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“Hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday in a stunning bid to overturn his election defeat, battling police in the hallways and delaying the certification of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s victory for hours.” Reuters
Both sides condemn the violence and call for a stronger response from President Trump:
“The breaching of the building during one of the longest-running ceremonies under our system of government is the starkest domestic assault on our democracy in memory, and means that in 2021 we indeed failed to have a peaceful transfer of power. The rioters themselves bear ultimate responsibility for their acts, but Trump egged them on… He whipped them up on Wednesday with one of his typically high-octane speeches about how the election was stolen from them, and urged them to march on the Capitol to give ‘weak’ Republicans the ‘pride and boldness they need to take back [our] country.’…
“It was a painful contrast Wednesday afternoon when outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, an institutionalist to his bones, gave a compelling, carefully crafted speech on why it’d be wrong to reject Biden electors, just as the rabble was preparing to roust him and his colleagues from their work. McConnell’s speech was the handiwork of someone who cares about our system enough to, when appropriate, admit defeat. The mob was not.”
Rich Lowry, Politico
“They broke through barriers and swarmed the Capitol steps. They climbed up walls. They smashed windows. Some got inside the building, where they provoked an armed standoff with Capitol police, and even breached the Senate’s inner sanctum… This was anarchy and terror, pure and simple, from a group that pretends to belong to the party of ‘law and order.’”
Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times
“Trump and his enablers talk a good game about patriotism. They denounced President Barack Obama for sometimes not wearing a flag lapel pin. They criticized Colin Kaepernick for protesting police brutality by taking a knee rather than standing during the national anthem — and then Trump incited a mob on Wednesday to invade the United States Capitol…
“What the pro-Trump rioters attacked was not only a building but also the Constitution, the electoral system, our democratic process. They humiliated the United States before the world and left America’s enemies chortling. They will be remembered as Benedict Arnolds… Patriotism is not about words. It is not about waving flags or singing ‘America the Beautiful.’… Whatever a president’s rhetoric, he betrays the Constitution when he oversees a campaign to overturn a free election guaranteed by that Constitution, and when he galvanizes rioters to overpower our democratic process.”
Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
“I sincerely wish Donald Trump had won the 2020 election. Trump’s record on naming originalist judges and justices, defending America against claims of Marxist critical race theory, defending life, bringing peace in the Middle East, and many other issues is exemplary, while Joe Biden has little to show for his decades in public life — and he has a long history of going soft on China. Trump did not win, however, and his rhetoric after the election has been dangerous…
“Never in my life did I expect to see the president of the United States refuse to unequivocally condemn a mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol. There is no place for political violence in America, and the president needs to be the first person to always insist upon that… When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Trump had a moral duty to vocally condemn their lawless attack. This situation also gave him an opportunity to demonstrate that he supported law and order more than Joe Biden had over the summer. Instead, Trump arguably proved himself worse than Biden. The president coddled violent elements among his supporters, even when they broke into the People’s House. This was despicable.”
Tyler O’Neil, PJ Media
Other opinions below.
“I do not believe the president intended today’s riot. It has done him, and his hopes for a future political comeback, great damage. If he did not foresee what the people in the outer fringes of his support were capable of, he ought to have seen it. As it unfolded, he ought to have been quick to condemn it. And he should have done so without any sort of mention of his own grievances… Trespassing at the Capitol and menacing elected representatives are crimes. Examples must be made so it cannot happen again. Still, [as President Abraham Lincoln said at his inauguration in 1861] we must be friends, not enemies…
“Nearly all of the nearly 75 million who voted for Trump and all of the 81 million who voted for Biden have more in common than either do with the violent fringe to right or left. But the president and his most hate-filled opponents across the aisle, the media and operatives feast on division. Even today, slandering all Trump supporters as enablers of Wednesday’s mob is as wrong as slandering all protesters of the murder of George Floyd as looters and arsonists…
“Shame on everyone who breached the peace. And shame on those who malign those who did nothing of the sort. If we are to be friends, it has to begin with careful discrimination between the those on the fringe who embrace violence and the 99 percent of Americans who reject it.”
Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post
When the Capitol was breached, “Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., head of the Freedom Caucus, [had risen] to state his concerns about his own state’s Electoral College votes. He even presented something that should not have existed: A stack of voter registrations that were recorded after [a judge extended] the Grand Canyon State’s statutory deadline. This is precisely the sort of evidence that the president’s supporters have wanted for weeks to be aired in public…
“Thus, the sheer mind-blowing stupidity of the buffoons who stormed the Capitol. They attacked Congress exactly as it was doing precisely what these people wanted done. This would be akin to Antifa breaking through the windows of the Capitol just as a Democratic U.S. Senate voted on final passage of Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare-for-all’ legislation…
“These un-American anarchists have performed an enormous disservice to President Trump, the America First movement, the more than 74 million voters who cast our ballots for him in November, and our beloved United States of America.”
Deroy Murdock, Fox News
“Conservatives saw the progressive mobs rampaging last summer. We saw the media and others within the liberal Establishment downplaying the wickedness of that violence. We were meant to understand the pain of the demonstrators. We have seen institutions — corporations, universities, media outlets — change their policies to react favorably to what these mobs have demanded…
“Conservatives have stood up to these things. And yet now, we have seen the MAGA mob do one better than the BLM mobs, which never attacked the US Capitol… And the BLM/Antifa mobs did not do what they did at the instigation of a leading Democratic politician. Today’s mob did it at the instigation of the President of the United States.”
Rod Dreher, The American Conservative
“Political violence begets political violence. That is an iron law. We have to be against that, no matter who commits the violence or under what pretext, no matter how many self-interested demagogues assure us the violence is justified or necessary. We have a duty to oppose all of this, not simply because political violence kills other people's children, but because in the end it doesn't work.”
Tucker Carlson, Fox News
“‘We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about,’ [Trump] told a sea of MAGA fans and Proud Boys on the Ellipse outside the White House at noon. From behind bulletproof glass, he told them: ‘If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’ Earlier, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani had proposed, to the same crowd, a ‘trial by combat’ to resolve Trump’s election complaints. And Donald Trump Jr. delivered a political threat to lawmakers who don’t vote to reject the election results: ‘We’re coming for you.’…
“Trump instructed his supporters to march to the Capitol — ‘and I’ll be there with you’ — to ‘demand that Congress do the right thing’ and not count the electoral votes of swing states he lost. ‘You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong,’ he admonished them… Trump has induced his MAGA mob to a violent coup attempt.”
Dana Milbank, Washington Post
“When Republican member of Congress Greg Gianforte body-slammed the reporter Ben Jacobs for asking about his stance on Trump’s health care plan, Trump praised him for his toughness…
“‘I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher, okay’ he said in 2019, ‘I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.’ When armed protesters stormed the Michigan State Capitol and shut down its proceedings, Trump praised their conviction… The president is an insurrectionist. Those who cooperated in giving him power cannot say they weren’t warned.”
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
“In what are supposed to be the final days of his presidency, Trump has been discussing invoking martial law to overturn the results of the 2020 election… More than 50 years ago, the framers of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution foresaw the possibility of a president’s behavior becoming so unstable that it would prove necessary to have some constitutional mechanism to remove him immediately from office…
“Those who drafted and ratified the amendment made clear at the time that they were quite consciously employing general and open-ended language in the amendment’s text, rather than trying to define what circumstances would warrant the use of Section Four, because they concluded wisely that it would be vain to try to anticipate in advance all the circumstances that would require removing a president… For the good of the nation, [Pence] should [act] immediately.”
Paul Campos, New York Magazine
“Black Lives Matter protesters, as well as reporters, were tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets for… being between Trump and a photo opportunity with a Bible. Black Lives Matter protesters were pushed, body-slammed, choke-held, pepper-sprayed, and beaten by police… for being in sneezing distance of big-box stores. And Black people were arrested all summer—scores of us—in the name of restoring order. How many white people were arrested during the Capitol takeover?…
“Did they get the guy who took the dais off the Senate floor? How about the one who sat down at Pelosi’s assistant’s desk? Or the people who broke windows and rummaged through desks? Did they get the guy walking around restricted areas with a Confederate freaking flag?… We have one set of laws for Black people and another, more lenient set of laws for violent white people. Trump must be impeached and removed. All of his supporters who breached the Capitol must be rounded up and arrested.”
Elie Mystal, The Nation
