The Jan 6th Capitol riots five years on… Why America is still divided

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0:30how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. It's now been over five years since January 6th and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and members of Congress are still debating what happened that day. A new committee has been set up by House Republicans, which they say is going to investigate the real story behind the January 6th attack and what the previous Democratic-led committee tasked with investigating the events that day did wrong. Now, the White House has even weighed in, perhaps not surprisingly. They've created a page on their website that documents their version of what happened on January 6th.

1:08The big question is, why is Washington still debating the narrative of that day? And at this point, who's winning the argument? Welcome to AmeriCast.

1:22AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

1:49Hello, it's Anthony in Washington, D.C. And it is Mariana in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London. Today is actually January 15th, and it is now more than five years past the anniversary of January 6th and the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters protesting that election in 2020. And here we are. We're still talking about this, not just us, but politicians on both sides of the aisle are debating the meaning of that day. and it continues to cast a shadow over American politics. Marianne, are you still seeing signs of this debate and what January 6th means online and in different social networks?

2:29Absolutely. I mean, actually, if you mark the kind of online life of the perception of January the 6th, it very much, I would say, sort of mirrors and reflects what we've seen happening in the real world and certainly the kind of different narratives being spoken about by politicians. So obviously at the time when the rioting happened, And there were a lot of people pointing fingers at the role social media had played about posts that were coming from people who supported Donald Trump, suggesting that there should be civil war or rioting. A lot of these were happening in groups online. And, you know, as someone who spends a lot of time looking at that stuff, I was watching it build and build and build until the incident happened on January the 6th.

3:06And then on social media in general, there was actually just like quite a lot of shock. Now you've got two completely different competing narratives. You've got people who support Donald Trump who say what happened that day has been completely misconstrued. It was not a riot. There were even conspiracy theories suggesting there were agitators and other people involved. And then you've got people on the left who, you know, continue to suggest that this was an absolute threat to democracy and that they thought the government, you know, this was akin to a coup and all that kind of stuff. And it's like they are inhabiting completely different realities.

3:36Yeah, it was interesting. At the time and in those weeks after January 6th, it felt like there was kind of a universal agreement that that was an awful day. And you saw Republicans start to criticize Donald Trump. You saw major corporations and funders cut off support for any Republican who was challenging those 2020 election results. It felt like the American public was united, at least for a moment. And then slowly that unity began disappearing. And part of it was Donald Trump's continued influence in the Republican Party and his political rehabilitation. And then to the point where he won the Republican nomination and, of course, won the presidency and came back to the White House.

4:22And that may be part of the reason why we're still talking about this is because Donald Trump is still around. I was looking at a poll that came out, a CBS YouGov poll in December, and the poll shows that the American public still disapproves of what happened on January 6th. 80 % of the American public writ large disapproves of what happened on that day. But if you drill down a little deeper, you can see Republicans, at least, starting to change their opinions on it. In 2021, shortly after the attacks, more than half of the Republicans polled strongly disapproved of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

5:02And now that number is just 30 percent. More of those Republicans have moved to somewhat disapproving of the attack on the Capitol. Now, the number of Republicans who approved on the attack of the Capitol, that was 20 percent in 2021 is up to 30 percent now. So it's not a large group, but it is movement. And I think, you know, we're seeing the ground shift, the mood among Republicans starting to become a little more mixed on January 6th, now five years later. I mean, we talk about the language all used around this and everything else. And like you say, Anthony, you know, the broad public perception hasn't shifted so extremely as we see on kind of either end.

5:40The people who really love Donald Trump and really hate Donald Trump remain sort of polar opposites. when I was in the US for the inauguration last January it was the time when Donald Trump decided that he was going to pardon a lot of the people who had been arrested and charged following the Capitol riots and you know these people were referred to not as rioters but as the January the 6th hostages like that's what they were called the J6 hostages that was just like a complete language shift and it was so interesting speaking to Donald Trump supporters who were there for the inauguration who were so supportive of this measure who felt like these people had genuinely been you know wrongly prosecuted that this shouldn't have happened that they were kind of sticking up for for all the right things and and a lot of what some of these supporters were saying to me was motivated by disinformation I mean they were saying that the election was stolen in 2020 that Joe Biden hadn't won even when there is not the evidence to support that at all but it kind of felt like that didn't really matter anymore it was about how people sort of felt about it.

6:38Yeah, I remember being at a Trump rally in 2023 and Donald Trump directly and the lead up speakers directly talked about how Trump actually won in 2020, how the January 6th rioters who were prosecuted, more than a thousand of them were being persecuted, that they were political prisoners. They had a, if you remember that video and audio of the January 6th choir, which was a group of people who were imprisoned for their activities on January 6th, singing God Bless America, I think it was, or maybe it was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.

7:21Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we are. With patriotic music in the background, and Donald Trump was very warm and supportive of their efforts and of those people. And I guess so it's not a huge surprise then that, you know, once he came into office again last year, he he pardoned almost all of them. You know, it's worth saying as well that when I talk about disinformation and and stuff that appears to have contributed to what happened that day at the Capitol, you know, there are people who would also say, well, hang on a second. The suggestion that this was, you know, a coup or a genuine extreme threat to democracy or what coming from the left, they would say, well, that's a conspiracy theory and that's not true.

8:16And I think that's why the narrative around this all feels quite sort of complex now, because it's almost like various things can be, well, as is always the way, various things can be sort of true at once. But it feels like everyone is on their teams and sort of hunkered down and they've decided what they think. And I guess, Anthony, what we were talking about there is how people, supporters felt. But this feels like it's really sort of progressed up into, well, the very top, really, like the political class, if we want to call them that. So, for example, on this fifth anniversary of January 6th, the White House marked it.

8:48They marked it by launching this page on the White House website, this J6 page, with this kind of whole different timeline, like their timeline of events of what happened hour by hour, which does not necessarily match up with other accounts of what happened. Yeah, I think that's an understatement. It blamed the law enforcement for escalating tensions on January 6th. It accused Democrats of denying realities by trying to brand the protesters, what they said were peaceful protesters there, as insurrectionists and calling it a violent coup. And they said it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud ridden election.

9:30This is a reference to Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election and ignoring widespread irregularities and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down those who dissented from the conclusion that Joe Biden rightfully won that 2020 presidential election. Now, Stephen Chung, who is a senior communications advisor in the White House, has called this Web page a trap, that it was set up to try to generate outrage among the media. So a lot of what, and I'm sure you see this, a lot of what the White House does on social media and online is essentially trolling. And I think this may be viewed part of that way, that this was an elaborate trolling exercise.

10:11But it also, I mean, does jibe with some of the things that Donald Trump has said time and time again, that the election was stolen, that he had rightfully won it, that January 6th they were being persecuted, that they were peaceful protesters. So on one hand, trolling, on the other hand, a pretty good distillation of what I think you would get Donald Trump's account of that day being. Yeah, and that's where there's this kind of blurred line, isn't there? Because to what extent is this political strategy, if that's the right word, and like you say, Anthony, kind of like deliberate trolling, deliberately provocative, just kind of like rewriting version of events, because that's what politicians seem to do now.

10:47And to what extent is it actually a version of events that Donald Trump himself or other people within the Republican Party truly believe to be the case? And it feels like, I mean, it's really interesting because I was thinking about some of the other episodes of AmeriCast that we've done, particularly over the past year, really. And I think back to the episodes we did when Charlie Kirk had been assassinated. And then also actually the one we did just the other week about about Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. And it feels like what's happening with with both of those killings, which are obviously different and for different reasons and in different contexts.

11:20but the kind of split afterwards with kind of either side painting a very very different version of events that's kind of happened to jan 6th but but later and and i think the reason for that i guess is is how politics works now and i mean i would always say this but to do with kind of the way that you consume it on social media and the ability to just be surrounded by people that you constantly agree with and therefore it's okay to just believe this whatever narrative you want to now. I mean, that's really interesting, Mariana, you compare this to what's happening in Minneapolis in the shooting, because Ashley Babbitt, the woman, the protester who was killed in the January 6th riots by a law enforcement officer was shot as she was trying to crawl through into an ante room close to the floor of the House of Representatives, where there's still members of Congress there.

12:11She has become kind of a martyr of the conservative cause, certain components of it, at least, in the same way that the Minneapolis shooting and Renee Good has become a martyr for protesters. And the resolution for Ashley Babbitt was she was given by Donald Trump's administration a military funeral, access to the military death benefits. She was given a$5 million family, was given a$5 million wrongful death settlement because of allegations that the police used excessive force in shooting her in these instances. And of course, now you're seeing from a lot of January 6th people who were pardoned, January 6th rioters who were in prison, asking for their own settlements, that they should be given some sort of compensation for wrongful prosecution.

13:02So this isn't just a settled thing. This is an ongoing movement to try to present the people who participated in those riots, protests, whatever you want to call it, on January 6th had been wrongfully targeted and are now due compensation. And how much do you think, Anthony, that this is about Donald Trump wanting to protect his legacy? Because you can imagine, well, although he does frequently joke about running again to be president, at the moment that's not possible. And I can't really think of another event where the perception of it feels like it's changed so much in the time that it's happened.

13:39And, you know, I think of the world that I look at, like the way that, for example, the approach to misinformation or conspiracy theories on social media has really changed in that period of time as well, because people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg now take a very different approach to whether that content should be removed and whether it censors freedom of expression. And that has all kind of run in parallel to the changing narrative about January the 6th and sort of what we, I guess, kind of deem to be acceptable or unacceptable as a society. Do you think that Donald Trump is that has been a kind of deliberate strategy from him?

14:10Or do you think that it's just kind of like all the pieces have fallen in such a way that the perception has changed and that will impact his legacy? I think Donald Trump is very concerned about his legacy. And if you remember, after his first term ended, his approval ratings were rock bottom. He was disgraced. I think, you know, he was roundly condemned, except for his very small core of advisors and his base. And he rebuilt it after that. And Donald Trump is very concerned about what people think about him. He has since he's come back to the White House, he has obviously been very concerned about what his legacy will be, how history will remember him, whether it's through the foreign policy he's doing, his attempts at being branded a peacemaker, his his desire for a Nobel Prize, his interest in putting his name on all of these different institutions in Washington, D.C., to renovate, build new buildings around the White House, create a triumphal arch for the 250th anniversary of American independence here in Washington.

15:16I mean, it is all about legacy burnishing. And the big black mark from his first term was what happened on January 6th. So I think there has been a concerted effort from day one, practically, since he left office to reshape how people viewed that day. And also, in general, to wash away the stain of defeat that he suffered in 2020 to Joe Biden. I think he cannot process or is unwilling to process the fact that he lost that election fair and square, that millions of more Americans voted for Joe Biden than him. And and so it has been all kind of a reaction to that defeat and trying to undermine the reality of that defeat that we saw in the run up to January 6th.

16:05And then in the years afterwards, because Donald Trump still says he didn't lose that election. And if you look around the White House, there's a picture of Joe Biden that was replaced by an auto pen. But in the little description of this president and the walk of president says that Joe Biden's election was the most corrupt in American history. It is it is a document time and time again that Donald Trump wants to cast doubts on the validity of that election and therefore the validity of his defeat. And there's now this new Republican committee, isn't there, Anthony, that had its first hearing this week and that is, I guess, again, looking to establish, would that be the right word, the narrative around January the 6th or to revisit it?

16:49to reshape the narrative. I think this is a legislative embodiment of Donald Trump's efforts. So now you have Donald Trump supporters in the House of Representatives creating this committee to go back and look again at January 6th and revisit what people perceive to be the reality of that. And it is, I think, also a direct response to the January 6th investigation that took place in 2021 and 2022 that was controlled by the Democrats, which painted a very dark picture of Donald Trump's actions that lay responsibility at his feet. But let's listen to Troy Nels, who is the Republican, who is speaking in the committee about what that previous investigation was and what they are trying to do with this new committee.

17:38Let me start by explaining to the American people why we are here and why this new committee is necessary. The previous select committee assembled by Speaker Pelosi was a sham from the start. It was a total sham. For the first time in the history of Congress, the Speaker rejected the minority leader selections for who would serve on a select committee. Pelosi installed two of puppets, Adam Kenziger and Liz Cheney. They both hated Donald Trump and the mega movement. The stated purpose of that committee was to examine the security failures and events that led to the breach of the Capitol and to provide recommendations to ensure that it never happens again.

18:19But that is not what the previous January 6th committee did. Instead, it set out to destroy Donald Trump and the mega movement by convincing the American people that Donald Trump coordinated a violent white supremacist insurrection to overthrow the U.S. government. They did this to justify the prosecution of his supporters and former administration officials and to ensure that he could never become president again. Today, we can say they failed. I covered those committee hearings in person. I was in the room on the first day when they began the January 6th committee that the Democrats ran. And I was struck that right out of the gate, they went after Donald Trump.

19:04They said this was all his responsibility. It was his actions that instigated the attack on the Capitol. and it was he had violated the law. At the end of these hearings, they said that he had violated the law and made suggestions for possible grounds for which Trump could be prosecuted. So it was aggressively anti-Trump in a way that may have caught some people by surprise. To explain a little bit about what Nels is saying there, what happened was Nancy Pelosi created this committee. The House voted on it. Kevin McCarthy, who was then the Republican minority leader in the House, came up with five nominees of Republicans to serve on this committee.

19:43Nancy Pelosi rejected two of them. And that is when Pelosi picked out Kenzinger and Liz Cheney to serve as Republicans on the committee. And they were critics of Donald Trump. And they participated in laying the blame for January 6th at Donald Trump's feet. So there's a bit more of a history there. But it is true that this was an unusual committee where the Speaker and the Democrat controlled exactly who was on it. Yeah. And I mean, that whole politicization of this, I'd say, Anthony, is kind of kind of gets to the heart of the issue, because I think if you're the average person who is seeing, you know, what one side of politicians are saying, what the others are, and then you've watched, you know, you might have watched the footage, which a lot of people did of what happened on January the 6th.

20:29It feels like people kind of made up their own minds. But then they're now in this political ping pong where actually there are kind of points that can be said by either side that are true but overwhelmingly as well I guess the politicization that is perceived to have happened from the left means that the facts themselves which show rioters behaving in a very violent way inspired by untrue claims that the election was stolen like that's the facts of the matter but it's all just become like quite distorted really and the democrats still have maintained the same narrative since really Jan 6th happened.

21:02When they were marking the fifth anniversary of Jan 6th, they had their own hearing and the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, started by saying this. On the first day in office of his second term, instead of fulfilling his promise to lower the high cost of living on day one, Donald Trump pardoned hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers while storming the United States Capitol. The January 6th violent attack on the Capitol that took place five years ago today was shameful then, it is shameful now, and it will be shameful always and forever. Yeah, Marianne, I think it's interesting there what Hakeem Jeffries is trying to do, which is commemorate January 6th, note it, but then throw it forward and saying this is just representative of what Donald Trump is doing now and what he will do for the remainder of his presidency.

22:00And I think the strategy there is they can't dwell on the past. They want to be able to attack Donald Trump on what he's doing, because that in the end is going to be what Americans care about when they go to the polls in November's midterm elections. I just wonder where this will settle in the end. I mean, where it will settle in sort of 10, 20, 30 years time when people are learning about this in history lessons or talking about it, which narrative will come up Trump's? because it feels a little bit like the initial version of events was very much taking aim at Donald Trump and saying what happened here was outrageous and that word Hakeem Jeffries used sort of shameful and it was inspired by disinformation and it can't ever happen again.

22:44Then as time has gone on and as I guess the memory of it has become a little bit less acute as well there's then been kind of questioning of all hang on a second how politicized was that and is it fair to say this was a threat to democracy and then even more so kind of conspiracy theories suggesting that they were agitators or it just didn't happen in the way that we saw at the time certainly the people who were there and the video evidence and everything else and it feels at the moment like that narrative is kind of winning and I would say one of the reasons for that is because on social media it's very visible and that can be explained in part by Elon Musk's ex and the prominence that is now afforded to particularly sort of provocative political posts and a lot of work he does in kind of amplifying posts that are supportive of Donald Trump when when their mates which they kind of currently sort of are.

23:28But you do just wonder whether, again, it will sort of, it will turn again and people, when it's not Donald Trump who's president anymore, does everyone kind of take another step back and say, hang on, hang on, hang on, this was actually what happened. And these were the two arguments put forth by the political sides, but ultimately the facts are this. Right. Once he's a little more removed from American politics, and it no longer involves someone who was the key player in all of this. And there's a little bit more perspective. And part of the attempt to gain that perspective and record this for history, there's been a battle over a plaque that the House of Representatives approved to be displayed at the Capitol memorializing the law enforcement officers who attempted to protect the Capitol, some who subsequently died either by suicide or by subsequent medical conditions.

24:20And that plaque was never displayed by the House of Representatives, never hung in the spot where it was supposed to be hung, in part because the Republicans who took control of the House of Representatives in 2024 didn't want it hung anywhere. They blocked it. And now we've seen Senate in the Senate. There have been some centrist Republicans who actually came up with a motion to hang it in the Senate. And it is going to be someplace off the floor of the Senate, at least temporarily, until they settle exactly where it's going to be. But this I mean, it's a good example of exactly how up in the air the historical legacy of all of this is that they can't even agree on where to put a plaque and what that plaque should say.

25:10if they can't agree on that, how are they going to be able to agree on anything? And maybe at some point that black will be where it's supposed to be. But for the moment, it is kind of in limbo. Yeah, and Anthony, this is no doubt something that we're going to be talking about on future episodes of AmeriCast. That is the end of this episode, though. Thank you so much for listening. Bye. Bye, y 'all.

25:32Thank you for listening to another episode. It is you, the AmeriCaster, that makes AmeriCast the community that it now is. If you like what you've heard, please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. We always want to hear your feedback as well. We look at every single bit of correspondence that we get. So you can send us an email, americast at bbc.co.uk. The WhatsApp is 44330 123 9480. And you can get involved in the AmeriCast Discord server. The link to that is in the description. Till next time. Bye bye.

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