“Unlike other recent spasms of American violence, this was not the work of a lone wolf nor of a small cell of radicals. The pathway to an attempted government overthrow unfolded in public, out loud on the internet, in a process that experts call mass radicalization.
The protest was likely just the tip of an iceberg; nobody knows how many Americans—tens of thousands? more?—would willingly have joined them if they’d been in Washington that day. It’s a new challenge for America, and a serious one: At times and places when large groups of people have been inspired to embrace violence, it often leads to long-term unrest, if not outright civil war. And right now, experts think, it’s happening faster than ever.”
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“over the past roughly 15 years, the average time span of radicalization in the U.S. has shrunk from 18 months to 7 months, largely because of how much of our lives have shifted online.”
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“Typically, when we talk about radicalization, we’re talking about it at an individual or small-group level. We talk about how Person X came to adopt an extremist viewpoint and act on it. We highlight things like personal grievances, their identity ambitions—perhaps they were seeking some thrill or meaning in their life, and got excited about the promises being made by an extremist ideology, and that if they participated, they would be revered as a hero. With small groups, we tend to talk about group cohesion. Individuals tend to isolate themselves among like-minded people—it’s just a natural human instinct. That tends to form echo chambers, where you hear the same ideas over and over, and they’re never challenged.
Mass radicalization is a much larger phenomenon in which you have tens of thousands—if not millions—of individuals who are vulnerable to [extremist] messages they receive from really influential people. And then, there might be movement towards mobilizing those individuals. They still talk about personal grievances, but there’s a broader national political message there, [where] this is a battle between good and evil, where the other side is looking to undermine us and our way of life, and we all have a responsibility to challenge and confront the other side.”
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“over the past 4½ years, we have had a very influential political leader [President Donald Trump] pushing a narrative that is not only polarizing—not only highlighting that the right and left are far apart on policy issues and disagree on discretionary spending—it’s a narrative of “othering.” It’s a narrative that casts the other side as evil, as “enemies,” as individuals you have to fight at all costs in order to preserve your way of life. We saw this, whether [Trump’s “others”] were Democrats, the news media or the scientific community.”
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“Our reality now is one in which a radicalizing message can be broadcast to hundreds of millions of people in a matter of seconds. And if it catches on, you’re virtually guaranteed that millions of people will [believe] that narrative. We’ve seen this in the more traditional forms of media, with outlets like Fox News pushing some of these conspiratorial views, but we’ve also seen it with social media companies not cracking down on this rhetoric early, and instead letting it fester.”
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“Think about somebody in the 1980s or 1990s radicalizing into the “white power” movement. You had to know somebody in your real-world life who was involved in it. They had to recruit you in or introduce you to the ideas. That tended to be a pretty slow process—a process that, for a lot of individuals, didn’t happen. Now, it’s a click away.”
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“there’s not an equal [threat] level across those ideologies. Our data suggest that far-right extremist views are the most prevalent of the extremist views in this country.”
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“The “Unite the Right” rally [in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017] was all about bringing these different groups together against a common cause and common enemy. To date, we’ve really only seen that manifest in online rhetorical collaboration, and then that’s spilling offline in terms of marches and demonstrations. To some extent, January 6 was these groups coming together. You saw everyone from neo-Nazis to QAnon supporters to Proud Boys marching on the Capitol that day.”
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“Look, I don’t think it’s good for the social fabric of our country for individuals to believe conspiracy theories and extremist views. But it’s not illegal. Individuals can hold those beliefs if they want to. What is illegal is when they mobilize on behalf of them and hurt someone else, or commit some other crime on behalf of those views. That’s really what we have the legal authority to do something about. When we’re talking about policies that we can reasonably enact in this country, then we’re talking about stopping people from engaging in illegal behaviors.
For the social good of our country, I hope that we promote more mainstream rhetoric over the next few years. I hope that we elevate science and evidence and fact to the position that it used to have, and that these narratives are not as prevalent, because it is bad for our democracy and our communities.”
“John Subleski, 32, is accused of inciting a riot in downtown Louisville on Jan. 6, the same day a mob egged on by former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. Subleski was allegedly part of a militia group that identified with the Boogaloo Bois — an extremist movement that centers on planning for an overthrow of the U.S. government.
Federal prosecutors allege that Subleski used social media to encourage others to take part in the riot. Subleski posted that it was “Time to storm” the Louisville Police Department, according to a criminal complaint.
Another Louisville man, Adam Turner, 35, allegedly menaced a Kentucky police officer during a protest caravan through St. Matthews, Ky., on Dec. 25. Turner was carrying an AR-pistol and resisted arrest, according to a Justice Department news release. He later posted threatening messages against police on his social media.”
“His son Don Jr. who had addressed the crowd earlier, condemned the rioters on Twitter shortly after 2 p.m. Trump took quickly to Twitter, too — before his staff could urge him to alter his message. But instead of urging rioters to stop, he blasted Pence for blocking Biden’s victory. A few minutes later, he tweeted his support of the Capitol Police and asked rioters to “stay peaceful.””
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“Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie repeatedly tried to get in touch with Trump. House Minority Kevin McCarthy, one of the president’s closest allies, called Trump and “begged” Trump to put out a stronger statement. Kellyanne Conway, a former aide who remains close to the president, called the White House after the D.C. mayor’s office asked her help getting Trump to call up the National Guard.
Inside the White House, there was paralysis. Trump’s son-in-law and de facto chief of staff Jared Kushner was flying back from the Middle East. Several aides, including Trump’s daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, urged the president to say more. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany considered whether to hold a briefing but didn’t. Instead, at 4:17 p.m., Trump released a video. “Go home,” he told the rioters before reassuring them that “We love you.””
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“Trump, still fuming about Pence’s decision not to interfere with the certification, never called his vice president. Pence had been forced to hide with his family in the Capitol while rioters chanted that they wanted to hang him. Later, Trump expressed frustration to Meadows and other aides that Pence had gotten credit for deploying the National Guard and coordinating with other government officials on the overall response, but it would be days before the two men spoke directly.”
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“even as authorities struggled to regain control of the Capitol and the city imposed a 6 p.m. curfew, Trump tweeted again: “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. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” An hour later, Twitter slapped his account with a temporary suspension.”
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“For the increasingly isolated president, the pile-on didn’t stop with the steady stream of resignations. When the deaths of five people during the riots were confirmed—including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick—the right-leaning editorial board at the Wall Street Journal, a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, called for Congress to impeach and remove Trump if he declined to “take personal responsibility and resign.”
The stinging indictment by a newspaper Trump had read religiously for decades was more upsetting to him than the flood of administration officials springing for the exits, according to one senior administration official. That was the point Trump began seriously discussing with aides what more he could say to spare himself further humiliation. Kushner and others suggested a televised address from the Oval Office, but the president didn’t like that idea. Several allies gently prodded him to publicly apologize to Pence, despite his notorious refusal to show contrition.
“You would think the news that five people died in a riot of your own making would scare you straight, but no, it was when one of his favorite media outlets turned on him that he finally realized the trouble he was facing,” said a Republican close to the White House.
Other Republican allies urged Trump to attempt a do-over with a more conciliatory and straightforward message. Realizing the treacherous legal waters he had waded into, Trump agreed. At around 7:30 that evening, Trump released a video through the White House, more straightforwardly conceding the election and asking “healing and reconciliation” for the nation. He never uttered Biden’s name. In many ways, it was the speech that most members of Trump’s inner circle, including his wife and Kushner, had wanted him to make in the days after Biden was declared president-elect by the bulk of Washington.”
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“what was on Trump’s mind was the PGA’s decision to cut ties with him — an embarrassing development the golf-obsessed president had awoken to that morning. Overnight, board members of the PGA had voted to cancel Trump’s Bedminster, N.J. golf club as the site for its 2022 championship. He was angrier about this loss of prestige than the riot.”
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“At 6:30 p.m., shortly after Pelosi signed the article of impeachment, Trump released a lengthy video statement — written by Stephen Miller, Scavino and attorneys, including Cipollone. Delivered in his flat Teleprompter voice, the statement didn’t mention the historic rebuke of his behavior, but it did, for the first time, unequivocally urge his supporters to shun political violence. It was something Kushner had been pushing for a couple days.”
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“as problems persisted with statewide Covid-19 vaccine rollouts and the U.S. death count crept closer to 400,000, Trump didn’t appear to weigh in — publicly or privately. Nor did he seem interested when the Labor Department released new data showing the first net decline in U.S. employment since the spring and staggering job losses across the food and beverage and hospitality industries. One top economic official who continued to work out of the White House said it had been two weeks since he last saw the president.”
“It all goes back to a larger truth about white supremacist movements in America: They haven’t been composed, as some claim, of poor white people disenfranchised by society. Instead, they’ve often included supposed pillars of the community — professionals, businesspeople, and especially law enforcement officials.
Indeed, all these were represented in one of the best-known white supremacist groups in American history, the Ku Klux Klan. Linda Gordon, a history professor at New York University and the author of The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, has studied the makeup of the group, especially during the 1920s when its activities became much more overt and open. And, she told Vox, the Klan, which at one point required the payment of significant entry fees, was “not an organization of poor people.””
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“the roots of white supremacy, then and now, are more complex, and to understand them, we have to look at where groups like the Klan and the Capitol rioters get their information and why they believe what they believe.”
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“One thing it did have in common with white supremacist groups today is that probably the single largest occupational group in the Klan were police, or other officers of law and order, like sheriff’s deputies.”
“Three hours and 19 minutes, while a riot raged at the Capitol.
That’s how long the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard says elapsed between then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund’s “frantic” plea for help quelling a violent mob and the ultimate approval of military aid by the Pentagon. The discrepancy between his estimate and the Pentagon’s conflicting testimony is now at the heart of lawmakers’ investigation into the security lapses that prolonged the siege on Congress on Jan. 6.”
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“D.C. National Guard chief William Walker told senators he was blocked from reacting quickly while Pentagon officials disputed his account.”
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” Walker, with evident exasperation, told two Senate committees that he preemptively loaded troops on buses amid the chaos of the insurrection while awaiting approval from acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. That approval took hours to arrive, he said. In the interim, top Army leaders — including the brother of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn — pushed back, worrying that the visual of National Guard troops ringing the Capitol could “inflame” the rioters, Walker said.
Pentagon officials challenge that account, saying Miller reacted rapidly but that his approval may not have been communicated to Walker efficiently. Nonetheless, Walker testified that earlier action by the Pentagon could have made a difference.
“We could have helped extend the perimeter and push back the crowd,” Walker said.”
“The day before last month’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, an FBI bulletin warned that some of President Donald Trump’s supporters were calling for violence to prevent Joe Biden, then the president-elect, from taking office. The bulletin cited “specific calls for violence” in an online discussion thread.
“Be ready to fight,” the thread said. “Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled…. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
The FBI shared that bulletin, which originated from its office in Norfolk, Virginia, with a joint terrorism task force that included representatives of the Capitol Police and D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). It was also posted on the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal, which is accessible to law enforcement agencies across the country, and emailed to the MPD and the Capitol Police.”
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“Acting MPD Chief Robert Contee said he never saw the FBI warning. The email account to which it was sent is not monitored “24 hours a day,” he said, and a message sent to that address would not “generate an immediate response.” He suggested that the FBI should have called him instead: “I would certainly think that something as violent as an insurrection in the Capitol would warrant, you know, a phone call or something.” Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned after the riot, said he first heard about the FBI bulletin on Monday.
Contee and Sund blamed their inadequate preparation for the violence at the Capitol on a failure of intelligence.”
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“That defense is complicated not just by the overlooked FBI bulletin but also by a January 3 Capitol Police intelligence report. “Due to the tense political environment following the 2020 election, the threat of disruptive actions or violence cannot be ruled out,” said the 12-page memo, parts of which were obtained by The Washington Post. “Supporters of the current president see January 6, 2021, as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election. This sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent. Unlike previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protesters as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th.”
The memo noted “a worrisome call for protesters to come to these events armed” and “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence.” It said “there is the possibility that protesters may be inclined to become violent,” creating “a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike.”
The Post says that memo “does not appear to have been shared widely with other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.” Sund, who said he did not know about the FBI’s bulletin until the day before he testified, does not seem to have made much of an effort to keep the FBI apprised of his own agency’s assessment. He told the Post “it would be inappropriate to publicly discuss an internal intelligence memo, given its sensitive nature and the risk of revealing sources and methods.””
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” While it can be difficult to distinguish between macho posturing and concrete plans of violence, the fact that some people who planned to attend the “Save America” rally were arguing that peaceful protest was inadequate to the occasion, combined with the clear warning that “Congress itself is the target,” should have prompted the people charged with protecting the Capitol to reevaluate their expectations.”
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“Even while noting the possibility of violence, the Capitol Police minimized the danger. According to Sund, its January 4 daily intelligence report “assessed ‘the level of probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests occurring based on current intelligence information’ as ‘remote’ to ‘improbable’ for all of the groups expected to demonstrate on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. In addition, the daily intelligence report indicated that ‘the Secretary of Homeland Security has not issued an elevated or imminent alert at this time.'””
“In the hours after Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy (LA) and Richard Burr (NC) joined five other Republican senators in voting to convict former President Donald Trump on an article of impeachment for his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection, the state Republican parties in Louisiana and North Carolina wasted no time laying down a marker that the GOP still belongs to Trump.
The LAGOP and NCGOP each quickly censured Cassidy and Burr for their votes. In a statement posted to Twitter, the LAGOP wrote that it “condemn[s], in the strongest possible terms, the vote today by Sen. Cassidy to convict former President Trump,” while NCGOP chair Michael Whatley released a statement denouncing Burr’s vote as “shocking and disappointing.”
Trump won both Louisiana and North Carolina in 2020. Cassidy was loyal to Trump throughout Trump’s term in office, but began to distance himself during the impeachment trial, perhaps feeling emboldened by the fact that he just won reelection for another six-year term. Following his vote, he posted a remarkably succinct video statement in which he said, “I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.””
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“the fact that seven of the 50 Republican senators voted for Trump’s conviction indicates his hold over members of his party in that chamber has weakened since he was in office, the quick censures of Cassidy and Barr are reminders that his popularity among grassroots Republicans remains strong.
The series of censures also points to a worrying dynamic that will be at play if Trump decides to run again in 2024. After all, if publicly inciting a violent attack on the legislative branch of the federal government isn’t enough to prompt state-level Republicans to break with him, then what, if anything, would?”
“For the first time in the history of the United States, a defeated president attempted to overturn the election’s outcome to keep himself in office.
Trump’s effort to try to steal the election was multifaceted. He spent months lying that there was massive voter fraud. He pressured state officials and state legislators not to certify President Joe Biden’s win. He filed dozens of frivolous lawsuits. He urged members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to throw out valid electoral votes on January 6. And, that same day, he encouraged supporters to gather in Washington and egged them on. The violence at the Capitol ensued.
It was stunning conduct that flew in the face of the US tradition of peaceful transition of power. And Congress did have an opportunity by which they could make Trump face a very real consequence for this: impeachment and prohibition from holding federal office again in the future (preventing him from running again in 2024). An impeachment of a US president has never ended with conviction, but surely, if one ever would, one would think that Trump’s conduct would merit it.
But instead, partisanship triumphed, Republicans mostly closed ranks around Trump, and the vote fell well short of the two-thirds threshold needed for conviction. The result is that Trump will face no consequences — from Congress, at least — for his effort to defy the will of the voters and stay in power. That has ominous implications for the political system’s future stability, and seems to invite Trump or someone similar to try something like it again.”
“After he voted to acquit Donald Trump of inciting the Capitol riot, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) explained why the former president was guilty. McConnell explained the apparent contradiction by arguing that the Senate does not have the authority to try a former president. But as he conceded, that is “a very close question,” and McConnell’s rationale for his vote is puzzling in light of what he did after the House voted to impeach Trump a month ago. McConnell’s mixed message reflects the predicament of a party that has built its identity around a reckless, unprincipled demagogue whose influence will continue to weigh down Republicans for years to come.
“Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty,” McConnell said in a Senate floor speech on Saturday after seven of his fellow Republicans joined 50 Democrats in voting to convict. “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. The issue is not only the president’s intemperate language on January 6th….It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe—the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-president.”
McConnell rejected the notion that Trump’s rhetoric was typical of the language commonly used by politicians and that it is therefore unreasonable to blame him because some of his supporters took him more literally than he intended. “The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things,” he said. “Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally. This was different. This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”
McConnell also noted that Trump’s “unconscionable behavior” continued after the riot started: “Whatever our ex-president claims he thought might happen that day, whatever reaction he says he meant to produce, by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration. But the president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored.”
To the contrary, “according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election! Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the president sent a further tweet attacking his vice president. Predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as further inspiration to lawlessness and violence.”
While Trump urged his supporters to “stay peaceful” in a tweet he posted an hour and 45 minutes after the riot began, McConnell noted, “he did not tell the mob to depart until even later”—more than three hours after the protest turned violent. “Even then,” McConnell said, “with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.”
McConnell’s indictment of Trump, which elaborated on his previous criticism of the former president’s conspiracy mongering and his role in provoking the riot, could have come straight out of the arguments made by the House managers charged with prosecuting the former president. Why did McConnell nevertheless vote to acquit Trump?
“Former President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction,” McConnell said. “There is no doubt this is a very close question. Donald Trump was the president when the House voted, though not when the House chose to deliver the papers. Brilliant scholars argue both sides of the jurisdictional question. The text is legitimately ambiguous. I respect my colleagues who have reached either conclusion. But after intense reflection, I believe the best constitutional reading shows that Article II, Section 4 exhausts the set of persons who can legitimately be impeached, tried, or convicted: the president, vice president, and civil officers. We have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen.””
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“McConnell’s compromise seems to be aimed at appeasing the majority of Americans who supported Trump’s impeachment without alienating the majority of Republicans who did not.”