Many of you likely expected us to editorialize on Wednesday’s events yesterday, but at the time of writing, the protest-turned-riot at the Capitol was still developing. In our effort to do our due diligence, we chose to wait until the situation had resolved and more information came to light. Now that it has, this is what we have to say.
Months ago, when discussing the Black Lives Matter protests, we quoted Martin Luther King Jr.: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
MLK’s words do not apply in any way to Wednesday’s insurrection.
The MAGA-hat-wearing and Trump-flag-toting mob had been heard. Their cries of election fraud and illegal voting had been heard, investigated, taken to court and disproved. There was no basis in realty for their insistence that the election was stolen. Trump and his supporters were heard. Trump and his supporters were proven wrong. Trump and his supporters decided they would rather burn down our democracy than admit defeat.
Since, more than likely, everyone reading this has made up his/her mind about the protest/insurrection, we’re going to cut to the chase. Let’s start with the elephant in the room.
A tale of two riots
If the “protesters” storming the Capitol building had been Black, things would have played out very differently. Rioters would have never even made it to the Capitol doors, let alone to the Senate chamber. This was one of our first thoughts as we watched the chaos unfold.
Instead, we saw white privilege in action. Look back at images from last summer in D.C. Photographs and videos show in perfect color the way the nation’s capital responded to Black Lives Matter protests and marches — with officers in full riot gear before the events could even start; armed and unidentified government agents standing guard at monuments or pushing protesters through the streets. Remember when a peaceful assembly outside St. John’s Church was interrupted by officers launching tear gas and shoving people out of the way with riot shields just so Trump could stand outside the church and hold up a Bible?
See it in the different ways the “rioters” were handled by law enforcement, then and now. Yes, Capitol Police did fight with pro-Trump insurrectionists, but only one gunshot was fired (that we currently know of) by officers. And when police decided they were outnumbered, they stood back and let the mob flood the halls of the Capitol. NBC News was airing live footage of the entrance to the House, where a steady stream of red-hatted and “Trump 2020” flag-bearing zealots walked the very path Congress had mere hours earlier.
Lester Holt wondered aloud: They’re leaving now, aren’t they? He thought he was watching the insurrectionists who had breached the building now exiting. What he was actually seeing — what we were all seeing — was the continuous flow of rioters into the House as a couple officers stood to the side and watched. A Twitter video showed that, later, Capitol officers held the door for some rioters as they left, cheering and congratulating one another for stopping the count.
For more than an hour, Trump supporters wandered the halls of the Capitol. They sat at Vice President Pence’s seat on the Senate dais, rifled through congressmen’s desks, posed for pictures in people’s offices, hung Trump flags from balconies and statues and defaced or stole government property.
See it in the different ways curfew was handled. This summer, rubber bullets and concussion grenades and tear gas canisters were launched at BLM gatherings the moment curfew struck. Streets were cleared almost instantly, and officers hunted people through the streets to charge them with curfew violations. It was well after 5 p.m. Wednesday when the rioters were cleared from the Capitol grounds. More than three hours after the 6 p.m. curfew, the remnants of the mob still paced the outer edges of the security perimeter and wandered the streets of D.C.
See it in the difference between the arrests. According to Forbes, 427 people were arrested on “unrest-related” charges between May 30 and June 2, 2020, when BLM made its showing in Washington, D.C. Almost 300 of those arrests came in one day, on June 1. Fast forward to after 10 p.m. Jan. 6 and only a little more than 30 arrests had been made, all of them related to breaking curfew. By early Thursday afternoon, the total number of arrests was 68. This, at a rally-turned-protest-turned-insurrection where the Blue Lives Matter crowd injured 50 law enforcement officers, but only one rioter was shot. This, at a failed coup where two pipe bombs were found and disabled, the Capitol Building was literally broken into and ransacked and members of Congress were evacuated from the building for the first time since 9/11.
If you still don’t believe that systemic racism is a problem in law enforcement after Wednesday’s events, then it’s doubtful anything will change your mind. So we’ll move on to the next.
Trump made this bed. Make him lie in it
President Trump needs to be removed from office. Now.
Whether it’s through another impeachment or the invocation of the 25th Amendment, we don’t care. Charge him with inciting a riot and/or sedition or have the Cabinet declare him insane. Just get him out of the Oval Office before anything worse can happen.
Because, without a doubt, the blame for Wednesday’s riot lays at Trump’s feet. For months before the 2020 election, Trump screeched like a broken record that the election would be rigged. That the only possible way he could lose was if the election was rigged. Rigged, rigged, rigged. Stolen, stolen, stolen. Fraud, fraud, fraud. The sheer repetition of his lies — over the course of months if not years, amplified by allies in government and media — successfully brainwashed a portion of his base into believing he was the only one telling the truth. He convinced them so thoroughly that reality was false that he inspired an actual insurrection with his claims. He stood in front of thousands of supporters Wednesday morning and told them to march down to the Capitol to convince the last Republican holdouts to vote his way. No — he said “we” will march down to the Capitol. And the fools who follow him blindly were convinced that he walked with them.
And after the mob had taken the Capitol, Trump was begged to call off his hounds. Instead, he riled them further by doubling down on his election lies and telling them how much he loved them. “You are very special,” he said in a recorded remark delivered via tweet. And his followers preened under his praise.
Finally, his social media megaphone has been taken away. Twitter temporarily locked Trump’s account and Facebook has shut him down entirely until after Biden’s inauguration. But he still stands at the podium of power. For now, he is still commander in chief of the military, still holds the nuclear codes. Trump is no longer just a wannabe despot; he has made his first substantial move toward becoming a dictator.
The checks and balances of government worked — for now. Congress stood its ground and certified the election — despite continued objections from Trump loyalists — and Pence did his job as prescribed by the Constitution. But Trump still has a disturbing amount of support in the House and Senate. It doesn’t matter that there’s only two weeks left in Trump’s term. Remove him from the seat of power before he stumbles upon a way to keep it forever.
There is so much more to say. In the next days and weeks as all the facts emerge and investigations are launched and so on, we might have more to say. But for today, we’ll bring it back home to close: One of West Virginia’s own stormed the Capitol.
Mountaineers aren’t free to destroy democracy
West Virginia Delegate Derrick Evans, the newly sworn-in Republican from Wayne County, actually videotaped himself breaching the Capitol building.
Let us repeat that: A West Virginia lawmaker broke into the United States Capitol — a felony crime, if not a treasonous act — filmed it and then posted it online for the whole world to see.
The petitions for him to resign have already started. Resigned or removed, it doesn’t matter; Evans does not deserve to hold a seat in our House of Delegates when he participated in the terrorizing of our national government. His desecration of the Capitol shows he holds no respect for our democracy; therefore, he should not be permitted to have a hand in its stewardship.
More than a day removed from the events, we are still furious. Devastated. Heartbroken. What we saw looked like images from a nascent republic, a developing country’s first attempt at a democratic election. It did not look like America — but it was. When we asked in our Wednesday editorial, “Is this how democracy dies? Is this how the great American experiment ends?” we had no idea how prophetic our words would be. As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, Jan. 6, 2021, is a day that will forever live in infamy.
