MSNBC's Rachel Maddow reported on Monday about Pope Francis' decision to
fire Joseph Strickland, a far-right Texas bishop who spent months attacking him as illegitimate — and suggested that there might be another reason, beyond his public insubordination, that the Vatican might want to be rid of him.
"You might remember that just before the January 6th attack on Congress, like three weeks before that, in mid-Dec. 2020, there was another day of crazy right-wing pro-Trump violence in the streets of Washington, D.C.," said Maddow. "Dec. 12, 2020. A number of people were stabbed. There were brawls in the streets of Washington, running, fistfights and battles. This was the day when a Black Lives Matter banner was stolen and burned from a D.C. church ... The largest event pro-Trump forces had organized was something called the Jericho March. This was a Mike Flynn thing, where Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the pro-Trump right-wing paramilitary group the Oath Keepers, who is now in jail on sedition charges — this is where Stewart Rhodes, at this event, called for
Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military in American streets to keep Trump in power."
It was violence and radicalism were the warm-up for the Jan. 6 attack, she explained.
"And that event, the Jericho March, the headline event of that day, included an address, a speech from a sitting Catholic bishop, from Bishop Joseph Strickland from the Diocese of Tyler, Texas," Maddow continued. "A serving bishop speaking at an event that was calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government, calling for the overthrow of the U.S. election results, including by the use of the Army, the U.S. military against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil."