CAPITOL HILL — When you live or work on Capitol Hill, you never tire of seeing the building. I remember passing it hundreds of nights in my 20s. I was on the east parking lot on Sept. 11 when I heard from a Capitol staffer about the World Trade Center attacks. I witnessed inaugurations, States of the Union, and all-night filibusters in or at that building.
From now on, though, my memory of the Capitol will be of a mob storming the building, smashing windows, assaulting police, all in the name of President Trump.
The same doors I passed through hundreds of times by flashing a press pass were barricaded by Capitol Police who repeatedly had to repel lines of men, many dressed as paramilitary troops, leading chants of “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!”
It was a horrific scene, a shameful one, and an embarrassing one.
But as foreign as the violence, tear gas, shattered glass, and weapons all seemed, what was just as disturbing was how familiar so much of it was. The men and women I interviewed at the Capitol spoke of the Constitution, and God, and even “conservative values.” “Communism — we cannot have that,” explained a woman from Phoenix.
Mike Reyes, a black man from New York in a Make America Great Again hat, was trying to get inside the Capitol. He said he was a Trump supporter because he feared Venezuela-style socialism.
In other words, the arguments for the violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol during a constitutionally prescribed certification of the presidential election were the same arguments I heard for voting for Trump in the first place. “Limited Government!” one protester cheered as more of his compatriots breached barriers.
For hundreds or thousands of these “patriots,” everyday political, cultural, or policy arguments justified a forceful occupation.
Sen. Mitt Romney, though, called it an “insurrection.” That’s the right word.
I saw men strategize how to defeat the Capitol Police in an effort to take over the building — and this was after a rioter was shot inside the Capitol.
“Someone pull down the little guy,” a rioter standing behind me said, pointing at the shortest police officer in the wall of Capitol Police in the doorway, “then sweep the big guy’s leg, then bam, a wedge right through.”
At about 4:15 p.m., standing near the entrance to the Senate, I saw a Capitol Policeman pulled down the steps and into the middle of the crowd. Dozens of rioters and protesters now surrounded the officer.
One man stood smiling at the scene, holding a pitchfork.
Screaming “traitors” at the police, on the bullhorn, one rioter instructed, “They grab one of you, we grab them back!”
“Occupy the U.S. Capitol!” they screamed. “This is not Nancy Pelosi’s House anymore,” a man said over a bullhorn to cheers from the crowd, as rioters broke into the House chamber.
Yes, a vast majority of the Trump supporters around the Capitol were peaceful, in that they never shoved, attacked, or threatened anyone. But that doesn’t mean they were blameless. Grandfathers and Grandmothers cheered when they saw the mobs scaling the wall on the west front of the Capitol and breaking through a police barrier.
“Oh my gosh, this is just amazing,” one woman from Phoenix, Arizona, in her 60s told me.
I saw a MAGA-hat-clad middle-aged man give a satisfied chuckle as he explained to his wife and friends that Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence had to be escorted from the House and Senate chambers. Later, I heard the Trump supporters who were demanding entrance to Capitol explain triumphantly that Congress couldn’t certify Biden’s win.
They were rooting for violence to overturn an election.
Watching my video of the incident after I got back to the office, I heard my own voice at the moment I realized the police officer is now surrounded by dozens of men declaring a revolution and calling him a traitor. “No. No. No,” I said. My instinct was to dive into the mob and protect the Capitol Policeman.
That’s when I knew I had to leave.
On the long walk back to my office, I tried to figure out the culpability of the protesters who were supporting the rioters and insurrectionists. Did it matter that they thought they were defending the Constitution? Did it matter that they thought the election was stolen and that a socialist coup was underway?
These weren’t, after all, people who said, “We lost the election, but we want our side to retain power.” They believed truth and the Constitution were on their side. That forced them to turn, progressively, against Georgia’s Republican statewide officials, Fox News, most Republican senators, and, today, against Pence. “He’s Judas Iscariot,” one man from Pennsylvania told me.
And then, today, their belief forced them to decide the Capitol Police were the enemy. “Don’t back the blue until they back you!” one man screamed over a bullhorn. “Traitors!” the rioters screamed at the police protecting the Capitol.
At the very least, we can see a profound failure of prudence here. And that’s not a small moral failure. When you realize you are on the side of violent insurrectionists and arrayed against law enforcement and ideologically aligned media and politicians, you ought to second-guess your conviction that there is a vast conspiracy against you.
But any accounting of blame for today should focus ultimately on Donald Trump.
Trump spread the lie that he won. Trump never wavered in repeating this lie and never shied from vilifying all who corrected him. Today, he allowed his lawyer to call for a “trial by combat” and told his misled faithful to march on the Capitol to “stop the steal.” Trump instigated the riots, which turned into destruction and death and a deliberate attack on the People’s House. And then, on Twitter, he made it clear that he enjoyed it all.
It was an evil scene at the U.S. Capitol today, which I will never forget. It was caused by the evil deeds of a wretched man, a fact which I hope his supporters will soon grasp.
