We’ll let the legal system figure it out, but the storming of the Capitol on January 6 included both some out-of-control rioters breaking windows and furniture, and then there were others who just wandered in and took selfies in the Rotunda. The January 6 riot is often referred to as deadly, although that’s rarely followed up by the fact that it was Ashli Babbitt who was shot and killed and not a police officer bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher.

There are plenty who are using the Capitol riot as leverage to crack down on speech and curtail civil liberties, and for that, they require January 6 to be a massive event, bigger than the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people. David Rutz notes for Fox News that Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, speaking with ABC News’ Matthew Dowd at a Lincoln Project roundtable, expressed his belief that the Capitol riots are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed on 9/11.

That’s quite a claim. Rutz reports:

Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt agreed with fellow disgruntled ex-Republican Matthew Dowd Wednesday that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans and launched multiple wars.

Schmidt, a Republican-turned-Independent-turned-Democrat, echoed Dowd’s brazen remarks this week that the riot was worse because it “continued to rip our country apart.”

“He couldn’t be more right,” Schmidt said at a town hall for the Lincoln Project. “The 1/6 attack for the future of the country was a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9/11 attacks. And in the end, the 1/6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed in the 9/11 attacks, which will include the casualties of the wars that lasted 20 years following.

Damn, that is a hot take.

Here’s the video in case you don’t believe Rutz:

Related: