Today’s mob violence swarming the Capitol was incited by 74-year-old President Donald Trump but the president didn’t tell the crowd to break the law or riot. Trump spoke to a crowd today in Washington, D.C. before Congress was due to meet in joint session to confirm 78-ytear-old President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Trump no doubt whipped up the crowd expressing his belief that the Nov. 3 election was rigged depriving of a second term. Whether that’s true or not, a sizable share of the population thinks the 2020 election was fraught with irregularities, primarily due to universal mail-in voting.. But whatever the reasons, the angry mob went over the top much like angry mobs protesting racial injustice tore down statues, defaced federal property, looted stores, burnt down buildings all during the summer of 2020, getting no criticism from Democrats and the media. .
Today’s mob violence was not different than what transpired over the summer but this time managed to gain access to the Capitol by some breach of security by the Capitol Hill Police. If D.C. or Capitol Hill police has prepared better and provided enhanced security to the Capitol where Congress was meeting in joint session, no one in the media would be talking about “insurrection,” “terrorism” or “revolution.” Only one person was killed into today’s mob scene, a female Trump supporter shot in the chest by Capitol Hill police. Watching CNN, you’d think the nation underwent a violent coup d’etat, something so preposterous, so off-the-wall, so twisted, it defies reality. Former Washington Post Watergate-famed journalist Carl Bernstein declared that Trump’s “unhinged,” “beyond the pale,” “mentally unstable,” dangerous to the Republic, despite Trump nowhere to be seen.
Journalists covering the mob scene at Capitol Hill today need to get a grip, grow up, stop making what happened anything more than an unruly crowed storming the Capitol. No one entering the capitol possessed firearms, explosives, Molotov Cocktails or other tools of “insurrection” or “revolution.” What happened today was no different than the angry mobs that tore up American cities—including D.C.—over the summer, protesting police brutality and racial injustice. Yet not one member of the media brings up Black Lives Matter, Antifa or other violent protesters holding the country hostage for nearly four months. No, today’s Trump backers invaded the sacrosanct Capitol, something that frightened elected officials and the media. U.S. media broadcasted to the world that U.S. Democracy was under siege, an absolute fiction, total distortion, when an angry mob disrupted the Capitol.
When Trump spoke to his rally earlier in the day he told the crowd that the Nov. 3 election was stolen from him and his followers. “This election was stolen from you, from me, from the country. “You’ll never take back the country with weakness,” Trump told the crowd before they descended on the Capitol. Whether Trump words can be construed as an incitement to violence is anyone’s guess. D.C. police could have filed a police report on Trump for inciting violence and gone to a judge for a bench warrant. While that never happened, it’s still unclear that Trump actually encouraged violence other than saying he’d follow the crowd to the Capitol. Democrat and the press blamed the president for inciting violence, leading to the trespass, vandalism and malicious mischief that happened in the Capitol. Yet, the same media said nothing when angry mobs looted, burned and trashed U.S. cities over the summer.
No one can support and must condemn in the strongest possible terms what happened today on Capitol Hill. But the media and elected officials clearly have a double standard when it comes to mob violence. American cities taken over and burnt to the ground were considered by Democrats and the media as justifiable acts of civil disobedience. Today’s actions were called by Democrats and media an “insurrection,” when there was no armed resistance, only mischief-makers trespassing and vandalizing the Capitol. Calling the mob terrorists also trashed everything anyone knows about terrorists, that they murder innocent civilians to advance political agendas. Listening to Democrats and the media grossly exaggerate what happened today trivializes the four months of left-wing rioting, looting, arson and anarchy witnesses in U.S. cities over the summer. No one called race rioters “terrorists.”
Today’s angry mob was not an “insurrection,” “domestic terrorism” or “revolution,” but a runaway crowd that got unruly, trespassing and vandalizing the Capitol. By five o’clock the mob was cleared from the Capitol, something that should have been done before the mayhem started after Trump’s speech. Had Capitol Hill or D.C. police planned properly for crowd control, they could have prevented the ugly mess from happening by keeping the unruly crowd away from the Capitol. Whatever role Trump played in whipping up the crowd should be condemned as incitement. But Trump did not ask the mob to commit criminal acts. Group dynamics can get out of control quickly, as most Americans saw on nightly TV over the summer. Despite creating some temporary chaos, today’s unruly mob was suppressed quickly, allowing Congress to get back to certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory.
