The Press Box - A Mob Storms the U.S. Capitol

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Trump supporters rioting and storming the U.S. Capitol. They break down what we’re witnessing, how politicians are reacting, and how the media is covering the situation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. This is an emergency podcast and not in the jockey sense. We usually use that term here at the ringer. This is a national emergency because David today, the U.S. Capitol was stormed and effectively taken over by a mob of pro-Trump forces that wants to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. That wants to subvert the will of American voters. Stop me when I use a sentence. ever imagine us using in our lifetimes? I mean, it's unbelievable.

I don't know. I can't. I think the only thing that I would quibble with, and again, this has become such a ridiculous refrain in various keys over the Trump years that I'm so happy to hopefully never have to think about it again in a few weeks. But, you know, there's a number of people who are out there who are doing all this illegal, reprehensible bullshit that should certainly be locked up for a long time, but who do not believe they are subverting the will of the American people,

who falsely believe that they are representing the will of the American people. And that is something we can blame on modern culture, but certainly we can blame on our president. And all of these ass clowns that are trying to inherit the mantle, like Ted Cruz is out there on the floor, day talking about how we need an emergency investigation into the election based on the fact that polls show that people were suspicious of the election because idiots like him were casting doubt on the election publicly. I mean, this is the only defense that these treasonous,

insurrectionists in Washington, D.C. have is that their leaders told them that they're doing the right thing. Everybody's, everybody has blood on their hands after today. Everybody, everybody everybody who supported the president at any point at any degree over the last four years anybody that said oh just you know let him let him wine what's the worst that could happen he lost the election i mean we are lucky that no one has been killed as the as at the time of this recording that that that was my first thought is as absolutely awful as today has been and as just reprehensible as the day's events have been, this could have been so much worse. So, so, so much worse. But I want to go back to something you just said, because we've seen that quote, making the rounds on Twitter.

It was in the Washington Post. It was on November 9th. You know what I'm talking about. A senior Republican official said, what is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? meaning if Donald Trump wants to rage that the election was stolen, if he wants to make people believe the election was stolen, if he wants to force other Republican elected officials and a major news network to do his bidding and go along with the charade, what's the worst that could happen? Today was one of the answers to that question. the capital of the United States could be taken over by protesters who wound up at one point milling around the floor of the Senate and sitting in the office of the Speaker of the House. And by the way, that's not the worst that could happen. That's the worst that could happen that has happened so far. Yeah.

That's where we are. Let's do a little recap, David, in case people are just joining. in here, the seizure of the Capitol that we're talking about started a little after 2 p.m. Eastern. Vice President Mike Pence was taken out of the Senate chamber by security. The doors to the House chamber were barricaded. Protesters were banging on the doors to get in. There's this amazing picture of security officials drawing their guns and pointing it at the door of the house. NBC had a video, as I just mentioned, a protesters sort of just milling around the Senate,

having breached actually breached the chamber. One woman was shot inside the Capitol today, according to reports. And then also, per the New York Times just now, a pipe bomb was found at Republican National Committee headquarters and Democratic National Committee headquarters was evacuated as well. Joe Biden spoke a few minutes ago. He said, our democracy is under unprecedented assault and told Trump to step up. Senator Mitt Romney told the New York Times is Jonathan Martin. This is what the president has caused today, this insurrection.

And Adam Kinsiger, a Republican from Illinois, put it a little more bluntly. This is a coup attempt, he said, referring to the events in the Capitol. Well, I mean, I think this is important. I think that it's important to use accurate language, even when it's problematic, even when it's difficult. I think one of the things that we've seen over the last four years in excess is people who are in the media, especially, people who are unwilling to say. the thing that is true for fear of the ramifications of calling Trump a racist of there's a million other thing um and when somebody when somebody is conducting an act of treason before your very eyes um as what you could also make the case you know Trump is Trump is done at various points over

his presidency we've seen over and over again that it's there's absolutely no weight to to to any mealy-mouthed parsing of it, right? I mean, you have, you either, you have to call what you see. And I think that whether, whether or not this sets the stage for, for any kind of charges being brought against the insurrectionists themselves or Trump,

it's important to say these, to call these things what they are on the front end and not have to try to just like retroactively make the case later on. And also just for, this is what our country needs. Our country doesn't need, doesn't just need a better president. Our country needs to like readdress the central concept of reality. You know, we need to like refamiliarize ourselves with what like real things are and what saying, and what saying things that are true feels like because everybody's been caught up in this nonsense.

That rhetorical process you're talking about, I feel it actually has two stages. The first stage is, oh my gosh, we can't bring ourselves to say what Trump and pro-Trump people are actually doing, right? We can't bring ourselves to say Trump is a racist. We can't bring ourselves to say it. Then the second stage is we say it so many times that we collectively almost forget how serious it is. Yeah. I know just talking to you the last couple of weeks, I almost have to do a control V insert into a middle of a sentence saying, Donald Trump, comma, who is trying to steal the election comma. And after a while, I think you and I are even guilty of you almost get lulled into forgetting how serious that is.

Yeah. Trying to steal an election. Yeah. And I think in some ways, I mean, I don't know if it was hindsight or what, but thinking back to the Georgia phone call that we talked about in the last episode, everybody obviously has been talking about, looking back today, it seems pretty obvious, I mean, at least to me, that this is a man, speaking of Trump, this is a man who does not believe that he won the presidency,

but who very much believed misguidedly that he could lean on people or pull certain levers or whatever to somehow finagle the presidency. And yes, steal the presidency, one million percent, yes. Although, again, I think he probably has some sort of rationale or he probably believes that thievery is the way things get done. But definitely trying to steal the presidency. I think that what you saw today is, was a man who knew he was defeated and was trying to get revenge,

not on the electoral process, but on all the people who were happy to see him go. You know, all the people that, you know, didn't have his back up to this point, he doesn't care. He just doesn't want Mike Pence to be seen as rejecting him, you know? And now, and he's just like, well, fuck all y'all. You can do that. You do that. This is what I can do. As this spectacle was unfolding at the Capitol, he was tweeting about Mike Pence.

Yeah. He was tweeting how mad he was at Mike Pence for not helping him steal the presidency. Then as it became clear that this is an incredibly serious situation. He tried a few limp tweets. Just before we came on the air, he finally put up this recorded speech on Twitter where he doubled down on all the election fraud claims. Said that the election was stolen. Still saying that, David. after people have invaded the U.S. Capitol, but said, please go home.

You know, please go home. We must have peace. He also told the mob, and I'm quoting directly here, we love you. You're very special. That was the response to what we saw today. You're very special guy dressed like a Viking who is standing in the dais of one of the, is of either the House or the Senate chamber. Yeah.

Are you kidding me? Well, I mean, no one's going to see it. None of these supporters are going to see it. They might get lulled into complacency by his, you know, his personal affection for them or whatever he said during the speech. But none of them are going to see it. But the fact is that he just gave away the game in that statement. Because if it had been a landslide election that had been stolen from President Trump, then you absolutely do storm the Capitol building. You absolutely do take on the Capitol Police. You absolutely do. give up your life in the name of the cause of preserving the country. But nobody fucking believes that. Your leaders don't believe that. You know, Trump does not believe that. Because you wouldn't be saying, oh, everybody go home and go to bed if that were true. But Trump himself doesn't buy it.

You know, all he wants to do. I mean, I do think on some level he wanted this to happen. I think he thought, I think just like with the election night plan, just like with the call to Georgia, I think on some level he thinks if he does a thing, then maybe something magical will happen. You know, if he does a thing that he's heard of, maybe. But I don't, I don't think he believes he deserves it. And I'm more than just some sort of mystical level. Yeah.

And I don't even know if I want to go down that cold sec, because who cares if he thinks he won the election or not, you know? I mean, I mean, at this point, it's does he deserve to be in office for the next two weeks, frankly? I mean, I don't think. Yeah, exactly. Like, that's a, that's a thing piece I don't want to write. That second one, that second part, does Donald Trump deserve to be president for the next two weeks is a really is a much more interesting one. This was an amazing spectacle, David, to consume through the media.

There was that remarkable video you and I both saw of that door to the Capitol where people were pounding on the window and then breaking the window that was flying around Twitter. Excuse me, I mentioned some of the pictures from inside the various chambers that were just shocking, one of showing a person. jumping down from the gallery onto the floor, there was this, I guess it's a file folder that CNN's Manu Raju had a picture of from Nancy Pelosi's office that someone had written, we will not back down and left it in her office as a kind of threat. And then, of course,

just the pictures of protesters on the stairs outside the Capitol building, just seemingly on every surface of that building. like you were just, you know, just like it was a sunny day in New York and everybody's standing, sitting on the steps at the library or something like that. Well, and you have to kind of squint at first to get to really take in the gravity of even that image, right? Because there's a degree, when you mentioned the library. I mean, you look at images like that all the time and, and you think of them as public spaces where you can go and hang out and take pictures. I mean, that entire area was cordoned off, right? It was all, I mean, none of that was, they were,

there were risers set up for the Biden inauguration over on, and the, on those spaces. already. I mean, no one was supposed to be there. It was just wild that they had their mobs of people just like you know, taking their insurrection selfies out there in front of the Capitol building. Another picture of somebody just walking away

from the Capitol holding one of the podiums from the Capitol that has the seal on it. We mentioned Viking guy in the sitting, you know, standing as if he is presiding over the American government. The police response, which we should probably talk about for just a second is going to be

these perhaps the number two story of days two and three. Like what the hell happened here? How in the world? This was not a mob that materialized in five minutes.

This was something everybody knew was going to happen. So Politico's Ryan Lizza tweeted this. I covered a lot of Black Lives Matter protests in D.C. last year. Tear gas several times hit with a rubber bullet. and the difference here in terms of the police response to property damage and violence is astounding. Yeah.

I mean, what in the world? I mean, think of how close these people got to elected officials of government who were trying to certify the electoral vote count. Which, by the way, David, can we talk about the success or failure of this thing today? The certification of the electoral votes, that has not been done. no i mean there's been there's been reports that there's you know bipartisan commitment to getting it done tonight for fear that they'll be seen as being cowed by the protest well brother there's there's a there's a there's a phrase that we should just put on ice for the next couple of years there's a lot of phrases we can put on i i mean i i mean god bless those like the the the republican

never trumpers that have been going chuggy like plugging along for the past four years but as much as they think they were you know that they were the voices of reason in this whole... I mean, they thought they were making a point and having an effect. They were just providing cover, you know? I mean, to allow the nut jobs out there

to run amok because, I mean, how many times do you have to pretend to be surprised that, like, even John Potterets and Commentary Magazine, like, that's a phrase that should be retired. The word even before any, like, old school conservatives name should be retired. Yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, the police response has been frankly stunning. I mean, there have been a lot of comparisons made to, in seriously and, uh, and in bad faith, a lot of comparisons made to the marches over the summer, the Black Lives Matter marches and other marches,

but I mean, I don't mean this is a joke. In some ways, this is as effective as any of the Black Lives Matter marches were in the sense that like, this is the exact proof that you need that our justice system is terribly imbalanced against African-American. And all non-white people, the idea that you could storm the capital and be, and literally be taking selfies with the cops afterwards, you know, at the same time.

There's no other, there is no scenario in which a group of non-white protesters would not be dead right now if they did the same thing. And, uh, and shot dead by police. And a lot of people would think they'd be justified for it. And this is a, well, this is just, I mean, it's just distressing. A couple bigger ideas here. You mentioned the whole idea of Republicans going along with Donald Trump, which clearly aided and abetted his march to this moment today.

We mentioned the quote in the Washington Post about what's the downside for humoring him. Today on the Senate floor, Mitt Romney apparently yelled when it became clear what was going on. This is what you've gotten, guys. referring to that group of senators led by Ted Cruz that was going to, and Josh Hawley of Missouri that was going to sort of file these objections today, you know, knowing full well again, that of course, of course, you know, the kind of electoral fraud quote unquote that Donald Trump is talking about did not occur. Well, and I mean, for what it's worth, Holly, too, is a hawking an outright lie right now that

Antifa mob came and assaulted his wife and child or something or threatened violence. on them when he was away from home, which is disproven by by videotape. I mean, there was like a silent protest outside of his house or something, but I mean,

he's out there spreading misinformation and justifying, and preemptively justifying this sort of violence, right? I mean, if the, if the, if the Antifa mobs of your imagination are actively doing these things,

then like, yeah, you would be interested in fighting back too, but it's not true. And you saw this picture of him today with the fist raised. Yeah, yeah. I believe this was credited

to Francis Chung. So he sees all these protesters who then, of course, this is after this picture apparently, but who are going to invade the United States Capitol. Here we go. Solidarity, baby. I'm with you guys. Quote, quote, unquote, Antifa outside my house, bad. These guys, they're okay.

Yeah. suit that someone compared to like every commentator on ESPN. You know, you got to wear the super tight suit. Josh Hawley is apparently taking that look. He'll have the, uh, the three day five o'clock shadow before long too. I just, I am, I cannot wait to hear Ted Cruz and company, who, you know, again, have gone along with this ludicrous charade out of some combination of they want to run for president in 2024 or they're just terrified of Donald Trump or, or, you know, They just have no scruples. And by the way, you don't have to pick just one.

In some cases, all three can be true. I can't wait to hear what they have to say. I just can't wait. It's no big deal. We're just going to, it's not going to affect anything. But we wonder, this is my chance to register my, my objection to this process. Well, that's, I mean, this is way, I mean, too far away probably from this, from this actually dire situation that we're facing. but there is a sort of interesting question

as to the degree to which these jackasses believe what they're doing, right? Or believe that when they say, what's the downside, right? I mean, do they really think that they can harness these mobs for their political gain and not risk something like this happening?

One would think that if they were that cynical, then maybe a day like today would shock them into some state of reality, right? It's like, oh, bad things can actually happen. I think their cynicism is probably degrees larger than what even I would assume and that they would probably believe that a day like today is a suitable sacrifice for getting reelected for four years. Well, I will say this. I'm not sure that those people in particular contemplated what actually happened today. I'm not sure they thought something like this would happen because I just don't know that that entered their head.

I don't think so either. I think everything else on the list that they've been doing, they have been doing with the idea that there will be no consequences, electoral or otherwise for them. They may look bad in the history books. They get written by professors. They're going to be denounced on two out of the three cable news networks, but otherwise there is going to be no downside for them. It's they're going to get, they're going to win their primaries in red states. They're going to get reelected to the Senate, and they're going to serve as long as they want to. and maybe they'll take another shot of the presidency.

Yeah. Absolutely. They thought they were in a consequence-free environment. Now, I don't know if today, you know, maybe it's too hopeful, by the way, David, to say that what happened today will actually cause something, you know, cause a consequence to happen to them, that they'll actually have to grapple with this in the future. I don't know, you know, talking about, again, within the right-wing media ecosystem and within Republican primaries. I don't know that it will matter. but they've certainly been acting like it doesn't. Well, I mean, you know, I said it, I said, I said a much more low-key version of this.

I think the last time we spoke, but if, if the nonsense that Holly and Cruz and anybody else who even gets close to that stuff, if that nonsense is not utterly completely disqualifying for not just a run for the presidency in the future, but a run for reelection, there's a problem with the Republican Party. If that was at all true earlier, you know, two days ago, it is one trillion percent true right now. This country cannot abide the sorts of things we're seeing today, and we can't abide small-bore versions of it, lesser versions of it for fear, I mean, under the assumption that nothing this bad could ever happen. I mean, Trump, for all of his, whatever you want to say about him, you know, he can rally a crowd or whatever. is an ineffectual man. I mean, he's not been good at getting things done the way that he wants to get done.

And yet, he has hundreds of people, thousands maybe storming the capital. This is, we can't, we can't run the risk of this happening again. We can't run the risk of someone of a more, of a more compelling communicator than Trump inheriting that mantle. It's, it's courting disaster. This country cannot abide things like this happening. But the question, this specific instance, is can that party abide things like this happening? And there's not any evidence that they won't, you know, that there's not any evidence that some controlling Republican authority figure or Republicans in mass in a place like Texas or wherever we're going to say, you know what?

Ted Cruz going along with it, that was it. That was a final straw. I'm sorry. You know, we're going to have to find David Dewhurst again or whoever you want to find. I just don't think that's going to happen. It's sort of, I mean, it's, even after today. It's a fitting sort of in, I mean, it's not over yet, but it's a, it's a fitting sort of, it was a fitting scene when you have Mitch McConnell out there, like choking up, talking

about the significance of abiding by the Constitution and why we needed to go forward with the Biden presidency. You have, you know, Mike Pence preparing to, you know, turn his back finally after all these years on on president Trump and and you know not follow him on his conspiratorial path. And all of that stuff is immediately overshadowed by this mob that Trump has inspired to to march on the Capitol. I mean, it's like to actually think like now is the day that I'm going to stand up. Now is the day that it's going to make a difference.

It's like, no. Late. It's way too late for that. Do you want proof? Oh, well, there's like people breaking the glass to get into this room right now. Yeah. And in fact, they're more enraged because Trump, by the way, Trump has told them, Mike Pence is letting you down. Yeah. You thought Mike Pence was supporting me? You thought Mike Pence had my back through all the awful things that have happened the last four years. Guess what? I'm going to tell you Mike Pence is letting you down. Mike Pence, Trump is telling them, could make me president. for another four years or at least extend this process somewhere. And he's letting you down. Guess what? People get mad. Way too late to turn that process off. The other thing I want to talk to you is about the,

a little bit about the way the media has covered the events of the last several weeks. You and I have nodded at this. This is, by the way, way, way down the list from Republicans abetting the whole fiction that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. But I do wonder, have we? paid enough attention to this? Have we covered this with the alarm that it deserves to be covered with? Do you think? I mean, you and I, you and I, when we make up the show, we're not saying, you know what, let's devote the whole show to the fact that Donald Trump is

stealing the election. There's that phrase again. We're not doing that every week. Well, I think that you're, you alluded to it earlier, that there's a point where, you know, you avoid saying racist and then you just hear you've heard racist the word too many times or whatever the word at hand is for it to have the same impact i should say there is a there is a there is a i mean i think a lot of people have pointed out that sort of what has defined this trump presidency is it sort of there's so much so much bad acting going on at the same time that's impossible to cover it you know like a thursday afternoon in the trump administration is would be the end of any other presidency right and And I think that there's a degree to which we are all, it's all, it becomes static.

And that's sort of part of the model, right? Yeah. I think that's true for most of his presidency, though I think something different has happened since he lost the election, which is it's like that 45-minute video we were talking about where Trump basically did. And everybody just kind of shrug going, eh, that's kind of boring. You know, we've sort of checked this box. And again, I don't want to cast blame because I hate when people do, the media isn't,

the media isn't. It's just striking to me that we have an American president who is trying to subvert democracy and keep himself in office despite clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly losing an election. Yeah. It's just, it's weird to watch it and you and I are participants in it, but it's weird to watch in real time that that isn't the only story in America. Yeah. Who are the Jets going to draft? What else is going on? You know, I mean, it's like, and I, and again, I fall prey to the same thing. Yeah. It's just weird. Well, I mean, I do think that, you know, I don't know if we talked about this last time, but I, but the, the Georgia phone call to me, I thought in a lot of ways, the reaction to it was a little microcosm of the past four years. And what you saw is, is,

you know, I don't want to put the media broadly defined in the same boat as, uh, you know, the Mitch McConnell's of the world. But you did see, I mean, the outlets finally using actual language, Not all of them, and some of them, not on the first try, but using, like, honest language to describe what that phone call was, right? Or at least, you know, even the New York Times, I think, said that he, that Trump pressured the Secretary of State or whatever to find votes and put fine in quotation marks, right? I mean, they find, they find, and no pun intended ways to make this point. Right now, the, you know, Times homepage says mobstorms capital inflamed by angry Trump speech. You know, this isn't, it's not just like, like, you know, protest or whatever. I mean, they're trying to be in so much as their desk allows them to be more honest than maybe they would have been at some point over the last four years. This is, that's a small bore. It's a small example and maybe not sufficient.

Over the past several weeks, have we, as everyone, been loud enough about this? I mean, my, I can only speak for myself. I have been, I had moments of incredible anxiety that didn't make it onto the air. And I think that there's a degree to which we as human beings, beings convince ourselves that everything's not as bad as it seems, and that's how we persist. That's how we're able to stay inside for a year while a virus ravages a country, right? I mean, we have coping mechanisms that don't always cue to reality. But I, and this is maybe neither here nor there, but I honestly believed that the transition

of power would happen, regardless. rather smoothly, regardless of what Trump said, because I honestly thought that, like, at worst case scenario, that there is, their actual, like, deep state actors that would, that would make sure that it happened, right?

I mean, that, there is, that there would be, like, John La Corre stuff going on behind the scenes that would insist, that mean, that would get,

that would, you know, encourage Trump to walk out peacefully. I, frankly, abiding by my own irrational logic, I am shocked that he was allowed to speak to his constituent, on the national mall today. I am shocked that this was allowed to get

even to the non-problematic stage of his speech. It is really, really unbelievable that he was allowed to speak and that the police were not better prepared for this sort of thing to happen. Right, well, of course he's allowed to speak.

I know he's, no, no, I'm talking about my own ridiculous logic, that there is like, that like, you know, faceless men with guns will show up and say, it's time for you to leave now, sir. Like I would, I would, you know, by that logic, I would assume that someone would show up and be like, you know, you're not allowed to have that speech.

There's two, it's just too problematic in the country. That's obviously not true. I'm more terrified now than ever, despite the fact that this should be a clarion call. This should make it clear to everybody that, that any suspicion about this man is not gone far enough. And that he shouldn't be allowed to serve the next 24 hours as president. let alone the next two weeks. There's too much at stake.

Fox News's Chad Pergroom was quoted on the air saying this. This is the most significant breach of an American government institution since the War of 1812. You will remember from our high school history classes, David, that the War of 1812 was the one where the British set the White House on fire. That's where we are. That's where we are. I was also struck by this tweet from Jake Sherman, who's been on this show from Punchball Media. This is him just narrating in real time. the capital has been breached and there's a fucking arms standoff at the house door.

They broke into the building through the windows. Tweet from a congressional correspondent in the United States of America today. Yeah. That is where we are. You want to say one more thing? I would just like to end that conversation with, I just see a tweet now from Kevin Roos. That's a Q. Shaman has taken, this is several minutes ago, has taken the mic outside the Capitol and is telling people through a vape cloud to go home.

Finally, the voice of reason. Yeah. Finally, the voice of reason. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Erica Sivantis. As I said, we'll regroup figure out what else we're doing this week. See you guys soon.