If Republicans have learned one thing from the Trump years, it’s that there is no behavior too inexcusable, too outrageous or too criminal that it ever requires apologizing for. And to assist with this new reality, conservative media and politicians are more than happy to run interference, distract and downplay all types of right-wing malfeasance and misbehavior.

Most recently, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, soon after reading into the Congressional Record his widely debunked and outlandish conspiracy theory that antifa, not Trump supporters, launched the January 6 assault on the US Capitol building, used a senate hearing into the events of January 6 to help former US Capitol police chief Stephen Sund pretend the authorities were well prepared for the attack. Another example: Sean Hannity, who essentially rewrote recent history when he told his audience that Ted Cruz had always intended to merely drop off his daughter in Mexico and return to Texas immediately, even though Cruz has admitted the error and that he had planned to stay for four days.

In this clip Ana and John discuss this phenomenon of the right-wing echo chamber of inoculation against any criticism for wrongdoing. First Ana notes that Johnson and Sund are actively gaslighting the nation to suggest that the Capitol police were prepared for the attack (with Ana also adding that if antifa really HAD perpetrated the Capitol assault, shouldn’t Johnson want to get to the bottom of it?).

Ana then tears into both Hannity and Cruz for their transparent falsehoods about Cruz’s abandonment of his constituents, and for trying to make the Texas Senator out as the victim of left wing media, when in fact it’s the residents of Texas who suffered and died during this extreme weather event - largely thanks to the energy deregulation policies that Cruz supports - who are the real victims and deserve to be the focus of the media’s concern.