A week ago, on Wednesday December 6th, 2021, the President incited a huge crowd of supporters who had gathered in Washington DC to hear him speak and to show their support for the “stop the steal” lie, marched on and attacked the Capitol building. Inside the building were lawmakers from all 50 states who were meeting to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election. In his speech, Trump repeated is claim that the election had been rigged “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is what they’re doing and stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.” He laid out many of the mostly debunked theories about election fraud and stated that the Democrats and the “fake news” media were complicit in refusing to acknowledge the perceived irregularities. “Our media is not free. It’s not fair. It suppresses thought. It suppresses speech, and it’s become the enemy of the people. It’s become the enemy of the people. It’s the biggest problem we have in this country.”
Trump continued to repeat his rhetoric while pushing the crowd and asking them to “fight”. At many points, he was interrupted by chants of “Fight for Trump!”.
Referring to the Vice President’s overseeing of the Electoral Vote counts, Trump talked about how Pence could refuse to certify the electors. “…and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. If he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution.” Trump continued “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
And that’s what happened. The crowd, now charged up and ready to “take back our country”, marched to the Capitol and within a few hours, they managed to breach all the security and hundreds of them entered the building. Congress had to evacuate and take shelter in other parts of the complex while the mob roamed around the building. Chants of “hang Mike Pence” and “where’s Nancy?” were heard.



One of the rioters was shot and killed as she tried to breach a locked and barricaded doorway into the area where lawmakers were sheltering. One Capitol police officer died after he was beaten by the crowd. Members of the mob ran amok, entering the offices of Senators, stealing things and causing havoc while saying “this is OUR house!”. Security and police officers seemed unable to stop them as they were overwhelmed by the numbers.
The mayor of DC imposed a 6pm curfew and the National Guard was finally called in to help disperse the rioters. Videos show a much heavier handed effort to remove the crowds from the building after the woman was shot. By evening, things had mostly calmed down but not before 4 people were dead (two additional deaths would be attributed to the attack within a couple days). Lawmakers re-convened later that evening and completed their task of certifying the election results. Many who had planned to vote against certification changed their minds after seeing the possible outcome of casting doubt on the validity of our elections could mean.
In the aftermath of this crazy event, I spent a lot of time on social media and news sites trying to figure out what had happened and what the outcome would be. As photos and videos began to appear online and were shared by my friends who seemed as astonished as I was about what had happened, I responded to a few:
After watching this video, I replied to my FB friend’s sharing of it. “I just finished watching. I’m shaking. I’m disgusted. I’m in disbelief that people died for these ridiculous lies and conspiracy theories. I had already seen a couple videos of the shooting but what gets me is the sheer power of the crowd. They push through lines of police with indifference. It’s clear that the police would be overwhelmed if they began to shoot into the crowds so I can see why they just try to work with them in order to slow their roll. But until shots were fired, the rioters were unstoppable. Some people were clearly just along for the ride and there were definitely some crazies in the crowd but there were also some smart, motivated individuals. I fear that these people will show up at the inauguration next week. Law enforcement and the military will no doubt be more prepared but I am pretty confident that something is going to go down.”
There have been many statements and analyses of this event and I’m sure there will be more. Today is the beginning of the second impeachment processes of Trump. Let’s see where this all leads….






