Trump Supporters Would Vote for Trump Again

Donald Trump was met with cheers are chants at the "Salvage America" rally on Jan. half-dozen. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

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Donald Trump was met with thanks are chants at the "Save America" rally on January. half-dozen.

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Editor'southward note: This story contains language that may be offensive.

"I was standing amid thousands of Trump supporters on the lawn rising upwards to the Washington Monument," says NPR's Tom Bowman. "Then Trump came on stage to raucous applause."

Bowman was reporting from the "Save America" rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. six. Upwardly until the indicate when former President Trump began speaking, the rally held a festive air, virtually like a football game, he said. "Some Trump supporters were singing YMCA but using the letters M-A-G-A."

Just things were different at the Capitol building, where I was standing with Hannah Allam, NPR'due south extremism reporter. The far-right grouping the Proud Boys had merely shown upwards and were organizing a crowd to head for the rally. We had quietly embedded ourselves with them as they began to walk due west on Pennsylvania Artery.

Then suddenly, they stopped. And turned around. The rally was on its way to us.

Moments earlier, Trump had claimed ballot fraud, called the results "balderdash****" and told the crowd to meet him at the Capitol. Thousands complied, many not even waiting for Trump to finish his spoken communication.

What happened adjacent is yet a bit of a mistiness. Hannah and I saw a roaring sea of people and flags moving toward us. I barely had time to change the batteries in my recording equipment before nosotros were surrounded.

And everyone knows what happened next.

Pro-Trump supporters tempest the U.S. Capitol post-obit the rally. Samuel Corum/Getty Images hide caption

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Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following the rally.

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A makeshift gallows. A changing narrative

It's been a year since that pro-Trump mob bankrupt through the Capitol doors and windows, attacked police force enforcement and media and vandalized the building as lawmakers were rushed to secure locations. Five people died in or as a result of the attack and 140 police officers were assaulted, along with members of the media.

Equally it was unfolding, we asked one of the rioters, who called himself "Joe from Ohio," what the goal was.

"The people in this house, who stole this election from u.s.a., hanging from a gallows out hither in this lawn for the whole world to run across, so it never happens once again," he said. "That'southward what needs to happen. Four by four by four, hanging from a rope out here for treason."

A makeshift gallows with a noose was actually built on the Capitol grounds that twenty-four hours but was never used.

A noose was seen on makeshift gallows as Trump supporters gathered on the w side of the U.S. Capitol. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hibernate caption

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A noose was seen on makeshift gallows as Trump supporters gathered on the due west side of the U.S. Capitol.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

On some other side of the Capitol, Tom Bowman was talking to Natalie O'Brien and Chris Scalcucci, a couple from Detroit. He asked them why they were doing this.

"The Democracy falling," O'Brien said. "And becoming decadent and unmanageable. And our vote non mattering at all whatsoever."

This was my view as the crowd surged to the Capitol. Lauren Hodges hide caption

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Lauren Hodges

This was my view as the crowd surged to the Capitol.

Lauren Hodges

"Considering we love our country," Scalcucci added. "And we don't want it to fall in the hands of these evil people. The stuff that they do, information technology's unforgivable."

"Our tax dollars pay for this monument. This is kind of our holding," O'Brien said.

For many who participated in the siege, it felt similar a patriotic human action. They were loyal Americans protesting what they had been told was a stolen ballot.

But as arrests keep and jail sentences begin, how have the consequences reshaped the narrative?

Last calendar month, news broke that Mark Meadows, Trump's then-chief of staff, texted with Fox News hosts on Jan. six. They were request Trump to brand a public statement to his supporters and telephone call off the riot. But by that evening, the same hosts had a different story.

"There are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd," Laura Ingraham said on her testify that night.

And that narrative spread.

A protester holds a Trump flag inside the U.S. Capitol near the Senate Chamber. Win McNamee/Getty Images hibernate caption

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A protester holds a Trump flag within the U.South. Capitol near the Senate Bedchamber.

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We know who was there

Months later, Tom Bowman and I went back to the Capitol grounds in Sept. for the "Justice for J6" rally. A lot of the people we spoke to had also been there on Jan. 6. And even so, they were echoing the story they had heard on Fox News.

"Those weren't Trump supporters," said a human being named Phil from Kentucky, claiming the only people breaking in were dressed all in black.

"So they were black helmets, black apparel, blackness backpacks who started busting the windows first," said Janie, a nurse from South Carolina, who said she saw members of Antifa and Blackness Lives Matter committing the violence. She as well claimed the Trump supporters were actually trying to fight them off. Merely when we mentioned we were on site that twenty-four hours, she admitted that she never actually came shut enough to the Capitol to run into any violence.

We let her know that the Proud Boys were dressed in all black that day, having planned to forego their usual colors of black and yellow in guild to exist "incognito."

"I didn't know that," she said.

Protesters who claim to be members of the Proud Boys assemble outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. half-dozen. Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images hibernate explanation

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Protesters who claim to be members of the Proud Boys assemble outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

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Merely the thread attempting to blame Antifa and Black Lives Affair was repeated by former President Trump himself as recently equally two weeks ago. In an interview with Candace Owens on December. 21, he also said it was FBI informants instigating the crowd.

But nosotros know who was there.

And then far, more than 700 people take been charged. The defendants are largely white, and 13% of them have ties to the armed forces or law enforcement. More than 100 of them have alleged ties to known extremist or fringe organizations, like the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters, a part of the anti-authorities militia motion. Simply the majority had no ties to extremist groups.

Supporters of those charged in the Jan. six assault attend the 'Justice for J6' rally near the U.Due south. Capitol on September eighteen. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide explanation

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Supporters of those charged in the Jan. 6 assault attend the 'Justice for J6' rally near the U.South. Capitol on September 18.

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'An American insurrectionist motility'

Tampa Bay attorney Bjorn Brunvand represents several people who were at the Capitol that 24-hour interval, including Robert Scott Palmer, who was recently sentenced to five years in prison house for assaulting law enforcement officers with a burn extinguisher, a wood plank and a flagpole. His is the longest such term yet.

"He believed in the lies that were being professed by sometime President Trump and his accomplices," Brunvand said.

But he said his client has had a major change of heart since his arrest.

"It went from 100% back up for President Trump and the idea that the election was fraudulent at the commencement ... to the recognition that he was misled. He's sitting in a detention facility here in Washington, D.C. and this large powerful former president who said 'meet me at the Capitol', he's likewise busy playing golf game and has no interest in any of the guys that have been arrested," Brunvand said.

Donald Trump at the "Save America" rally on January. half-dozen. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

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Donald Trump at the "Save America" rally on Jan. 6.

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He said Palmer took President Trump'south words that mean solar day as a directive. That he did it for him. And now he feels abandoned.

"Not just did he not show up, he'due south not there for anyone who were there and supposedly were in that location to save commonwealth and save the land. When in fact, they were doing quite the opposite," Brunvand said.

Just the idea of Jan. 6 did not dice with the 24-hour interval. The Academy of Chicago Project on Security and Threats has been tracking insurrectionist sentiment in the U.S. for a year now. Information technology constitute that 21 1000000 share the same beliefs that motivated rioters that day.

In other words, millions of Americans support the thought of political violence. Researchers phone call information technology "an American insurrectionist movement" that, a year after the attack on the Capitol, is still alive and well.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/02/1068891351/january-6-insurrection-capitol-attack-trump-anniversary

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