The September 11 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, were "nothing compared" with the storming of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, the disgraced former FBI official Peter Strzok said on Sunday.
"I think if you look at the scale in terms of a threat to democracy, I mean, 9/11 was a tragedy, we lost thousands of lives in a horrific way. We still mourn to this day. But when you look at something that is an attack on democracy, something that could actually bring about a fundamental change to American governance as we understand it, 9/11 is nothing compared to January 6," Strzok told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, one of the lowest-rated hosts on network television.
The widely criticized pundit argued that the January 6 riot should have prompted the federal government to adopt "the same sort of war footing that we were on in the weeks and months and years after 9/11," which wasn't nearly as big of a "threat to our constitutional democracy," and marshal "the same urgency and approach to the situation."
Strzok was fired by the FBI in 2018. He is best known for expressing his hatred for Donald Trump in texts to the FBI lawyer with whom he was having an affair while spearheading the investigation into Trump's so-called collusion with Russia based on the discredited Steele dossier. He is a regular guest on MSNBC.
A Harvard/Harris poll published over the weekend found that most Americans think the Democratic Party is egregiously obsessed with the January 6 riot. Whereas just 7 percent of respondents said the riot was the most important issue facing the country, nearly one in three respondents said it was the Democratic Party's top priority. The country's most pressing issues according to voters, the poll found, are inflation, the economy, immigration, and crime.