He was caught pressuring an official to re-calculate the votes in a state he lost in the November election. ibid.
But Wednesday 6th January was always going to be the day it came to a head. Congress was due to do what’ normally procedural, formalize the results of the election. ibid.
Fight for Trump: At his [Trump] request thousands of his supporters had gathered from all over the country … ‘You’ll never take back our country with weakness; you have to show strength and you have to be strong.’ It was all his supporters wanted to hear. ibid.
Many point to the relative restraint shown by the security forces as compared to some of the scenes we saw as the Black Lives Matter protests last summer. ibid.
Many Americans described feeling numb at the events the previous day. ibid.
Democrats are adamant Donald Trump needs to leave office immediately … ‘an armed insurrection against America.’ ibid. Pelosi
A brazen assault on American democracy. The warning signs I heard just an hour before. And what it means for America as it confronts the threat of extremism from within. It was just after 2pm on Wednesday. This was the protest march that became a riot, that became an insurrection. Storming the Capitol: The Inside Story, Robert Moore reporting, ITV 2021
These last four years have been different: anger has been weaponised on social media. The election didn’t calm America, with a president who refused to accept his loss. The anger became fury. The drumbeat of incendiary rhetoric has been growing louder by the day. ibid.
‘Our lives are at stake. This is our last stand.’ ibid. protester
And so they did. Although the president never joined them. ibid.
Louisville: The resurgent militia movements: I saw these emboldened and empowered militias take over the very centre of Louisville … Why on earth were the police retreating and ceding territory to a private army? What signal was that sending? ibid.
Starting in 2013, a powerful synthetic opioid surged in popularity: Fentanyl. It’s a 100 times more powerful than morphine. Rather than reckoning with its dangers, companies sold it as aggressively as drug cartels. But instead of gun-toting dealers on street corners, men and women in suits and lab coats pushed opioids and cash bonuses and power-point presentations at pain management jamborees. Flush with campaign cash from Big Pharma, Congress would look the other way. Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century I, Sky Documentaries 2021
‘We will never give up; we will never concede; it doesn’t happen.’ Four Hours at the Capital, Trump to protesters, BBC 2021
‘You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength, you have to be strong … If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.’ ibid.
We go over one fencing then we go over the next fencing all the way, bedlam, sheer bedlam. ibid.