Trump-Incited Anarchy Reins Over Congressional Vote Count, Biden Challenges Trump to Restore Peace
At 12:00pm E.T. Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Congress gathered to count electoral college votes. No matter what media outlet you frequent, we all thought we knew what to expect: Certain leaders would object the electoral college votes, some would be granted automatically, but by the end of the day, the votes would be counted and we could look towards January 20, 2021.
Instead, American President Donald Trump spoke to his large crowd of misled and uninformed supporters, giving them false hope that they could effect the outcome of the congressional vote counting and that Vice President Mike Pence could prevent the outcome of electoral college votes being casted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He even tweeted the pressure towards Pence, who appeared to rebuke this pressure by releasing a statement prior to the session beginning.
Shortly after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a speech condemning attempts to undermine the vote count, things took a sudden turn. The growing crowd starting scaling past the police barricades, eventually climbing the steps and pushing their way through into the Capitol building. While being met by little to no resistance, they occupied the building for hours, vandalizing and stealing property, breaking into multiple offices, including Speaker Pelosi’s office (photo below). As the rest of America watched, each tweet and post was a drop in the bucket into what was a true questioning of the abysmal lack of security on federal property during an important constitutionally mandated event, while trying to making sense of the utter dismay and lawlessness taking place while Trump’s extremist group wreaked havoc.
Hours later, President-elect Biden urged “ I call on this mob to pull back and allow the work of democracy to go forward.” He then went on to say “…the words of a President matter…at their best they can inspire and at their worse they can incite. I call on President Trump to go on National Television now, to fulfill his oath and defend the constitution and demand an end to this siege.”
