Remembering What (Really) Happened on January 6
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From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. It is January 6th.

Four years ago, a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, part of a broader attempt to subvert Joe Biden's electoral win. It was a terrifying spectacle and a direct attack on our democracy that the FBI classified as an act of domestic terrorism. In the initial aftermath, leaders of both parties expressed shock and horror. But in the years since, President-elect Donald Trump has pushed a revisionist history of the event, even calling it a, quote, day of love.

We'll revisit the event and talk about the conspiracies that now surround the January 6th movement. It's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. On January 6th, 2021, a mob of Donald Trump supporters left his rally and went to the Capitol building with the idea of disrupting the lawful certification of the 2020 presidential election.

They violently broke in, attacked Capitol Hill police officers and attempted to hunt down elected officials. The world saw it all and much more evidence has come out in the years since. But there has also been a concerted effort by Donald Trump and many of his MAGA supporters to downplay, recast and even reinvent what happened on January 6th at the U.S. Capitol.

Our country cannot let what happened that day go down the memory hole. So let's start first with a plunge into the chaos of that day. What you're going to hear is a montage of audio that producer Dan Zoll put together from clips gathered by the congressional investigation into the event. Let's listen. Hey, brother, we're boots on the ground here. We're moving on to Capitol. Now I'll give you a boots on the ground update here in a few. Okay.

Okay, guys, apparently this tip of the spear has entered the Capitol building.

That was audio from January 6th, 2021. And to discuss what happened that day, we're joined by journalist Sarah Weyer, who was reporting from the Capitol that morning. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Yeah.

So what was your assignment that day and what were you expecting when you went to the Capitol? I was there to watch what the lawmakers did. Normally, this was an assignment for a lower level reporter. You know, these things happen every four years. It's kind of a ceremonial event and you move on. The certification of the election, that is. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it had never been in question before, and no one ever took it as an issue. But we had heard for weeks at that point that something could happen, violence could happen. I remember going to the Capitol and thinking to myself, you know, I'm in the safest building in the world. I wasn't worried about myself, I was worried about

the reporters and the photojournalists who would be outside the building. And we were expecting maybe a big protest that became violent. Why were you worried that there might be violent protests? Like what were the specific things or events that made you think that might happen?

There had been a rally in D.C. in the middle of December that had become violent at one point. We had heard the then-president Donald Trump, he had sent out tweets saying it's going to be wild. And then there was response on social media from pro-MAGA groups and from the far right, kind of agreeing this is going to get violent. We started hearing talk about

Civil War and taking control of the situation. At the same time, I mean, at least for me and I think for many people I've talked to, there was something really unthinkable about people actually like attacking the Capitol building. So when did you first realize on that day that something was truly amiss? I walked into the building around 11 a.m. through one of the side staff entrances and there was already people

people there with signs and flags. But I didn't really feel like there was anything amiss until after Nancy Pelosi had gaveled the joint session in at about 105. And I got a text message from a House staff member saying that they had just been told to shelter in place in the House office buildings.

And I ran up to check on what was going on, and I heard the emergency radio go off in the press gallery. And this is something that's only used for when they need to alert staff quickly to shelter in place or lockdown. And you can hear the terror in the officer's voice over the radio.

that anyone who was outside needed to get inside immediately, lock doors. You don't hear that terror in an officer's voice very often. For those of us who are watching from the outside, it was hard to know what was going on on the inside where you were. Were you on your phone essentially watching the outside or seeing tweets from what was happening outside and not knowing where or what you should be doing inside?

I was watching on Twitter, but I was inside the house chamber where we're allowed to have computers, but not allowed to play any audio. And I saw...

A tweet that someone sent of Trump saying, you know, we're going to go to the Capitol. And I remember thinking to myself, there's no way they're going to allow him to walk up to the Capitol itself. But, you know, just walking into the press gallery space, I could see the crowd forming outside.

But again, you know, I thought of it as the safest place in the world. You know, I figured even if a crowd gathers outside, we have protests at the Capitol very frequently. I never thought that they would be able to get inside the building. Yeah. I mean, the shock of that, you know, going back, you know, obviously this anniversary is coming up, looking at older footage, listening to...

the things that people were saying as they were breaking into the building. I mean, you must have been actually terrified, right? I mean, this, I just think sometimes as this story has gone on and people have forgotten that this was terrifying for people who were inside the building. Yeah. I mean, we,

you were in this chamber having no idea what was fully happening outside. And, you know, police came in at one point and shut down the proceedings, which that never happens.

And, you know, a plainclothes officer walked in and said, you know, there's protesters who've gotten into the rotunda. Pepper spray has been dispersed. We need to lock the chamber down and everyone needs to pull out the gas masks from under their chairs. I don't even think the members of Congress realized that there were gas masks under their chairs. And yes.

Officers started to lock the doors from inside and these are big tall doors. These are 13 15 foot wood doors and you could just hear him slam boom boom one after another and You know the members of Congress started to evacuate from the ground from the ground level and we were up higher in the you know the area where guests it during the state of the Union and

There was one moment while they're locking these doors where my eyes connected with an officer and a member of Congress yelled, what about us? And you could see the color drain from his face because they were locking those doors from the inside. And we realized that we were basically on our own in that upper gallery. And

The crowd was breaking the glass on the main floor. Officers have their weapons drawn. As a reporter, you get used to compartmentalizing. I covered cops and courts for a long time. My safety was in the little box in the corner.

But, you know, that's how you can keep track of what's going on and taking notes. And it wasn't until we heard the gunshots that killed Ashley Babbitt, the protester who was climbing in to the speaker's lobby as members of Congress were still evacuating, that it connected with me that this happened.

good and poorly for all of us. And there was just something that clicked in my head that if I'm going, if there's a chance I could die today, people are going to know that I died doing my job. And I crawled over to a member of Congress and started interviewing Norma Torres from the LA area. And she took a photo of me

and shared it on Twitter with my bosses just to let them know that I was okay. And I remember thinking that might be the last photo of me alive. I mean, eventually everyone is evacuated to different safe areas and time goes on. But given what you had witnessed yourself and what you later saw, you ended up covering the January 6th committee hearings as well.

Can you believe that we've ended up in this place where January 6th in some quarters of the United States is seen as a positive thing or a quote day of love as Donald Trump has called it? You know, I covered January 6th and the hearings and the, um, just kind of the ongoing fallout for years for the LA times. And that, that perspective was always there, you know, it moved into the mainstream, but it was always there. Um, and,

I mean, I don't want to give my opinion, but it was always there. I mean, can you just remind us of what the January 6th committee's basic findings were? They focused very heavily on...

the role of Donald Trump. We heard a lot from the committee members throughout their investigation. It started out very broad, and as they learned more from the depositions that they did and the people they spoke to and the documentations they got, they started to focus more on more about Donald Trump, his campaign, and kind of the efforts to stoke this

misunderstanding about, not this misunderstanding, but to stoke this idea that the election was being stolen. I mean, I think any American can put themselves in that position of understanding, you know, that their vote was taken from them and that the wrong person is going to become president. Whether, I mean, just if you can take yourself away from politics, I think every

every American can understand that feel. And they centered so heavily, the investigation centered so heavily on efforts to mislead the general public about, you know, it being wrong. You know, I spoke to a expert, Robert Pape, at the University of Chicago in the last couple of weeks as he's talked about this effort to reshape the narrative. And he said, you know, it's,

capital insurrection would not have happened just with Trump. He said the capital insurrection wouldn't have happened with just the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers or the militia groups. It was the mob. The mob crashing wave over wave over the Capitol is what allowed it to happen.

We're talking about the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, which took place four years ago today. Sarah Weyer, senior national correspondent with USA Today, was reporting from the Capitol. Thank you so much for joining us, Sarah. Thanks for having me. We'll be back with more with Hannah Rosen of The Atlantic right after the break.

Set in Chicago during Prohibition, Some Like It Hot tells the story of two musicians forced to flee the Windy City after witnessing a mob hit. Featuring Tony-winning choreography and an electrifying score, Some Like It Hot plays the Orpheum Theatre for three weeks only, January 7th through 26th.

Tickets on sale now at broadwaysf.com. Support for Forum comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment. From wielding the power of the law to protect people's health, preserving magnificent places and wildlife, and advancing clean energy to combat climate change, Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer.

Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org. Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We are talking about the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, which took place four years ago today and how it is being remembered by different Americans.

We want to hear from you. What memories or images of January 6th stand out to you? And what questions do you have about the way that the memory of that day has been changing? You can give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786, forum at kqed.org. Of course, you can find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, Discord. We're kqedforum.

I want to welcome Hannah Rosen in. She's the host of Radio Atlantic, also co-host of The Atlantic's Narrative podcast. We live here now, of course, a longtime journalist, and we live here now, explored the quote unquote justice for January 6th movement and leaders. Welcome, Hannah. Thank you. So you live in D.C. You were there January 6th, 2021. For those of us here, you know, in Northern California, how do you think January 6th was different for people who live in the city?

Oh, so visceral. Like a lot of people watched it unfolding on Twitter and it was kind of an interesting breaking news story. But for us, it really changed the landscape and the geography of where we live. I just live a few minutes from there. And it's funny you should ask me this today because I walked by the Capitol today and it's a little PTSD. I mean, there's they just put up huge fences and barricades. I mean, there's a whole infrastructure up.

that reminds us of exactly what it looked like four years ago, which is that you were suddenly living not quite a war zone, but definitely a different city. You know, barricades, cops,

And the you know our kid this is that our kids were let out of school so quickly that they didn't really have time to call the parents like there was an emergency sense hanging over the city that day, you know, like I everybody can tell you like Where were you what you what were you doing? You know, I was at the optometrist office with my son and we had to rush everybody home It was that kind of feeling. Yeah. Yeah, I

So, you know, we just heard, you know, before the break, we heard Sarah Weier describe what it was like to be at the Capitol. We have this incredible body of evidence that was created by congressional committees and by the people who broke into the Capitol themselves with, you know, extensive documentation and video of all the things that were going on that day. And yet Donald Trump and many of his supporters are pushing a really different version of those events. Like tell us as you got into this world,

What is that other version of events of January 6th? First, I want to say, Alexis, doesn't it amaze you that four years later you have to just

bring someone on the show to recount what happened. I mean, it's amazing. It's like there are hundreds and thousands of hours of footage. There was a whole committee hearing laying out the evidence. You can go online and see the evidence. And yet here we are having to remind people, yes, there was a mob. The mob did this is very odd. You know, it's very odd because it's not just the congressmen who saw it with their own eyes and lived it as they hid under their desks

We all did. There's a lot of video footage, you know, and yet we're having this sober conversation saying, oh, yeah, I did. I promise it happened. You know, it's been a systematic four year effort to write the history of January 6th, which actually has been remarkably successful because people polled Americans about what they thought happened on January 6th after the event. And now four years later,

And it's a decreasing percentage of Americans who think that people broke the law or that the mob was violent or that Capitol Police officers were killed. And if you look back at the four. Oh, sorry. I take that back. They were not killed, but injured. They died after the event, but none were killed on that day. But but you can trace what Donald Trump did. So the strategy, as it were, I don't know that it was intentional, but it was a slowly. Initially, it's very hard to remember that.

right after January 6th, there was a lot of resistance. I mean, even from Republicans. Oh, yeah. What? Like, no, like this person is not qualified to be president anymore. And then initially came the line that it was Antifa who did it. Although that line. It's a thing, right? Yes, that was a Matt Gaetz thing. And actually, that revisionist history started on

January 6th, Jamie Raskin, Congressman Jamie Raskin, Democrat from Maryland, writes about this in his book that that the very next morning, because they'd all been there, you know, late at night to certify the election, started that revisionist history. Oh, no, it was, you know, it was.

It was agitators from the left who actually got the mob overexcited. And then it kind of died down for a few months. You know, you didn't hear much from Trump about it. It was just kind of a stalemate. And then it rose back up about a year after January 6th.

Trump started to test this line initially about Ashley Babbitt, who's the woman who was killed on January 6th. Was she a martyr? Who really shot her? What do we know about this? And it was only when they tapped into that narrative, which is the deep state narrative, you know, the narrative of like there's a mysterious they.

who got all those people in trouble. There's a mysterious they who shot people. And then Tucker Carlson took it up, and then it exploded. And then we got this very coherent, unified narrative that actually those people were victims of the deep state, which

as we all recall, Trump himself was feeling because he was starting to be the victim of prosecutions. And then it kind of, you know, all, you know, we got a unified whole of a story that really took off off. Marc Thiessen: And that tapped into sort of pre-existing conspiratorial networks as well, right? I mean, you had the QAnon, which of course now we don't hear very much about QAnon, but I mean, this was

all over the place for years. This idea that there was a guy on a message board who was somehow tapped into the deep state and was crafting this incredibly elaborate, interactive narrative about how Donald Trump was going to save everyone. Right. I mean, it tapped into all that.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the that's the zoom out picture, which actually culminated in 2023 when Trump announced his candidacy. And now, of course, he's fully redeemed. He's in control of this narrative. And he announces his candidacy with pictures of January 6th in Waco, Texas, Waco, Texas, being the ultimate candidate.

symbolism of the deep state, pictures of January 6th playing all around him and the January 6th choir, which is a choir made up of people who were from the D.C. jail and who were accused of crimes related to January 6th.

playing interspersed with his voice. So the symbolism kind of crescendoed in Waco, Texas, as he was announcing his candidate. And it's kind of amazing because all of this, you know, we don't live in... There are some countries like China where you can actually scrub images of what happened on Tiananmen Square. Like you can literally scrub them from the Internet. We're in a kind of weirder position because

We're not at the point where anything is scrubbed from the internet. We all have access to both of these narratives and they kind of exist simultaneously. So honestly, I don't know what to do with that. Right. It just has to... Instead of scrubbing it, essentially a counter narrative that is equally deranged has to be built and then slowly somehow replace the underlying factual reality. Yeah.

Sorry. And add to that the sort of weird moment of like ironic belief that we live in. I don't even know what to call it where it's like, do they believe it or does it matter? You know, people say things they does. Alex Jones actually believed that the kids were not killed in that shooting. It doesn't matter. It's something like you assert an absurd belief and then it just hangs out there as a counter narrative. Yeah.

So in your work for this new podcast Essentially you ended up kind of inside this world of swirling Conspiracism and you know would-be martyrdom and other things and

How did that happen? This wasn't a purely like you were a journalist looking for that story and went and found it. Like, how did this occur? Yes. The mother of Ashley Babbitt, who we've now mentioned a couple of times on this show, moved in down the block from us.

And she became kind of the beating heart of this counter narrative that we're talking to. Not the brains of the counter narrative, you know, that was Trump and his people, but sort of like the energy of it, you know, the mother of a martyr, the sort of emotional soft core of it. In addition to that, she held a vigil outside the D.C. jail every single night and still does. You know, it's hundreds of nights and counting. And

you know, it is a little despairing, the conversation we've just had, the fact that there's a true narrative and a counter narrative and never the twain shall meet. That's a heartbreaking reality for our country. So I think we just use the category neighbor. We move towards neighbor as an old fashioned category. Like what happens if you make yourself get to know this person? I mean, she is also a mother whose child was shot.

She didn't even know her daughter was going to January 6th. She wasn't talking to her that much then because they, you know, they had a little rift, even though they were fairly close in general. And so you try and have your brain hold

both of those realities. That was the experiment that we did with this podcast, that you simultaneously do not blind yourself from the fact that this counter narrative is dangerous and very popular and it helped elect

Donald Trump to office. Those are all true. And secondly, that there is this person who is your neighbor whose child was killed. And so you just try and follow both those paths a little blindly, like not really knowing where that leads you, but in some hope that people can keep talking to each other. I mean, it's interesting. Some of this work that you've done reminds me of reading about

You know, the daily people in countries that have authoritarian leaders rise. Right. You know, I mean, there's like bakers and there's just a gardener, you know, and they, too, were part of like, you know, they were in Italy, you know, as Mussolini's right to power, whatever the case may be.

What do you think you learned about sort of how everyday people get brought into these the larger power play right because as you said it's not like mama Mickey as she's known in this movement and

is pulling the strings here or is in charge of some grand narrative. She's a piece of some other set of machinations. Yeah, that's what's so hard about this. Even if you take the January 6 cases or you take Mama Mickey or you take Ashley Babbitt and you look at any of these people as individuals, I mean, your heart starts to break a little because the person who we think of as being responsible in some way for all this is not held responsible.

You know, he's now the president elect. Exactly. He's about to take office. And so so so that's that's the issue here. So so the sympathy comes in there. I mean, I would say that, you know, Mickey has has been as many people who are deep in grief.

and I hesitate to be patronizing here, but people do look for meaning, they do look for a reason that their child was killed, they do look for justice, is completely an apolitical person, completely drawn into this universe. I mean, you know, sort of believes, like, she believes all the, she entertains many of the conspiracy theories now. All the ones that you've heard about, you know, legislators and children and pedophiles, like, all of those things seem plausible to her if

a person in uniform could kill her daughter and get away with it. So it's more, I think of it more like

there is this available universe of darkness that if your brain is kind of open to it because something happens in your life or for some reason, it's available and you kind of latch onto it and suddenly there's a universe of meaning for you. I mean, I've visited with January 6th families. You see how their lives were destroyed. You know, people with, for the most part, no criminal record who are now serving years in jail. I mean, it is, there are thousands of lives destroyed because of

this one day. And yet they chose to do it. Well, and, you know, just to get to one of these specific ideas, you know, Mickey at one point references this QAnon-fueled conspiracy theory that global elites, quote unquote, are kidnapping children to drink their blood for it. Adenochrome, this

you know, elixir of youth that's supposedly there. When somebody like brings that up to you as a plausible scenario or not just plot, but like something that's happening. Um,

How do you find a common neighborly basis on which to continue interacting? Yeah. Well, for this, I remained ever suspicious throughout the making of this podcast. My partner and co-host, Lauren Ober, I would say developed a much deeper

stronger relationship with Mickey. And this is where there's a little bit of hope. I don't know that the hope, you know, we can act on it this year or 10 years from now, but at least some humanity that exists. She would say, "Mickey, what are you talking about?" Or she would say, "Mickey, you're smarter than that." And Mickey would say the same thing back to her, like, "Lauren, you're smarter than that." Nobody changed anybody's mind.

I mean, we're in desperate times here where we're not trying to convince people of the truth. We are really just trying to keep

a thread of connection. How important is that thread of connection? I don't know, but they would text each other if they knew that one got sick or see that one was okay or, you know, it's just a human thing that is completely apart from the political thing. So it just depends how much you value that and how much you desperately want to keep that little thread going. I mean, I think about it a lot. Like, think about the ways in which there are just whole swaths of people who you just feel like, "I have nothing to talk

to you about and you have nothing to talk to me about because we don't even agree on the same set of facts being real. You know, like I show you a video of what happened on January 6th. I show you a video of this person and you will look at that video with me and say, describe it completely differently than I will. You know, and so that feels fairly hopeless. And so even the little threads of connection neighbor to neighbor are something, but they're definitely not everything. Yeah. Yeah.

We have memories coming in from listeners here of January 6th. You know, Mike writes in to say, I remember January 6th as a violent attempt to destroy the American tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. Martha writes, Vice President Pence did not experience a quote, day of love.

I remember listening to the news, not believing my ears and seeking relief by tuning to KPOO. They were playing Childish Gambino's This is America. How appropriate. Yeah.

It does seem worth discussing that other countries experienced maybe not exactly things, but things that were somewhat analogous to this kind of mob action around an election and have mostly responded quite differently. Like how much do you see what has happened with Donald Trump's reelection and in fact

continued inclusion from just a few weeks after January 6th, 2021 by the Republican Party. Like, how do you how how much is this an American problem? Yeah. I mean, the line that that keeps coming into my head over and over again are we are not special. It's the opposite of what Donald Trump said to his followers that day. You are special. We're not special. I mean, we have we have we've grown up for hundreds of years. This country, I mean, thinking of

ourselves as exceptional. But people who know American history well will tell you, no, there are fault lines and there have been lots of historical moments of fragility. And if so many other countries can lose

a democracy. I hate talking like this, but Alexis, it's true. Like it's so fragile. I mean, it's just it's just very fragile. I mean, it's bizarre. I don't I don't know how history will look back and think the person that tried to disrupt our very fundamental transfer of power is now the president again. It's so odd. Yeah. Well, and the people around him as well. I mean, something we haven't discussed too much and probably won't get too deeply into is that there were a variety of people

who were even willing to talk to reporters like Bart Gellman, who wrote an amazing piece for The Atlantic back before the 2020 election, basically keying in on January 6th as a key procedural step that could be disrupted in order to disrupt the elections, disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

Yes. It actually took me a while to realize that, and it was largely from talking to Jamie Raskin, who's also a constitutional lawyer, that's Congressman Raskin, that everybody had been well aware. It wasn't just an accident. It wasn't a kind of, "Oh my God, everybody show up at the Capitol." There had been systematic efforts and thought put into a possible disruption of the transfer of power.

We're talking about the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It took place four years ago today, of course. We're joined by Hannah Rosen, host of Radio Atlantic, co-host of the Atlantic's narrative podcast, We Live Here Now, which explored the quote-unquote justice for January 6th movement and leaders. Earlier, we were joined by Sarah Weyer, senior national correspondent with USA Today, who was reporting from the Capitol on January 6th.

2021. We're going to get to some calls and comments in the next section of the show. Questions you have about the fallout from January 6th, legal and political. Numbers 866-733-6786. The email is forum at kqed.org. We'll be back with more. Support for Forum comes from Broadway SF and Some Like It Hot, a new musical direct from Broadway from Tony Award-winning director Casey Nicholaw.

Set in Chicago during Prohibition, Some Like It Hot tells the story of two musicians forced to flee the Windy City after witnessing a mob hit. Featuring Tony-winning choreography and an electrifying score, Some Like It Hot plays the Orpheum Theater for three weeks only, January 7th through 26th.

Tickets on sale now at broadwaysf.com. Support for Forum comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment.

From wielding the power of the law to protect people's health, preserving magnificent places and wildlife, and advancing clean energy to combat climate change, Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer. Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org.

Welcome back to Forum. We're talking about the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, which took place four years ago. Today we're joined by Hannah Rosen, who has a podcast exploring the justice for January 6 movement leaders and the way that it has tried to rewrite this part of American history. It's called "We Live Here Now." That's the podcast name. Let's bring in Valerie in Oakland.

Hey, Valerie. Hi, yes. So for many years, I lived in D.C. and did a lot of protests at the state Capitol, at the Capitol buildings with people of color, with unions, with immigrants, with students. And we were met with pretty harsh pushback from all the different types of police departments that were at the Capitol.

The difference that I saw on January 6th is that when we were doing those actions, it was mainly people of color, mainly low-income folks demanding things to be different for them. What I saw on January 6th, it was a lot of, like, white people. Can you explain a little bit as to, like, what you think the difference was in the response to the police at the different crowd that was there on January 6th?

Marc Thiessen: Valerie, appreciate that. What do you think, Hannah? Hannah Cohen: Yeah, that's a counterfactual we don't know. I mean, we intuitively feel like if the crowd had not been all white, it would have been, you know, a much different response and maybe even by Donald Trump and the National Guard.

We don't know. But what's interesting is how it's unfolded, which Valerie would be interested in, which is that, you know, all of these, and then they are very high majority white, although not entirely white. All of them have been shocked by how the justice system works.

You know, shocked at how, you know, the sentences in federal court sort of shocked it at the unfairness of it all. Shocked at how public defenders are assigned, which, of course, people of color would think like, well, welcome to the universe, like welcome to America. Welcome to the American justice system. So that's been an irony that's unfolded. Like if you take the D.C. jail where a lot of these guys have been held, people charged with crimes related to January 6th.

You know, it's largely -- the inmate population is largely black, largely meaning like almost 85, 90% over the years. And there have been complaints about conditions at the D.C. jail forever, but these guys are sort of shock-shocked, sort of, "How dare you treat me this way?"

Yeah, I also can't help but think about the difference in the response between, say, when the Black Panthers walked in with guns and the California state capitol led to a whole bunch of gun legislation here in California versus, you know, this militia that walked into the Michigan State House some years ago. Obviously, I think people don't like the idea of guns in state capitol buildings or the capitol for a lot of reasons, but the response has certainly been...

There was also, you know, adjacent to Valerie's point, there's also been a lot of talk about the role of sort of white supremacist organizations in January 6th or those who are sort of closely linked to sort of white nationalist types. Do you see that, like the link between like Charlottesville and January 6th? Did you encounter that in your reporting?

Yes, there is a link and the, you know, there's a small number of Proud Boys and other organizations like that, people at the head of those organizations who have gotten the heaviest sentences on January 6th. So there definitely is a link and there has been some reporting by ProPublica and other groups about the resurgence of these connections, them trying to, you know, kick back up again.

As for the vast majority of January Sixers, I mean, the estimates are now that about 3,300 people, something like that, were at the Capitol that day. How would you -- I don't know how to know that. I mean, I can't imagine the vast majority of them were connected to white supremacist groups, but definitely the people at the head of the movement who did get harsh sentences were.

Well, and there has been a lot of reporting about just the very everydayness of many of the people who showed up there. Yeah. You know, radicalized by what they read on the internet, more or less. Yeah.

Yeah. And as I said, it's a zoom in, zoom out thing. When you zoom in closely to one of these cases and you think, you know, a person who had to sell their house for legal representation, who'd never been to a protest one day in their lives, who had no criminal record, who suddenly lands themselves in federal court where the sentences tend to be higher and is now spending three, five, six years in jail for what we call assault. Now, what is assault? Assault could be pushing a barricade. I mean, assault can look

lot of different ways so so it depends whether you're zooming far out or closer in couple of listener comments another listener writes is there any other time in American history that has been so well recorded and yet people seem to be buying into a recounting that does not match what can be plainly seen on tape

What do you think? Do you think there's an analog to this right now? I puzzle about this all the time, and it makes me feel like I don't have words for the age that we're living in, because I feel like denying the more obvious a reality, it's almost like the more loyalty points you get for denying it. I mean, the equivalent would be, unfortunately, like Stalinist autocratic tactics where they would have

mock trials and the point of the trial was for everybody involved in the trial to understand that there was no evidence. I mean, there is people who study autocracies would tell you there's an absurdist element to them, that weirdly comedy and autocracy are closely linked or absurdist comedy because you are supposed to look around you and think this is absurd and then the

and then you declare loyalty to it anyway, and that's a sign that you are on board with what's happening. So there is a little undercurrent of that going on right now because your listener is absolutely correct. There truly could not be more evidence. I mean, in a way, you look back and think, wow, Liz Cheney

who held the Select Committee on January 6th, Liz Cheney, I mean, at some level, you're like, "Why do you have to, you know, have a committee laying down the facts of something that just happened?" But wasn't she smart to do that? To lay down the -- didn't she -- wasn't there some prescience in understanding how this was going to unfold that she did all of those interviews and laid down all of that evidence so early on?

You know, Ritz over on the Discord writes, this event made me feel hopeless for America and continues to erode whatever sense of civic identity I've held onto over this past decade. The fact that there was no common ground on the merits of this, it'll only contribute to the same tension we'll see in the next few years. I have to say, I wondered if that sentiment is part of what drove you to make this podcast. Like that may be that sense that you've talked about of like trying to

have a sense of connection to someone who's caught up in this maelstrom is maybe the kind of thing where you think, "Oh, we could pull them out," or we could, they could, like, we can somehow end this, but that's not actually what happens, right? Yeah, I mean, did you say this person's name was Ritz? Ritz, yeah. Okay, well, I have struggled with this myself. I mean, I have struggled with this feeling as a journalist, as an American citizen, sort of, what are you gonna do in this moment?

And one time I had a terrible incident, which is when I was reporting this podcast, I sat down next to a sort of left-wing neighbor who had been tweeting at these other January 6 neighbors of mine for a while, but they'd never met face-to-face. But they kind of accidentally ran into each other in the courtroom. Right.

And I looked at the two of them and I thought, "Oh, they're meeting face to face for the first time." I turned on my recorder. You know, I was expecting some speck of humanity, as often occurs when you're face to face with someone who you've only kind of insulted online for a long time. And there was none. Like, the left-wing person said unbelievably, like, cruel things, in this case about Mickey and her daughter.

to her face exactly the way she said online. And that was the moment, Ritz, that I said, okay, I can't, we can't go down this road. Like, we cannot keep marching towards this kind of despair. Like, this is a bad road. So we have to try something else, even if we don't

know the end of it. There has to be some worth to continuing to talk to people, even if you have no guarantee or evidence yet that it is yielding anything. You just have to keep doing it, because otherwise we're just going to become our nasty avatars, like, on the earth. And that's terrible.

But I mean, I imagine you've gotten some pushback from listeners of like, why? Why is this too sympathetic a portrait? Like even to go down this road of humanizing people who made this particular attack on, you know, our elections, our democracy and all these things that this is that it's too sympathetic.

Oh, absolutely. It's not just listeners. You know, a federal judge called our project appalling. So it's not just listeners. I mean, there is the thing we debate of platforming, meaning you're giving airtime and space to people who have dangerous ideas. And even this idea that you're sort of spurring sympathy for people who have dangerous ideas and thus

sapping energy for fighting back against them. Like, I am sympathetic with that idea. I understand that dynamic. You know, if you were to listen to a radio story about a terrible person and your heart starts to break a little bit for this terrible person, well, you think, "Okay, well, I'm not going to get out and march in the streets," as one of your listeners said, because maybe they're people just like us, and it's not so bad. So I understand how that dynamic works.

I don't think we would have done it if they weren't our neighbors. Like, if we didn't have -- I don't think I would have sought them out or gone out to report about them, but something about the fact that they lived down the block from us and were a natural part of our community, and our dogs ran into each other on the street sometimes, and I knew the name of their dog just because everybody knows the names of everybody's dogs. That just created a different framework for us to walk into this, but otherwise, I think it would have been hard.

Let's bring in Bola in San Jose. Welcome. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, everybody. I really love this talk. What I wanted to say was there was one image that I remember of one of the insurrectionists. I think he was part of QAnon. He was in Nancy Pelosi's office, probably with a weapon and then looking for her.

that they're not looking for her and then just kind of just putting his feet up on her desk, just desecrating her desk, just showing all signs of disrespect. And also now that it's four years later and now the person coming back in is

is gonna possibly pardon most of these people and some of them are also from California is really terrifying because we don't know where they are in California. Because I heard, I think I heard on the news earlier today that some of them are from California. And it's like, you don't really know, you don't know if

If they're near you or if they're somewhere from the Bay Area. So it's like now you have to put your guard up even more. And it's just four years later, they just want to... They say that this is why I really am really concerned for this nation. They want to erase the hard truth, the cold, hard truth, especially this type of truth that we just saw four years ago, that we witnessed already.

on the news and they want to erase it just to record it and say that, oh, it didn't happen. Or it was just, it was just, it was actually just a peaceful protest. It's like, how is hurting and hurting. Then later on those police officers dying peaceful. That was not peaceful. That was violent. And that was an insult.

Related to our nation. Yeah, Bola Appreciate your perspective. Thank you so much for for calling in. I think you know one thing we haven't talked about Hana is the the kind of radicalization of some of the folks who've been who were in prison together and what might Where they might be headed, you know in the sense that you know bowl is worried about some of these folks, you know maybe becoming her neighbors and

You in particular talked with a young man who you felt like as a J6 defendant had been radicalized. Tell us a little bit about Brandon Fellows.

Yeah, Brandon Fellows is one of those people who had never been to a protest before, wasn't part of any movement, certainly not a white supremacist movement. He lived on his own, almost in the woods, you know, ran a chimney business in his hometown in New York. And he went to the jail and he was much younger than a lot of the guys in the jail and much less committed, I would say. And this is a mistake that the Justice Department did many things that were impressive. It's the largest investigation.

Justice Department history, but housing all the January 6 detainees together in a segregated unit was maybe not the best idea. Because over years and years, I guess the word you can use is radicalized, but they certainly became unified. They began to know each other. They became a network. They shared ideas. They shared legal strategies. They supported each other. I mean, that was not great.

for our future. And as this listener worries about it, the one thing I can say to the caller is they're not hiding it. You know, a lot of these former January Sixers

have run for office, continue to run for office, state office. And they generally put the pictures up on their website. So it's kind of a democratic process. They're not, it's not like you hide it, like I was a Nazi and I moved to a different country and I'm not going to tell anybody I was a Nazi. It's not happening like that. You know, people are proud of it. And so you can use

your, you know, vote essentially to be like, no, thank you about that. Now, where the pardons, we haven't talked about the pardons yet. The one thing I will say to the caller is that a part, an interesting thing about a pardon is it is not a declaration of innocence. Pardoning someone is acknowledging that they did something wrong.

But that you want to close the chapter on that thing. I'm not saying that Donald Trump has good intentions or is thinking of it this way. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong to pardon people, but I am saying it is not a declaration of innocence. If you pardon someone, you're saying they were guilty, they did commit this crime, but I pardon them and I pardon them. So it's complicated.

Let's just hear one short clip of Brendan from your podcast. Like, how long are you going to stay in D.C.? Do you have a plan here? Yeah, I plan to stay till like January 7th. Wow. Yeah, that was my kind of plan. That feels vaguely threatening. Yeah.

I could see why you would say that, especially considering, you know, my feelings. About violence? Well, about how, man, I wish after seeing all the chaos that's happened in the world and to the country, how I wish people did more on January 6th instead of like me taking selfies and just smiling. I think it would have been better off if people actually would have actually been there for, like more people would have actually been there for an insurrection.

Thanks for playing that again. Yeah. I mean, where does this go? I mean, where does this go? I mean, you basically described like the seed of a network of people who have...

taken exactly the opposite lesson from I think most of our listeners about what January 6 was about. Well, it's funny listening to that clip now in the wake of Donald Trump's victory. I have a different question for all of us, which is where does all that rebellious anti-deep state energy going to go? Like if Donald Trump won and he is the head of the deep state or the head of the state,

What happens to that Brandon Fellows-like resistance? Who does it get turned against? Does Donald Trump have to endlessly create conspiracies of some deep state that isn't him that's stopping thus and such from happening, like the price of eggs from going down? I don't really know how the dynamic is going to unfold. I was worried about Brandon Fellows and what he was saying

in the context of Donald Trump losing a second insurrection and a second conspiracy because the first one had been so successful. But now that he legitimately won, I don't I don't know where this energy goes, where it finds a home. It is.

It is a true mystery. It's honestly one of those things where you because it's not going to go away. I mean, I think that what seems really clear is you can't have moved into this conspiratorial space and come back. Like I've been covering things all the way back to like Gamergate for those who might remember. So many of these characters return in a different guise. And let's leave with let's leave with a hopeful note that maybe it will turn on the rich.

Like on the elites and the rich. So then then it will lead to some economic upheaval, which would be good for all of us. There you go. We are talking about the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol took place four years ago today. Been joined by Hannah Rosen, host of Radio Atlantic, has a new narrative podcast called We Live Here Now that explored the quote justice for January 6th movement. Thanks for joining us, Hannah. Thank you so much.

Earlier, we were joined by Sarah Weier, senior national political correspondent with USA Today, who was reporting from the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Great to be back with you all. Thank you for your comments and your calls. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with guest host Grace Wong. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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