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Music to Trump's ears: Whitewashing Jan. 6 riot with song

The song is simple and tinny, but that hasn’t stopped it from being embraced by former President Donald Trump and his allies in their campaign to rewrite the history of the deadly Capitol riot.

The tune, “Justice for All,” is the Star-Spangled Banner, and it was sung by a group of defendants jailed over their alleged roles in the January 2021 insurrection. Recorded over a prison phone line, the national anthem sounds more like a dirge than celebration and is overlaid with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Despite its low fidelity, “Justice for All” has garnered a lot of fans. Trump, a Republican, played it at a recent rally in Waco, Texas, as images of Capitol rioters flashed behind him on a big screen, and the $1.29 song last month briefly vaulted to No. 1 on iTunes, supplanting such recording artists as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.

Experts on extremism and propaganda say the song is another example of how Trump and his most ardent allies are trying to gloss over an avalanche of evidence proving the Capitol riot was anything but an act of patriotic resistance.

And it shows how such revisionists have dug deep into authoritarian playbooks that rely heavily on the use of national identity to sway public opinion. In this case, Trump and his allies are ironically relying on America's most patriotic song in their efforts to whitewash an insurrection that contributed to five deaths and left more than 120 police offices injured, experts said.

“We should not be surprised that this propaganda is effective, but it is shocking to see this in this country," said Federico Finchelstein, chair of the history department at the New School for Social Research in New York, an expert in authoritarian disinformation. "What they are demanding is that reality be put aside for the loyalty of the leader. And that leader in this case is Donald Trump.”