The Enduring Shame of January 6
A Day of Infamy that was just the beginning...
“As Jan 6 approaches, I can’t help feeling betrayed by those we protected, the failures of the DOJ, the Supreme Court negligence to hold a president accountable, and those who claim to support the rule of law and the police while supporting a violent attack on our democracy and police officers. — Staff Sergeant Aquilino Gonell
“We keep using terms like post-factual, but it almost feels like there’s this national psychosis or amnesia about what happened a year ago. It’s not just that we’re two nations. It’s as if we live on two different reality planets when it comes to the memory of Jan. 6.” —Me, to the AP
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We will never bow the knee. And we will never forget.
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Four years ago today, a mob of insurrectionists — fueled with conspiracies and lies, and incited to violence by a mendacious conman clinging to power — stormed the Capitol. It was a Day of Infamy.
But now — four years later —we know that the infamy was just beginning — a cascading failure of the institutions we thought would be the guardrails of our Constitutional order. Nearly 1,000 rioters have pleaded guilty to criminal charges, including more than 300 who pleaded guilty to felonies. Leaders of far-right militia groups were found guilty of seditionist conspiracy.
But the man who sat at the center of the conspiracy to overturn the election — who summoned the mob and sat by while it attacked the Capitol — emerged immune and unscathed. And in a scenario that was unthinkable the morning after the attack, the chief perpetrator of it all is about to return to the office he left in disgrace and ignominy.
Along the way, our moral universe was turned on its head as Trump’s decade-long assault on the truth comes to fruition. Via the NYT: “ ‘A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6.”
In two weeks, Donald J. Trump is to emerge from an arched portal of the United States Capitol to once again take the presidential oath of office. As the Inauguration Day ritual conveying the peaceful transfer of power unfolds, he will stand where the worst of the mayhem of Jan. 6, 2021, took place, largely in his name.
Directly behind Mr. Trump will be the metal-and-glass doors where protesters, inflamed by his lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, stormed the Capitol with clubs, chemical irritants and other weapons. To his left, the spot where roaring rioters and outnumbered police officers fought hand to hand. To his right, where the prostrate body of a dying woman was jostled in the bloody fray.
And before him, a dozen marble steps descending to a lectern adorned with the presidential seal. The same steps where, four years earlier, Trump flags were waved above the frenzied crowd and wielded like spears; where an officer was dragged facedown to be beaten with an American flag on a pole and another was pulled into the scrum to be kicked and stomped.
And we know what comes next: In this upside down universe, those violent insurrectionists will be hailed as patriots and heroes and honored with sweeping pardons. Meanwhile, the investigators who sought the truth face the threat of criminal charges.
**
So today is a good moment to pause and remind yourselves: You are not the crazy ones for remembering what actually happened. And it is up to us to keep the historical record intact.
On the first anniversary of the attack I wrote: “We know what actually happened, because we saw in it real time. And here are some data points to keep in mind as we relive the experience:
Five people died as a result of the riot that Trump incited, including Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died the next day. More than 150 police officers were injured in the assault on the Capitol, some with head wounds, cracked ribs and smashed spinal disks. Pro-Trump rioters shouted “kill him with his own gun” at officer Michael Fanone while they tased him, triggering a heart attack. Four other police officers committed suicide in the days and months after the riot.
Despite the violence, 147 Republicans voted to overturn the election results hours after the attack.
A week after the attack, in a bipartisan 232-197 vote, the House impeached Trump for a second time. Ten Republicans voted for impeachment.; the rest — 197 — sided with the now ex-president.
In February, 57 senators — including seven Republicans — voted to convict Trump. Conviction required a two-thirds vote, so he was acquitted.
But right-wing media was quick to rally around both Trump and his supporters who attacked the Capitol. The day after the Insurrection, The Federalist’s Ben Domenech downplayed the violence, insisted that Republicans rally around the protesters: “A party of the right that rejects the mob of people who spent their hard-earned, working-class money to drive to Washington, D.C., and wave a flag as deplorables will never win, or deserve to, any more than a party of the left could reject naming something Black Lives Matter plaza.”
The pivot came quickly.
In a secret ballot in early February, House Republicans voted 145-61 to keep Liz Cheney in her leadership post, despite her outspoken support for impeachment. Three months later, with the support of GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republicans voted to oust her — replacing Cheney with Trump cheerleader Elise Stefanik.
By the end of the year, with the exception of Cheney and Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, GOP critics of Trump’s role in the Insurrection had either retired or fallen silent.
And the GOP had rallied around the defeated, disgraced, twice impeached ex-president. The NYT reported: “A Year After Capitol Riot, Trump’s Hold on G.O.P. Is Unrivaled.” Reported the Wapo: “How Republicans became the party of Trump’s election lie after Jan. 6.”
But they knew. They all knew.
Lest we forget what we saw on January 6, 2021….
Here was on again, off-again Trump critic/Trump supporter Erick Erickson:
As we later learned, even Trump’s uber-turd-polisher Sean Hannity was horrified by the craziness emanating from the White House. On December 31, 2020, he texted Mark Meadows: “We can’t lose the entire WH counsels office. I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told.” The night before the riot, he texted that he was “very worried about the next 48 hours”
Trump’s loyal vice president, Mike Pence would later denounce the former president’s role on January 6.
"History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6," said Pence…."Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day."
"Tourists don't injure 140 police officers by simply sightseeing," Pence said, referencing how some other conservatives have sought to play down the rioters' actions. "Tourists don't break down doors to get to the speaker of the House. Tourists don't threaten public officials."
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Trump’s former Defense Secretary James Mattis, delivered a full-throated indictment:
"His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice," he added. "Our Constitution and our Republic will overcome this stain and We the People will come together again in our never-ending effort to form a more perfect Union, while Mr. Trump will deservedly be left a man without a country."
Trump’s own loyalists turned against him.
Former Attorney General William Barr says President Donald Trump’s conduct as a violent mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol was a “betrayal of his office and supporters.”
Cabinet members bailed. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao resigned abruptly.
“I had planned on serving through the end of your term in office," she wrote. "But after yesterday’s events at the U.S. Capitol, I will resign as U.S. Secretary of Transportation, effective Monday, January 11, 2021 to provide a short period of transition.”
She was even more direct on Twitter, calling Jan. 6 “traumatic and entirely avoidable” saying it “deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.”
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also resigned the day after the assault on the Capitol and wrote to Trump, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”
Former WH COS Mick Mulvaney, who had been serving as a special envoy to Northern Ireland, also resigned.
[F]ollowing the Jan. 6 riots he announced during a live interview on CNBC he was stepping down. “I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was resigning from that. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mulvaney told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Mulvaney said Trump was “not the same as he was eight months ago.”
**
Even right-wing think tanks were appalled. Kay C. James, who was then the president of the Heritage Foundation put out a scathing statement:
Like many Americans, I watched in disbelief Wednesday as an angry mob stormed our U.S. Capitol. As members of Congress gathered to certify the electoral votes of the presidential election, a band of criminals decided to take matters into their own hands. As this horrible act is investigated, it will be determined exactly who they were, and they must be held accountable…
Violence should not be used as a tool to bring about change, and those who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Of course, James’s successor at Heritage struck a very different note — turning Heritage into a full-on extension of Trump’s ego and agenda.
Back then, the disgrace was so palpable — and Trump’s culpability so obvious — that one of the nation’s most prominent business organizations, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) urged Mike Pence to consider removing Trump via the 25th Amendment:
The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy. Anyone indulging conspiracy theories to raise campaign dollars is complicit.
Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy.
**
The Wall Street Journal had seen enough.
In any case this week has probably finished him as a serious political figure. He has cost Republicans the House, the White House, and now the Senate. Worse, he has betrayed his loyal supporters by lying to them about the election and the ability of Congress and Mr. Pence to overturn it. He has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose.
It is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly.
By November of 2021, though, the WSJ published this piece, snarking that “The idea that the Capitol rioters threatened the American republic is a fantasy.”
**
But all of this was simply a prologue to the complete and utter collapse of the GOP. By now, it may seem an old story, but it’s still worth remembering.
There was a brief moment when even Lindsey Graham has reached his limit of sycophancy. (He quickly recovered.)
In the days after the attack, even the invertebrate Kevin McCarthy recognized Trump’s guilt.
“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said on the House floor. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump."
McCarthy’s public comments, which echo what he told his caucus earlier this week, came as he denounced the effort to impeach Trump for the second time.
You know what happened next: McCarthy hastened to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and embrace the Big Lie — a grovel that did not spare him from the serial humiliations of the next few years.
And then there was Mitch McConnell.
Fatefully, he stopped short of supporting Trump’s impeachment, but what he said back then is worth quoting at length. (It is also worth bookmarking and printing out.)
"January 6th was a disgrace.
"American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.
"Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President.
"They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he'd lost an election.
"Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.
"The House accused the former President of, quote, 'incitement.' That is a specific term from the criminal law.
"Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
"And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.
"The issue is not only the President's intemperate language on January 6th.
"It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged 'trial by combat.'
"It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President.
"I defended the President's right to bring any complaints to our legal system. The legal system spoke. The Electoral College spoke. As I stood up and said clearly at the time, the election was settled.
"But that reality just opened a new chapter of even wilder and more unfounded claims.
"The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.
"Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally.
"This was different.
"This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.
"The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence began.
"Whatever our ex-President claims he thought might happen that day... whatever reaction he says he meant to produce... by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world.
"A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"It was obvious that only President Trump could end this.
"Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the Administration.
"But the President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn't take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored.
"Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!
"Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger... even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters... the President sent a further tweet attacking his Vice President.
"Predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as further inspiration to lawlessness and violence.
"Later, even when the President did halfheartedly begin calling for peace, he did not call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later.
"And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.
"In recent weeks, our ex-President's associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to re-elect him as a kind of human shield against criticism.
"Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters.
"That is an absurd deflection.
"74 million Americans did not invade the Capitol. Several hundred rioters did.
"And 74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it.
"One person did.
Nota Bene
What I Saw on Jan. 6 Still Haunts Me - Sergeant Aquilino Gonell in the NYT
For those who didn’t experience the violence, Jan. 6, 2021, might feel like it’s in the past — but it’s not for me. I keep reliving the five horrific hours of that cold Wednesday afternoon, as I tried to protect elected officials, regardless of their political ideology, and their staffs inside the Capitol building — all without firing my gun.
For my efforts doing my duty as a Capitol Police sergeant, I was beaten and struck by raging rioters all over my body with multiple weapons until I was covered in my own blood. My hand, foot and shoulder were wounded. I thought I was going to die and never make it home to see my wife and young son.
Over the last four years, it’s been devastating to me to hear Donald Trump repeat his promise to pardon insurrectionists on the first day he’s back in office. “It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” he said in a speech last year. But all of us who were there and anyone who watched on TV know that those who stormed the Capitol were not peaceful protesters. Pardoning them would be an outrageous mistake, one that could mean about 800 convicted criminals will be back on the street.
They Remember
That trump is about to be reinstalled as POTUS is sickening and demoralizing to the rest of the nation who watched what he did and did not believe in a million years that he would ever be elected to anything ever again.
We have been let down by our elected gutless politicians who are only interested in staying in power and by the “free” press who either complicity have spread trumps lies and political propaganda are destroying America.
If trump and his thugs think for one minute that decent law abiding Americans will ever believe or go along with his corrupt government, he is dead wrong.
We remember
This was just right, Charlie. Thank you so much. I am just finishing two extended posts - one to remember this day and its consequences, as you have done - and one to contrast the speeches of Congressman Jeffries and Speaker Johnson on Friday. Congressman Jeffries "there are no election deniers on our side of the aisle" moment was exactly what was needed, as the nation has suffered so greatly through the vanity of a single, cowardly man and his supporters in Republican leadership, and Trumpist media and social media.