Trump White House's Jan 6 website draws fierce media reaction

The White House's Jan. 6 website that was rolled out Tuesday on the fifth anniversary of the Capitol riot drew a fierce reaction in the media, with critics saying President Donald Trump's administration was rewriting history with a false narrative that blamed police and Democrats for the day's violence.

The New York Times called the site "the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility" and a "breathtaking reversal of reality," while The Washington Post's report stated it was a "false telling" of events.

MS NOW reporter Vaughn Hillyard reported on the website, leading White House communications director Steven Cheung to write on X, "Can't believe MSDNC actually fell for our trap in covering the new January 6 page on the White House website."

The official site rehashed Jan. 6 and its aftermath with a timeline that framed it as a miscarriage of justice against the president's peaceful, patriotic supporters, lauding Trump for his blanket pardons and commutations of those charged with and convicted of various crimes around the day's events, which included everything from misdemeanors to felonies like seditious conspiracy, assault and obstruction.

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The site's timeline alleged Capitol police instigated the violence by "deliberately escalating tensions" and used "inconsistent and provocative tactics" that "turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos." 

It also praised Trump for encouraging calm, castigated former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as responsible for the lack of armed security around the Capitol, said Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was "murdered in cold blood," and stated former Vice President Mike Pence was too cowardly to "return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and decertification under the United States Constitution."

The site continued to push Trump's longtime claim that the 2020 election was stolen, saying at one point Democrats "staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters." 

It also discussed the subsequent GOP investigations and allegations of entrapment long pushed by Trump acolytes, the social media bans put on Trump and his eventual political comeback culminating in his 2024 election victory. The site also paid tribute to Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol officer, and eight other supporters who died that day or subsequently of suicide, while saying no law enforcement officers lost their lives.

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Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died the day after the riot, although it was falsely reported at the time that he had been killed by a blow to the head by a fire extinguisher. He suffered multiple strokes and his death was determined to be by natural causes, although the Washington medical examiner said the day's events played a role in his condition. His name isn't mentioned on the White House site.

ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel mocked the website during his monologue Tuesday night, joking, "Happy stormiversary, everyone," and quoting other parts of the site, saying, "They actually wrote this."

"Donald Trump tried to overthrow our government in a pathetic and illegal attempt to stay in the White House. There's no other way to put it," Kimmel said. "You cannot look at the facts objectively and come to any conclusion other than that."

The White House site also drew virulent reaction online, with one anti-Trump Republican account writing, it was "straight out of Stalin’s Soviet Union or today’s North Korea." The Bulwark's Sam Stein wrote it had "grotesque entries," and Mediaite's Isaac Schorr wrote it "takes Trump's greatest disgrace and compounds it. For shame."

CNN called the site a "full-blown recast of the historical record," and a Chicago Tribune reporter on BlueSky called it "White House propaganda."

MS NOW host Jen Psaki ripped the site as well, saying, "The administration unveiled an official White House web page selling a completely fabricated revisionist history about that day. One that refers to the rioters as patriots who marched to the Capitol, and blames Capitol Police for escalating tensions, which is insane and offensive."

Video footage from Jan. 6 showed demonstrators, some of them part of organized far-right groups, overpowered barricades and law enforcement on Jan. 6, broke windows and breached the building, disrupting the certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election and forcing an evacuation of lawmakers. Order was eventually restored and Congress was back in session by the end of the day to officially certify the results. 

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Trump released a video that afternoon telling his supporters to go home, adding they were "very special" and "we love you." He said he didn't want anybody to get hurt, and they needed to respect law enforcement.

On Tuesday, Trump addressed House Republicans and accused the media of misreporting on Jan. 6.

"Do you know that the news never reported the words walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol?" Trump said. "Do you know that they never reported it? It’s a scandal."

More than 140 officers were injured during the day, and some have spoken out against Trump's pardons of those convicted of violent offenses.

Critics of the common Jan. 6 narrative have said many demonstrators entered the building's open doors and simply walked around peacefully, claimed the melee was in part incited by federal agents, and said Pelosi bears responsibility for not accepting Trump's offer of thousands of National Guard troops to prepare for demonstrations. Pelosi's office has responded to the charge by saying that she did not plan her "own assassination," referencing verbal threats made against her that day by protesters.

A Pelosi spokesperson said Tuesday that the "ongoing attempts to whitewash the deadly insurrection are shameful, unpatriotic, and pathetic," according to Fox News Digital.

Trump was impeached on a count of inciting an insurrection over the riot shortly after leaving office but was acquitted by the Senate. He was also indicted in 2023 on charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but the Supreme Court ruled he was immune from prosecution for official presidential acts. A subsequent indictment was later dismissed after Trump was elected president again in 2024.

Trump is suing the BBC, alleging a documentary edited his Jan. 6, 2021, Ellipse speech by splicing two different segments to make it appear he told supporters to "fight like hell" immediately after saying they were going to walk to the Capitol. In reality, those remarks were nearly an hour apart.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.

Fox News Digital's Emma Colton contributed to this report.