Everything You Need To Know About The Chaos At The Capitol

Written By University Girl Magazine

There’s just too much for one article.

by CHLOE HECHTER and MYKENNA MANIECE ★ JANUARY 7, 2020

If you’re anything like us, you’re probably feeling incredibly overwhelmed by yesterday’s events. Let’s try to unpack the situation from beginning to end and paint a clearer picture of where our nation stands.

So what was supposed to happen yesterday?

On January 6, Congress was supposed to count the electoral college votes from the 2020 presidential election, officially securing Joe Biden’s spot as the President-Elect once and for all. While we certainly expected some drama within Congress, we did not expect Trump’s supporters to start a riot at the Capitol building in D.C., where this otherwise routine procedure was taking place.

Protests began rather peacefully, with crowds congregating and chanting while President Trump delivered an address at his “Save America” rally nearby. There, he discussed the loyalty of his supporters, referring to them as “patriots,” and assured the ralliers that the election was “stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats.” The President continued pushing his agenda and his Twitter hashtag, #StopTheSteal, enabling the crowd of right-wing protestors to take to the Capitol with a chilling statement: “We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”

 
Credit: The Guardian (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Credit: The Guardian (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Within hours, the atmosphere at the Capitol shifted completely. The same people who had begun an impromptu rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner” started a full-blown attack on a U.S. landmark.

Insurrectionists began pushing past cops and guards, and ultimately took to scaling the walls and shattering the windows of the Capitol building to forcefully break in. The violence reached its peak when Air Force vet, Ashli Babbit, was fatally shot by Capitol police while storming the building. A major Trump supporter herself, Babbit had previously tweeted “Nothing will stop us…. they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours….dark to light.”

Amid the chaos, Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress were escorted to safety. Lawmakers from both parties, as well as Pence, spoke out against the attack and insisted it would not change the outcome of the election.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) said, “The president needs to call it off … The election’s over. And the objectors need to stop meddling with the primal forces of our democracy here.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) also announced that she was drawing up Articles of Impeachment, while others called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked. (The 25th Amendment gives the vice president and Congress the power to deem a president incapable of governing.)

While the Democrats emerge victorious both in the presidential and senate elections, the current state of polarization in our society makes the Trump supporters’ fight historically detrimental.

Never before have we seen civilians storm the chambers of Congress, take photos and videos of private documents, shout “Get her out!” as they invade the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and wreak havoc on historical artifacts.

 
 

The president remained quiet for most of what can only be described as an attempted coup, releasing just a short video message and several tweets such as this one, which resulted in Twitter banning his account for 12 hours:

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” and “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Failure to remove these tweets could result in a permanent platform ban for Trump.

Though Congress reconvened and finalized the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the early hours of January 7, yesterday’s events clearly portray the double standard between law enforcement’s response to right-wing insurrectionists and this summer’s Black Lives Matter protestors. 

One cannot forget the outward shows of force BLM was met with across the country. The tear gas. The violence. All deployed against peaceful protestors.

Officials were aware of Trump’s supporters’ plans to protest yesterday, yet they were greeted by a simple fence and a minimal police presence. When violence erupted, guards did not reach for their guns, their tasers, their batons. They didn’t use force. Domestic terrorists wielding violent weapons and hurling projectiles were calmly escorted out, even helped down the stairs.

It’s not difficult to imagine how different the response would have been if such a coup had been led by a group of minorities.

The attack on the Capitol again revealed what so many of us already knew: this is the America we live in.

An America where taking a knee is unpatriotic, but vandalizing a national landmark is an acceptable act of protest. Where police lives are only valued when they’re oppressing people of color. Where BLM protestors are called thugs, anarchists, and terrorists while Trump insurrectionists are “great patriots” and “very special” people. Where Trump threatened BLM activists with violence, tweeting that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” yet apparently, this need not apply to his supporters.

 
 

As the events unfolded, thousands took to social media to express their feelings.

President Barack Obama released a statement on Twitter, writing in part, “History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation. But we’d be kidding ourselves if we treated it as a total surprise.”

Lindsay Peoples Wagner, newly appointed editor-in-chief of the Cut, wrote on Instagram “this is insurrection, a coup, these are extremists and mobsters these are NOT protestors and the white privilege is honestly beyond me! seeing cops take selfies, the stealing of artifacts and documents, is just a painful reminder of how little Black lives matter.”

 
Credit: Instagram (@indyamoore)

Credit: Instagram (@indyamoore)

 
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