A year since the Capitol insurrection, Republicans remain confused and divided

Today marks a year since the storming of the US Capitol by Trump-supporting rioters, and it promises to be one heck of an occasion. Despite the fact that the former president cancelled his own planned speech earlier in the week – reportedly after even prominent commentators on Fox News and members of the Republican Party started balking at the idea of “No 45” so clearly commemorating the occasion as a noteworthy, perhaps celebratory, event while the rest of the world looks on in horror – plenty will be said by even bolder members of the far right. Well-known firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene (her of the “Jewish space lasers”) will be making a short speech to supporters at one event; Steve Bannon will be hosting another.

This is a difficult day for the so-called Grand Old Party (GOP), which used to pride itself on perennially being on the “sensible” side of history. Rioters on 6 January last year were seen to erect a makeshift gallows and call for the execution of their own former vice president, Mike Pence. Just this week, Republican congressman for Texas Dan Crenshaw opined that Marjorie Taylor Greene must be “a Democrat or an idiot”. And former majority leader Mitch McConnell, a former friend of Joe Biden and a well-respected Republican before the difficult Trump years, has spent the past few days clearly struggling with the anniversary. On Wednesday, he said Senate Democrats were “distasteful” for pushing voting rights bills on and around 6 January. He also tweeted, with little sense of irony, that he thought Democrats were planning “a one-party takeover of our democracy”.

Of course, the people who ran into the Capitol in Washington DC with weapons and bizarre costumes were the ones who seemed to take real issue with democracy, considering their stated aim was to stop the certification of a democratic election. Though many carried pro-police “Blue Lives Matter” (BLM) flags, the mob viciously attacked members of the Capitol Police force, maiming and traumatising some and killing one (additionally, two later died by suicide). Altogether, 140 officers from both the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington sustained injuries that ranged from concussions and a heart attack to broken fingers and bruises. Protesters, too, were injured and one – Ashli Babbitt, an ex-veteran from California who had professed her belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory – was shot and killed during the insurrection as she tried to breach the Capitol.

As a member of The Independent’s US team, 6 January is burned into my memory. Much of the country remained in lockdown due to Covid when the small “Stop the Steal” rally where Trump spoke suddenly became a riot. As photographs and reports came pouring in from our journalists on the ground in DC, I watched footage from my locked-down apartment in New York in disbelief. I vividly remember turning to my husband and saying that we were about to witness a truly historical moment.

What this historical moment really means for the US, however, is still too soon to say. Many Republicans and their supporters refuse to condemn the deadly riot, despite the fact that we now know Fox News commentators sent text messages begging Trump to get on air and distance himself from the violent protesters. Those commentators warned him and his advisers that he was at risk of destroying his own legacy. It’s clear that, for many, a line had finally been crossed. What’s so shocking is that, for others, it hadn’t.

Yours,

Holly Baxter

US opinion editor