Washington in final convulsions of Trump era

For years, President Donald Trump’s critics who warned of worst-case scenarios were dismissed as alarmists. But the worst case appeared to be materialising Wednesday as the president’s supporters stormed the US Capitol, forcing a halt to the process formalising his election defeat and the evacuation of Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress.

In a remarkable scene evocative of coups and uprisings in authoritarian countries around the world, a mob breached security barricades, broke windows and swarmed through the Capitol. While lawmakers fled, police officers deployed tear gas inside the citadel of American democracy and drew guns to guard the House chamber in an armed standoff. Rioters made it onto the Senate dais where the vice president had stood shortly before and into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, where one sat at her desk.

The extraordinary invasion of the Capitol came shortly after Trump egged on his admirers at a rally to march to the headquarters of Congress to protest its acceptance of the results of the election that he lost, even suggesting that he would join them, although he did not. While he did not explicitly urge them to force their way into the building, he told them that his presidency was being stolen and that no one should stand for it, inflaming passions that erupted not long after on the other end of the Pennsylvania Avenue.

Only after the situation escalated did Trump finally appeal for calm. “I am asking for everyone at the US Capitol to remain peaceful,” he wrote on Twitter. “No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

But he did not initially tell them to leave the Capitol or allow proceedings to resume, and even Trump’s own advisers implored him to do more. “Condemn this now, @realDonaldTrump,” Alyssa Farah, who just stepped down as his communications director, wrote on Twitter. “You are the only one they will listen to. For our country!”

Protestors climb onto the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. After President Donald Trump urged supporters not to stand for his election defeat, crowds of angry partisans stormed the Capitol, putting a halt to the congressional acceptance of the election and bringing a violent end to his presidency. (Jason Andrew/The New York Times)

Mick Mulvaney, who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff and later become a special envoy, made a similar appeal. “The President’s tweet is not enough,” he wrote. “He can stop this now and needs to do exactly that. Tell these folks to go home.”

Moments after President-elect Joe Biden went on live television to deplore the “sedition” at the Capitol and call on Trump to go before cameras, the president released a recorded video online that offered mixed messages. He repeated his grievances against people who were “so bad and so evil” even as he told supporters it was time to withdraw, without condemning their actions.

“I know you’re hurt,” he told them. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now.” He added, “We love you. You’re very special.”

The president’s critics placed the blame on him for encouraging the violent response by repeatedly telling Americans that the election was stolen from him when it was not. “This is what the president has caused today, this insurrection,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told a reporter as he was ushered with other lawmakers into a secure location that authorities asked not be disclosed.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., another outspoken critic of the president, went even further, accusing the president’s supporters of seeking the violent overthrow of the government. “This is a coup attempt,” he wrote on Twitter.

The president’s Republican allies, who were in the midst of trying to block the counting of Biden’s electors in hopes of helping Trump cling to power, denounced the violence without backing down from their effort.

“The violence must end, those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress must get back to work and finish its job,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a leader of the election-blocking effort, said in a statement.

While Washington has seen many protests over the years, including some that turned violent, the convulsion Wednesday was unlike anything that the capital has seen during a transition of power in modern times, literally interrupting the constitutional acceptance of Biden's election victory. A presidency that has stirred hostility and divisions for four years appeared to be ending in an explosion of anger, disorder and violence.

“We will never give up,” Trump had declared at a “Save America March” on the Ellipse shortly before the uprising, his last-gasp effort to justify his failing bid to overturn the democratic election with false claims of fraud that have been debunked by elections, judges and even his own attorney general. “We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about.”

People protesting the presidential election results inside the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2020. After President Donald Trump urged supporters not to stand for his election defeat, crowds of angry partisans stormed the Capitol, putting a halt to the congressional acceptance of the election and bringing a violent end to his presidency. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)

As the crowd on the Ellipse chanted, “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” the president lashed out at members of his own party for not doing more to help him cling to power over the will of the people. “There are so many weak Republicans,” he growled and then vowed to take revenge against those he deemed insufficiently loyal. “You primary them,” he said.

He singled out Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican who has angered him by not intervening in the election, calling him “one of the dumbest governors in the United States.” And he went after William Barr, the attorney general who would not validate his election complaints. “All of a sudden, Bill Barr changed,” he groused.

Other speakers, including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, excoriated Republican lawmakers for not standing up for the president. “The people who did nothing to stop the steal — this gathering should send a message to them,” Donald Trump Jr. said. “This isn’t their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party.”

To many Republicans, that was the problem. Even as Trump’s presidency was slipping away from him, Republicans increasingly turned on him, stewing over the Tuesday’s runoff elections in Georgia that seemed to favour Democrats and the votes he was forcing lawmakers to take for or against the results of a democratic election.

Even Pence and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who have been among the most loyal supporters of Trump for four years, finally broke with him in a decisive way. Pence rebuffed the president’s demand that he use his role as presiding officer over the Electoral College count to reject electors for Biden. And McConnell gave a forceful speech repudiating Trump’s effort to overturn the election.

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell said in a speech before the rioters overran the Capitol.

Pence rejected the president just minutes after Trump continued to publicly pressure him to do what even the president’s longtime lawyer Jay Sekulow said the vice president did not have the power to do: reject the electors of swing states Republicans lost. “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump told the rally on the Ellipse. “I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”

Just minutes later, Pence released a letter saying he did not have the power to do what the president wanted him to do. “Vesting the vice president with unilateral authority to decide presidential contests would be entirely antithetical" to the constitutional design, he wrote. “It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”

With Pence unwilling and unable to stop the count, the president’s supporters made it their mission to do it themselves. And for several hours, at least, they succeeded.

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