After Capitol insurrection, RNC Committeeman Peter Feaman plays apologist

Republican Party of Florida National Committeeman Peter Feaman holds up the documents he and the rest of the 29 Florida Presidential Electors used to cast votes for Donald Trump and Mike Pence during a meeting of the electors at the Capitol in Tallahassee Monday, Dec. 14, 2020.

If mental gymnastics were an Olympic sport, Peter Feaman would win the gold.

Florida’s Republican National Committeeman can’t accept that President Donald Trump’s supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol and tried to subvert an election.

Some have speculated — wrongly — that the invading mob were members of antifa, a disorganized group that Trump apologists claim — again, wrongly — are operating as a well-oiled machine to sow chaos.

The theory is as dumb as it is false. But Feaman has an even dumber explanation: Entrapment.

In a Facebook post, he said police must have been given a “stand down order” so that rioters could march into the Capitol unimpeded.

“There is NO WAY a mob of unarmed people could have breached the Capitol building, while they were in session, without a stand down order. This is ridiculous,” he wrote, emphasis his own. “This was a set up to make Trump folks look bad.”

Wrong. Didn’t happen. But let’s play along.

Say there was a stand down order, the goal would be to protect the law enforcement officers who were greatly outmanned and not to make anyone “look bad” — the seditious mob didn’t need any outside help to accomplish that.

Even if that was one of law enforcement’s objectives, the crowd bought it hook, line and sinker.

If this was a small crime, enticing someone to commit a crime would be overboard. But this wasn’t a small crime.

This was nothing short of an attempted coup. Seizing power at a moment of perceived weakness is essentially the definition of one. It doesn’t matter if the pro-Trump mob tried to torch our republic just because they saw an opening.

One last thing, Mr. Feaman. The brainwashed thugs that stormed the Capitol don’t “look bad.” They are bad. And your words are enabling them.