Radiolab - Post Reports: Four Hours of Insurrection

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

We’re all still processing what happened on January 6th. Despite the hours and hours of video circulating online, we still didn’t feel like we had a visceral, on-the-ground sense of what happened that day. Until we heard the piece we’re featuring today. The Washington Post’s daily podcast Post Reports built a minute-by-minute replay of that day, from the rally, to the invasion, to the aftermath, told through the voices of people who were in the building that day -- reporters, photojournalists, Congresspeople, police officers and more. It’s some of the most visceral reporting we’ve heard anywhere on this historic moment. Listen to their full episode here.  

Okay, just a warning this episode contains strong language and sounds and descriptions of violence. This is Radio Lab, I'm Chad Ibu Murad. Quick dispatch, if you can call it that, on this Saturday, I like so many of us, we at the show are cautiously watching the news this weekend. While still trying to process what happened on January 6th, even nine days later, I find myself looking at all of these video fragments and these pictures, clicking through them, and just not able to put it all together. Like, what exactly happened? Why weren't more people expecting this?

What was going on behind the scenes? Why weren't there more police there? All of these questions, I've been really wanting someone to just kind of lay it all out, like beat by beat. Hello, that has happened. I want to bring in Martin Powers from the Washington Post. Martin, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. She and her team at Post Reports have been one of my personal go-to's this past year, and they just released an episode last night.

Yeah. That I want you to hear. So, for people who don't know who you are and what post reports is, can you just tell me a little bit about you in the show? So, post reports, we are the Daily News podcast at the Washington Post. And I think what's really valuable about being in a place like the newsroom of the post is this access to all these reporters who live and breathe

the beats that they cover. Congress, the Secret Service, the military, and police. I mean, those are people who really know their stuff. And so I think for us after the Capitol invasion, like we also had these questions, right? Like we were, we on our team weren't seeing these videos of what was happening, but it really felt like snapshots and it was hard to understand like,

what were police trying to do? And like, why was this escalating so quickly? It seemed like everyone was really unprepared. And so we started asking those questions to the reporters in our newsroom trying to figure out what actually was going on. Yeah, and so you guys, what you ended up doing is creating almost like a minute by minute sports cast,

so to speak, but you basically sort of marched through the whole thing. And I wanted to play a couple excerpts from that piece you put up last night. So you start with the, I guess, noon, January 6th, the president's speech near the White House. You then follow the crowd as they walk from the White House to the Capitol.

At first, it's kind of a jolly country music sort of vibe in the crowd, but then it starts to sort of like gradually get darker and more military march like. And then you pivot to the, this is the part I found really startling. You pivot to the police who were watching the crowd approach. And I guess maybe we'll just pick up with you speaking to one of the reporters at the post and asking a question that I think we've all been wondering. Why weren't there more police stopping writers from getting to the door of the Capitol? Capitol police had not believed that this protest was going to turn into a siege on the Capitol.

That is Carol Lennig, a National Investig a siege on the Capitol. That is Carol Lening, a National Investing Depreporter for the Post. They had been watching the intel gathering from the FBI, from the DC Metropolitan Police. They'd been conferring with their partners, other federal agencies, and there was no indication to them that this was going to be an aggressive

war-like riot. However, what they didn't know is that the FBI, a day earlier in their Norfolk office, had gotten a warning about exactly this, a plan to battle and seize the Capitol. At the same time, officials in DC were starting to get concerned. The mayor's office, the city police department, police reporter Peter Herman had been hearing for days that they were worried about the possibility of for big crowds and for violence.

Law enforcement agencies were also monitoring of the transportation in terms of bus tickets. They noticed an increase in Amtrak tickets into DC and a big increase in hotel reservations, which all led them to believe in the weeks leading up to this that this was becoming much bigger than anyone had expected. Those concerns got communicated to Steven Sun, the chief of the Capitol Police.

This is the police department that is in charge specifically of the Capitol Building and its other office buildings. Carol later interviewed him about the right. On Monday, chief's son at the Capitol Police is starting to become concerned after talking to some of his partners just about the size of the protest. You know, there had been a make America great again protest in police language, they call it MAGA 1, MAGA 2, and this one was MAGA 3. So there had been protests before, but this one on January 6th, he was starting to see

signs that the group was going to be much larger than what they had seen in the past. And so on Monday, he talks with his two supervisors, the sergeants at arms, for the Senate and the House, Paul Irving and Mike Stanger, and he asks them if he can activate the National Guard, put them on emergency standby, just so that they can be sure that they are at the ready in case there is something that develops. But his two bosses who are security professionals, former very high ranking officials at the Secret Service, by the way, they are operating in a kind of political world. Their bosses are the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, and they are

not thrilled about this idea of activating the National Guard. And they suggest that he not do that. There was concern from his bosses about the optics of soldiers standing on the capital grounds, or with the capital in the backdrop, and what that would look like. Almost like the soldiers or the army was taking over for the seat of power. But even more behind that, they were pointing to criticism they got back in June when they flooded DC streets with federal officers and national guards been from various states. They were saying, well, basically, we did this in June and the mayor and everyone else

complained and led all sorts of problems. It looked like a military takeover of the district. And so we're trying to avoid that. So we want to basically have a light footprint at this time around. But by 150 p.m. on Wednesday, it started to become clear that a light footprint had been the wrong choice. And then there was a stream of protesters just running into the doors of the capital. In the videos of this, you see people using riot shields to push back officers.

You see people picking up metal bike racks to basically use as battering rams, more doors, more windows are broken open. And then that sends a massively powerful symbol to the thousands of people behind them who may not have thought they were going to storm the Capitol. But I so swept up in the excitement of this happening that they join it. We've seen those images from inside the Capitol of elderly men and women, why not armed,

get in t-shirts and sweaters. They do not look like they were there to terrorize members of Congress, but they ended up having that effect. I'm pretty neat, Jack, to Capitol Command. Just allows you that the NKD has declared this a breach of the Capitol as well as a riot at the Capitol. Also, they're requesting the hospital help. This point, the chief of Capitol Police is watching all of this unfold from a command center

to blocks away from the Capitol. He's there watching by video feed and getting radio transmission from his incident commanders on the scene and as he sees this he realizes we aren't gonna win this one. We aren't gonna be able to hold this line. They had created this huge perimeter far far out on the first street and he knows it's not gonna work. And so, Sund calls the acting chief of the DC Police Department Robert Conti and he says, we need help now. I'm paraphrasing here, but he essentially says, anything I got, I'll send it your way.

I can send you 100 right now in Moral Con. I came down to assess the situation and see if we're going to make a rest. And I really couldn't believe my eyes what was going on. All our officers and Capitol police officers had formed a line. There was a bicycle rack. All the people in the crowd are pushed up against. It was literally a war zone. That's DC Police Commander Raimi Kyle.

You'll also hear officer Daniel Hodges and officer Mike Fanon. They were all on the west side of the Capitol, the part facing the National Mall where the inauguration is held. We had officers engage in hand-to-hand combat across the fence line. People were throwing water bottles, pieces of metal that they had, I guess, broken off from somewhere with the inaugural stage construction site. I started noticing that the members in the crowd

are actually stealing our bike racks. I was fairly certain that we were gonna be overrun. It was only a matter of time. Oh yeah, whoa, what the f**k. They broke through, it's on. We literally fought all the way back to those stairwells. We hit the stairwells, the officers go back up, we get up here to the top and be told it's called the West Terror Store.

All the officers that were there, they kind of refer to it now as the tunnel of death. This tunnel is really a hallway that leads inside the capital. So we went inside, we closed the doors, locked them. I believe that the time that we were the only door that was in jeopardy being breached. I had no idea that there was these other doors. I really thought that it was upon us and those officers in that hallway that we were the last line offense for the Capitol. I don't know if it was just me being naive, but I always thought that these doors and these windows and stuff were bomb proof, bullet proof, however, it seemed like within 45 seconds to a minute, the individuals outside were able

to break those doors. All right, you're going to the ball. All right, you're going to the ball. We basically lined up officers, shoulders, shoulder, and that narrow tunnel. Four to six rows deep. No matter what, we were going to be the quirk in this hole that kept them from entering.

And we made another stand there. At that point, I had gone inside and put on my gas mask. CS gas and OC spray, pepper spray was flying at that point. They're throwing things at us, they're shooting bare mason and of course, like being in that tunnel, they shoot bare mason. Everybody's getting it. It basically coated the entire vestibule. We couldn't see anything, totally pitch black. I walked in there and I looked at of course, like, being in that tunnel, they shoot bare mace, everybody's getting it. It basically coated the entire vestibule, and you couldn't see anything, totally pitch black.

I walked in there, and I looked at my partner, Jimmy Albright, who came with me, and I was like, man, what the f*** did we get into? The only thing that I can really see was the backs of plenty officers, maybe 30 officers, that looked like they were involved in some kind of, like, medieval style combat. Body against body, just crushing like a barbaric scene. As officer fell back, I would work my way to the front.

And eventually I got to the very front there where you saw me in the corner next to the door. And I just tried to hold, hold them back as best I could. And eventually just the sheer numbers and all of them pushing in unison wedged me into the door. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! My arms were pinned, and I couldn't really defend myself at that point. So the guy in front of me took that opportunity to rip my mask off, rip my rib-a-ton away

from me, started beating me into the head with it. You know, I didn't want to... Didn't be the one guy to start shooting because I knew that they had guns. We've been seizing guns all day, all yesterday. And the only reason I could think of that they weren't shooting us is that they were waiting for us to shoot first. And if it became a firefight between a couple hundred officers and a couple thousand insurrectionists, then we should really would have lost.

Wow. Even though I know everything that I just heard, I know it differently now. Do you know what I mean? Hearing it in that way. Before we go to the next excerpt, I wonder if I could ask you a question. This is sort of an adjacent thing I've been wondering about. As I look at all the video clips from inside the Capitol, I do find myself wondering, who are the Capitol police? Are they part of the DC police force?

Are they a separate unit? Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, it's actually a very complicated and like very DC system. They're actually more than 30 police departments just like in the district because there's there's police for the capital building and it's just this corresponding office buildings. And then there's also the like DC police department for the rest of the city where people live and then White House and all these other buildings, they all have their own police, there's actually police for the zoo, believe it or not. But I think that is one of the things that actually led to some confusion and some chaos because one of the things that we heard from these police officers and to be

clear, the voices you heard, those are all DC cops. They don't work for a capital police, and they're just coming in to try to help reinforce. And one of them was saying, like, he's never been to the capital before. Like, he'd been outside, but he'd never been inside. And that he, like, didn't have a sense of where other writers were coming from, whether this was gonna be the only door

that they needed to keep closed, or where other people might be. And so you just get the sense that there was a lot of confusion and trying to figure out like what is the best way to strategize to keep these crowds under control, because in any scenario, all of these police, even with the DC cops who came along, they're still so vastly outnumbered. And so you see how the logistical steps started to unravel, even though I think a lot of officers were really doing their best in the moment.

Yeah. Okay, so in your story, after the crowd burst in and we hear that very visceral tape with the confrontation with the police. You then sort of pivot and kind of back up the story from the perspective of people inside the building. So maybe we'll pick it up there. The day started with my biggest concern being whether the snack bars would be open into the wee hours of the morning

because with all of the objections planned, the joint session of Congress was expected to go until like the middle of the night. That's Bill O'Leary. He was stationed in the House of Representatives press gallery on that Wednesday. He's a photographer for the post. I started in 1984, which among other things makes me the oldest person in the photo department. So on that day, I wanted to be as far away from COVID spreading mobs as possible and requested the hill as an assignment because it would be so safe. It started off exactly as expected, fairly dull and perfunctory.

This was just as Trump was finishing his speech before the mob started attacking the capital. Madam Speaker, members of Congress, pursueduant to the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The Senate and House of Representatives are meeting in joint sessions. Just about at one o'clock on the dot, with the calling of each state in alphabetical order, Vice President Pence would ask, Are there any objections to counting the certificate of vote of the state of Alabama that the teller has verified appears to be.

And if no one objected, then he would say, okay, this is certified and they'd read the number of electors. The certificate of the electoral vote of the state of Alabama seems to be. Mr. President, the certificate of the electoral vote of the state of Alaska, the certificate of the electoral vote of the state of Arizona. And within 15 minutes, the first objection popped up. Are there any objections to counting the certificate of vote of the state of Arizona that the teller

is verified appears to be regular inform and authentic? There was an objection from Representative Gosar. I rise up for myself and 60 of my colleagues to object to the counting of the electoral ballots from Arizona. And that was seconded by Senator Ted Cruz. An objection presented in writing and signed by both a representative and a senator complies with the law. That forces the session to interrupt itself and each chamber has to separate and debate

it themselves. And report its decision back to the joint session. The Senate will now retire to its chamber. So Arizona was the first contested state. I was down there talking to my colleagues preparing our defense. That's Congressman Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, and a former Marine. He was on the floor of the house.

And what were the first indications to you that something was off or that things were starting to escalate? When they took away the leadership, I didn't see Pelosi get whisked away, but I saw Hoier get whisked away. And that clearly told me that something was about to go down. At 217, Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader

Steny Hoier are escorted out of the room by a bunch of men in suits. And just as that's happening, you hear this yell come from the back of the room. House will be in order. OK. We got the room. So a colleague of mine shouted that, and other colleagues were shushing him.

That's Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, Democrat from Texas. The shout she heard was from a fellow Democrat, saying to the Republicans, this is because of you. And you can hear one of the Republicans yell back and tell him to shut up. And I yelled over and I said, I'm with you, buddy, because I felt the same way. I felt exactly the same way. It was because of them. A reporter showed me, pointed me his phone, and it was the image I saw were hundreds of people crawling over the scaffolding. And that was a little disconcerting, because I know

where that scaffolding is. It's right next to the front door deep inside the boundaries and there were lots of people. A Capitol police sergeant, I believe, came in and he tried to speak calmly, but I could tell he was breathing heavily. He says that first people had broken in, they've broken through the barriers. That doesn't really scare us. I mean, we've seen that happen before, different type of protesters. And then somebody else came in and started saying that we needed to lock the doors and lock and everyone lock ourselves in. And at this point, we're still trying to continue with the debate. I don't think any of us want us to stop, especially for a bunch of thugs and terrorists. Some members of Congress are shouting at the Republicans. We started hearing pounding on the front door of Congress. And then announcement comes over. It said, everybody under your seat, there's a bag open that bag and put on the escape hood.

These are basically like light gas masks. They actually live under every seat in the house in the Senate all the time, kind of like the life jacket under the seats in a plane. And they've got little motorized fans to pump in filtered air. And so there was a confusing little moment when like representatives are looking at each other and they're pulling out these shiny plastic bags with what it looks to me like if you took a dry cleaning bag and pulled it over yourself, there was a lot of what do I do with this kind of energy going on. The other kind of absurd thing about these masks is that they actually make this sound

like this high-pitched buzz. Imagine if a dentist's drill is wearing in your ear while you're being evacuated from a hazardous situation. That's what it sounded like to me anyway. And so in the middle of this very scary situation, the room sounds like it's filled with a bunch of casus. And at this point, now people are getting really animated and excited.

And the pounding on the front door, the house of representatives is getting increasingly stronger. When the bags came out, they're not intuitive. It's just a folded up piece of plastic. Representative Ruben Gallego jumped up on a couple of chairs and started instructing his fellow congressmen and women how to open the bag, how to use it. And remember, Gallego is a former Marine. He's been trained in using gas masks. He's gone through drills with real tear gas. And he sees some of his colleagues literally

start to hyperventilate. And he's afraid that one of them might actually pass out. I think people were about to really freak out. And you can't have freak out in a very tense situation. We can get on it, we can resume. On the floor, there were staff members, and I think even a few representatives starting to drag furniture from parts of the room, desks and benches, and we're piling it up to fortify the main door to the chamber.

You know, the door where the president walks through every state of the union, that's the door that they were assembling outside. When there were a quick sequence of pops to an arrow, some of my colleagues are convinced that these were gunshots, but I'm still not convinced of that. They could have been stungering into flashbangs, they could have been breaking glass. But it caused everyone's temperature to rise. People be in the duck, guns get pulled, and everything's just sort of froze at that point.

MUSIC What was burned and will forever be in my brain is the image of those capital police officers behind that piece of furniture pointing their guns through the broken glass of the door with faces on the other side. And they were what was standing between us and that mob. That's when I thought we may never make it out of the chamber. There's more shouting, there are more rioters outside the door. This is when capital police are basically like we need to go now.

The security forces on the floor started moving people out of the chamber and down a stairway. I was one last one to leave to make sure we didn't miss anybody because that's also a very dangerous thing. Congressman Gallagher walks out into the speaker's lobby and towards a staircase. And as I looked left, that's when I saw a barricaded door, you know, the rioters, the terrorists, the seditionists pounding on the door. I was afraid they're gonna break through and there were still members trying to get down into the tunnels and I really thought

we may have to fight our way out of this or fight them off enough until security got there. As I proceeded down the stairs, you could tell that Capitol Security had set up a kind of safety corridor to move us through, though it was very hasty, I would tell you, at one point I get to a hallway and Capitol Police is grabbing like two young guys with rifles and telling them to stand here and if anybody comes shoot them, right?

And the fact that they have to, they're not covering all the sectors for our evacuation is very, that was very scary when I heard that. Okay, we'll be right back with more from Martin Powers post reports from the Washington Post in just a moment. This is Lauren Fury from Western Springs, Illinois. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.Sloan.org.

Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. Okay, this is Radio Lab, Jett here with Washington Post Reporter and hosts, Martin Powers, from the Post Daily Podcast, Post Reports. We're going through the Play-by-Play of the events you guys created that sort of lay out January 6, which I found revelatory to listen to. At a certain point in your story, you talk with post-reportor Carol Lenig about a particular video of Officer Eugene Goodman. This is a video that the entire

radio lab team was slacking back and forth all week because you see one guy running up the stairwell floor by floor being chased by floor, being chased by an angry mob, and like the dynamics between them are really confusing. And also, I mean, I think it's worth mentioning that Eugene Goodman is black, and this entire mob, at least from what we can see in the video, is white. And I remember seeing that, and I just, I'd made my skin crawl. Like, it almost felt like, you know felt like a lynching in progress.

It was just, I think that's why one of the reasons why it scared so many of us. Yeah, and I want to go, I want to sort of like excerpt you and Carol talking about this that video. When I first saw it, I thought, this poor man, he has a baton. He doesn't seem to be willing to pull his weapon. He's being chased up two flights of steps by a marauding band, the first group that's gotten in. They're threatening him.

And he's radioing for help. Second, the roll up! When he gets to the top of the second four steps, and you think that he is in panic for his life, but as it turns out, he is extremely calculated. When he gets to the top of that second floor, he looks left. The mob is below him in a tiny, tiny stairwell, and they're still coming, and he looks right. And he literally leads them walking backwards to the right

and it's such a key moment because the Senate is open, the chamber is open to the left where he looked and glanced quickly and they are still trying to seal that chamber to make sure that no one gets inside and there are lawmakers still fleeing. And when he pulls right, they follow him. And, you know, that decision, that split second decision may have saved lives. Okay, I want to end with one more excerpt from inside the building. Right now, I am sheltered in place in my office because we have protesters who have stormed the Capitol. That's Congressman Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin. He cannot believe what he is hearing

and seeing from the Capitol. And he wants to send a message to the president. So he reaches out to him in the most direct way that he can think of. He posts a video on Twitter. We have got to stop this. Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are the only person who can call this off.

I was desperate and I felt like the only thing I could do, trapped in my office, was to try and communicate the gravity of the situation to the White House, and they were in the best position to prevent further violence in chaos. Gallagher was in a politically challenging spot. He is a Republican, but he also disagreed with his colleagues' attempts

to undermine the election results. And in this moment, literally hiding from rioters, he is struggling with how to feel about the president and about his co-workers. There's a cost to lying to people for a long time. And the fundamental idea that Congress was gonna change the election results on January 6th was an unconstitutional lie.

And, you know, I don't know if that produced the violence, but it certainly didn't help. Gallagher, by the way, was not with the other house members in the secure room. He happened to be in his office and another building when the evacuation started, and the safest strategy was just to shelter in place with his aides. We just started gaming it out. So we'd barricaded the doors. We had, you know, we looked out the

window and quickly ascertained that, you know, it was too high up to survive a drop. So we couldn't leave out the window if we had to. We left the window open interestingly enough, like as a decoy, if we had then to retreat to my inner office, but then we had what now seems kind of absurd in retrospect, but at the time I assure you it was quite serious. A discussion where on my wall, I have my ceremonial Marine Corps sword, the Mamelook sword. How big is this sword or like what does it actually look like? I mean, it's like a curved blade, old school kind of like, you know, what you imagine a pirate might, a very like fancy pirate might, yeah, not a carrot.

But I started to think, okay, we have no weapons in this office to defend ourselves. And so I took my sword out of this, this blade case, and I had this debate with my staff about, okay, I'm gonna use the sword. We have two flag poles in here, one's the American flag, one's the Wisconsin flag. You guys can use those as like pikes.

Oh my gosh. And I know it sounds absurd, but in the moment it was quite serious. From his window, Gallagher could only get a little sense of what was happening outside. I'm actually here at the flashbangs in the distance as the Capitol Police were trying to get control of the crowd. You could sort of see the CS gas and the air. And back at the Capitol, officers with the Metropolitan Police Department were still trying to help

Capitol Police keep riders out of this tunnel. the riders out of this tunnel. So immediately I walk up to the officers, I kind of rush up to the officers and I start yelling out, who needs a break? Like who needs some rest? As we're kind of like bacon our way through this crowd, officers were handing me guys that were only being held up by other officers body weight.

You know, we keep making our way through the crowd. Once we passed through and Jimmy and I got up to the front. At that moment, I remember seeing like we weren't just battling 50 or 60 riders in this tunnel. There's like 15,000 people out here. And it was so surreal. It looks like some medieval battle scene with all these flags.

And the next thing I know, I was grabbed and I was pulled into the crowd. I remember hearing people yelling, you know, we got one, we got one, pull them in. I remember being tased, numerous times, and then just like beating that seemed like from every angle. Because they were just ripping shit off, you know, they tore my badge off my vest. Guys were like yelling to get my gun, killing with his own gun.

Yeah, I thought like, you know, that's it. Like, I'm just gonna get like stripped down and drug-frued to keep the West Front of the Capitol. And I was thinking of like trying to think in a calculated way, like, maybe I can appeal to somebody's humanity and I just started, I remember yelling, like, you know, I have kids. It's just the zealotry of these people is absolutely unreal. They believe wholeheartedly in something that there is no evidence of, and they refer

to themselves as patriots, even while they're deceiving the capital of the United States. And they call us traitors, even while they're waiting to fin blue line flag and eating us with it laterally in some cases. There are numerous first-person accounts now coming to us from police officers, both at the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department, indicating that they saw off-duty cops. They saw cops with their badges. They saw a military personnel.

They saw people with the kind of tactical gear you don't have by going to Dick Sporting Goods and buying it, that these were people who have worked or do work in our national security firmament and that they had joined in this protest. And that is a fascinating feature of the division of our country. There were sad to say police officers who believed they were being hit by other police officers. Police are fighting throughout the afternoon and into the evening to get back control of the Capitol building and the grounds.

And while that's happening, members of the House and Senate are locked inside these secure rooms. Can you describe, like, once you were inside what the mood in the room was? Oh, my God. It was a sea of humanity. And some of that humanity was unmasked and I immediately felt unsafe inside of the safe room

I'm sure you've seen the video by now of Lisa Blunt Rochester offering the masks and they're laughing and they're Completely indignant Yeah, there were some members they actually went over and offered the mask and their refuse. Wow. Were people trying to like distance themselves from these members? I mean, you could only distance yourself so much. It's a room full of 200 members. People mostly sat, talked to other members, texted their families and their staff, charged

their phones. You could still hear that we were droning sound from some of the gas masks. And while they just sat there waiting for the Capitol to be cleared, they also thought about what would happen when they eventually got back to the floor of the house. I know I had a conversation with a Republican member of Congress and you know, told them that this has gone off the rails

and you know, this is, you know, not a coincidence and he agreed agreed but of course then he ended up voting it anyway to overturn the elections of Arizona. He actually agreed. Like when you were talking to him he was like yeah this is yeah wow. Yep. Can I ask which congressman this was? No it's not worth it. There was a member from the other side of the aisle wanting to pray and I was furious. I was so filled with rage. I pray sometimes multiple times a day. I very much believe in prayer.

I prayed with Lisa Blunt Rochester as we were crouched in the gallery. I couldn't pray with them. I was disgusted that something that I believe they helped cause and potentially aided and abetted in creating, they were now saying, let's leave this to God. And I just, I was outraged and I was beside myself between the prayer and the lack of a mask. I was really upset. Okay, we'll end the excerpt there. To hear the full story, I wish it goes into way more detail than we included here, I highly recommend. Highly recommend you search for post reports, wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe to it. Martin, thank you for allowing us to share your work and for doing the work. Thank you for having me and having us. Yeah. Also thanks to Ted Moldun and Renys Fernovsky for producing the story with Martin and

Maggie Pennman for editing it. I'm Chad Abumarad. Thanks for listening. Hi, this is Dan Green calling from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumarad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lula Miller and Lotta Knosser are our co-hosts, Dylan Keep is our director of sound design. Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer.

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