On Sept. 11, 2024, two months prior to the 2024 election, the Secretary of Homeland Security designated Jan. 6, 2025, as a “National Special Security Event.” The press release announcing this decision explained this designation had been made based on recommendations from the House Select January 6 Committee, the Government Accountability Office, and the D.C. mayor’s office. It also somberly noted, “This marks the first time a National Special Security Event designation has been granted for a Certification of Electoral Votes.”
The need for this new designation is, of course, the direct result of the attempted violent insurrection four years ago today led by Donald Trump in a desperate attempt to stay in office after losing the 2020 election. The violence Trump encouraged and unleashed that day resulted in the death of one protester and injured 138 police officers, 15 of whom were hospitalized.
Robert P. Jones
In an interview with The New York Times, a Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson described the brutal injuries from the hand-to-hand combat: “I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake.”
Four police officers took their own lives in the months after their experience of being attacked by their fellow citizens.
Trump’s behavior that day is a national disgrace and provides one of the clearest windows into the character of the man the American people have chosen to put back into power.
Here are three disturbing reminders of Trump’s documented actions that day:
- Trump had planned a television backdrop of about 50,000 supporters for his infamous January 6 Ellipse speech, but it was only partially filled because about half his supporters refused to be screened for weapons, a requirement for entry. According to testimony by Cassidy Hutchins, Trump was furious. “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” he screamed. “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Take the fucking mags away”
- During his hour-long speech, Trump told his supporters to prepare to fight: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. … We’re going to try and give them (Republicans) the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
- Even after Trump knew the protesters had attacked Capitol police and breached the security perimeter, endangering Mike Pence, members of Congress and their staff, and while reportedly watching the attacks from the White House on Fox News, he tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
Most disturbingly, Trump never has conceded his loss in the 2020 election. He not only has continued to promote that falsehood throughout his campaign but also has made belief in that Big Lie a litmus test of loyalty and a precondition for joining his administration. And among his followers, he has largely succeeded in inserting his lie into their accepted reality: PRRI’s 2024 American Values Survey found 62% of Republicans continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
“Most disturbingly, Trump never has conceded his loss in the 2020 election.”
While Trump was impeached (the second time) for “incitement of insurrection” for his role that day, he of course was not solely responsible for the violence. I also was deeply disturbed by the white Christian nationalists who participated in the insurrection that day. After watching the disturbing television coverage on January 6, 2021, I stayed up late that night and wrote a piece for Religion News Service, which was published the next morning.
I wrote in part:
If there was one thing of value to come out of the shameful chaos of yesterday’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, it’s that the horrific events made plain the powerful ideological and theological currents of American politics that often stay just under the surface. The emblems carried by the rioters — particularly the comfortable juxtaposition of Christian and white supremacist symbols — bear witness to these forces.
There were crosses, “Jesus Saves” signs and “Jesus 2020” flags that mimicked the design of the Trump flags.
Some of the participants, organized as part of a “Jericho March,” blew shofars — Jewish ritual horns — as they circled the Capitol, reenacting the siege of the city of Jericho by the Israelites described in the book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible. And one video showed the Christian flag — white, with a blue canton containing a red cross, used by many white evangelical churches — being paraded into an empty congressional chamber after the doors had been breached and members of Congress evacuated. …
If we are to understand the events of yesterday, and the challenges ahead for us as a nation, we must take these symbols and this rhetoric seriously, not in isolation, but in combination and conversation with each other.
This seditious mob was motivated not just by loyalty to Trump, but by an unholy amalgamation of white supremacy and Christianity that has plagued our nation since its inception and is still with us today.
I am grateful we did not experience another assault on the U.S. Capitol building today. I am grateful our local hospitals are not filled with the battered bodies of police officers who showed up to work to ensure our elected representatives could perform a routine but vital task of certifying the electoral college vote. I am grateful the only thing shutting down our offices in D.C. today, which are just a few blocks from the White House, is a gentle snow storm.
But the likely peaceful certification of the results of a free and fair election this January 6 offers little reassurance about the future of our democracy. It is merely the contingent result of the victory of the man and the party who would undermine democracy over the woman and the party who would uphold it.
Robert P. Jones serves as president and founder of PRRI and is the author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future and White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award.
This column originally appeared on Robert P. Jones’s substack #WhiteTooLong.
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