The Capitol Terrorist Attack
Photo Credit: Phil Roeder
February 15, 2021
On January 6th, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a number of domestic terrorists who bought into Donald Trump’s cult of personality. These terrorists were under the false assumption that the outcome of the recent elections was fraudulent, and these terrorists stormed the building while there was a joint session of Congress concerning counting electoral votes. These terrorists surrounded the building and overwhelmed the flimsy police force set up to prevent it. Amazingly, even pipe bombs were found on site. Five people were killed in the course of the attack: four terrorists and one police officer. Of these people, one terrorist was shot trying to enter the Capitol, and the police officer died after being bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher.
It is no surprise that this attack occurred—Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have been calling for total war and echoing fictitious claims that the election was fraudulent. This struck a nerve with a few thousand domestic terrorists, and they took it upon themselves to make it right. One such terrorist, named Ron Watkins, took to his platform and implored Donald Trump to follow the example of Julius Caesar. In particular, he references the crossing of the Rubicon river when Caesar took advantage of military loyalty and seized the Republic for his own. Thus, #CrossTheRubicon was born. The flames were further stoked when the former national security advisor Michael Flynn suggested Trump use the military via martial law to rerun the election. However, the smoking gun comes from the tweet from ex-President Trump stating that his supporters should protest on January 6th while ballots were being counted.
Prior to the Capitol attack, ‘patriot’ caravans transported terrorists from around the country to D.C. The terrorists came from many groups, including but not limited to, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, other far right militant groups, and some members of the actual police.
As the election result began to sink in, many Republicans began to recognize President-Elect Biden’s just victory. Among the Republicans recognizing Biden’s victory is former Vice President Mike Pence. This made the terrorists extremely angry. At the Capitol attack, the terrorists erected a guillotine and called for Pence’s execution. The terrorists also turned on the police who fought to keep them out of the Capitol, calling into question the true intentions behind the commonly heard expression “blue lives matter” by some of these people.
Trump told the terrorists over Twitter that he loved them and that they should go home. Unsurprisingly, this did not work very well in quelling the violence.
The aftermath of the attack saw Democrats push Mike Pence to use the 25th amendment to boot Trump from office. After voting went in Trump’s favor, an impeachment trial was initiated in which ten Republicans voted in favor of impeaching Trump, making it the most bipartisan impeachment in history. In addition to showing sympathy
for a terrorist attack, Trump is also the first president to be impeached twice. Trump was also banned from the following platforms: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Shopify (for his merch).
In the wake of January 6th, we are seeing the dangers attached to the cult of personality that Trump has created. His base of supporters live in their own pocket universe, made of alternative facts where Trump is everything and his actions and words are excusable.
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