Trump's Insurrection: The Fall of the Capitol (Ep 3)

0:06Hello, and welcome to The Rest is Politics US and this special series on January 6, 2021, and the riots at the US Capitol. This is the third episode. I'm Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Katty, where were we, Katty? You had a cliffhanger moment in episode two. So where are we going? Well, we left you last week with Trump having just spent the last few months. He was trying to stay in power. It was all about stop the steal, trying to prevent Joe Biden's victory. He's had all of these court cases that he's brought unsuccessfully. He's tried to lean on his political opponents, people like Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, who we spoke about, to fiddle with the results.

0:47And now he's got to January the 6th. And he sees January the 6th as his last stand. He's trying to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. And going into this day, it was pretty clear that Republicans in both the houses of Congress would challenge the results in Congress and try to stop the certification process. And the Democrats have been busily preparing their rebuttals against those challenges. So in today's episode, we are going to look at the events of January the 6th itself. The tick-tock, what happened hour by hour as Donald Trump supporters came from all over America.

1:29They came from Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, I mean, really from all over the country. And they stormed the Capitol building, trying to undermine the very foundations of American democracy. The erosion and support for President Trump comes as COVID-19 cases have been surging. Joe Biden is back and taking aim at the current commander in chief. Under this president, we become weaker, sicker, more divided and more violent. What if Biden wins? Our constitutional rights are to remove a tyrannical government. I'm going to give it to you wrong. Yeah, we're violent. We are getting ready for some big calls. NBC News projecting, as expected, Joe Biden will win.

2:12We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. The 700 ,000 votes Trump was ahead by disappeared. We're going to walk down and I'll be there with you. Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! You'll never take back our country with weakness.

2:36They were peaceful people. These were great people. We want Trump! We want Trump! Let me just say this and I would love to get your reaction. So we go from the Tea Party movement after Obama comes into power. People are upset about the taxes and they're upset about the zero interest rate policies that are favoring the banks. We then go from Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street. So it's not just right-wingers. It's now left-wingers are railing on the government. You gave trillions of dollars away to the fat cat bankers. The rest of us are not doing as well. You then morph into MAGA. And, Caddy, you know this.

3:19Some of it is Bernie Sanders stuff. Some of it is Donald Trump stuff. It's like a Frankenstein monster has been created in the body politic. And then we go from MAGA to the government is lying to you and the elections are unfair. And the people are chanting, stop the steal. 31 million American adults, 31 million believe that the election was stolen. There's no evidence of it. subsequently Fox News is paying a$783 million settlement to one of the voting machine companies to not have to have their news stars deposed. No evidence of it. Yes. 61 separate court cases tossed out. The Secretary of State of Georgia who votes for Trump and does three recounts for him, tells him no, there's no evidence of any massive fraud here.

4:15So before we get into the narrative, how do you get thousands of people to believe this bullshit? And how do you get them to show up at a rally on the ellipse and then march on the Capitol and break windows and take a dump on Speaker Pelosi's desk? Go ahead. How do you do it, Kat? Because I'm trying to start a cult, by the way, and I need to know how to do this. So how do you do it? I'm interested that you use the word bullshit because that's exactly the word that Donald Trump used on the ellipse on that day, on January the 6th, to describe the election from his point of view. He said, we were winning, we had all of these votes ahead, and then it was bullshit.

4:55But I think it's people went down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. And what they were reading online and what they were reading in different social media groups whipped them up. And that is why we got to the events of January the 6th. So going into January the 6th, let's have a quick look at where we are in all of the different factions. We've got the Republicans in the House, and it was here really that the congressional challenge began. And by this stage, it looked as if 140 Republican members of Congress would contest the election result. The Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, had said that he was going to get a team together on what he called voter fraud and integrity.

5:33And there was no doubt really in the White House, they knew that Kevin McCarthy was going to follow Donald Trump's wishes and push against the certification of the election result. The Republicans in the Senate were a little bit more divided. Josh Hawley, the senator for Missouri, he said that he was going to join those House members who were objecting to the certification. But there were a bigger group of Republican senators who also said that they wanted the vote certified, most notably, of course, Mitt Romney and also Mitch McConnell, who was the leader of the Republicans in the Senate. The Democrats, of course, in the Senate and in the House, they're united.

6:08They want to have the election results certified. They say Joe Biden has won and they don't really trust Mitch McConnell. They're a little bit wary. Nancy Pelosi is a little bit wary of him. He said that he's going to certify the results, but there's not a lot of love between Mitch McConnell and many Democrats. And so she was a little bit wary about that. Joe Biden, he's holed up at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. Remember, it's still COVID. He's not out and about very much. And he is kind of waiting to see what Donald Trump is going to do. And Donald Trump, and he is the key figure this day, is set to give this speech and it's called Save America.

6:43It's no longer Stop the Seal. This is now the Save America. He really does see this in the battle for America as he sees it. He sees this as the big last stand, January the 6th, the day that Congress is going to certify the election results. If they can't stop this certification from taking place, then he and MAGA have lost the election. That's his kind of feeling. So he's going to give this big speech on the ellipse, just on south of the White House, outside the Washington Monument. And I think we should set the scene. I covered this day for the BBC. I was live on air for hours. And I'm going to be honest, I woke up that morning, and I don't know what you feel, Anthony, but I woke up that morning, and I didn't think there was going to be a massive riot on the Hill, did you?

7:28I mean, I didn't wake up thinking, oh my God, this is the day there's going to be war in America, or potentially the beginning of a civil war, or we're going to see the Capitol overrun. I mean, yeah, we all knew that January 6th was a big day, but maybe I just wasn't listening to the right kind of deep web online chatter because I just thought it was going to be a big Donald Trump rally. So I woke up, it was my 57th birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. And by the way, I have the same birthday as Eric Trump. I think I've mentioned it already. And my wife got me a Bitcoin birthday cake and I was super happy about it.

8:01And I ended of putting it on the cover of one of my books, but I had no clue. But before we get into this narrative, I want to do a character test with you. Ready? It's spineless or principled. Those are the answers, Katty Kat. Spineless or principled. Okay. Ready? Mitch McConnell, spineless or principled. Well, he did say he wanted to certify the election result. All right. So, we're going to go with principled on that one, even though he's an equivocator, We're going to say principled, okay? Kevin McCarthy. Well, not so principled. Okay. We're going to say spineless on that one, okay? Okay. We would say jellyfish, but that's not one of the two answers, okay?

8:39Now, let's go to the last one and then we can get into this narrative. Mike Pence, spineless or principled? Mike Pence put himself and his family at risk that day. He did. And not just on that day, as we will tell during the course of this story. No question. For days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months and potentially years afterwards. They still chant. Hang Mike Pence. Yes. I don't even want to say it, but that's what they do. So Mike Pence principled. Mike Pence comes out of this thing and he says, my political career is likely over, but I do love my country and there was no election fraud here and we're certifying the election.

9:20But Trump says at the - At the ellipse, at the rally at the ellipse. All we have to do is get Mike Pence to say that we have to bring it back to the states. And then you're happy and I'm happy and I get to stay in power. This son of a bitch is trying to overthrow the government. Now, we're going to pretend that that didn't happen now because he's now been reelected president, Katty Kay. But that's what he was doing on that day. So take us to what happened. I think that's why it's so important to tell this story again, because Donald Trump has been reelected. And America, in a way, kind of collectively decided to draw a veil over these events.

10:03But when you listen to them again, and I've spent the last few days watching documentaries, watching the coverage, listening to all of the voices of that day, I've been shocked all over again. So let's take us to about 10.30 in the morning. And you've got all of these different groups, buses and buses of crowds of people coming from all over the country to the Washington Mall, Trump supporters there to protest. You've got the Proud Boys, which is a far right American militia group, walking down the mall, chanting, fight for Trump, save America, USA, USA, some of them got baseball bats in their hands.

10:39And there is a kind of, it's a mixture of a sort of, a big football game crowd and a little bit of menace in the air. And I knew this rally was happening. And I remember first thinking there could be trouble when I was in the Uber on the way to the studio. And I was listening to the rallies and I was listening to Rudy Giuliani saying that you had to have trial by combat and thinking that doesn't sound good. And then Trump comes on and he keeps repeating the word fight. And you've got to fight for America. And the kind of language that he was using, the repetition of that language, I thought this spells trouble.

11:13We hadn't woken up expecting it, but it was the tone of those speeches. And the way he then at midday, so the crowd starts gathering in the morning, some of them are getting there early. At midday, Donald Trump takes the stage in the ellipse in front of this huge crowd. It's something like 53 ,000 people. He is thrilled. He says, I'm so honored to have you all here to fight for me. Congress, meanwhile, a mile down the road, is due to start the procedure of certification of the election results at 1 p.m. in a joint session in the House presided over by Vice President Mike Pence. If both the senators and the members of the House object to the results, then they would retire to their own chambers to discuss the results separately.

11:55So that's all happening up on Capitol Hill. Outside the White House, Donald Trump, who, as we heard in the last two episodes, has been attacking the election procedure for months has whipped up this crowd into a kind of frenzy of fury and revenge and excitement. I think that's worth pointing out that there really is this kind of sense of excitement. There's one point where the Trump family is in a tent behind the podium and Donald Trump Jr. shows a video of himself backstage in which he pans to his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, by the way, quick aside, who's just been nominated to be ambassador to Athens, Greece, cradle of democracy.

12:34I mean, how ironic does that get? What did the Greeks do to Trump that deserve that though? That's what I want to know. Of all the places they could be sending this woman, because what does she say in this video? She says, have the courage to do the right thing, fight. And then Trump goes up on the stage and he says, now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this. We're going to walk down and I'll be with you there to the Capitol. And this is the crucial part. And we fight and we fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

13:10And I think it's worth dwelling on that because when we have the investigation in Congress afterwards, Anthony, into whether Donald Trump incited this riot, they keep referring to this. Do you think he meant to tell them to go and actually do what they did to fight their way into the Capitol? I do. And I think that's the incendiary language that he was using. And the real question is, how does he get other people to try to out-Trump Trump? He's got Rudy Giuliani saying that we need trial by combat. Giuliani, who of course has been leading the legal challenges in many cases. Yeah, but he's up on the stage saying, trial by combat, I've got to out-Trump Trump.

13:51Katty K, how does Donald Trump get people to stand there and try to out-Trump him? So I have one theory about this. I think some of the people, and it's interesting going back over the documentaries, some of the people who were there on the mall that day were there with a real intention to fight. There was one guy who called himself Joe from Ohio, who was asked by an NPR reporter, what do you want to happen today? and he said, I want all the members of Congress who certify this election to be hanging from gallows, tried and hung for treason. And he's super graphic. I want them hung four by four by four, hung so the country can see.

14:33I mean, there is no doubt that that guy was there with an intention to overturn the election result and to enact retribution. And as he says, to enact violence against members of Congress. We know from Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony, and she was the aide to Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and she testified before the January 6th committee that Donald Trump knew before he took to the stage at midday at the Ellipse that there were members of the crowd who had arms and weapons. And he said, I don't care. Let them in. They shouldn't have to go through security gates. They're not there to do any harm to me.

15:10So that already was something that came up later. He knew they were armed. He knew they had weapons, and yet he's still kind of trying to get them up into the mob. In answer to your question, I think part of it is that, yes, there are people there with a clear intention to commit violence who have come there with a very specific purpose, who are organized. We know this from intelligence reports afterwards, people like the Proud Boys, the militia group, the Oath Keepers, the militia group. But as I was watching it on television unfold, I couldn't help but think, this crowd is 90 % male and 90 % white.

15:43And partly what was happening was the kind of mob mentality kicks in. You get a big crowd of people together, of young men together, older men in some cases, but you get this big crowd together and Trump is whipping them up and Rudy Giuliani is whipping them up. And they just kind of get themselves into this frenzy. And at 1253, even while Donald Trump is still speaking, so Donald Trump's up at the ellipse still speaking, some of the crowd is already down at the Capitol. And they breach the outer perimeter of the kind of fairly flimsy, honestly, railings that have been set up around the Capitol.

16:19They breach the first fence. And then the chaos starts to ensue. And that's where you start seeing this footage that we've all seen, that I think, I imagine you were watching, even though it was your birthday, and you're probably your mouth full of birthday cake, and yet your jaw on the floor at what you were seeing, I imagine. I called Jack Oliver. Now, I don't know if you know who Jack is, but Jack is a dear friend of mind. He was RNC finance chair. He was deputy chief of staff for George W. Bush. Brilliant guy, worked for Jeb, stepped out of things when Trump became president because Jeb did.

16:53Said, he's going to rush the Capitol. There's going to be violence at the Capitol. And I said, Jack, how's it going to be violence at the Capitol? First of all, the Capitol - This is America. Yeah. Yeah. And how is that going to happen? And by the way, police are going to be ready for that. They'll put down the violence. But you know, and I know, that it was 58 to 1. There was a limited amount of Capitol Police because you live in that city, Caddy, and that Capitol building for the average American is fairly accessible. It's the people's Capitol building. And the police there are not anticipating violence on a January winter day, two weeks before the inaugural, which is exactly what it is.

17:39They're not expecting it. Why weren't they expecting it though? Because there were rumblings. Bannon was saying, you'll see what happens on the 6th of January and all this sort of nonsense. Why weren't they expecting it? And there had been one FBI field report that had come through saying, listen, we're hearing that there's going to be serious violence. But I think the Capitol Police, a bit like me and us other reporters, I mean, I had not been really tuned in to the online chatter. And some of the people were just there for the kind of day out. There's this wonderful guy, this guy called Anthony Joseph Sirica, who was eventually sentenced to 15 days in jail for his role in the Capitol attack.

18:19When he was asked if he wished he'd stayed out of the building, he said, well, it might make a good story in like 50 years when I'm a grandfather. I mean, some people really were there for the sort of fun of it. I think that was the attitude of Washington. That was the attitude of the Capitol Police. that was the attitude of the law enforcement was that this is just going to be another Trump rally. There'll be some bad guys, but we can handle them. But they realized that they were massively unprepared. And you start to get the pictures now of the police right up against the crowd. They are outnumbered, like you said, the surge of people coming up onto the Capitol.

18:58And this is before Donald Trump has even finished his speech. So you haven't even got all of the people there yet. Trump finishes speaking at 1.15. The rest of the crowd now joins all their brothers in arms on the mall. They walk down from the mall to the Capitol building. DC's regular police, because you've got the Capitol police, and then you've got DC city police. They were called in to help manage what was the kind of football atmosphere is gone. Now you've got full on anger. There's scaffolding around the Capitol because it was all set up already for the inauguration. and some of the protesters managed to get through the scaffolding.

19:31They find a staircase, they get up that, they jump over a fence around the side that was only guarded by a handful of police officers. And they get in initially through the side of the building. Most of the crowd is staying out on the front of the Capitol. But at 1.50 PM, that's when a riot is declared. and it's at 2.13 p.m. that we see that now famous footage of Trump supporters smashing a window. One of them has grabbed a policeman's shield, riot shield, and they smashed the window and they are climbing through the windows into the Capitol buildings. And it's kind of surreal because you've got the Capitol security video and a lot of the people are filming themselves.

20:13We've got so much footage of this day and they're going in there with their Confederate flags. By the way, something that didn't even happen in the Civil War, right? And we didn't ever have the Capitol breached in this way, even during the American Civil War. It was well guarded during the Civil War. Obviously, the whole Union Army was surrounding the Potomac River to prevent anything happening to the White House or the Capitol building, which was still, frankly, being built at that time. But what I don't understand, caddy, and it always will vex me for the rest of my life. What did those people think they were doing?

20:49So there were, like you said, mailmen. There were bank executives from Wall Street that joined. I mean, you pick any slice of America from blue collar to white collar had shown up with their red, white, and blue bandanas and their Confederate flags. And a lot of Trump flags. A lot of Trump flags. What were they trying to achieve? So they thought, we're going to run over the Capitol. We're going to, I guess, hang people that don't agree with us. And then as a result of us doing this, Donald Trump is going to stay in power. He doesn't have the American military. He lost the election. He lost the electoral vote.

21:27This was a formulary procedural certification caddy. This was not anything more than that, just required by Congress to certify the election. So what did he think was going to happen? Because I asked some people that actually were there. I said, hey, guys, what do you think? I mean, I don't want to mention the guy's name, but he's a bit of a nut. He's a friend of mine. He's a MAGA guy. He lives out here on Long Island. I said, so, okay, so you're there. Did you get in the Capitol? Yes, I did. Didn't get arrested. No. Well, what do you think was going to happen? What were you doing? Well, we were very angry.

22:02And by the way, think about this, and I think you know this, If you really thought your vote was stolen from me, if you really thought this, then I guess there could be a manifestation of anger. But is that the actionable thing? And then what was the outcome? And he just looked at me and said, I don't really know if there was much of an outcome, but we wanted to send a message to people. We weren't expecting necessarily a different outcome. It's such a good point that it was just, I think people, and there was one guy who was convicted who said we were just American people, tired and pissed off by the fact that we felt our election was stolen.

22:36We were just regular pissed off Americans. Now, some of them were kind of extreme conspiracy theorists. There's one guy who's interviewed who actually starts smoking joints in one of the halls of the Capitol. And he's clearly also a QAnon conspiracy theorist because he's interviewed and he says, well, I'm pissed off because 800 ,000 children are abducted. and tortured and sexually abused every year. And Donald Trump understands this. And I'm in the kind of forefront of the battle against this. I mean, this is classic QAnon, mad conspiracy theory stuff. So you've got people like that. You've got people like the guy you interviewed who are pissed off, who genuinely felt because they had been reading a lot of conspiracy theories and misinformation online, that the election had been stolen.

23:18I guess if you and I felt we had voted in an election and our vote had been stolen and the result had been stolen, we would be angry too. Now, would we storm the Capitol? I would be absolutely terrified to do so because that looked like an incredibly scary scene to me. But I think it's pretty clear what Donald Trump wanted. Donald Trump wanted the certification to stop. And in fact, at 2.24, he tweets, 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.

23:56USA demands the truth. So that's at 2.24 PM and Donald Trump is not backing down. He's not asking the rioters to stop. And he is again reiterating that he wants Mike Pence to defy his constitutional responsibility and not certify the election. It's Trump's insurrection. It's Trump's pushing the violence because McCarthy knows Ivanka Trump knows. Everybody knows Trump can stop it. All he's got to do is take to the airwaves, but he doesn't do that, Kat. No. We'll get to the reasons why after the break, but I think it's important to point it out. We'll come back and we'll talk about what was happening to the members of Congress, of the House, and of the Senate whilst this riot is taking place.

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