The Endless Affair

The recent January 6th video files that were released by Fox News Host, Tucker Carlson, change the narrative of what may or may not have happened on January 6th, 2021.

That day, Inauguration Day, an event that only comes every four years, became marred by protestors at the Capitol of the United States in D.C.

On that day, the defeated President Donald Trump, held a rally near the White House. I had thought about going, but instead decided to stay home and watch it on television. A decision I both feel happy about and deeply regret.

Outgoing President Donald Trump gave a speech to his adamant supporters, people who were upset by the outcome of the election and believed wide-spread cheating had happened. As I watched the rally I saw passion, some bits of anger, but mostly people gathering for reassurance that the American Dream they believed President Trump had worked hard to deliver was not going to be iradicated. It was a peaceful gathering in which people wanted to share their stories, spend time with like-minded others and find healing from the inexplicable disappointment. There was a lot of laughter and a celebratory feel to the gathering.

I am reminded that before inauguration day, Trump had requested thousands of National Guard Troops be stationed around Capitol Hill, not just the Capitol building itself, but the legislative offices of the House and the Senate. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who had charge of the grounds, turned down his request and that refusal has always made me wonder why.

I mean, what could be wrong with extra security? Especially given there were a large amount of Americans not happy with the outcome of the election. Not just because their team didn’t win, but clearly the challenger, who did not go on the campaign trail due to Covid, seemed quite inept even from the confines of his basement Zoom calls.

I remember thinking “The President has the power to call up the National Guard. But Pelosi has the power to refuse their presence? What is wrong with this scenario?”

In hindsight, practically everything.

At the end of the Trump rally, the former President admonished the crowd to go to the Capitol and “peacefully protest.” He didn’t say “break through windows, act like thugs and destroy the place.” He told them to peacefully protest. So many did.

Now we can have a discussion about how out of sorts the rally was and how admonishing people who were upset about the election to go protest was an amateurish thing, given what I know. Having participated in, organized and led protests; I knew you’d better be careful what you say because people are very impressionable. And, there are always outliers in any group; outliers who will let their fervor take the better of their judgement and tend to get out of hand. There are also saboteurs who wait for opportunities to make a peaceful protest go sideways.

But I have to defend Donald Trump on this one. He’d never been a part of a “real” protest, probably in his entire life and he didn’t know how some people get triggered to their lowest selves if you tell them to “resist.”

I trained in Civil Disobedience. My guess is Trump never heard of or understood what Civil Disobedience means or what it looks like in the traditional sense. He just said “Go and peacefully protest.” You can’t do that with a crowd of people. You have to set up an order, have line captains in charge of protestors and teach the protestors the rules of civil protest, the stances, the response to push back and violence, the locking of arms, the closing of feet, how to drop to the ground and cover their heads to protect themselves. It’s a thing, a very real thing.

Trump just told the crowd to march to the Capitol and peacefully protest.

The tapes shown by Tucker Carlson seem to undermine the entire narrative of the Democratic Party that there was an “insurrection”. An insurrection so seriously violent it rivals what the nation experienced on 9-11. That comparison is disdainfully evil but it seems to easily roll off of liberal’s tongues as if it were gospel. The video shows people walking around the Capitol as if they had just come up from the Visitor’s Center after being shown a brief film.

They’re looking at the statues, at the paintings on the interior of the dome, admiring the beauty of the place.

Having been in the Capitol many, many times, I want to stop here and explain the process of how one does a legislative visit or even a briefing in the actual Capitol vs. the Senate and House Office Buildings across the street. Having gone to the President of the Senate and the Leader of the House’s offices inside the Capitol, it is a full production.

First, you call the Chief of Staff to set the appointment. My guess is the President of Comcast or Shell Oil actually get to meet with the President of the Senate or the Leader of the House. But for me, as the Executive Director of a small national nonprofit representing media democracy and local television that kind of a meeting was never going to happen. The best I could hope for was Chief of Staff, more often it would be a secondary whose legislative portfolio included telecommunications.

Information would be taken from me and my name and the names of others in party would be submitted so there could be a “security check” of us. After that our names would be on the “approved” list and would be checked by security the minute we walked into the Capitol.

On arrival at the Capitol, I would wait at the guard shack for the rest of my party to meet me. We would be met inside the guard shack by Police Officers with long guns and hand guns and we would be wanded on entering. All purses, brief cases, shoes had to be put on the scanner belt and any loose objects in our pockets into a bin to be screened on the belt. We’d walk through a scanner and once done, we would be stopped and wanded again. After collecting our belongings we would exit the guard shack and be met with Police Officers with long guns.

Once we were cleared by security, we had to stop at a desk, present our driver’s licenses and that security person would call up to the office to see if we were on the approved list of visitors for that day. Once confirmed we were given badges to wear to show the many Capitol Police that we were approved to take the elevators to the floor where the meeting would be held.

There was that embarrassing time I went for a visit with Mitch McConnell’s office by myself. I got directions to the office after I was given my badge. I went up a couple floors on the elevator and when I stepped out I was in a long gray ominous looking hallway not knowing which way to go and not seeing a person in sight. I realized there were cameras everywhere and these small lockers lining the walls. I tried a door and it was locked. It slowly dawned on me I was in a SKIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) and I got back on the elevator as fast as I could. Went back to the guard and told him I had gotten lost and he escorted me to Mitch McConnell’s floor and office.

All of this is to explain, you just don’t aimlessly walk around the Capitol Building.

And the Capitol Building is so big, if you are on one side you can’t see what’s happening on the other side. There’s a huge front and a huge back. The front faces 1st street and the back faces the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The rioters were at the back and no one at the front knew what was going on until someone told them cops were spraying pepper spray.

Thus the video of people just wandering around, clueless there was trouble at the back side. And there’s the video of the “Shaman” (Jacob Chansley) being escorted by the Capitol Police into the Senate Chambers, where he delivered a prayer which included praying for the Capitol Police and none of that had any violence. Yet he was sentenced to four years in prison and still is in prison to this day.

His lawyer is asking for a re-trial as he was never given the evidence of the video which was shown on Fox. A clear violation of Chansley’s legal rights. And evidence which would have exonerated him.

As I watched the events unfold that day on television I became increasingly upset. All I could think was someone was going to get killed. You can’t have that much fire power surrounding the Capitol without something happening. I worried for the people who marched there, I worried for their naiveté. And someone did get killed, a former Air Force member, Ashli Babbitt. I’ve seen articles on Babbitt’s background and character that are not flattering. But I find those observations beside the point. She might have had weird, even odd beliefs but did she deserve to die?

The videos show us that much lying has happened about January 6th and what went on. It wasn’t an insurrection, it was mostly people who didn’t understand what they were getting into or the typical gravity of the place. There’s also plenty of room to speculate that people were encouraged forward, not by Trump, but some shadowy figures that may need to explain who they are and why they encouraged people to go into the Capitol. Why did they incite passion in the way they did? And who are those people?

And even with hard video evidence of what took place, I suspect the same falsehoods will continue to be told about the events. Mainly because they make good talking points to create a rift among Americans. And politics and parties enjoy creating dissent among its citizens because it’s a great distraction from what they’re actually doing to its citizens at the end of the day.

But now, at least with the videos, you have something to point to when people bring it up. You can simply say “Have you seen the videos?”

***Note, Jacob Chansley, the January 6th Shaman was released from prison today, 14 months ahead of schedule. Thanks to the January 6th tapes shown by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3926036-qanon-shaman-released-from-prison-transferred-to-halfway-house/