Climate Deniers Backed Violence and Spread Pro-Insurrection Messages Before, During, and After January 6 Feb 16, 2021 @ 14:35 On the evening of January 6, 2021, the day of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, former coal mining executive Don Blankenship, who ran against Donald Trump as a third-party candidate in the 2020 election, began an all-caps Twitter thread. “Why is it that American politicians and the American media support citizen uprisings in China, Poland, South Africa, and throughout the world, but when an American citizen is killed during an uprising against a corrupt American government the citizens are at fault?” @DonBlankenship posted on Twitter. “Members of the media and the government are all saying what we saw today doesn’t work — but that is only because they don’t want it to work,” the thread continues. “What we saw today is what freed Americans from King George and England.”