1:04:14
[Senator Mitch McConnell] We’re debating a step that has never been taken in American history. Whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a presidential election. I’ve served 36 years in the Senate. This’ll be the most important vote I’ve ever cast. President Trump claims the election was stolen. The assertions range from specific local allegations to constitutional arguments, to sweeping conspiracy theories. I supported the President’s right to use the legal system. Dozens of lawsuits received hearings in courtrooms all across our country. But over and over the courts rejected these claims, including all star judges, whom the President himself has nominated. Every election we know features some illegality and irregularity, and of course, that’s unacceptable. I support strong State led voting reforms. Last year’s bizarre pandemic procedures must not become the new norm.
But my colleagues, nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale, the massive scale that would have tipped the entire election. Nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break when the doubt itself was incited without any evidence. The Constitution gives us here in Congress a limited role. We cannot simply declare ourselves a National Board of Elections on steroids. The voters, the courts, and the stage have all spoken. They’ve all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our Republic forever. This election, actually, was not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000 and 2004 were all closer on this one. The Electoral College margin is almost identical to what it was in 2016. This election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We’d never see the whole nation except an election again. Every four years would be a scramble for power at any cost.
The Electoral College, which most of us on this side have been defending for years, would cease to exist. Leaving many of our States with no real say at all in choosing a President. The effects would go even beyond the elections themselves. Self government, my colleagues, requires a shared commitment to the truth and a shared respect for the ground rules of our system. We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate realities with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share. Every time, every time in the last 30 years that Democrats have lost a presidential race, they’ve tried to challenge just like this. After 2000, after 2004, after 2016. After 2004, a Senator joined and forced the same debate and believe it or not, Democrats like Harry Reed, Dick Durbin, and Hillary Clinton praised, praised him and applauded the stunt.
Republicans condemned those baseless efforts back then and we just spent four years condemning Democrats shameful attacks on the validity of President Trump’s own election. So look, there can be no double standard. The media that is outraged today spent four years aiding and abetting Democrats attacks on our institutions after they lost. But we must not imitate and escalate what we repudiate. Our duty is to govern for the public good. The United States Senate has a higher calling than an endless spiral of partisan vengeance. Congress will either override the voters, over rule them, the voters, the States and the courts for the first time ever, or honor the people’s decision. We’ll either guarantee Democrats de-legitimizing efforts after 2016 become a permanent new routine for both sides or declare that our nation deserves a lot better than this.
We’ll either hasten down a poisonous path where only the winners of election actually accept the results, or show we can still muster the patriotic courage that our forebearers showed not only in victory, but in defeat. The framers built the Senate to stop short-term passions from boiling over and melting the foundations of our Republic. So I believe protecting our constitutional order requires respecting the limits of our own power. It would be unfair and wrong to disenfranchise American voters and overrule the courts and the States on this extraordinarily thin basis. And I will not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing. I will vote to respect the people’s decision and defend our system of government as we know it.
***
3:47:58
[Judy Woodruff, PBS News Hour] Right now our own reporters, Lisa Desjardin, and Amna Nawaz have been reporting from the Capitol grounds. We are waiting to see evidence of either National Guard, State Patrols, State Police, for some evidence that they are showing up at the Capitol to reinforce the Capitol Police where they were clearly under-prepared, under-secured; they were not ready for the show of force on the part of these protesters who came in force in large numbers determined to breach the Capitol, to breach the perimeter, to go in, to knock down the doors, to break windows, to break glass, to get inside, to go inside the Senate chamber, into the House chamber. Here we have, this is a quick look at the House chamber. We were told that protesters were inside. We were also told that House members are trying to find different places to stay safe in the Capitol building. Lisa Dejardin has reported for us that the members of the Senate were in one location. We don’t know what that location is. We were told they are staying safe, and kept safe, in one location. But we’re trying to follow sources of information from many different directions. We just listened to Joe Biden calling on President Trump to go before the American people, to go on National television, to urge his supporters to leave the Capitol; to pull back. And Biden himself called on these protesters to leave the Capitol. He said, and I’m quoting here: He said, what they are doing borders on sedition; he called it disorder, even chaos; he said they do not represent who we are as American people; they are a small number of extremists; and he went on to call them, he said “I call on this mob to pull back.” And he described the words of the President, clearly holding President Trump responsible for what has happened today at the Capitol. These are live pictures you are looking at from the Capitol grounds. We know that tear gas was deployed a little earlier, maybe 15 to 30 minutes ago, in an effort to disperse the crowd, but a number of them are still there as dark descends on the Capitol city. We know it’s about 30 degrees with some pretty strong winds today. It’s not a pleasant day to be outdoors, but this is a determined group.
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4:44:10
[John Hart, Former Communications Director for Sen. Tom Coburn’ I think what we would have learned today, had not the protest happened in the way it did, and we will still learn, is that there’s a lot of ambiguity written into the Constitution about how Congress can provide oversight – should Congress provide oversight – to state election boards, to state legislatures. And to me, the only intellectually honest way to actually change anything, is to do it through a Constitutional Amendment. So there may be takeaways where there might be an agreement to, for example, look at how we draw congressional districts. You can broaden the aperture beyond just election rules to look at how we decide districts. And how do we have modern elections in the Internet age in ways that are transparent and fair. Could we simply vote through our phone? Are there ways to do it online? If we could pay our taxes online, why can’t we vote? Are there simpler ways to have free and fair and open elections, ways that can prevent fraud, that will not create suspicion?
And again, I think what’s happened is there were four years of the resistance on the Left that said the President was illegitimately elected. And that has created an enormous amount of suspicion. And I would agree that Trump has amplified that in ways that are unhelpful, but that’s part of why we’re where we are today….
And to clarify … what I am imploring, the media to do at large, is to understand that when there were years and years dedicated to a storyline that the Russians helped elect Donald Trump, that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians, and there was an impeachment process built around that, that then created a fertile ground for Donald Trump to say, “This election result was merely a continuation of four years of resistance.” And so that’s why I think there’s plenty of blame on both sides. That this is a cultural, political problem, and this goes way beyond just partisanship. And really, that’s the point that I’m trying to make here that it’s wrong and partisan for either side to say, “One side caused this and the other didn’t.” There is different types of blame to go around, but there’s a lot of blame that I think both sides can share, and that we need to learn from, and move forward in a much more productive way. And there are ways that Congress can do this very productively, and bring in experts, and figure out how can we have, in the modern digital age a free election where everybody gets to vote, and their vote is not fraudulent, their vote will count. And that’s what I think we need to do going forward. That’s what members can support on both sides.
***
4:49:52
[Judy Woodruff] Let’s turn now to journalist and author Ron Suskind, who has been speaking with sources of his within the Trump administration on this truly astonishing day. Hi, Ron. What are you learning?
[Ron Suskind, Journalist and Author] It’s quite a day. Um, Judy, one of the things I’m hearing from sources in the government is, well, something that we heard starting around the middle of last year, is that this is the thing they feared, is that Trump always had an army of loyalists. And the fear was, if he were to lose the election, that he would unleash them. He would use the power of the people who will do just about anything Donald Trump says, and have been convinced that a fraud has occurred, in extraordinary numbers, which Trump did himself, to create a situation that is sort of what we have at this moment in which you’ve got this group of insurrectionists who have taken over the Capitol, that are really moving at the direction of Donald Trump – let’s be very clear about that – and at the same time he still retains the powers of the presidency. That’s a left hand and a right hand in which he has power in both hands. And I think what we’re seeing now is a question that he’s answering as to how he will use that leverage.
He said to them, “It’s time to go home.” That’s not a very forceful statement. It’s sort of like, “You’ve done your work now, stand down and wait for further instructions.” He has also activated the police, and has activated the National Guard.
So you’ve got left hand and right hand working in a kind of unison that terrifies many of the folks, Republicans, and many of the folks who are senior officials in the government. And that’s why we’re in a very dynamic situation now.
[Judy Woodruff] Well, at the very least, it’s a mixed message and as you say, it’s a dangerous message. Because you’re right: on the one hand, the President is saying “Go home,” but he is sticking by his argument that the election was stolen, which is of course what is fueling the anger and the actions taken by these protesters.
Ron, so how organized is all of this, is my question? I know we still don’t know the identity of every single one of the individuals who came to Washington today to protest the election result, but how much organization is there?
[Ron Suskind, Journalist and Author] You know, I don’t think there’s a lot of organization as we generally think about “organization.” You know, this is a mob that kind of takes direction and can improvise as they see fit. You kind of don’t need a battle plan handed to them. Not in this age. And I think what you’re seeing here is a kind of signaling that we see a lot in the digital era, in which the President is signaling to his community, as he did in that speech this morning, which was just harrowing to listen to, because he did fire them up, and he pointed them toward the Capitol. It was quite clear: You’re ready – go that way, and do what need be done! If you listen to that long speech, that is essentially the message he gave to them. And then he sat and watched, Trump in the Oval Office, as the havoc unfolded. And watched for quite a while.
[Judy Woodruff] It seems to me, just again, looking at this from my perspective, watching this unfold today, that there was an effort initially to exercise restraint on the part of the Capitol law enforcement, the Capitol police and others. They were hoping that things wouldn’t get out of hand, and they were holding back. They didn’t want to use force; they didn’t use tear gas or other methods. They held back. But then that turned out to be the opening that led to what we saw, where they broke into the Capitol, at least one person was shot, people sent to the hospital, and so on. It remains to be seen just how much this unfolded. But now we have the situation where a number of these protesters are telling people who talk to them that they are going to stay there overnight. We had Yamiche Alcindor reporting a while ago that that’s the whole purpose of being there, to keep this electoral vote counting process from going forward. So if the National Guard or police, or whoever goes into the Capitol, they’re going to meet with resistance on the part of these people. We think; we don’t know.
But back to the President and his role in all of this. It’s something we are trying to understand. And it’s certainly raising a question about just what a dangerous moment this is.
[Ron Suskind, Journalist and Author] You know, Judy, one thing I want to point out, I think you say something that’s quite pertinent, that the Capitol police were kind of surprised. It’s hard to imagine this! You know, there’s been threat assessments going on inside of the government by senior officials who are fearful, in various agencies, for months, as to what could happen if Donald Trump lost the election. It’s one thing to engage in that process, and it’s another thing to be facing it. And I think what you saw is the surprise of law enforcement, police around the Capitol. When they saw a mob coming, quite ardent about what they decided to do. And I think as well, now is a moment where we’re all trying to get in the head of the key actor here, which is Trump. Trump created this situation. Trump also controls the key powers of government that will effect what happens in the next few days. Both things are in his control, and purview. I think that’s why you have some people, Republicans and Democrats, calling for the 25th Amendment, saying, “Look, you can’t have all that power in one man.” What Peter Baker wrote in the New York Times about the President leading an insurgency, insurging in the White House, is the thinking that many senior officials have had for quite some time.
So now we’re in a dynamic situation where people are trying to figure out what Donald Trump’s intentions are, and what he will do next. In some ways, one of the things that people have been watching for, is in fact alerting and bringing in the National Guard, and military to create a kind of state of emergency situation which again, gives the President extraordinary powers. And that’s happening now.
So it doesn’t surprise me that the folks in the Capitol are staying. They realize they have power, and that they’re really backed up significantly by the President of the United States himself. That changes the dynamic from anything we’ve ever seen I think in this country, where you had a group like that who feel they have the support of the President. That’s the new terrain we are standing on now. And it is terrifying.
[Judy Woodruff] Sobering at the very least. And this discussion of the 25th Amendment, again, sobering. Ron Suskind, thank you very much. So much to report on.
***
4:59:11
[William Brangham] I would like to turn now at some point to Yamiche Alcindor, our White House correspondent. She has been following all of this. Yamiche: great to see you. Can you just give us the latest? What are you hearing? We say the statement the White House put out from President Trump. What else can you tell us about the latest of what the White House is thinking and how they are responding to all of this?
[Yamiche Alcindor] The President remains convinced that he has to continue to spread disinformation about the election. He is watching all of this unfold from the White House. At this point, other than that one-minute video, he has not offered himself up to speak to the American people in this moment when so many Americans are terrified about what they are watching. This, of course, is a result of the President’s own words, own rhetoric. He told Americans, millions of them, at rallies, on Twitter, in videos, from the White House podium, that he was someone who was a victim of a mass conspiracy theory against him, that he had had the election stolen from him. And the President is still there, still in that mind-frame, still focused on his own future even as night falls on the White House, even as things get dark, even as things have gotten so dark in the Capitol.
What we see here is the President urging calm. People around him, including Rudy Giuliani, say that there needs to be no violence. But these are the same people, William, and you know this from the reporting that you’ve been doing on disinformation domestically, these are the same people who are perpetuating the same information that now these people have taken, these protesters, have taken into the Capitol and other cities to try to really upend all of this process. My reporting continues to be that these protesters do not plan to want to leave; do not plan to want to back down, because they want to see the system not be able to go forward. And right now they are succeeding at doing that.
It’s remarkable. At the beginning of the day, we thought finally the 2020 election was going to be over, and now we’ve seen armed protesters succeed in disrupting American democracy. So many people, including Republicans, urged the President weeks before this to condemn violence, to not have people come out, but the President ignored them all. And we saw this morning, the President double-down on that and I think it’s going to be something that we’re really going to have to think about, when he said, “Fight on; we will not concede, and we’re heading to the Capitol.”
And I should say, as someone who has covered a lot of protests, these images are just remarkable. I remember being in Ferguson, Missouri, where there were protesters who were protesting peacefully, and we saw tanks and teargas thrown onto them. And these protesters are now sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s office, are sitting in the Senate chamber, and President Trump is saying, “I hear your pain. I understand you. I love you.” This is the President, feeding into that sense of entitlement that got these people to break windows of the U.S. Capitol, something that we just have not seen in modern history. Some historians saying that it was back in 1812 the last time that the Capitol was breached. So this is the White House right now, that is not communicating other than that one-minute video. I have so many questions for this White House, including, “What happens next? When is the President going to do something to try to put an end to this all the way, physically try to do something to put an end to this?” We are just not getting any answers. And we also don’t know where the Vice-President is right now. He was whisked away from the Capitol, and there’s no clarity from the White House on where the leader, the second-in-command of the U.S. government is right now.
[William Brangham] It is just such a remarkable turn of events, Yamiche. And just to echo what you said before. I know you have covered so many of those protests and seen the way in which heavily armed, and well-fortified police officers respond to physical destruction to large numbers of people pushing into places where they’re not supposed to be, and then to see that this has been going on for hours today. We know that the National Guard has been called out in some instances here, but this idea that this went on for such a long period of time, and either the Capitol Police simply were outnumbered, but then to not see a response, a more vigorous and forceful response, has got to just be – I mean, the contrast between the protest that we saw earlier this year, and what we saw being allowed to go forward today, is just striking.
[Yamiche Alcindor] It’s so striking. As someone who remembers seeing protesters moved out of the way physically with some sort of chemical gas so that President Trump could take a picture in front of St. John’s church, as someone who has gone to Ferguson, Missouri, who has seen protesters there protesting the death of an unarmed teenager in the street, being moved aside with teargas and with tanks, this was the Capitol Police, in some ways being caught off guard, it seems. Um, the President announced several hours ago that he was going to be marching with them, marching with these protesters to the Capitol, but it seems the Capitol Police just simply did not have the force needed and the manpower needed to protect the U.S. Capitol. And that really is something that’s very scary. I’m standing in the other building in D.C. – there are a number of them, of course, that are federal buildings in D.C., but the White House is probably the only other place that you think of as super-safe. It’s seen as sort of a security bubble. I’ve been in the Capitol so many times, and when you enter that rotunda, you feel like the security guards are not going to let anyone in there that doesn’t need to be there. And instead, what we saw was a complete breach of that. And I should say there were moments when we heard sirens, where we heard protesters outside the White House, but they didn’t breach here. And some of that is because they are sympathetic to this White House. They like this White House. They are supporting this White House. Um, as a result, we didn’t see the same force that we saw at the Capitol.
[William Brangham] Yamiche Alcindor at the White House for us today and as you have been all day today. Thank you so much for your reporting. We’ll check back with you later for sure.
I am joined now by the District Attorney, the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Karl Racine. He is on the telephone talking with us today. Uh, Mr. Racine, are you there?
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] I’m here, William. Thank you very much.
[William Brangham] Very good to have you on the NewsHour. Thank you for talking with us. Um, I wonder if I could just initially get your reaction to what has unfolded here today.
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] Well, it’s several-fold, and I’ll try to be as brief as I can. I think Attorney General Barr’s message is plain, clear and unquestionably the truth. What we witnessed today was an American tragedy. It is outrageous! It is devastating. And I would add to former Attorney General Barr’s words, that it was unlawful, predictable, and encouraged by none other than the President of the United States. And so this is an unprecedented event.
Let me talk about the predictability for a moment. We know that these hate groups and militia groups – I’m talking about not the peaceful protesters, but the people who broke police lines, and assaulted the Capitol, and left Senators and Congresswomen and men, huddled down onto the ground with their gas masks out and ushered on to underground trains for refuge, the same refuge sought by the Vice-President of the United States.
So this is a tragic day that was predictable, because the social media made it clear as to what was going to occur. And I have to tell you that Yamiche is exactly right and you too, William, when you bring into contrast the Black Lives Matter protest. You’ll remember, and there are pictures, and I would urge you and your fantastic program, to show the images. What you’ll see in the images of the defense of the Capitol during the Black Lives Matter protest, are wardens and other officials from the Bureau of Prisons, law enforcement heavily armed and in uniform, bulletproof vests and masks, from the Homeland Security, National Guard from overwhelmingly states run by Republican governors, protecting the Capitol for no reason, where there was a peaceful protest. And what you saw today, sadly, and I certainly don’t mean to demean Capitol Policemen individually, but you saw Capitol Policemen RUNNING AWAY from individuals who were breaking into the Capitol and defacing the offices of our most respected elected officials.
Again, I’m going to cite Yamiche. She and I are Haitian Americans. We love our country of Haiti. It’s been beset, unfortunately, by political corruption, and instability, sometimes with the cooperation of the United States of America. A coup d’etat in Haiti is not something, sadly, that is unusual. What you had today was an attempted coup d’etat that may still be in process, because the President claims, falsely, that he won an election that every court has rejected including a conservative Supreme Court. And so now is the time for all responsible Americans – and thank God for the former defense secretaries, and the business leaders – to finally come out and make clear that our democracy relies on a peaceful transition of power. Every side feels the loss, but we get on with it, we regroup, and then we fight a political battle, the next four years. It’s time for Donald Trump and his supporters to leave Washington, D.C. peacefully. It’s too late for them to leave humbly, or with any decency. But please leave in a manner that is not violent.
[William Brangham] You’re describing the words of the President and many of his supporters, as the legal equivalent of “incitement to violence.” And we certainly saw Rudy Giuliani this morning standing amongst those protesters calling for “trial by combat.” We heard the President, and we’ve heard his language all along about theft and robbery and enemy of the people, and the need to rise up and to come to Washington. Do you really lay this fully at the feet of the President? Do you really believe that this is a monster of his making?
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] Candidly and honestly I do think he bears great responsibility, because he’s gone where, literally, no President has ever gone before. And history will certainly reflect this. I also believe that we have seen the fragility of our democracy. And the fragility of our democracy is not in our Constitution, nor in our laws, nor in our norms. It’s in the human beings who are entrusted to defend those. And sadly, too many of those human beings succumbed to the withering pressure of the President of the United States, I would argue the corruption of the President of the United States, and the fear – the fear of their losing potential supporters and voters.
You know, John F. Kennedy wrote a book called “Profiles in Courage” about 8 senators who defied their constituents and public opinion because they did the right thing for the country. That book is noted for its talk about those 8 courageous senators, but it’s also noted for how thin the book actually is. What we’ve seen, unfortunately, are elected officials after elected officials, and former elected officials, and responsible folks, fold uncourageously at the expense of our great democratic experience.
[William Brangham] Attorney General, I wonder if you could help us understand a little bit of, for people who don’t know Washington, D.C., and how law enforcement operates in the City, it’s a very confusing thing. There’s a police force for the Capitol; there’s the Secret Service for the President; D.C. has its own police force. In this case, we saw that this was primarily an issue for the Capitol Police to be dealing with. What other local and/or national law enforcement agencies should be involved here, and do you believe are involved in here?
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] William, the question is spoken from someone who knows Washington, D.C. So thank you for that. And it’s important for the citizens and residents of the United States to understand that the District of Columbia, unfortunately, is not a state. We pay taxes; we go to war, but we’re not a state. We have taxation without representation. And that means that our local police police our neighborhoods in the District of Columbia where we have 700,000 plus extraordinary Washingtonians live and work. But we have the Capitol Police responsible for policing the Capitol. We have the Secret Service who has broad responsibility for protecting, of course, the President, and other elected officials, and other national assets. We have the Park Police that is in charge of protecting our parks here in the District of Columbia that are beautiful. And so in a way, the District of Columbia is one of the most over-policed in the sense of having so many law enforcement officials who, generally speaking, actually work well together. I think the breakdown here is that the Metropolitan Police Department is trying with all of their might, and I think they are doing, to be honest, a very good job under the new chief Contee.
But we have a dissonance because it appears that some crucial federal partners frankly didn’t come to play today. And I can only think that the order came from somewhere up high because I know those federal police officers. They go to work every day to do the right thing. I think they were frankly told not to post today.[William Brangham] I want to follow up on that in a moment, but we are just getting some word from the apparently the Sergeant of Arms inside the Capitol announced an all-clear, that there was some sense that the majority of protesters have been either contained or that the threat is minimized. And allegedly there was some applause that broke out inside the Capitol. So hopefully that is some good news, and we’re working to try and confirm that. But Attorney General, you were saying before about this issue of the difficulty of a city not necessarily having full governance over its own affairs. We know that the mayor of D.C. , Muriel Bowser, has established a 6:00 p.m. curfew tonight in the city. Can you give us a sense of what other resources are going to be deployed in the city? What concerns you have about what might unfold as this protest continues? Abrupt Change of Topic
Another way to deal with a subject that you don’t want to discuss is to wait for a person to catch her breath and change the topic to something that is more agreeable. Most people will take the hint, but if it doesn’t work, try it again. Smile when you do it so the person doesn’t perceive you as being antagonistic or think you’re not a good conversationalist.
Here are some examples of how to quickly change the subject:
• When people start gossiping about someone who isn’t there, point to the buffet (or another inanimate object) and make a comment about how much planning must have gone into it.
• If a person says she has issues with the company you work for, you can smile and ask if she has any pets, and if so, what are they. She should take the hint that your employer is off limits in this discussion.
• When a person starts criticizing your friend or coworker, flash a big smile and ask about her last vacation.
-- How to Gracefully Change the Subject, by Debby Mayne
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] Well, yes, William. The mayor, indeed, did issue a 6:00 p.m. curfew, and we’re getting close to that 6:00 p.m. hour – 18 more minutes. And I’m urging anyone who is watching your show, and I hope many people are, to adhere to that curfew. The Metropolitan Police Department is going to enforce that curfew. In the District of Columbia, that means our police officers will enforce the curfew, and will arrest any individuals who are violating the curfew. Those charges will be reviewed by my office, and where the evidence supports it, will bring the charges. There are other charges that can be brought in regards to what we saw on television today. Many of those charges, in fact almost all of them, are not chargeable by my office, which is the D.C. Attorney General’s office but instead, are only chargeable by the federal prosecutor.
[William Brangham] Is that because these events happened on federal property? Is that correct?
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] Partly, but not fully. Partly, yes, but not fully, because the federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia, given D.C.’s lack of full autonomy, is the principal prosecutor for felonies and adult offenses. And the federal prosecutor, that is the U.S. Attorney of the District of Columbia, is appointed by the President of the United States. And so if you thought that there was meddling into the Michael Flynn case after he pled guilty twice and acknowledged that he perjured himself, and violated the law, then you know that, unfortunately, the President of the United States interferes in the lawful and dutiful operation of federal prosecution. It’s a fair question, William, for you and the press to follow up on, to ask “What charges are the federal prosecutors bringing in light of today’s events?
[William Brangham] And lastly, Attorney General, I just have to wonder, as someone who has spent so much of his life and career in Washington, D.C., and in many ways charged with the protection of the people who live here, and looking after the residents of this city, this has got to be an incredibly dark day. As I said at the beginning, many of us watched what was going on today, and the congressmen and senators gathering to go through what we had been told was a formal counting, certifying, whatever the term of art is, of the final votes of this election. And then to see it devolve into this chaos. I mean, as a long-time resident here, and a member of our local government, this has got to be an incredibly dark and tragic day for you.
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] Well, I’m going to beg to differ a bit, notwithstanding the assault on our democracy that was aided and abetted and encouraged and frankly, known in advance, by the President of the United States. The residents of the District of Columbia, to the contrary, they followed the rules. They were not out in the District of Columbia. They did not participate in confrontation with hate groups. In fact, the residents of the District of Columbia, I would argue, are at the front of the seat of hypocrisy. So they saw the mistreatment of protesters who happened to be overwhelmingly protesting against police excesses on behalf of people of color who the statistics clearly reveal have been treated disparately and violently. And they’ve also seen what happened today. And they are going to see what’s going to happen tonight. And so there may be weeping tonight, but there will be joy in the morning. And there will be a sense that residents of the District of Columbia have honored their oath to be citizens of this country, by acting peacefully, respecting protesters, and going along their business. The D.C. residents – we get it, and we want the rest of the country to get it.
[William Brangham] Attorney General Karl Racine, the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, thank you very much for joining us on this really remarkable day. It’s great to talk to you. Thank you.
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] Thank you, William.
***
5:56:49
[Judy Woodruff] And we step back now to reflect a little more on this remarkable moment with Mary McCord. She was Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice. She now teaches at Georgetown Law School. Mary McCord, we appreciate your being with us again. I know you’ve just been listening to Amna talk about the makeup of the people who showed up in Washington today, who showed up at the Capitol. You’re somebody who has studied some of these extremist groups, including white supremacists and others. What do you make of who these people are, what motivated them to come to do what they were doing today?
[Mary McCord, Former Justice Department Official] Well, it’s not surprising to see these groups showing up. This is something that we have seen in the making for some time now. And we have a combination of extremist, far-right extremists including conspiracy theorists, those who buy into debunked false claims of everything from election fraud to Q-Anon theories about various elected officials: democrats and republicans. But we also have unlawful, criminal street gangs and militias from different states.
Now, D.C., of course, is not an open-carry jurisdiction, and in fact doesn’t even allow a concealed carry unless you have a conceal-carry permit from D.C. They don’t recognize permits from other jurisdictions. But that doesn’t mean that people haven’t been concealing weapons on their person, under their coats, etc. And these are far-right, unlawful private militias who are big Trump supporters.
I think we have probably also seen some more mainstream Republicans who legitimately are concerned that there might have been some fraud in the election, but they are in with these much more extreme individuals who I think are contributing to a real radicalization and the type of violence and rebellion that we saw today at the Capitol.
[Judy Woodruff] Well, from the work that you’ve done, when the group got to the point, today, where they went to the Capitol, they weren’t content to simply protest outside the Capitol; they breached the perimeters, they got to the doors, they started breaking windows, breaking through the doors, going inside, ransacking or walking through, basically taking over the building, what kind of leadership does it take for something like that to happen? Is it spontaneous, or is it something you think was probably worked out and planned ahead of time?
[Mary McCord, Former Justice Department Official] So, I’ve been watching this develop for months now, even before the election, as the President was, even prior to the election, suggesting that mail-in ballots were susceptible to fraud, and that we weren’t going to be able to trust the results of the election. And of course he’s doubled-down on that post-election. And this is red-meat for these groups. The online activity of the far-right extremist movement is extremely prolific, and it in some cases encouraging violence, in other cases encouraging overthrow of the government, and whatever they needed to do to do what they considered “stopping the steal.” The President has been egging it on at every turn. Not only has he himself promoted conspiracy theories, and false claims of election fraud that have been debunked in every single court, and of course Secretary of State Raffensperger and the call on Saturday, you know, tried to push back, point by point about the falsity of those claims, and the President, at the same time, is giving this red meat to the base, giving this red meat to the most extremist elements of his supporters, has also not only refused to denounce civil unrest, but encouraged it.
We saw that coming through the weekend as he was encouraging people to come today, but we saw it even more so this morning, and this evening, when he was encouraging that march on the Capitol. And this evening, while he was telling people to go home, at the same time he was saying, “I know your pain. The election was stolen. I won in a landslide, and it was stolen.” You can’t tell people to go home and be peaceful while you’re telling them that the election has been stolen. So there’s been no leadership.
And I want to say also: I put this on the hands of the President, but he has been enabled by those in the White House, and those in Congress, who refuse to stand up to him. And right after the election, you might remember that some of them said, “We’re humoring him.” Well, the time for humor has long passed. And this violence, this woman killed, the other people who will be injured, this is on their hands.
[Judy Woodruff] And now the question a lot of us have is, “Will the death of this woman and will the pleas of so many people, including prominent Republicans and supporters of the President, that this stand down, that this stop, will that have any effect on these people? We will certainly be watching to see. Mary McCord, thank you very much.
[Mary McCord, Former Justice Department Official] Thank you, Judy.
