The Oval Office is surprisingly small and somewhat disorienting.
It takes its name, of course, from its shape. People are largely accustomed to rooms that are square or rectangle, with a clear point of entry, a gateway to a room that orients everything inside. That’s not the case in what is likely the most famous room in the world.
The Resolute Desk, fashioned from the oak timbers of a British Arctic exploration ship and given as a gift from the Crown to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, sits at the southern portion of the room, the large windows behind it looking out onto the White House South Lawn. When the president is at the desk, the Rose Garden is to his right, a pair of couches and other ornate seating directly in front of him, portraits of past presidents on the wall.
It’s one of the most consequential places on earth, where history-altering decisions are made. There is no obvious way in or out to the rest of the building, though there is a door out to the Rose Garden. But when the interior doors are closed, the room looks almost smooth, nearly a continuous oval wall. But there are three doors tucked away if you know where to look for them. One leads to the Cabinet Room, where the president gathers his most trusted advisers. Another opens to the Roosevelt Room across a hallway, a smaller place for meetings and press events, with the White House reporters stationed just down the hall in a far more dilapidated section of the West Wing.
But there is one more door, just to the president’s left when he sits at the desk. It leads to a small study. And just a few steps beyond that lies a private dining room, featuring a table and a bank of TVs on the wall, a place of refuge to be used only by the person who calls the White House home.
That was where Donald Trump watched one of the darkest days in the nation’s history. And he did nothing to stop it.
For hours, the forty-fifth president of the United States stared at a television as a riotous mob of thousands committed heinous acts of violence in his name. The hordes stormed the United States Capitol, assaulted police officers, sat in the seats of power, put lawmakers’ lives in jeopardy, and threatened to hang the vice president. A Confederate flag was burnished for what was believed to be the first time in the citadel of the nation’s democracy. American flags were used as weapons. A police officer was Tasered with his own device. A gunshot rang out. All told, five people died.
The searing, brutal images from the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, transfixed a nation and horrified the world. They exhilarated Trump.
His people were fighting for him. They had believed the Big Lie.
The power of Trump’s falsehoods was on full display that day, both inside and outside the US Capitol. His lies had come home to roost, the nation’s constitutional bonds fraying like they had not since the Civil War. Inside the Capitol, Republican lawmakers bent to the will of the president, defying their oaths of office in an effort to hijack the election results. And outside, a mob tried to do the same, using violence to keep their favored candidate in power. This was happening here. American democracy was in peril.
In the weeks the president had spent contesting the election, January 6 had been elevated from an obscure date in the federal calendar to a last stand for the MAGA movement. More than a dozen Republican senators and more than a hundred members of the House had indicated they would vote against certification of Joe Biden’s win. Trump had tweeted about it several times. As the date approached, thousands of Trump supporters wearing red hats descended on Washington, arriving at the area’s airports and populating downtown and the National Mall. The night of January 5, members of extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers became an ominous presence, involved in skirmishes breaking out around the city.
Ali Alexander, the leader of “Stop the Steal,” which organized many of the protests against Biden’s certification, tweeted at 1:13 a.m., “First official day of the rebellion.”
They began converging on the Ellipse.
Soon after the sun was up, Trump was rallying his troops via Twitter, continuing his pressure campaign against Mike Pence. “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”
Pence was shown the tweet as he got ready that morning at the vice president’s residence, the Naval Observatory. He grimaced. He had told some of his closest aides that he had been unnerved by the president’s behavior the night before; Pence grew pale as he talked about it, one aide noticed. But his mind was made up, and he wanted to head off the narrative as best he could, asking staff to draft a letter that he could release before the event at the Capitol so he could try to end speculation that he would do Trump’s bidding and deny Biden’s win.
“I just want to get this day over with,” Pence told one aide.
January 6 had already started poorly for Republicans: the Georgia Senate runoff election was held the night before, with the final result announced on the sixth. Both Democratic candidates, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, had won. Democrats had surged to the polls, repeating the push that had led Biden to capture the former GOP stronghold two months earlier. Republican turnout was down, in part because Trump had cast so much doubt over the election that some of his supporters stayed away, believing the outcome was rigged. The wins were significant: the two new Georgia senators would now give the Democrats fifty votes in the Senate, and the resulting fifty–fifty divide meant that ties would be broken by the incoming vice president, Kamala Harris. For the first time since 2010, Democrats controlled the presidency and both branches of Congress.
From the White House, Trump could hear the excited crowd gathering a short distance away at the Ellipse. The temperature was in the forties, not too cold. He was handed a note that thirty thousand people were expected at the rally, far more than had been originally anticipated. He effused at how much the crowd “loved” him. Two aides said it was the most energy Trump had displayed in weeks.
The “Save America” rally at the Ellipse had all the trappings of a Trump campaign event: same soundtrack, mostly the same aides, the president standing in front of a phalanx of flags. But there was one difference from a normal rally: in a nod to the uncertainty of the day and the public nature of the Ellipse, Trump would stand behind bulletproof glass. Some advisers wondered if it would be the final time that Donald Trump would step in front of a crowd like this. His family gathered. Ivanka and Jared Kushner came over from the White House; Eric Trump and Lara Trump, a senior campaign aide, were there, as were Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle. The crowd was huge and cheered the opening speakers, growing especially loud when Rudy Giuliani called for “trial by combat” to defend the election. There was a sense of danger in the air. The question that hung over the teeming crowd: What would Mike Pence do?
When Trump took the stage to roars right around noon, he kept the heat on. He repeated his false claim that the election was stolen, he tore into his fellow Republicans for not doing enough to support his allegations, he suggested that “no third-world countries would even attempt to do what we caught them doing.” And he denounced his vice president repeatedly.
“Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder,” said Trump as some in the crowd chanted, “Fight, fight.”
“And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us,” the president continued, “and if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our Constitution.”
Thousands in the crowd peeled off, beginning their planned march to the Capitol. The chants of “fight for Trump” grew louder. Trump used a variation of the word “fight” more than twenty times in the speech, the crowd getting more and more agitated.
“We fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said. The crowd felt combustible. And then the president urged the thousands still gathered in front of him to also march to the US Capitol to apply the pressure in person.
“We’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try,” Trump said. “The Democrats are hopeless, they’re never voting for anything. Not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
He concluded: “So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Despite his exhortation, Trump did not join the crowd, instead returning to the White House, setting up shop in the private dining room off the Oval Office. But about ten thousand people left the rally and marched toward the Capitol, officials later estimated, joining thousands more—including three hundred members of the Proud Boys—who were already there. One Capitol police officer reported seeing a rifle. The crowd pressed up against the temporary security barrier installed outside the famed building. A noose hanging from a gallows was spotted nearby. A new chant had gone up: “Hang Mike Pence.”
Just before 1:00 p.m., the first barricade fell.
A sea of protesters surged through the protective fencing put up by US Capitol police on the building’s west front, pushing the officers back toward the exterior stairs. The pro-Trump mob, for the time being, remained outside, milling about as more and more joined the assembling masses who were concluding their walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. Seeing the growing crowd, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund made his first request to have the National Guard deployed to add reinforcements. That call, and four more in the next hour, were all ignored.
But for most people either inside or outside the Capitol, it was not apparent that the moment was on the precipice of crisis. TV coverage was trained on the inside of the people’s chamber, waiting for the certification ritual to begin. At 1:00 p.m., Pence and US senators began their walk to the House chamber for the start of the event that would lead to Biden’s official election. Pence’s office used that moment to release the statement in which he reaffirmed his decision to defy Trump and not interfere with the afternoon’s events.
“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,” he wrote.
News alerts about Pence’s letter soon flashed across the phone screens of the assembled crowds. The vice president was letting them down; he was letting Trump down. The cries of “traitor” and “hang Mike Pence” grew louder.
Pence was not the one committing the betrayal. The venom toward him was the sole creation of the man whom the vice president had served so loyally for four years. Pence had never broken from Trump publicly, and his effusive praise of the president had bordered on obsequious: he had set the tone for the “Dear Leader” cabinet meetings that had become punch lines; at times he even mimicked Trump’s mannerisms. He had done everything that a faithful vice president was supposed to do except this one thing: he would not defy the Constitution.
But that was not enough for the president. Loyalty had always been a one-way street for Trump, and he thought nothing of casting it aside in the service of staying in power. In the service of the Big Lie. And now he was putting his vice president’s life in danger.
Just as news of Pence’s letter began to ricochet across Washington and dominate cable news chyrons, the flash of blue and red police lights surrounded the areas near the Capitol. A pair of pipe bombs was discovered, one at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee, one at the Democratic National Committee. Vice President–Elect Harris was at the DNC and hustled to safety as the areas were evacuated. As of this writing, no one has been charged with planting them.
Inside, the proceedings continued apace. And, fueled by the false claims of election fraud, the Republicans put their plan in place. At 1:12 p.m., Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Paul Gosar objected to certifying the votes in Arizona. The attempted coup was underway.
By rule, that move separated the joint certification sessions, with lawmakers splitting up to head to the House and Senate chambers to debate the objections. Those separate sessions would be capped at two hours, with each lawmaker given five minutes to speak. But the Republicans were vowing to contest all seven states, requiring two hours of debate for each objection, meaning that the certification would be delayed by half a day or more.
When the session paused, it was only the third time since the adoption of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 that there had been a debate about a state’s results. In 1969, there was a brief kerfuffle over a segregationist faithless elector from North Carolina who voted for George Wallace instead of Richard Nixon. The objection to the faithless elector was rejected by both chambers. And then in 2005, one Democratic senator, Barbara Boxer of California, joined Ohio congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs to object to what they said were acts of voter suppression in the battleground state. It too was debated and put aside.
And there had been a brief effort four years earlier, as a few Democratic House members raised objections to Trump’s win over concerns about Russia’s influence on the 2016 election, but Biden—who was vice president and serving, as Pence was now, as president of the Senate—repeatedly slammed his gavel and rejected the effort because they lacked a Senate sponsor.
“It is over,” Biden had said.
Republicans in the chamber applauded. Pence told others he remembered that as a moment when Biden put country before party.
What was happening was not quite unprecedented. But there had never before been such a coordinated effort to question the integrity of the results or to challenge the veracity of so many states. Pence seemed steadfast, but some in Trump’s orbit traded texts that early afternoon, wondering if the vice president might cave under the pressure of the GOP lawmakers—some of his closest friends and allies—making a principled stand for the president. Bannon gleefully exclaimed, “He might blink,” but reasoned that even if the vice president held firm, the damage done to Biden was incalculable.
“Seventy-five million Americans already think he didn’t win,” Bannon said. “That number is going to only go up today, there will be more doubt. He’ll be crippled.”
The pressure was building both inside and outside the chamber. It was a split-screen testament to the power of Trump’s hold on his party and its members: there was no evidence of voter fraud, no legal justification for any outcome other than Joe Biden’s election being certified. Yet some of the most important figures in the Republican Party were doing his bidding under the Capitol dome, challenging the results and staking their reputations to his lie.
And outside the crowds were building. Many held Trump flags, others American flags. Some wore tactical gear or carried zip ties. They pushed forward, forcing the Capitol police to retreat up the building’s steps. The officers were overwhelmed, some pushed to the ground.
At 1:35 p.m., Mitch McConnell spoke in the Senate deliberations, offering a sharp rebuke to his GOP colleagues and demanding that they set aside their challenges to the election results.
“The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. They’ve all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever,” McConnell said. “If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We’d never see the nation accept an election again.”
But some of his Senate colleagues looked back, unmoved.
Scenes of the unruly crowd outside the Capitol were flying across social media and now catching the attention of the cable channels. But some of Trump’s allies were quick to add to the confusion with their own social media gaslighting, claiming that the mob was fueled by antifa or other left-wing forces looking to carry out a false flag operation to discredit the Republican president and his supporters.
The rioters reached the Capitol walls. Sund’s next call for the National Guard to be deployed went unanswered. The senators continued to debate the validity of the Arizona electors. Trump watched from the dining room off the Oval Office.
At 2:11 p.m., a rioter used a plastic shield stolen from an officer to smash a window on the Capitol’s northwest side.
At 2:12 p.m., the first rioters entered the Capitol through that broken window.
At 2:13 p.m., the Senate was gaveled into recess and security hastily removed Pence from the Senate chamber.
The rioters were inside. The certification had been stopped. Lawmakers ran for safety.
It was an insurrection.
The United States Capitol was attacked during the War of 1812, long before its famed dome rose over what was then a small city built on swampland. The capital city, which drew its name from the nation’s first president and was built on land annexed from Virginia and Maryland in the deal Alexander Hamilton had struck with Thomas Jefferson, was besieged during the conflict. President James Madison was forced to evacuate the White House before both the executive mansion and the Capitol were torched by advancing British soldiers.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln ordered a fortification of the city—which sat just across the river from Virginia, a slave state, and a mere hundred miles from Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy—but the district remained largely free of fighting during the bloody conflict. The Confederates never mounted a serious offensive against Washington, and the Capitol dome, completed in 1863, soon became a symbol of the resolve of the Union. The building remained untouched in the century and a half that followed, standing tall amid the antiaircraft artillery installed nearby during World War II, its dome barely visible during the occasional blackout meant to reduce the risk of bombing from the German Luftwaffe.
The building remained a target, but was never fired upon, during the Cold War, in which the United States and Soviet Union aimed enough nuclear missiles at each other to destroy the world several times over. Officials have long suspected that the Al Qaeda hijackers who seized control of Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, may have planned to slam the plane into the Capitol, but a heroic rebellion from the passengers onboard sent it crashing into an empty field in rural Pennsylvania instead.
Despite the threats from foreign foes, the Capitol had stood impregnable for more than two centuries. On this January day, it was breached by its own citizens.
They carried Trump flags and American flags. Some had hockey sticks and other clubs. A few wore masks—not to prevent the spread of coronavirus but to obscure their identities. The rioters poured in through the broken windows, while a few climbed exterior scaffolding to gain entrance to the building’s second floor. And then it happened: the rioters who had gained entry swung the ornate front doors wide open. The others could now storm in.
“It’s open!” one man screamed as the crowd surged by.
They pushed over and through the Capitol police. The behavior of some officers, who appeared to be sympathetic to the pro-Trump crowds, would come under harsh scrutiny in the weeks that followed the insurrection. But the vast majority of police behaved heroically. Video shows the mob chasing a lone officer up a flight of stairs. Officer Eugene Goodman confronted one group of rioters who had an otherwise unimpeded path to the Senate chamber with lawmakers still inside. Goodman shoved one rioter, drawing the group’s attention, and then proceeded to lure them away from the chamber. He had willingly put himself in harm’s way—he became the mob’s bait—and diverted their attention, buying precious time for the senators to escape.
Later, a video would capture Goodman racing Senator Mitt Romney—a likely target of the mob, since he was the lone Republican who had voted to convict Trump during his impeachment trial—away from the crowd and to a secure location. Other rioters reached a hallway less than a minute after Pence was hustled through it to a safe room; had the rioters reached the grand space just a little earlier, they could have overwhelmed the vice president’s security detail and set upon the man whom the president had all but labeled a traitor.
The rioters were in the building and yet the lie that brought them there—that the election was stolen from Trump—was still being spun on the House floor. As Representative Gosar continued his challenge to the certification of the Arizona results, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was hustled from the chamber. Representative Dean Phillips, Democrat of Minnesota, yelled, “This is because of you!” toward the Republican side of the chamber. The House was gaveled into recess.
For those in the House chamber, the sounds of tumult in the hallways grew as the mob advanced. Lawmakers hid behind chairs, some clutching hands and praying, some texting loved ones. A few with military experience, like Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, took the lead, checking on others’ safety and making sure that they fastened the gas masks left under their seats. The scent of tear gas was suddenly in the air, followed by the unmistakable sound of glass shattering. The rioters were at the door, breaking a pane of glass in an attempt to get in. Officers on the inside of the chamber barricaded that door, their guns drawn, screaming at the rioters to step away.
On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the president tweeted.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
Members of Congress, including Trump’s fellow Republicans, were running for their lives. But his only concern was the Big Lie.
Minutes later, Trump tried to call Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, one of the senators who had announced his intention to object to Biden’s win. But Trump mistakenly called Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who then handed the phone to Tuberville. The two senators were hustling from the chamber, and Lee told Trump that Pence had been rushed to safety.
But Trump seemed not to hear him, Tuberville recounted later. Or simply didn’t care.
The rioters flooded the Capitol. A Confederate flag, which is believed to have never penetrated the Capitol during the War between the States, was held aloft in Statuary Hall. A man commandeered Pelosi’s office, putting his feet up on her desk. A self-proclaimed shaman wearing a Viking headdress stood behind the lectern in the Senate chamber as someone bellowed, “Where’s Pence? Show yourself!”
Rioters looted the building; at least one defecated in a trash can. Law enforcement officers were viciously beaten by the surging crowd; one pleaded with rioters that he had children. Michael Fanone was Tasered by his own weapon and suffered a heart attack as he was pummeled by the crowd. He later said he feared he would be shot to death with his own gun. Officer Brian Sicknick was sprayed with a chemical substance—believed to be bear spray—and collapsed. He died the next day after suffering two strokes.
Lawmakers texted one another, expressing fears of being kidnapped. Some representatives, mostly Democrats, were leery of trusting and following the officers and instead barricaded themselves in their offices. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, later said she felt specifically targeted by some of the rioters and feared she would be raped and killed. Two men clad in all black were spotted holding zip ties, which could have been used to bind the arms and legs of a possible hostage. Law enforcement officials, in the aftermath of the attacks, privately said that their greatest fear was that a prominent Democrat would be executed on a livestream.
But Democrats were not the only ones in danger. As Sund once more requested the National Guard, and was again denied, some GOP lawmakers began calling the White House for help. Pence, who along with his family was moved to another secure location within the Capitol complex, checked with aides and implored Mark Meadows to bolster security. And Kevin McCarthy, the GOP House leader and close Trump ally, called the president’s cell phone and screamed at him to put out a public statement asking his supporters to leave the Capitol.
Trump refused, snapping that it was clear that the rioters loved their country—and their president—more than McCarthy did.
Despite McCarthy’s plea, Trump made no attempt to ask his supporters to leave. That’s because Trump didn’t want them to go. He was transfixed.
The president, after returning from the Ellipse, walked back into the Oval Office and ambled through the door that led to the private dining room. It was there, sealed off from most of the White House, that he watched the Republican lawmakers object to Biden’s win and, now, the rioters storm the citadel of democracy in his name. There were few people around to disturb him: at this point, with only two weeks left in his term and COVID surging, the White House was nearly empty. Meadows, who had free rein of the Oval Office, darted in a few times, nervously pointing out to Trump that things were getting violent.
“This is going to hurt your cause and not help it, sir,” Meadows told Trump.
The president ignored him, his eyes glued to the televisions. They were full of images of chaos, rising smoke, and waving Trump flags. “They love me,” the president breathed.
At 2:38 p.m., Trump tweeted a second time since the insurrection began, making his first mention of the disturbance at the Capitol.
“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”
Minutes later, a shot rang out.
Ashli Babbitt was not the same person she used to be. She had served more than twelve years in the military, settled near San Diego, had trouble keeping in business a pool service and supply company she ran with her husband. She found solace online, in the social media of the like-minded. She delved into QAnon, embraced its conspiracy theories, believed that Trump was being unfairly ousted from power. For weeks, she had January 6 circled on her calendar, believing it to be the day the nation would begin to win again. The night before, she tweeted: “Nothing can stop us.… they can try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours.… dark to light.…”
She had fallen under Trump’s spell, believed his lies. And it cost Babbitt her life.
Babbitt worked her way toward the front of a surging crowd of rioters who were pressed up against the door to the Speaker’s lobby, adjacent to the House chamber. They pushed against the door, which buckled but held. A chant went up: “Fuck the blue!” Lawmakers on the other side of the door were being hurried to safety, with officers fearing that the situation could deteriorate at any moment. Three of the officers stepped back, away from the door.
A rioter, later identified as Zachary Jordan Alam, smashed a window in the door to the Speaker’s lobby. The officers, with the guns raised, screamed at the rioters to stay back, to not breach the door.
Babbitt didn’t listen. She attempted to climb through the broken glass, perhaps reasoning that her small frame could squeeze through and then she could open the door from the inside to let the others in.
The officers yelled again. Babbitt kept climbing. One of the officers pulled his gun’s trigger.
The video of Babbitt’s death was everywhere within hours. Investigators would later declare that the Capitol was the most documented crime scene in history, with journalists and the rioters themselves all using cameras and phones to snap photos and take videos. Several of the cell phone videos show the bullet drop Babbitt, her body instantly lifeless. She died that afternoon.
The rioters kept coming.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser, was long perceived as the person to whom her father listened the most. She was one of the few people, White House aides believed, who could get him to change his mind, or at least temper his instincts, smooth his rough edges. She was now in the private dining room off the Oval Office, urging her father to do something. She made the appeal that those in danger were police officers, so many of whom had backed him in the last election. He relented, but still did not call for the rioters to leave. He still thought they were helping his cause.
“I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!” Trump tweeted. “Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order—respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
But that was as far as Trump would go. Only a few aides—including Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger and Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser—moved in and out of the Oval Office during the afternoon. Other allies reached Trump by phone. Some were stunned by his demeanor, others horrified. The president seemed unfazed by the scenes of violence and chaos that were on full display on the television that held his attention. At times, he smiled. He was getting what he prized above all else: people fighting for him on television.
The pleas kept coming in, including from some of Trump’s closest allies, those who had supported him on cable for years. Many couldn’t get through to Trump directly, but pleaded with Meadows to make the president do something. Among those who made the desperate pleas were the same conservative media heavyweights who had spent four years defending Trump—and, in recent months, propping up his Big Lie—but now were afraid that their own reputations would be damaged.
“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Laura Ingraham wrote in a text later released by the House committee investigating the riot. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
“Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished,” texted Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends.
“Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,” texted Hannity.
Others demanded answers as to why the rioters were still allowed to roam the Capitol. Lawmakers of both parties huddled in secure rooms, with Democrats furious at Republicans for not wearing masks in confined spaces and accusing them of inspiring and even aiding the rioters. The National Guard had still not arrived by three o’clock. Chuck Schumer called top Pentagon officials and urged them to demand that Trump tweet that everyone should leave. Hunkered in a secure room, Pence reached Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who took over once Esper was fired after Election Day, and made clear that the Capitol was not secure and a military presence was needed.
“Clear the Capitol,” Pence demanded.
The order to mobilize the National Guard had been slow to come, with military leaders anxious about the public perception of sending troops to break up a civilian protest. Many in the Pentagon had been stung by the condemnation they received in June, when those in uniform were called in to help Trump clear Lafayette Park of the George Floyd protesters. That had been a mistake, many said privately. They had been used as political pawns and didn’t want that to happen again. In other words: Trump’s lie in June slowed down the response seven months later and put lives in danger.
Images of political rebellion that Americans had associated with other nations, those run by despots and dictators, had come home. Offices were ransacked, flags used as weapons, cell phones held aloft to record videos of vandalism. Tear gas filled the air outside the Capitol’s steps, illuminated by the bright lights of flash grenades. As the skies began to darken, the scene was harrowing and eerily beautiful.
Biden had been in a great mood, celebrating the Georgia wins. He had plans to speak that afternoon about the economy, which had been devastated by the pandemic. Those plans changed as he and his team watched the scenes from the Capitol, his rage growing. A number of his staffers had just convened a Zoom meeting to discuss inauguration prep when someone shouted: “Oh my God, they are attacking the Capitol!” Anita Dunn felt her mouth open in shock. Quickly, Mike Donilon and other aides scrambled to write something for the president-elect. Biden took the stage at the theater in Wilmington that his transition team had turned into an event space, screens displaying the words “Office of the President Elect” behind him. He began to speak in a quiet voice not much louder than a whisper.
“At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault, unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times. An assault on the citadel of liberty, the Capitol itself.”
His voice rising, he declared, “This is not dissent, it’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition.”
Nearly barking his words, he urged Trump to go on television and make a statement demanding the mob retreat. He dismissed the idea that his own safety could be in danger at the inauguration, saying, “The American people are going to stand up,” and concluding, in answering a question from a reporter, by declaring, “Enough is enough is enough.”
Some of the aides at the White House saw the clear distinction between Biden’s forceful denunciation and Trump’s earlier tweet, which included no push for the rioters to go home. They were dismayed and embarrassed. But the idea of a live, in-person statement was dismissed, for fear of what Trump might say off-the-cuff either on camera or to a pool reporter. When Trump was at last persuaded to intervene, the decision was made to record a video from the Rose Garden. But in his first two takes, he dwelled almost solely on his false claims of election fraud; in one, he didn’t make any mention at all of a need for the rioters to depart.
Eventually, he said this: “I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. 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. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us—from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.”
Trump tweeted it out at 4:17 p.m., more than two hours after the rioters first set foot inside the Capitol. It was rife with lies, claims of a stolen election. In the months after the riot, as those who participated were arrested and stood trial, dozens of them said their violent actions were directly motivated by Trump’s words. And here, amid an insurrection he inspired, Trump would not relinquish his lie.
An hour after Trump’s tweet, the first few hundred National Guard troops, all clad in riot gear, arrived at the Capitol. The rioters who were still there, unable to reach lawmakers, were dispersed, many running from the possibility of arrest. A short time later, word was sent that Congress would not head home, but remain in session to finish the certification of the vote. Lawmakers who had left the Capitol complex were urged to return. Pence made clear that he would stay to preside. Trump was furious and tried to shift blame elsewhere for the day’s violence.
“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,” he tweeted again at 6:01 p.m. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
All told, nearly 800 people have been arrested across the country for crimes related to the insurrection. That includes over 165 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. Of those, more than 50 have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious injury to an officer.
The investigation is continuing.
As the rioters slowly left the Capitol the evening of January 6, a question hung in the air: Would the Republican senators continue to object to the election?
Many eyes turned to Josh Hawley. Weeks before, he had been the first senator to say that he would challenge the results of some of the contested states. And earlier on January 6, before the violence, the brash forty-one-year-old was photographed raising a fist in solidarity to some of the pro-Trump protesters who had assembled near the Capitol. He was urging them on, suggesting that he endorsed their fight. Hours later, some of the people he saluted would breach the Capitol and threaten the lives of all inside.
McConnell was resolute that the Senate finish the certification job before heading home, convinced that even a postponement would hand a win to the rioters outside. He wanted to go fast, to speed things along. Democrats were furious, demanding their GOP counterparts abandon their plan. Some Republicans wanted to do the same; Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler, fresh off her defeat, told her colleagues that she was changing her position and would drop her protest. She wanted to go home.
But Hawley would not. He would continue his objections to Arizona and Pennsylvania. He would remain in lockstep with Trump.
How the next hours played out on the Senate floor appeared to provide a preview of the politics within the Republican Party in the post-Trump era. Trump had lost, and the certification would continue. Most Republicans, including McConnell and the rest of the leadership, were pushing the party to move on. Some of the president’s most loyal supporters, including Lindsey Graham, turned on him. And the few allies who remained stalwart, like Hawley and Cruz, were vilified and, briefly, appeared to be pushed to the margins of the party, their fates certain to sink with the outgoing president.
For a moment, the Republican Party looked largely ready to stop believing the Big Lie.
Just after 7:00 p.m., in an unprecedented step, both Facebook and Twitter removed some of Trump’s incendiary tweets from that day, citing their contribution to the violence. Twitter then suspended the president from its platform for twelve hours, Facebook doing so for twenty-four. Trump’s megaphone was turned off and, since he refused to face reporters, he was silenced as Congress reconvened to make his defeat official. For the first time in five years, he was unable to intimidate Republicans into obeying him.
When the Senate reconvened, the Capitol resembled a war zone. Windows were broken, offices vandalized, floors bloody. National Guard troops in full uniform were stationed throughout the complex, meaning that the democratic ritual would happen under armed guard. The anger in the chamber was palpable when Hawley registered his objections to Arizona, and then to Pennsylvania. Senator Mitt Romney glared at the junior senator from Missouri, only his eyes visible behind his double mask, and the image of his death stare quickly went viral. Mike Lee, Republican of Arkansas, stared at his GOP colleagues and told them that his own exhaustive legal research had led him to an undeniable conclusion: “Our job is to convene, to open the ballots and to count them. That’s it.”
And Graham, arguably Trump’s closest confidant in the Senate, took to the floor to give an emotional speech reflective, many Republicans hoped, of the mood of their party.
“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it,” Graham said. “All I can say is ‘Count me out.’ Enough is enough.”
The objections to both Arizona and Pennsylvania were roundly defeated in the House. At just after 3:40 a.m. on January 7, nearly fifteen terrifying hours after the proceedings began, Pence announced that Biden had been certified the winner. It was over.
The nation woke up the next morning to find news of Biden’s certification and to gaze in horror at the images of the previous day. Washington was a blizzard of talk about forcing Trump from office, by either impeachment or the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, which would have required a majority of the cabinet and Pence to find that the president was “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Pence was furious at Trump, who never apologized for his role in endangering the vice president’s life. But he quickly scuttled talk of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and refused to engage Pelosi and Schumer in discussions of the topic.
Trump’s grip on power was precarious.
He soon lost his primary ability to spread his misinformation and to keep Republicans in line. Two days after the insurrection, Twitter permanently banned Trump from its platform, citing his ongoing efforts to incite violence. Trump had 88.7 million followers, and his account was his central means to rally his fans and intimidate others in his party. Now it was gone. Facebook soon followed suit with its own ban. Trump was silenced. It was devastating. In those first few days after the ban, Trump frequently reached for his phone or shouted for Dan Scavino, his social media guru, to post something—only to unleash a storm of four-letter words when he remembered that he could not.
Several cabinet members—including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Mitch McConnell—handed in their resignations. Several senior staffers quit. And while Pence would not entertain discussion of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, House Democrats made clear that they planned to impeach Trump again, and there were real questions as to whether enough Republicans would go along with the move to forcibly remove the president from office.
In an effort to quell that talk, Trump gave in to pressure from his few remaining aides and recorded a video to send out the afternoon of January 7.
“Now Congress has certified the results. A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20,” Trump said. “My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”
For the first time, Trump acknowledged that he would no longer be president after Inauguration Day. But he stopped short of admitting he had lost, nor did he concede the election to Biden. A week after the insurrection, with growing chatter that Senate Republicans might join in an effort to convict him, he released another video, with a stronger condemnation of the Capitol riot.
“I want to be very clear: I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week. Violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country and no place in our movement.
“Like all of you,” he continued, “I was shocked and deeply saddened by the calamity at the Capitol last week.”
It was, of course, another lie. But Trump needed to change the political momentum that was seemingly hurtling toward removing him from office. He desperately didn’t want that: the first impeachment was tough enough on his ego, even though it ended up galvanizing his supporters and would have propelled him to reelection, he believed, had it not been for the pandemic. There was little he could do to stop the Democratic-controlled House from impeaching him again: he was going to have to live with being the first president to have been impeached twice. It would be part of his entry in the history books.
But Trump told confidants he didn’t want to be the first president convicted and removed from office, even though the punishment would largely be symbolic since the trial itself wouldn’t happen until after Biden called the White House home. Why did Trump care? Because were he convicted, he would likely be barred from running for federal office again—including another bid at the presidency.
To keep that hope alive, Trump needed to keep his head down, he grudgingly admitted to a few select aides. He saw Pence in the Oval Office a week after the insurrection and offered no apology but kept things civil. He bent to his aides’ wishes and upheld a presidential tradition by leaving a note for Biden. He never said publicly what he wrote in longhand the night of January 19, his last in the White House. But Trump did break with another tradition: he announced that he would be the first modern president to skip the inauguration of his successor. Pence would go in his stead.
Donald John Trump stepped out of the White House for the final time as president just after 8:00 a.m. the morning of January 20. He and First Lady Melania Trump stopped to thank those who worked in the executive mansion and then strolled slowly across the lawn to board Marine One a final time. He seemed to be taking it in, realizing what he once had and now had lost. After the short flight to Joint Base Andrews, a farewell reception was held and Trump delivered brief remarks. There, in his final hours as president, he finally did what his aides had wanted since the moment the race was called for Biden: he touted his own accomplishments; he extended good wishes to the new administration; he made no mention of contesting the election.
A few minutes later, Air Force One lifted off for its final flight with Trump aboard as commander in chief.
Ten miles away, Biden was fulfilling a moment he had dreamed about most of his life, yet in a manner he could never have imagined.
With America’s tradition of peaceful transfers of power never appearing more fragile, the inauguration ceremony unfolded in front of a US Capitol that still bore the wounds of the insurrection just two weeks earlier. Biden became the nation’s forty-sixth president within a circle of security forces evocative of a war zone and devoid of crowds because of the coronavirus pandemic.
He placed his hand on a thick Bible and took the oath of office, his family alongside him, but a spot empty in his heart without Beau. Denouncing a national “uncivil war,” Biden gazed out on a cold Washington morning dotted with snow flurries to see over two hundred thousand American flags planted on the National Mall to symbolize those who could not attend in person.
“The will of the people has been heard, and the will of the people has been heeded. We’ve learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed,” Biden declared in his speech. “Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge. Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy.
“This is America’s day. This is democracy’s day,” Biden continued. “A day of history and hope, of renewal and resolve.”
As inscribed in the Constitution, Biden officially became president at noon. But because the ceremony ran ahead of schedule, he actually took the oath at 11:48 a.m., yet did not officially become president for twelve more minutes, at which point he was midway through delivering his speech.
Therefore, Trump was still president as his motorcade passed the cheering crowds along the roads leading from Palm Beach International Airport, over Lake Worth Lagoon, and onto the gilded enclave of Palm Beach. The cars then turned into Mar-a-Lago’s driveway, disappearing behind the well-manicured hedges.
Just before noon, Trump was seen walking into his residence at the estate, having only a few more minutes as the most powerful man in the world and the undeniable center of global attention. At 12:01 p.m., the Secret Service began reducing its assets on the property. The military aide who carried the nuclear football stepped away. Agents and officers began getting in their vehicles to drive off. The transfer of power, more tumultuous than ever before, was complete.
Trump was alone.