The Trumpist insurrection at the Capitol
What happened
The Trump presidency was in full collapse this week, as fallout mounted from an insurrection by thousands of Trump supporters who launched an assault on the U.S. Capitol—killing a police officer, injuring dozens more, and leaving the nation deeply shaken. Before the riot, President Trump told a crowd of rabid supporters the election had been stolen and to march on the Capitol, warning, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” A mob of thousands then smashed windows, broke down doors, ransacked offices, smeared feces in hallways, and sent panicked lawmakers into hiding, delaying the certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Armed with flex cuffs and tasers, some sought out Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; several legislators who only narrowly escaped the mob said they feared for their lives. Five people died in the melee, including a police officer attacked with a fire extinguisher and a QAnon follower shot by police. Rioters were seen beating a prone cop with sticks and an American flag; others erected a gallows and noose outside the Capitol to hang Pence and other “traitors.”
• A massive security failure, p. 16
• Can Trump be prosecuted? p. 17
• International reaction, pgs. 14, 15 • The Trump social media ban, p. 20 • Inside the insurrection, p. 40
More than 70 of the rioters—whose ranks included firefighters, police officers, active-duty military, and business owners along with members of militias and white supremacist groups—have been arrested, and charges may include trespass, assault on police, theft of national security information, and felony murder. The number of arrests will “grow geometrically,” said the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, Michael Sherwin. “The gamut of cases we’re looking at is mind-blowing.”
Blowback against Trump and his congressional allies came on multiple fronts. The House impeached Trump for the second time (see adjacent page). Over a dozen administration officials resigned, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, and former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. The PGA pulled its 2022 championship from Trump’s New Jersey golf club, and Trump’s longtime creditor Deutsche Bank said it would no longer do business with him. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials warned lawmakers of a host of ominous new threats, including plots to disrupt the inauguration, attack state capitols, and harm elected officials. The nation faces “a continuing crisis,” said Maryland Rep.
Jamie Raskin. “It is not over yet.”
What the editorials said
President Trump has abased his office, and should be finished “as a serious political figure,” said The Wall Street Journal. He incited a direct assault on
What next?
the cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. When his followers turned violent, he “declined for far too long to call them off”; when he finally addressed the mob, he spouted more lies about a stolen election. All this “crosses a constitutional line” and is “impeachable.” He doesn’t have the grace to resign—but he should.
Trump’s congressional enablers are “complicit in the deadly violence,” said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Sens. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and other “two-faced, lying populist politicians” failed repeatedly to “stand up and condemn Trump’s dangerous rhetoric.”
Now they deserve to be “cast into political purgatory.” These same Republicans are “suddenly calling for unity” and “healing,” said The Washington Post. “There is a minimum price of entry” for reconciliation: Issue an “unequivocal acknowledgment” that there was no vote rigging and that Joe Biden won “fair and square.”
What the columnists said
Responsibility for this “horrific” spectacle falls squarely on Trump, said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview.com. He incited his followers for weeks with baseless claims of election fraud, misled them into believing Pence could “alter the outcome” of the certification vote, and then sent them seething with rage to the Capitol. “At each step” Trump could have steered his supporters away from “violent confrontation.” At each step, “he chose the opposite path.”
The blame runs far deeper than Trump, said Zack Beauchamp in Vox.com. “The Capitol Hill mob was the logical culmination of years of mainstream Republican politics.” For years the GOP has vilified Democrats as extremists who represent “an existential threat to America” and whose election victories are inherently fraudulent. That “delegitimizing rhetoric” has long fueled the conservative movement—and the Capitol violence was “the logical next step.” This was about more than anger over a single election, said Hakeem Jefferson in FiveThirtyEight.com. It was an explosion of rage by whites who see their dominance threatened by the “multiracial coalition of Americans who brought Biden to power.” Carrying Confederate flags, they weren’t fighting just to defend Trump but also to defend a white America whose “hold on power has become increasingly precarious.”
Alarmed by an unprecedented threat of “violent assault” against Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, the Secret Service and federal law enforcement agencies have launched a security effort “unlike any in modern U.S. history,” said Carol Leonnig in The Washington Post. The capital will be fortified by as many as 20,000 armed National Guard troops, “thousands of police and tactical officers, and layers of 8-foot steel fencing.” Officials plan subway closures, roadblocks, vehicle checkpoints, and “Amtrak sweeps,” and Airbnb has canceled all local reservations for the week. Once “even Trump’s most ardent supporters” realize he’s leaving the White House for good, said Paul Waldman in WashingtonPost.com, “their rage will only increase.” We may be facing an era in which “right-wing domestic terrorism” is “a regular feature of our politics.”
The overriding question now, said Charlie Sykes in TheBulwark.com, is whether this was “a last gasp” of the Trumpist era “or the beginning of something ugly.” Faced with the “consequence of putting a demagogue in power,” some Republicans are “crawling out from the detritus of Trumpism and trying to return to a modicum of sanity.” But we remain a deeply divided country, and dark days may lie ahead. “Unfortunately, it is just one small step from coup d’etat to civil war.”