GWYNN ISLAND, Virginia – On Doug Sweet’s first trip to the United States Capitol, at the age of 13 in 1975, he tilted his head back, looked at the shiny white dome and thought it was the most amazing thing he had already seen.
On his second trip to the Capitol, he joined a crowd of Trump supporters who broke into the headquarters of the United States Congress and ended his visit handcuffed facedown on the floor.
The 45-year journey between these two visits was marked by brilliant idealism and a belief in dark conspiracies, a lonely existence and a new fraternity with those who are convinced that Joe Biden never defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
It didn’t matter that no evidence of widespread electoral fraud emerged, or that more than 50 lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign were dismissed by the courts.
Sweet placed her faith in Trump and his allies, who for weeks begged followers to rise up against the result of a national election that they said was rigged.