[I remind readers that these occasional letters to my descendants are intended to share and explain my experience living through various momentous events that happened during my life. As such, they contain my personal opinion. Others are free to disagree as to what the events meant from their point of view and they should record and preserve their thoughts and beliefs for their descendants to read and judge just as my descendants will do.]
Dear Descendants:
I originally began this post on Monday, January 4, 2021–the day after the meeting and swearing in of the 117th Congress and the day before the momentous Senate elections in the state of Georgia that would determine which party would control the new Senate after the general election of November 3, 2020.
Following the November 2020 general elections, the Democratic Party retained control of the House of Representatives, albeit it with a smaller majority than before the elections. Control of the new Senate was undecided and literally hung in the balance because there were 50 Republican Senators after the general election and there were 46 Democratic Senators with two Independent Senators who caucused with the Democrats–leaving a Senate of 50 Republicans and 48 Senators who voted as Democrats.
The Georgia Senate races provided an unusual sitation where both U.S. Senate seats were up for election in runoffs on January 5, 2021 because no candidate received more than 50% of the votes in the original elections held on November 3, 2020. One of the two races was a special election to fill the remaining two years in the term of Republican Senator John H. Isakson, who had resigned due to health reasons after being re-elected to his third six-year tem in 2016. His seat had been filled with an appointment by Republican Governor Brian Kemp and neither the appointed Senator, Kelly Loeffler, nor any of her opponents–particularly Democrat Rafael Warnock–had been able to garner more than 50% of the vote. The nation was watching the Georgia elections (about $500 million dollars–half a billion dollars–was poured into the race) to see which way control of the Senate would go. Because the Democrats, Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris, had won the presidency and the vice presidency in the November elections, a 50/50 Senate would be controlled by the Democrats with the slimest of margins. The Vice President, as President of the Senate, is the tie breaking vote. While a sweep of both Senate seats by the Democratic candidates was possible, it was generally deemed to be unlikely both seats would flip to the Democrats.
When this post was originally started, the nation was also focused on January 6th, 2021 (two days ago) as the date that the Congress would receive, open, and count the certified elector results from each of the states, thereby confirming officially Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris, as the President-elect and the Vice President-elect. Throughout the nation's history the process of opening and counting the electoral college votes had normally been a ministerial, pro forma, event, but this year the event was a matter of serious concern and anything but a minsterial, pro forma ceremony because the incumbent president, Donald J. Trump, had for the first time in our history refused to conceded the election based on a claim of widespread fraud across several states. Moreover, for the nearly nine weeks since the general election he and his supporters had tried to undo the election results in a handful of states. Dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits had been filed by Republicans and, through a clarion claim that the presidential election had been rigged and stolen from the Republicans, diehard Trump supporters in the public, in elective office, and in the conservative media sought to undermine the legitimacy of the election results. Donald Trump ignored the raging virus pandemic in the country that had already killed 350,000 Americans and seemed to be engaged only in playing golf and badgering Republicans to make every effort to throw out election results in several states based on unsubstantiated claims of fraud. And then on Saturday, January 2nd Donald Trump forced an hour long call directly to the Republican Secretary of State of Georgia (Brad Raffensperger) to harangue him about Georgia's certified presidential tally and culminate with, "So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state."
On Wednesday, January 6th Molly and I were ready to sit down to watch the live broadcast of the receipt, opening, and counting of the certified electoral college votes from the states. By 11:00 AM Donald Trump's "Save America/Stop the Steal Rally" was underway near the Ellipse after Trump had tweeted weeks earlier (on December 19th),"Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, be wild!" There were already thousands of Trump supporters at the protest rally when Eric and Donald Trump, Jr. spoke to the crowd and were followed by Rudy Guiliani (Trump's personal lawyer and formerly Mayor of New York City during the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center), who said, "Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat." Then Donald Trump, the sitting President of the United States, spoke to the assembled throng for more than an hour and said during his monologue, "Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal." He also encouraged the assembled crowd to march on the Capitol, saying, "We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. If he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution. Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."
At the conclusion of Donald Trump's discourse thousands of demonstrators began walking down Constitution Avenue to the Capitol in a sea of Trump flags, Tea Party flags, Q Anon signs and shirts, and American flags while Trump retreated to the White House.
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| Photo by Shawn Thew AP/Bloomberg from NBC 4 Washington, DC website |
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| Photo by Ringo Chiu/AP via Getty images from NBC 4 Washington, DC website |
By 1:10 PM, thousands of demonstrators arrived at the Capitol building grounds and began grappling with police at the security barriers and on the Capitol steps. They soon became rioters storming the Capitol.
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| Photo by John Minchillo/AP from NBC 4 Washington, DC website |
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| Photo by Julio Cortez/AP |
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| Photo from Reuters Pictures via Twitter |
A joint session of Congress commenced around 1:00 PM with Vice President Pence presiding over the event. Despite days of pressure from Donald Trump for the Vice President to exceed his constitutional authority and single handedly throw out certified elector votes from a handful of states Trump lost in November, Mr. Pence began the roll call of states amid suspence about what would actually happen when the first state on Trump's challenge list was reached. In the days prior to Congress convening to do the official electoral college tally, 14 Senate Republicans and about 140 House Republicans had indicated they were going to object to the acceptance of electoral results from several states. It was important to those wanting to disrupt the electoral college results that at least one Senator and one Representative combine to make any objection; otherwise any objection to an individual state's tally would fail. The alphabetical roll call of the states began and the results from Alaska and Alabama (both won by Donald Trump) were accepted without objection and recorded. At about 1:15 PM the state of Arizona was called and was immediately objected to by Rep. Paul Gozar of Arizona and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. This caused the two houses to devolve into ther own chambers to debate and vote on the eligible obection. This was very disappointing when it actually happened, but it was expected.
And then, during the debate on the Arizona objection (at about 2:15 PM) Vice President Pence was suddenly ushered out of the chamber and unexpected, confused movement in the Senate chamber ensued. Both chambers of Congress were evacuated by Capitol Police and the Capitol building, the "People's House," was put on lockdown. As of that moment, the narrative of this letter to you descendants had to take a differnet tone and direction.
After the illegal breach of the security perimeter around the Capitol was accomplished, the demonstrators morphed from protest to riot and they forced their way into the Capitol building by breaking windows. Once in, the ransacking of the interior of the building began and ultimately led to at least two deaths--a female rioter inside the Capitol was shot by a policeman and a policeman trying to defend the Capitol was hit on the head with a fire extinguisher and later died of the injury. Others died either inside or outside the Capitol building leading to a total of five riot-related deaths as of the January 8th date of this post.
The rioting led to significant damage and vandalism inside the Capitol. Windows were smashed, doors were broken, at least one bust was covered with blood, offices were trashed and looted. One man walked off with the lectern of the Speaker of the House and her gavel was reported stolen. Trash was littered everywhere. But the rioters were finally driven away from the Capitol grounds after the 6:00 PM curfew began being enforced by the presence of police–with the FBI and National Guard called in to assist. The Congress returned to joint session and by early the next morning the counting of the electoral college tally was completed and Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris were declared the winner of the 2020 election and will be sworn in on January 20th at noon. As of today however, various civilian "militia" groups have said they will be in Washington to protest at the inauguration! It remains to be seen how that will work out, but by the time this is read by you the result will be a matter of history already known to you.
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| Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta |
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| Photo by Win McNamee/AP |
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| Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images |
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| Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images |
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| Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images |
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| Photo by Olivier Douliery/AP |
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| Photo by Leigh Ann Caldwell via Twitter. [The round sticker is a piture of Joe Biden with the words "Not My President!" The rectagular stickers say "F*** ANTIFA."] |
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| Photo by Mike Theiler/Reuters |
As you descendants should know, Molly and I lived on Capitol Hill for a year and a half in 1978-79. We were on Maryland Ave. just off Stanton Park and a couple of blocks behind the Library of Congress and the Capitol grounds across the street. We are quite familiar with that area from a time when I could go for a run and run up the steps of the east front of the Capitol and around the other side down the steps to run to the Lincoln Memorial and back. I would often stop my run on the way back home to stand on the western front and look down the Mall. One could still at the time walk into the Capitol rotunda and around the Capitol grounds. It was indeed the "People's House" and the symbol it all represented did approach the sacred. On January 6th, 2021 it was desecrated by demonstrators turned rioters; but more importantly when the purpose of the melee they wrought in the Capitol is understood, they turned into insurectionists. They wanted to intimidate and threaten the Congress into throwing out enough elector votes to keep the losing candidate in power. It was undemocratic in its purpose and, as one of their flags left littering the floor of the Capitol proclaimed, it was treason. Many, if not most of those who broke into the Capitol came armed with weapons of various description, includng Molotov cocktains, spikes, clubs, or they made weapons out of materials they found inside the Capitol. They were trying to prevent the newly and duly elected executive officers of our country from assuming their office two weeks hence.
Today, January 8th, 2021, some 50 people have been arrested and charged. Authorities are searching the mountain of photographic evidence identifying the people who stormed and ransacked the Capitol. Many more arrests are sure to follow. The last two days have been spent with mounting calls for the removal of Donald Trump from office. Calls for Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment are gaining support and some Republicans are speaking out in tepid support, most are not. There have been resignations by two cabinet members and many of lower rank. The House has drafted new articles of impeachment to submit for a vote within the next two to three days if Trump does not resign or the 25th Amendment is not invoked.
The implications of the damage that was done to our country and the serious concern that was caused among many nations of the world is only slowly being comprehended. In the ransacking of the Capitol computers were stolen and classifed material could have been exposed. It is not an exaggeration to say national security could have been jeopardized. The full repercussions will take weeks if not months to uncover and analyze–and in many respects this was all foreseeable when the behavior of Donald Trump over most of the last decade is considered. As Jeb Bush said of Trump when he was running against him in the 2016 primaries, "He's a chaos candidate and he'd be a chaos president!" He has been exactly that and now we are left with the pieces that have to be put back together. I hope we make it to January 20th and beyond without further violence or an outbreak of civil war.
Finally, for the genealogical record, know that Molly and I did all we could to avoid Donald Trump rising to power . We voted against him twice and made monetary donations to those opposed to him and his policies in 2016, 2018 and again in 2020. We believed from day one that with Donald Trump as president things would get very ugly--sadly we were correct. We believe history is going to be a harsh judge of Donald Trump and deservedly so, but you will know the ultimate result of that assessment, not us.
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Copyright 2021, John D. Tew
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