By Wednesday evening, the combination of Capitol Police, DC police, Virginia National Guard, Maryland National Guard, Virginia state troopers and specialized SWAT units of various state and federal agencies had retaken the Capitol after Donald Trump’s terrorist coup. Many Congressmen and senators had stayed in the building, likely taking cover where they could – there’s a complex maze of offices, especially underground, and probably several bunkers. So when outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Pelosi called the joint session of the Senate and the House back, the people were already in the building. They restarted what they intended to do in the afternoon, which was a procedural certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. (Chuck Schumer’s speech was great – that starts at the 6:20 mark.)
Pre-coup, the vote was already going to be a mess, with Republican congressmen and senators announcing plans to challenge various states’ electoral votes. Many (but not all) of those challenges were abandoned post-coup. That didn’t stop many delusional, self-serving traitors from spreading lies and dangerous conspiracies from the floor, like Matt Gaetz.
Matt Gaetz claims Congress was stormed by “ANTIFA.” He is knowingly lying. And yet dozens of colleagues applaud his blatant misstatements. It is utterly repugnant.
— A Worried Citizen (@ThePubliusUSA) January 7, 2021
Matt Gaetz should be tried as a traitor to the country. Before 4 am this morning, the vote was finally concluded and guess what? Joe Biden was affirmed, certified and ratified, yet again, as the winner of the 2020 election. VP Mike Pence confirmed it, as president of the Senate, and Pence seemed especially… something. Republican colleagues said that Pence was “madder” than they’d ever seen him, and especially disillusioned about how Trump basically sent those terrorists into the Capitol FOR Pence.
Joe Biden had already been seen before the Capitol was retaken – he gave a speech in Delaware, calling on the terrorists to GTFO and calling on Donald Trump to tell his terrorist supporters to stand down.
And finally, Donald Trump conceded the election after all of that. He issued this statement, which was posted on Dan Scavino’s Twitter account because Twitter had locked Trump’s account: “Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th. I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!” That’s a threat. He’s explicitly threatening all of us, and America itself.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
I can’t believe there are Republicans still siding with Trump.
Why? Were they suddenly going to wake up as not stupid, horrible people this morning? They knew this was the logical outcome of their irresponsible rhetoric, and they kept up with it anyway. So why change course now?
You know who really pisses me off? The ones like Loeffler who planned to object, and then changed their mind after the coup. “Oh my goodness, I had no idea that repeatedly feeding into this violent, racist machine would result in actions that are violent and racist! I am scandalized!” Who the hell do they think they’re fooling? Too late. We see you.
Absolutely. Loeffler was especially disingenuous and robotic as always. And Hawley is determined to double down on feeding the MAGA monster he’s decided to court.
Exactly! It took an armed insurrection by domestic terrorists for bootlickers like Loeffler to wake up and smell the covfefe?
I was watching this all unfold yesterday from my little corner here in Quebec and I remember thinking only now do they finally realize how insane this is? Only now is Pence actually growing a pair? Pathetic.
I sincerely hope that now that the Dems have the senate and house they use that to punish every republican who supported this coup d’état. I will be so disappointed if they don’t do anything about it.
My aunt is a Republican and her stomach is turning. Yesterday finally let her see what I’ve seen for 4 years.
They are still flirting with that base. They probably know the objections wouldn’t have gone anywhere, but they wanted to keep the insanity going nonetheless.
They know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve tested the authoritarian waters and probed the weak points. When the next coup happens, they want in on it. They want the power. We should all view these people with a healthy dose of fear and wariness.
That whole saga was batshit crazy. It was surreal. Can’t believe it happened here.
Agree, surreal and heartbreaking. Never in all my life would I have imagined our Capitol police could not maintain the security of the U.S. Capitol from a mob of white supremacists. How they were not prepared for this riot tells me they were complicit with the mad man currently occupying the White House. Drumpf has broken this country and shit on the very foundation of our democracy. Every word he’s spoken to his supporters over the past 4 years has contributed to this horrendous act, and as a Vet and US citizen I feel personally violated. He needs to be held accountable and removed from office immediately.
There’s a video of police inside the Capitol taking selfies with the rioters! They didn’t stop them because they are them!
A newly elected West Virginia legislator was one of the rioters. Recorded himself and posted it to Facebook.
If you are surprised you haven’t been paying attention.
I felt like I did on 9/11 but this time it was trump/gop flying the planes.
+1
Well there may be some Republicans left who will gladly follow Trump over the cliff, but many are turning against him and are fed up with him and I hope Pence is livid. The “ungrateful” Supreme Court justices should also be livid if they have any integrity. Fox News was not too flattering to Trump either.
There is one Republican that I have a lot of respect for and that is Mitt Romney. It was difficult to watch how the Trump supporters treated him at the airport (I assume it was recently) and on the plane but he dealt with them with dignity. He has called Trump out for months and I loved his speech on the Senate floor. When he returns to SLC, he should get a hero’s welcome.
You know what? The Republicans who are turning on him now deserve our ire every bit as much as the Republicans who are still supporting him. Who didn’t see this coming? After five years of behavior that has been leading us precisely to this moment they want a cookie and a pat on the head because NOW they see that Trump is dangerous? They’re fed up NOW? Where the hell have they been?
Remember how in Inglorious Basterds Brad Pitt’s character makes sure the Nazis wear the Nazi symbol for the rest of their life so they can never pretend they weren’t? I want to be clear, I am NOT implying that we should hurt ANYONE, but metaphorically, these people should NEVER be allowed to take off their uniforms. They’ve shown us their true colors and we should NEVER forget.
Romney though has been very vocally critical of Trump. To the point that he did vote for impeachment. The rest that changed their tune since November 4 and specially after yesterday are trash and should be taken out like the trash that they are come January 20th.
Don’t forget Romney courted a position in Trumps administration and he didn’t get it. He may have realized what kind of person Trump is, but he’d still sell his mother out for politics. He’s no hero.
THIS. I’m so tired of some Republicans getting credit for what ultimately amounts to a modicum of political savvy. Romney made a calculation. That’s all. He’s shown us who he is in the past.
The only reason I semi-forgive Romney for trying to get a position in the trump administration (I said SEMI forgive) is because at that point, everyone still thought he could be reigned in. Everyone still thought that with competent people around him – some crazy a-holes like Steve Bannon – but some competent establishment Republicans, that he could be controlled and the Rs could use him to push their agenda. Obviously that didn’t happen and he couldn’t be controlled and he’s going to tweet whatever he wants and no one is going to make him admit that the Nazis marching in Charlottesville weren’t fine people. But initially, there was a thought process that with enough competent Republicans around him, things would be bad politically in terms of legislation but not unhinged.
Well it only took him 5 months to fire Comey so by that point everyone should have known, but before he took office, there really was a sense that he could be contained.
It was a naïve sense, but it was there.
@Becks1, I agree with this. I live close to NYC, so already had more of a sense of who Trump was in 2016 – though I never expected things could turn out as extreme as this. Have a brother in CA, who really follows the news and is very savvy politically (lifelong D), and I remember him saying something similar, with Trump’s initial appointees – it looks like he’s surrounded himself with semi-competent people, so maybe it’ll be okay, or words to that effect, so I thought, okay, let’s hope so.
All that went out the window pretty quick, but I agree the sense was there in the beginning, naive or not.
Yeah, in the beginning, there was still a hope that if he was surrounded by moderate, intelligent people, MAYBE it could work, provided he took their advice. That notion was quickly disabused. Hell, Rex Tillerson said as much – that you can sit across from him, calmly and clearly explain why he should do/not do something, and he’d basically say “yeah, no” and plunge ahead. Romney at least was spared actually taking a position and was able to flee with his dignity intact. Few others were so lucky.
These people need to be clinically diagnosed and sent to institutions until the brainwashing is over.
These people think the non-organization Antifa infiltrated their insurrection by dressing up in camo and MAGA hats…then turning the hats backward. You know….the standard MAGA good ol’ boy uniform. And of course, the camo wearing “antifa” were aggressive. Nevermind that everyone was aggressive and these snowflakes always get aggressive when they don’t get their way. Just ask Karen!
I’m just sad that we always see images like this throughout America’s history. First, a war because the South wanted to continue chattel slavery. Second, whites did not want to integrate AND did not want Black-only communities to prosper (Black Wall Street among others). Now we’re seeing the same thing with MAGAts who have attempted a coup. And we keep waiting for this type of person and sentiment to die out a bit more with each generation, but it’s not happening. We need to tackle this head-on with free education through university, social nets including UBI. Take away desperation and ignorance and we MIGHT be able to move forward as a country. Otherwise, we’ll see this repeated again and again.
The fragility of our country’s social fabric has never been more apparent. The number of police who were friendly with these insurrectionists is sickening but not surprising. For the “greatest” country in the world, we certainly aren’t much better or different than other “sh!@hole” countries, are we?
Can we invoke the 25th already? I feel like we have to, because otherwise we’re sanctioning this behavior. It sets a really dangerous precedent.
Pence being enraged that the people were coming for him – and they were, trump was focusing his rage on Pence yesterday – is almost sort of funny in a dark humor kind of way – like he cant believe that Trump turned on him so fully. Pence was a useful idiot to Trump and I think yesterday was the reason Trump kept him as his VP – he really thought that Pence was such a weakling that he would do whatever trump said. while Trump was almost right, even Pence recognized the limits of his power. I don’t even want to say that Pence did the “right thing,” he did the ONLY thing he could do under the constitution, but I guess at this point following the constitution is the bare minimum we can expect?
Yeah it’s like most of those pub senators were like, “wait, Trump would send his Nazi white trash goons to kill ME too? Oh I’m done now.”
They’ve made their bed. I felt so sympathy for them when they had to put on gas masks and go hide from the mob they created.
They only got concerned when their lives were at risk, and I’m just over the same people suddenly finding reason once they are personally affected.
Oh yeah, it’s like that viral tweet “i never thought leopards would eat MY face…” right? I don’t feel one bit sorry for Pence. He made this. They all did, save Romney. I don’t know how differently things would have played out had McCain lived. I don’t give him as much credit as many, but he wouldn’t have gone along with this. Would he have stopped Graham? I don’t know.
@darla, there’s a sub on Reddit called r/leopardsatemyface that exists solely to call out this behavior and incredulity that it would happen to them. It’s a favorite.
Honestly, it reminds me of that damn poem that Trump kept reading, about the woman who took the snake home and the snake bit her and was like, “you knew I was a snake when you brought me home.”
They’re all shell shocked and enraged now but they all knew Trump was a snake when they “brought him home.”
That’s why my ‘favorite’ picture, for want of a better description, is of the members of Congress crawling on the floor between seats in one of the chambers. Says it all. Didn’t consider what they were doing to the rest of the country during the last four years. They didn’t think they’d be personally affected. Boom!
Though, I was following a bit of historian Michael Beschloss’ Twitter last night (as much as I could handle), and his comment after watching the House proceedings and continued objections to states’ electoral votes was, “It looks like none of these people have learned anything at all from what happened today.” Not encouraging.
I agree; I found it funny that his boss didn’t care if Pence or any of his Republican supporters got caught in the cross-fire. It’s sad though too because, once again, the US is the laughingstock of the world.
Trump didn’t write that statement.
And it still isn’t really a concession.
And Scavino should be held on treason charges for posting it. Anyone who enabled this should be held accountable to the fullest extent.
Well, obviously the only way to find out if the MAGAts were really antifa in disguise is to order the FBI to immediately track down every single one and thoroughly investigate, interrogate, and prosecute them for multiple crimes committed. Sounds good to me.
They should be easy to find. No masks, lots of posted incriminating photos and videos and selfies. They probably are counting on pardons.
@jwoolman, they identified themselves in the videos and on social media. A newly installed state representative from West Virginia was one of the terrorists and once inside the capital, he announced his name and proclaimed “I’m Inside!!” excitedly. Their treason is matched only by their stupidity.
Yesterday was horrible, disgusting and heartbreaking! How dare he incite that violence! I hope (but doubt) he will be charged with Treason!
Also, Why did some of the senators call Pence President when they reconvened?
He’s the president of the senate. So that’s why you sometimes hear them go back and forth – he’s the Vice-President of the US but that’s an executive branch position; in the legislative branch he’s the president of the senate.
Thank you so much. That make sense.
Pence calling in the ng is him thinking 2024. This is him showing a possible candidate to the republican voters that were disappointed yesterday trump and his terrorists.
What I can’t believe is Pence has finally grown a spine. Who knew that it would be him that would end up doing the right thing?
Pence did what he is legally required to do under the Constitution. He gets no brownie points. He’s been lock step with Trump for the past four years. His actions yesterday don’t erase away that away.
True. I never said what Pence did excused his behaviour for years. But as we’ve seen these last 4 years just because you’re legally required to do something it doesn’t mean it gets done. I guess even he saw the ship sinking.
He hasn’t grown a spine. He’s trying to salvage some sort of political future for himself and he’s scared. He deserves NO credit.
Nah, he’s just realized that Trump is not his friend or ally. Trump is not going to help his political career. He’s finally gets what the rest of us saw all along: Trump was just using him, waiting until the right moment to throw him under the bus.
Trump was hoping for a Pence assassination. You can’t convince me otherwise. He riled them up, said he would march there with them… and didn’t because he knew they would cause anarchy.
The lunatic is mad he lost and is trying to intentionally burn it all down in revenge. It’s like an abusive spouse saying, “if I can’t have you, nobody will”
And he’s still inciting violence!! That “concession” was just as bullshit as his statements to the rioters yesterday.
It doesn’t surprise me that the protestors were violent. We’ve seen them be violent before, they thrive on violent fantasies. What surprises me is the total lack of sufficient security at the US Capitol building.
“After all I have done for him” oh sweet summer child it is always about what you can do for him. Loyalty is a 1 way street to your dear leader.