Christ, when you’ve lost Betsy Devos.
1 Like
yeah but that’s because they didn’t call blackwater
7 Likes
Just imagine the pearl clutching and fainting when Ossoff starts calling seated members traitors and abettors of terrorists on the floor of the United States Senate. Fuck, I can’t wait.
3 Likes
first thing that made me lol in a good way since yesterday
to answer your question, there are no names in the article. most rioters didn’t give their last names to the reporters
full text:
These Are the Rioters Who Stormed the Nation’s Capitol
The mob that rampaged the halls of Congress included infamous white supremacists and conspiracy theorists.
Jan. 7, 2021Updated 9:18 p.m. ET
The storming of the Capitol was carried out by a jumbled constellation of hard-core Trump supporters: a largely white crowd, many of them armed with bats, shields and chemical spray.Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — There were infamous white nationalists and noted conspiracy theorists who have spread dark visions of pedophile Satanists running the country. Others were more anonymous, people who had journeyed from Indiana and South Carolina to heed President Trump’s call to show their support. One person, a West Virginia lawmaker, had only been elected to office in November.
All of them converged on Wednesday on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, where hundreds of rioters crashed through barricades, climbed through windows and walked through doors, wandering around the hallways with a sense of gleeful desecration, because, for a few breathtaking hours, they believed that they had displaced the very elites they said they hated.
“We wanted to show these politicians that it’s us who’s in charge, not them,” said a construction worker from Indianapolis, who is 40 and identified himself only as Aaron. He declined to give his last name, saying, “I’m not that dumb.”
He added: “We’ve got the strength.”
Rioters clashed with the police on Wednesday.Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
As the country sifts through the shards of what happened in Washington on Wednesday, what comes into focus in the storming of the Capitol is a jumbled constellation of hard-core Trump supporters: a largely white crowd, many of them armed with bats, shields and chemical spray; some carried Confederate flags and wore costumes inspired by QAnon memes; they were mostly men but there were women, too.
Those who stormed the Capitol were just one slice of the thousands of Trump supporters who had descended on Washington to protest the certification of Joseph R. Biden’s victory in November over President Trump. Their breach came with a confused and frenzied energy, fueled by the words of Mr. Trump just minutes before and the fervor of the mob standing behind them.
Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department said it had made no additional arrests on Thursday connected to the rioting, during which one woman was fatally shot by the Capitol Police. A day earlier they detained 68 people, plus the 14 picked up by the Capitol Police during the unrest. Dozens more people were still being sought by federal authorities. Their number included a 60-year-old gun rights activist from Arkansas who was pictured sitting in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, men in tactical gear taking selfies in the Rotunda and a woman carrying a QAnon-inspired sign about children in the House chamber.
Some of those who had also surged forward in the crowd seemed to show a bewildered wonder at what they were seeing in front of them. A few remarked on the opulence of the Capitol building and offices, a quality that seemed to confirm their suspicions about the corruption of Washington.
The mob inside the Capitol on Wednesday. Some of those in the crowd seemed to show a bewildered wonder at what they were seeing in front of them. Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“Yeah look at all this fancy furniture they have,” said a man in a winter parka and red hat, standing on the west side of the Capitol and peering through the glass at empty desks, computer screens and ergonomic chairs. Several people banged on the windows with their fists, including one man who shouted, “Put the coffee on!” One man hit his head, not seeing the outer layer of glass was there, it was so clean.
As people rushed inside, there was a strange mix of confusion and excitement, and the almost complete lack of police presence in the beginning amplified the feeling of lawlessness. They gawked at a place of wealth and beauty, adorned with art and marble, a domain of the powerful, and for a short while on Wednesday afternoon, the rioters were in control. For once, they felt, they could not be ignored.
Race/Related: A deep and provocative exploration of race, identity and society with New York Times journalists.
Aaron, the construction worker from Indianapolis, and his two friends had heard people talking about going to Ms. Pelosi’s office. So once inside they decided to instead find Senator Chuck Schumer’s office. Both are Democrats.
“We wanted to have a few words” with Mr. Schumer, he said. “He’s probably the most corrupt guy up here. You don’t hear too much about him. But he’s slimy. You can just see it.”
Officers drew their weapons as people tried to break into the House chamber.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
But they could not find Mr. Schumer’s office. He said they asked a Capitol Police officer, who tried to direct them. But they appeared to have gotten nowhere near the minority’s leader’s office. They ended up smoking a few cigarettes inside the building — “We can smoke in our house,” Aaron said — and one of his friends, who would not give his name, joked that he had gone to the bathroom and not flushed.
A woman in a coat sat on the couch in a small room with a blue carpet and watched as a man ripped a scroll with Chinese lettering hanging on the wall.
“We don’t want Chinese bullshit,” the woman said.
Nearby, six men sat at a large wooden desk. A lamp with a white shade was knocked over and broken. Someone was smoking pot. “This is the pot room!” a young man said.
In the Crypt, people walked around taking photographs of the statues and themselves with their phones. One man had a selfie stick, like a tourist in a foreign land. A woman in baggy jeans, a blue puffer jacket, was shouting chants into a megaphone, while a man in a black T-shirt that read “Not Today Liberal” ran around the central columns in what looked like a frenetic victory lap.
As people rushed inside, there was a strange mix of confusion and excitement, and the almost complete lack of police presence in the beginning amplified the feeling of lawlessness. Erin Schaff/The New York Times
As the authorities try to identify those in the mob, some will be less hard to pin down than others. The group included some well-known figures from the conspiratorial right, including Jake Angeli, who has pushed the false QAnon claims that Mr. Trump was elected to save America from deep-state bureaucrats and prominent Democrats who worship Satan and abuse children. He was pictured sitting in Congress in a viking helmet and furs. Mr. Angeli, who is known as the “Q Shaman,” has been a fixture in the pro-Trump protests in Arizona since the election, and there are indications that he and other right-wing activists had planned to spark a confrontation with authorities ahead of Wednesday’s rally.
There were also leaders from the Proud Boys, such as Nick Ochs, a failed Hawaii state legislature candidate and member of a collective called “Murder the Media.” Chris Hood and members of his National Socialist Club, a neo-Nazi group, posted photos on Telegram from outside the Capitol on Wednesday. And the Three Percenters, a far-right armed group, were seen gathered in Washington’s Freedom Plaza on Tuesday night, most wearing helmets and Kevlar vest adorned with the group’s symbol, a Roman numeral three.
The mob came from the broader crowd, tens of thousands of Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters, many of whom had driven through the night, or taken buses with friends and neighbors, to watch him speak and be part of a day that many hoped would finally hold some answers to what had been months of false claims that the election had been stolen. A number of people interviewed said they had never been to Washington before.
A rioter dangling from the balcony in the Senate chamber on Wednesday. Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
In interviews on Wednesday, protesters in the broader crowd expressed a sense that something would happen — something that was bigger than they were. What exactly it would be no one could say. Before the Capitol was stormed, some hinted darkly about violence and the looming threat of civil war. But when pressed for what that might mean, they tended to demur, saying simply that, if called, they would serve their side in a conflict.
“There’s been lots of people talking about this day coming for a long time,” said Brian Sachtleben, 40, an asphalt truck driver from a small town near Sheboygan, Wis., who was looking at the sea of people spreading from the Washington Monument to the Ellipse, marveling at the numbers, shortly before Mr. Trump began to speak.
When asked what he thought might happen, he said: “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
He referred cryptically to the Thomas Jefferson quote: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Then he added: “I don’t think anything is going to be back to normal ever again.”
He left town before the violence began.
When those who entered the Capitol later re-emerged after their rampage, many were welcomed like returning heroes.
Supporters of Mr. Trump outside the Senate chambers. Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock
“Yeah, we stopped the vote!” screamed a man in a navy-blue zippered jacket, as he emerged, hands held high, from a tall yellow wooden door, as people outside whooped and cheered. “Murder the media” was scrawled in black marker across the other part of the double door.
Many said they would not have tried to go in, but they sympathized with those who had.
“I’m not going in there, but, yeah, I’m kind of OK with it,” said Lisa Todd, 56, a high school teacher from Raleigh, N.C. She was standing with three friends, all fellow teachers.
Others expressed some regret.
Storming the Capitol was “probably not the best thing to do,” said Eric Dark, 43, a truck driver from Braman, Okla., who was tear-gassed when he got to the top of the steps to the building but never made it inside.
He had been standing with Brian Hobbs, the mayor of Newkirk, Okla., near the top of the steps on the western side of the building around 4:30 p.m. when officers in riot gear started moving to clear out the thousands of people who had gathered.
It could have been a lot worse, he said.
“We had enough people, we could have tore that building down brick by brick,” he said.
2 Likes
The headline and lede of this article are a bit misleading imo. The reason the Pentagon placed those restrictions on DC Guard is that Capitol Police did not request the assistance of DC Guard. If the Capitol Police are telling you they’ve got this, then it’s better to avoid having armed, uniformed troops wandering the streets, which might be inflammatory. The article lays out this timeline:
The Capitol Police, the law enforcement force that reports to Congress and protects the House and Senate, hadn’t requested help from the Guard ahead of Wednesday’s events. But early Wednesday afternoon, its chief made an urgent plea for backup from 200 troops during a call with top Pentagon and city officials, according to officials familiar with the call.
On the call, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund was asked whether he wanted help from the National Guard. “There was a pause,” one of the D.C. officials said. And Sund said yes. “Then, there was another pause, and an official from the [office of the] secretary of the Army said that wasn’t going to be possible.”
The Army official — who was speaking on behalf of the secretary of the Army, who was de facto commanding the D.C. Guard but was not on the call — said the “optics” of soldiers inside the Capitol building was not something they wanted, the two District officials said.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) confirmed that account in an interview with The Washington Post, saying Capitol Police “made it perfectly clear that they needed extraordinary help, including the National Guard. There was some concern from the Army of what it would look like to have armed military personnel on the grounds of the Capitol.” One concern was whether the Army had been invited by Congress.
A U.S. defense official said the Army general on the call didn’t formally deny the request but rather reinforced the negative optics of having uniformed personnel inside the Capitol, a point on which Bowser had agreed, and later checked with the chain of command. The defense official said Bowser agreed that if further support was necessary, D.C. police would provide it inside the Capitol, and the Guard would backfill D.C. police positions away from the building.
The defense official said the military wanted to be the force of last resort, and military officials had urged Bowser to request more support from federal law enforcement but she didn’t do so until Wednesday.
Higher-up leaders at the Pentagon then evaluated the request and activated the full D.C. Guard, in addition to later calling the governors of other states to send their Guard forces as reinforcements. The officials also lifted limits on the Guard for the new mission, arming guardsmen with riot gear, but not guns, before they headed to create a perimeter around the Capitol.
In the roughly three hours it took the Pentagon to make the shift from traffic policing to full-fledged riot response, the Capitol Police found themselves overwhelmed and rioters stormed the building, forcing lawmakers to take cover and barricade themselves in their offices. The Pentagon left it to federal law enforcement to clear the Capitol of the rioters, amid the hesitancy about sending Guard units into the building itself. By the evening, Guard units helped the Capitol Police and federal and city law enforcement reestablish a perimeter around the building.
This all seems reasonable from the Pentagon to me. The big question is whether Capitol Police deliberately weakened security or whether the chief was an idiot with no idea of what was about to hit him. I’m agnostic on that at the moment. It’s definitely plausible there was a plot.
2 Likes
Ted Lieu says they’re impeaching again on Monday.
Trump is a lock to abandon the new tone by then. Hell he probably won’t make it to the weekend.
7 Likes
There was no new tone. HIs statement was edited.
1 Like
If you browse a lot on a desktop, I have a second browser installed with Javascript disabled. If I hit a paywall I open the other browser and paste the link I followed. This defeats almost all paywalls, some Australian sites and The Daily Beast are the exceptions I can think of.
3 Likes
We are reading it differently. LOL at not sending the national guard because of “optics” after an armed mob of lunatics had overtaken the freaking Congressional buildings.
6 Likes
Yeah, literally the core fucking function of the us armed forces, but bad optics, so nah.
2 Likes
worried it might be inflammatory as the capitol burns
3 Likes
It’s most likely all this. But trump and the gang having something to do with them being understaffed so his followers could get in at this point would not surprise me.
Well she’s not as obviously guilty as all the poor kids that got separated from their families for the crime of not being white, but she’s pretty guilty never the less.
3 Likes
Edit - is a link to Instagram account dedicated to ID’ing MAGA dipshits that stormed capital.
1 Like
Go to the Capitol and steal a computer.
5 Likes
The GOP will nominate someone in 2024. It won’t be someone who didn’t stand by Trump. Are you sure 80MM people will turn out to vote against Cruz?
I’d be shocked if it was a politician. Could imagine some MAGA parler influencer who is unemployed getting the nom.
“We should be highlighting and celebrating your administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people,” she wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. “Instead, we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people’s business.”
“That behavior was unconscionable for our country,” she added. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”
…
“The peaceful transfer of power is what separates American representative democracy from banana republics,” Ms. DeVos said in a statement posted to Twitter on Wednesday evening, hours after the storming of the Capitol. “The work of the people must go on.”
That conversation took place “early Wednesday afternoon” and subsequently “higher-up leaders at the Pentagon then evaluated the request and activated the full D.C. Guard”. Scuffles between insurgents and police started after 1pm. This suggests that the Pentagon did deploy the Guard once insurgents were invading the Capitol.
I’d be careful vaulting too quickly over Hanlon’s Razor, like:
The defense official said the military wanted to be the force of last resort, and military officials had urged Bowser to request more support from federal law enforcement but she didn’t do so until Wednesday.
The defense official said Bowser agreed that if further support was necessary, D.C. police [i.e. not the Guard] would provide it inside the Capitol, and the Guard would backfill D.C. police positions away from the building.
Is Bowser in on this too, or did she just fuck it up?
If there was a conspiracy, the only guy who really needed to be in on it was chief of Capitol Police, who by all accounts was assuring everyone who would listen that preparations were well in hand. I don’t think there’s evidence here to suggest the Pentagon was in on this, nor does it logically make sense considering the military brass generally hate Trump.
2 Likes