MSNBC talking head Nicolle Wallace performed, with the aid of a former Jan. 6 committee member, yet another mental gymnastics routine on Monday, framing as ludicrous the suggestion that the targeted violence against federal agents in Los Angeles over the weekend amounted to an insurrection while insisting that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in Washington, D.C., still qualified.

By way of their acrobatics, Wallace and former Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman accomplished little more than reveal "insurrection" to be a term used by liberals to differentiate riots on the left from riots on the right.

"Insurrection" is not explicitly defined by federal law. It is, however, prohibited and generally understood to be an organized and violent act of revolt against an established government or civil authority. Although a riot is similarly characterized by violence, it alternatively tends to be more spontaneous and localized.

Elements of the Washington establishment and the liberal media spent years hyperventilating about how the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — not the deadly 2020 Black Lives Matter riots that resulted in billions of dollars in damage, thousands of businesses ruined, and 2,037 police officers assaulted or injured — was somehow an insurrection.

This suggestion was used to great political effect.

For instance, its acceptance enabled the Democrat-appointed justices on Colorado's Supreme Court to rule in 2023 that Coloradans couldn't vote for then-candidate Donald Trump for president — a decision later echoed by a Democratic judge in Illinois but ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court.

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  Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Some of the same personalities who liberally threw around "insurrection" in recent years, when doing so meant maligning peaceful Trump supporters and the unarmed boneheads who stole into the U.S. Capitol in 2021, are now coming out of the woodwork to insist that the term's use to describe the targeted leftist revolt against governmental forces in California is inaccurate.

As always, MSNBC has been one of their go-to platforms, if not their base of operations.

Hosts, contributors, and staff at MSNBC have used the term "insurrection" without reservation when speaking of Jan. 6. MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance dubbed it a "mass insurrection." Former MSNBC talking head Joy Reid routinely referred to the rioters and protesters as "insurrectionists." The team over at "The Rachel Maddow Show" also adopted the term with that specific target.

Wallace continued using it in reference to Jan. 6 on her show Monday but bristled at the mention of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller referring to the L.A. riots as an insurrection and of both Trump and Vice President JD Vance calling some of the rioters who violently attacked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents "insurrectionists."

Wallace said that "insurrection" is an important word, not only because of its relevance regarding the invocation of the Insurrection Act but because "anyone older than 4 years old remembers an actual insurrection and the way Trump spent his first day in office the second time, pardoning all the rioters involved in January 6."

'It's about the target and purpose of it.'

Riggleman warned Wallace that the Trump administration is "trying to take the language of January 6."

A similar game was being played over at CNN, where senior reporter Aaron Blake accused Trump of using a "broad definition of 'insurrection.'"

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  Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images

Whereas Wallace focused on reminding her viewers that the L.A. riots didn't satisfy her criteria for insurrection, Blake identified other uses of the term that he regards as problematic, such as Stephen Miller characterizing an Obama judge's recent decision to undermine the executive branch and temporarily prevent the Trump administration from revoking status for over 500,000 illegal aliens as a "legal insurrection against democracy and the American people"; and Miller's suggestion that the radicals who marched on the Supreme Court and illegally mounted a pressure campaign at conservative justices' homes around the time of the high court's Dobbs decision were engaged in "an open insurrection."

"An insurrection isn't about the level of violence," wrote Blake. "It's about the target and purpose of it."

So long as the liberal establishment agrees with radicals' target and purpose, it appears it will refrain from calling organized revolts against governmental targets for a political purpose "insurrections."

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