Supporters of the outgoing U.S. President, Donald Trump, breached the U.S. Congress buildings while American lawmakers were gathered to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
After having tried the legal route (60 lawsuits filed—all rejected—or urging Republican lawmakers to oppose Biden’s victory in Congress), and scheming (ordering to “find” 12,000 missing votes in Georgia), Trump played his last card: sedition.
The outgoing president boasts of having gathered in Washington “hundreds of thousands” of supporters for his march against the “theft of the election.” Trump has just lost a major ally: his vice president, Mike Pence.
While Trump asked him to turn the tonight’s purely ceremonial event in Congress into a quasi-coup, Pence acknowledged that he was “not in a position to overturn the results of the election.” Increasingly isolated, Donald Trump harshly lashed out at his own Republican camp.
The outgoing president, who refuses to concede defeat. “We will never give up. We will never concede,” “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide,” he insisted, against all evidence and despite the lack of proof supporting claims of electoral fraud.
Then he called on his supporters to rally on the fringes of this ceremonial session. After listening to him, some protesters marched towards Congress for a show of force, as Congress began to certify the presidential election results.
This ceremonial session was interrupted when Trump’s supporters attempted to enter the Capitol, and senators and representatives were forced to evacuate the chamber for safety.
Through his egocentrism, Donald Trump wanted to play the populism card to the end. In reality, through his actions, he gave voice to the mob and inflicted a wound to democracy.
All that will remain from the end of his mandate is shame.
During the night, a woman succumbed to a gunshot wound sustained within the Capitol grounds.
