The Daily Signal - Reporter Who Followed the Mob Into the Capitol Shares What He Saw

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

Julio Rosas, a senior writer for Townhall, was at the Capitol on Wednesday when violence broke out as supporters of President Donald Trump forced their way into the building.  Rosas, who has spent the past several months reporting on riots across America, followed the mob inside the Capitol to capture the situation on video. He joins the show today to explain what it was like to be in the middle of the chaos.  We also cover these stories: Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to remove President Donald Trump from office following the violence and unrest at the Capitol on Wednesday. In a statement to the Associated Press, former Attorney General Bill Barr blames Trump for the violence at the Capitol on Wednesday. Antifa expert Andy Ngo says he doesn't think the left-wing anarchist group was involved in that unrest. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the daily signal podcast for Friday, January 8th. I'm Marisa Zeldutas. And I'm Virginia Allen. Wednesday was a difficult day in American history. A mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building and four lives were lost amid the violence. Julio Rosas, a senior writer for Town Hall, was at the Capitol when the violence broke out. He joins the show today to explain what he witnessed as rioters broke through barricades and past police to force their way in the state. inside the building. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. New York Senator Chuck Schumer is calling for the 25th Amendment to be used, which allows the

vice president to become president if the president is unable to perform his duties, following the violence and unrest at the Capitol on Wednesday. On Thursday, Schumer tweeted, What happened at the U.S. Capitol yesterday was an insurrection against the United States and cited by President Trump. This president must not hold office one day longer. The quickest and most effective way it can be done today to remove this president from office would be for the vice president to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment. If the vice president and the cabinet refused to stand up, Congress must reconvene to impeach President Trump. On Thursday morning, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, became the first GOP member to call for President Trump's impeachment.

After Trump supporters violently forced their way into the Capitol building on Wednesday, causing a full lockdown of the Capitol, Kinzinger said in a video message on Twitter that President Trump should be held accountable for the actions of the mob and is no longer fit for office. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment allows a majority of the cabinet and the vice president to assume the duties of the office of presidency until the president is able to himself. It's time to invoke the 25th Amendment and to end this nightmare. We will arise from this, but we cannot forget what led us here. The liars and conspiracy authors are already added again this morning with false narratives about yesterday's disaster.

Here's the truth. the president caused this. The president is unfit and the president is unwell. And the president must now relinquish control of the executive branch voluntarily or involuntarily. God bless you. And God bless our enduring democracy. A number of Democrats have called for the president's impeachment after the events that transpired Wednesday, but Kinzinger is the first Republican lawmaker to join the call to invoke the 25th Amendment. In a statement to the Associated Press, former Attorney General Bill Barr called out Trump for the unrest that ensued at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Barr told the AP that orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable, with the AP reporting that Barr was one of Trump's most loyal and ardent defenders in the cabinet. In a statement obtained by Politico, Barr said, orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable. The president's conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters. Vice President Mike Pence formally announced President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the winners of the 2020 presidential election around 3.40 a.m. Thursday. Around the same time, President Trump said in a statement that he would accept the outcome of the election and that there would be a peaceful transition of power. Dan Scavino, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, tweeted the president's statement since Trump has temporarily been banned from Twitter.

Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election and the facts bear me out, nevertheless, there will be an orderly transition on January 20th, Trump said. And he continued, I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted, while this representative. the end of the greatest first term in presidential history. It's only the beginning of our fight to make America great again. Antifa expert Andy No says he believes the group wasn't involved in the unrest at the Capitol on Wednesday. Know who's beaten and kicked by Antifa members in June of 2019 while covering the leftist group's protest of a march in Portland held by the far right proud boys told the Washington Examiner that he doesn't believe Antifa is to blame. The people occupying the Capitol building do not look like Antifa people dressed in Trump gear or Trump costumes.

No said, I have seen no evidence that they are able to coordinate a mass infiltration on this scale before, so I'm really skeptical that they would have been able to do it here without any of that information leaking out. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the social media platform has decided to ban President Trump from Facebook for an indefinite amount of time. but for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete. Zuckerberg explained the action in a long post on Facebook, writing, The shocking events of the last 24 hours,

referring to the violent invasion of the Capitol Wednesday, clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden. And he added that we believe the risk of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Julio Rosas, a senior writer for Town Hall as we discuss what he saw at the Capitol Building Wednesday as rioters stormed through the doors. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government,

it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight four conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you. Please join us at heritage.org. I am pleased to be joined by Julio Roses, a senior writer for Town Hall. Julio also serves in the Marine Corps Reserves.

Julio, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for having me. So Wednesday was a really hard day in our nation's history. You were at the Capitol when the violence broke out. If you could, just walk us through what you saw. When exactly did the violence begin? So things were fine at the ellipses where President Trump was having made a speech. And that's where most of the Trump supporters gathered by the Washington Monument and near the White House in that area.

And so I was told that people were starting to make their way to the Capitol building. And so I made my way over there. And right as I started to go over there, I could see. see Trump supporters tearing down the inauguration construction fencing, which is, you know, which is not much of a fence. It's just, you know, to section off parts of the capital grounds so that people don't wander on there. So, I mean, it was just very easy for them to just rip it off. And they just kept going. They just kept going on to the west side, the side that faces the Lincoln Memorial. And the police presence, and this is something that I want people to understand.

And the police presence, they were able to do that because the police presence was very light on the grounds. They had, you know, a few metal barricades that are used for like concerts and whatnot. So this is, I mean, so really the show of force was not there. And so the Capitol Police had a scramble at the last minute to try to form defensive lines on the steps on the west side of the Capitol building. And that's when we started to see people fighting because they wanted to get inside. the Trump supporters. They wanted to get inside the building and obviously the Capitol Police wasn't going to let them. And so that's where we saw the fights and we saw all the all the brawling. And then it kind of transitioned over to the East Side that faces the Supreme Court

because that is a little bit easier to get into the Capitol building, not as many steps and stuff. But and so that's, it was after people. started to go from the west side to the east side, that's when we finally saw people just being able to break in because, like I said, the capital police clearly were not prepared to prevent people from breaching the complex. So you have rioters entering the Capitol building from both sides, from the east and west. Do you know about how many individuals or how many people were you seeing trying to get into the building? It was in the hundreds. So the main sort of entrance on the east side, which is, I mean, it's really just one quick flight of stairs to get up there.

It's a very narrow doorway and hallway to get inside because that leads into the rotunda. It was a lot of people trying to get into this very narrow area. And I was eventually able to get in because I wanted to see what was going on. And I only made it. as far as the rotunda, because then that's when police reinforced by DC Metro Police started to come in and started to push everyone out through the same entrance that they went into. And were these individuals yelling anything? Were they making their demands known to police or to reporters? What were they saying?

Oh, yeah. No, they, like I said, they wanted, well, one, they said that they wanted President Trump for another four years. They wanted Congress to not certify the, the electoral college results, and they wanted to occupy the Capitol building for as long as they could. And, you know, obviously these people are from out of town, so they were just also just kind of curious, since I'm assuming many of them haven't even been inside the Capitol building. I mean, I've only been inside once on a tour. Wow. That's a quite different way to view the Capitol from going on a tour, now you're reporting on this mob, essentially invading the capital.

Right, right. So there was just some people who were just curious because they just wanted to check things out on the inside. But no, people definitely wanted to interrupt the, and they did accomplish that temporarily. But once they were able to secure the capital building, they were able to finish the certification process. So they really didn't accomplish their goal. Yeah. So as soon as you got through the doors of the Capitol, what were you seeing? What was happening inside? So prior to police moving in, things were, I don't want to say calm, but they were. I mean, they weren't like, because you know that there's statues, there's paintings. They weren't trying to tear those down. They weren't trying to rip them up that I saw. I do know that there was some vandalism elsewhere, but in the rotunda, not as much. all the windows on the outside of the Capitol, or windows on the outside were broken. So like I said, people were just kind of curious.

They did want to go further into the building, but police finally had the manpower to stop them from going any further. So that's why, like I said, the retinas as far as I was able to make it, because then people were being pushed out by cops once they had the numbers to finally push everyone out. So what was running through your mind as you arrive at the Capitol, as you see what's happening, you realize, whoa, a mob is literally trying to break in. What are you thinking? I've never seen anything like, I mean, none of us have in our lifetime have seen something like this before. Because, I mean, when you think about it, this is the capital building. I mean, short of the White House, this is one of those central tenants of the United States government. And you'd think that there would be a plan in place and the resources necessary to prevent such an incursion,

no matter who's trying to break in, right? But I think, like I said, there's just a lack of preparedness on the capital of police's end. And I'm not trying to disparage them, not the rank and file, but certainly the leadership for allowing that to happen. And so the only thing that I can really compare it to is when I, because I was in Minneapolis during at the start of all this, the start of all the riots last year. and I was on the ground outside the third precinct in South Minneapolis, and I was there when they abandoned it. And so they abandoned the precinct, and that's when people stormed in.

They set it on fire, and the rioters had control of that area after that. But obviously, that's a city police precinct in one state, and this is the, like I said, one of the main branches of government buildings. that's been through a lot over the years. So it certainly was, it was certainly just surreal to see, really. I just almost couldn't believe it. Yeah, well, and I mean, like you say, obviously, you know, the capital wasn't planning on, you know,

having a major threat on Wednesday. There was knowledge that individuals were gathering on the National Mall to have this rally. But, you know, as far as you and I are aware of, you know, there was no whispers of, you know, broad, known plan that there was going to be this massive group of individuals who planned to essentially invade the Capitol. And we certainly salute the job of the police that did get in there and shut it down and bring order. But Julio, as you mentioned, you have traveled around the country over the past several months. You've covered these riots.

You've been in the midst of the chaos. As someone who has covered, So many riots. What stands out to you about what you saw on Wednesday? What I will say is that there is a false narrative going around right now. And actually, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is parroting it, basically saying that, oh, if these were BLM protesters,

the police response would have been much harsher. And I can say that that's just simply not true. The Capitol Police, And then eventually the other law enforcement agencies, they were trying everything they could to stop people from getting inside. They used pepper spray, tear gas, flashbangs, pepper balls. I got hit with a few pepper balls in the chaos of it all. What are pepper balls? It's basically like, so it's like a paint ball.

But instead of, so when you get hit instead of paint coming out, it's like tear gas or like pepper spray kind of. So it's a more. And so instead of spraying and getting a whole bunch of people, if cops want to just target an individual, they can hit them with a pepperball and they get the irritant on them. And it's actually pretty annoying. So all this is to say is that the Capitol Police

did not just open the doors and let them all in. I mean, that is just not the case at all. And then, of course, they're saying, oh, well, if there's BLM protesters, they would shoot us. Well, we could say that someone was shot. A Trump supporter was shot while she was trying to enter the Speaker's lobby. So that's just something that, needs to be said because this narrative coming from Democrats in the media is just simply not true.

And I can say that because, as you said, I've been to a lot of these other riots. And often in those cases, the police response is almost nothing, which is why the riots were able to happen. Because there was no police response. And so now there definitely was. It just took a long time for them to actually have the manpower to finally take control back of the complex. Yeah. How long did it take? Do you know how many hours? It was probably about four or five hours, give or take. People started to leave once the curfew, the 6 p.m. curfew was announced.

By five o'clock, most people were gone. There were still some people out, and then by six, people were still out, but not as near. many as numbers as it was during the day in the afternoon. And I know that you were capturing video during, obviously, while you were in the Capitol as you were watching this mob break in, did you hang out kind of into the evening outside to see what was happening? Yeah, just a little bit. Like I said, there were some Trump supporters still out and about, but the additional law enforcement agencies, I mean, I saw Prince William County office.

I saw Virginia State Police, National Guard, the FBI coming out. So they finally had the numbers to form just a human chain link around the entire perimeter of the Capitol Hill complex, which is not by any means a small complex. But by then, you know, the damage was done and everything had already happened. It was good, but it was a little too little too late at that point. As you mentioned, one individual was shot in the neck and tragically died. Did you hear gunshots while you were inside the Capitol? No, no.

I believe I was still outside trying to get in to see what was going on when that occurred. Okay, okay, so that was still. Wow. So as the evening wore on, we know that there were a number of arrests made. Did you witness any of those arrests take place? Yes, I did see one or two, but the issue was in the rotunda, I can say. So the reason why it's hard for people to, it was hard for the police to make arrests just anywhere, in any case, is that if you have a single line of officers pushing a crowd back, they need every single officer on that line to maintain that integrity, right? So if an officer is going to pull somebody out of the crowd to make an arrest, well, they have to turn around and get behind the other officers.

And that leaves a gap in that line. So there needs to be multiple lines of law enforcement so that the officers on the front line can take someone, pull them back and then have the officers behind them take care of the person that they want to be arrested. In the rotunda, it was just that single line of officers. So there wasn't anybody really to make sure someone was apprehended without compromising the integrity of that line. So I understand that, you know, people are asking, well, how can they just break in and not be arrested? Well, it depends on what the situation is because, you know, if they're just trying to get everyone out so they can just secure the area, I think that was their main priority just because there were multiple breaches on different levels. Yeah. Now, I know you had mentioned there were two doors for sure individuals were coming in from.

Do you know if there were other entrance points or was it just those two? There definitely were other entrance points that were breached. Other ones were attempted to be breached and compromised, but they weren't successful. Okay. And that's the other thing, too, that people don't understand is that it's not the White House where there's a big fence around it. you can walk up to it. And there's a lot of, there's, there's, there's entrances and exits for Capitol Hill staff, press people, uh, the main doors. I mean, so there's, this is a pretty accessible, uh, federal government building, which, uh, people don't really seem to understand.

And in normal times, and I think one of the issues, I think one of the issues with the Capitol police leadership is that it was complacency that led to this, um, because there's been, a lot of protests at the Capitol building, but they never went beyond to what happened yesterday. So I'm based on what I saw, I'm assuming that they just thought, oh, well, we'll just do the same thing that we have always done, which is put a nice little metal barricade and put a few officers in non-riac gear, and that should be enough. But what they don't, what they didn't factor into is just the fact that people were riled up, they were heated, and they're, they wanted to get in.

And so, and also just because they had the numbers. I mean, initially the officers there did not have the numbers at all to hold the grounds, much less the actual complex itself. And did you talk with any of these rioters? Sometimes throughout the day, yeah. Some people were just kind of curious. I mean, they didn't really, even they were kind of surprised that it was going as far as it went. And they were trying to just get more information on what was had.

I told them. And I said, oh, yeah, I just came from outside. And they're like, oh, what is that like? And I was like, well, it's really bad. You don't want to go in there. It was just kind of a dog finally catching up to the car. And now it's like, okay, what do you do now type of situation? And so there was no real leadership in terms of like in the crowd of someone directing

people where to go. It was just a kind of a free for all. It was just trying to go and see how far they can get into. And as we saw, they were able to get into Pelosi's office in the Capitol. they would get into one of the chambers. And so it was just insane. It was just crazy. And like I said, I've never seen something of that magnitude on that scale in terms of

a building being breached. Well, Julio, we're really thankful for your reporting your boldness to go into the midst of that, to capture that video. And I've been really thankful throughout several, you know, past months of writing that you have often been in the midst of the chaos, capturing what's really going on. If you would, tell our listeners how they can follow your work. So they can follow me on Twitter at Julio underscore Rosas 11. They can follow me, my work at townhall.com. They can become a VIP subscriber. You get access to exclusive articles and it helps fund trips to put me in more dangerous

situation. But that's okay because I've always volunteered for it. I'm never forced to go. So you can find my work there. Great. Well, stay safe. And Julio, thank you so much. We really appreciate you coming on the show today. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode.

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