Trump supporters gesture to the U.S. Capitol Police in the corridor outside the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, January 6, 2021.
The media are publishing more and more videos, photos and testimonies of Wednesday’s pro-Trump rebellion on Capitol Hill. And it is becoming clear that as hideous as the attack seemed in real time, on live TV and on our social networks, it was even worse than we knew then.
It was even more violent. It was even more treacherous. And Trump’s behavior was even more disturbing.
On Wednesday, we witnessed the story through a handful of soda straws, to use a metaphor for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Journalists bravely covered the turmoil in real time and deserve enormous credit for it. But in the fog of chaos, it was impossible to see the whole picture as it was happening. The public did not know that a United States Capitol policeman was seriously injured until Thursday, for example. Officer Brian D. Sicknick died on Thursday night, and federal prosecutors have already opened a homicide investigation.
As is the case with many traumatic events, it took some time for reality to be assimilated. “I was in the crowd and didn’t realize how bad it was until a day or two later,” reporter Richard Hall of The Independent, a British newspaper, tweeted Saturday.
Reconstructions of events and follow-up reports by news organizations are putting this in focus.
CNN aired a horrible video on Friday night, first published by the investigative channel Status Coup, showing a police officer trapped between a door and the crowd. The officer cried out in agony.
There are several practical reasons why these scenes were not shown live on Wednesday. Inside the Capitol, many correspondents were arrested and taken to safe locations with lawmakers.
Outside, some reporters found it difficult to spread the news because the wireless towers were overloaded. In addition, some news teams have been threatened by groups of Trump supporters, making working conditions even more difficult.
Some of the live footage of the TV on Wednesday afternoon was taken from a distance, out of necessity, and the most important live cameras of all – within the House and Senate chambers – were turned off by the respective legislative bodies.
Think of your own processing of Wednesday’s events: a handful of chaotic videos on social media shocked the world and immediately confirmed that the police had lost control. But the views were limited and time consuming. The information came in little by little, in ways that referred to 9/11.
There was so much news that was difficult to process: Reports of explosive devices, an armed confrontation, a shootout and evacuations. Viewers were able to see some of this with their own eyes, but most of the information was second-hand, from tweets and phone calls and dispatches by e-mail from Congressional reporters, many of them locked up on Capitol Hill.
Only later did it become clear that lawmakers feared for their lives; that some of the attackers were looking for Congressional leaders; that there could have been a massacre.
On Wednesday, “the images broadcast were not the most horrible of the day,” said Chris Hayes of MSNBC on Friday night. “A lot of what we saw – silly costumes, people taking selfies, grabbing the speaker’s pulpit – seemed like the type of a group that could even attend a Trump boat parade. But there was something much, much darker, more violent, more sinister and more organized going on in that Capitol on Wednesday. And it’s time for us to see clearly. “
On the Internet, Hayes’ segment was entitled “New must-see video shows that the Capitol revolt was much worse than we thought”.
He stressed that “it is entirely possible that there were people in that crowd looking to apprehend, possibly harm and possibly murder the political class leaders that the president, and people like Mo Brooks, and even Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, told them that they had betrayed them. . “
Understandably, it took journalists some time to digest what they witnessed and ingest their Capitol video. The Washington Post, for example, produced a video entitled “What it was like to report a Capitol under siege”.
The more complete videos that came out on Thursday and Friday provided much more detail. The New York Times Daily podcast showed audio clips of protesters shouting “Where’s Mike Pence? Where’s Mike Pence? Where’s Mike Pence? Find Mike Pence. “
Progressive writer Mike Konczal, director of the Roosevelt Institute, tweeted on Friday, “That the occupation of Capitol was much more violent and had the ability to cause much more violence than I realized while it was happening is the most shocking thing I learned about the coup in the days that followed. That’s scary. “
As for the president and his behavior, Sunlen Serfaty, Devan Cole and Alex Rogers of CNN revealed on Friday that Trump “tried to call senators” and pressure them to overturn the election despite the turmoil.
Another thing that was even worse than we knew at the time: the attacks on members of the media. Erin Schaff of The New York Times later described what happened when the crowd saw his identity in the Times. “They threw me on the floor, trying to get my cameras out. I started screaming for help as loud as I could, ”she said. “No one came. People just watched. At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one was going to stop them. They took one of my cameras, broke one lens on the other and ran away.” She ran away and found a place to hide.
Having a complete account of what happened and how vital it is. After writing about this topic in the Friday night “Trusted Sources” newsletter, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California responded on Twitter, “We have already learned and will continue to learn that what happened on January 6, Day of Uprising, is even worse than we knew.” Lieu then asked for action: “The Congressional response cannot be simply to make speeches seriously. Unless Trump resigns or is removed through the 25th Amendment, we must be impeached. “
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