January 6 insurrection laid groundwork for Trump’s current reign of terror
Five years ago, on January 6, 2021, Trump organized a rally at the Ellipse of the Capitol complex. He called it the Save America March, and he used it to urge his supporters to take action in his defense after he said Joe Biden had “stolen” the 2020 election from him.
Trump told the gathered crowd, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”
At the rally, Donald John Trump Junior (Trump’s son), Rudy Giuliani (then his attorney), and several Republican congress members addressed the crowd, also pushing false claims. Then, President Donald Trump suggested a march towards the Capitol, assuring his audience that he would be with them to demand that Congress only count the electors who had been lawfully counted.
While he did ask those gathered to “peacefully and patriotically make your voice heard,” he then used the words, “we will fight, we will fight like hell, and if we don’t fight like hell, we’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
In the minutes and hours that followed, pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, and Americans watched absolute chaos unfold in real time on their televisions and phones.
As I myself watched the rioters on TV, I was shocked and alarmed. These demonstrators turned quickly violent, with attendees breaching multiple police perimeters, assaulting police officers, and occupying, vandalizing, and ransacking parts of the building for several hours.
On that day, 140 police officers were injured defending the Capitol, and four officers later died by suicide. Police Officer Michael Fanone was tased in the neck, beaten with a flagpole, and later had a heart attack. Officer Daniel Hodges was pushed into a corner of a doorway by rioters who used stolen police shields to crush him.
Rioters used chemical weapons, broke windows, and smeared feces on the windows. Rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” because the outgoing Vice President has verified the election results. They also shouted for Nancy Pelosi, eventually invading her office, destroying things, and stealing items as she was rushed to a secure location. They carried pipe bombs to use to explode and distract law enforcement. Five people died, and 100 police officers were injured.
We were in school, as this occurred during online school during the pandemic. I remember during our lunch break, I went downstairs and saw the horrors of what Americans could do. Americans were attacking other Americans. I was scared; I was shocked. I was disappointed that this is what and who Americans were willing to fight for. The supporters continue to fight for the idea that Donald Trump will forever be president, like he’s a king.
America was still suffering; the COVID pandemic was in full swing, and now this. I remember learning in class that the last time something like this happened was during the Civil War. I was thinking, how could Americans attack other Americans? I have a lot of anxiety, so my family told me not to read or look at anything to do with the insurrection anymore, but that was hard. It was like a bad car crash; I couldn’t look away.
Watching these people not only try to threaten other human beings who were trying to help them get through what was just an awful pandemic, but also seeing them disrespect what the Constitution intended as a peaceful transfer of power was shocking.
At the time, President-elect Joe Biden had won the election fair and square. There was no voter fraud. The thing is, this is also very ceremonial. The person wins the election, and each state casts its electoral college votes. But Trump was so persuasive that he got his supporters to believe that Americans’ rights had been violated and the way to restore them was through insurrection.
Instead, he and his supporters harmed the structural integrity of our Constitution when it came to voting. January 6 was the biggest display of people drinking the Kool-Aid in my generation, risking life for a powerful leader who cared little for what would later happen to them.
As I look back and reflect on what happened on January 6, it saddens me to think that after this, millions of Americans reelected Donald Trump to a second term. And political violence has only gotten worse in the aftermath of January 6. People like Liz Cheney, Jack Smith, and Cassidy Hutchins were threatened or silenced for speaking out against the January 6 insurrection.
America will always be an unfolding experiment, and unfortunately, every experiment will fail at some point. However, five years after the insurrection at the Capitol, we are now facing an even more disturbing reality.
After the horrors of that day, Donald Trump was not only re-elected but emboldened to use his platform to spread even more pervasive violence and control of the American people.
He does this by: terrifying immigrants, emboldening ICE and the national guard to unleash reigns of terror on our cities; attacking and trying to erase the dignity and rights of trans Americans, LGBTQ people, women, and people of color; putting RFK in power to destroy medicine and science and ruin American healthcare, while increasing outbreaks of measles and other diseases; dismantling the best federal government programs, including USAID; investing in oil instead of nature; keeping the horrific Epstein files a secret; doing nothing to curb gun deaths; and bombing countries like Venezuela.
January 6 opened the floodgates for white Christian nationalists to spew their hateful one-way views and laid the groundwork for Trump’s even more extreme Project 2025.
The only question now is how we, as Americans, can respond to say enough is enough, to come together to show Donald Trump that America is a place of resistance, love, freedom, diversity, and respect, that it cannot and will not be destroyed through his hateful and illegal actions. What actions, large and small, are each of us willing to take to defend what is good about this country before it is too late?
