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America feels more divided than ever, one year on
From a professional point of view, it is disgusting to see so-called journalists fueling the divisions and stoking the conspiracy theories that have caused so much destruction in this country.
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Supporters of US President Donald Trump protest inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. - Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. (Agence France Presse/Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
T
he moment from Jan. 6, 2021 that will always stay with me came about an hour into the insurrection. I was on the steps on the north terrace of the Capitol with our group of six. Somehow, some in the crowd had figured out that we worked for CNN.
Word spread quickly, it felt like all eyes were on us and instantly, profoundly hostile. Within moments we were being pushed and jostled, while countless others jeered, shouted and swore at us. We knew immediately we had to get out of there and we began to walk through an increasingly agitated tunnel of people as rioters hurled abuse at us.
One man followed alongside, wagging his gloved finger at us. He was probably no more than 30 years old, tall, wearing a black jacket and a khaki-colored backpack, with a scarf pulled up over his mouth and nose. “Who are you with?” he demanded to know. “There’s more of us than you,” he repeated twice. “We could f***ing destroy you right now,” he said, coldly. “You’re traitors.”
I had reported on Trump rallies before and witnessed the hostility toward the media that the former president’s rhetoric could whip up. Journalists had been under sustained attack from the administration for four years, and the safety of reporters had become an ever-greater concern, with physical threats increasingly commonplace. The animosity we would see boiling over that day had long been simmering, and the damage to people’s faith in the press had been done.
My team and I had arrived at the Capitol that day shortly after Trump’s rally at the Ellipse ended. We knew people were moving toward the building itself, but we didn’t have a sense of what that would look like. We were certainly prepared for the possibility that things could get a little out of hand, but there was no real sense of what was to come.
Suddenly, protesters started storming up the west side where Biden was to be inaugurated in just two weeks’ time. Others started scaling the wall in front of us to climb up to the terrace of the Capitol. The insurrection was fully underway.
In the months following that day we learned that intelligence existed showing the potential for things to get out of control and threaten the Capitol and those inside. But it was ignored, and the correct forces were not in place to prevent what happened. On the ground, the size of the crowd compared to the police presence took me by surprise.
A year on, it often feels like the country hardly learned a thing from that day, and politically the differences have become more entrenched. For Democrats there’s little doubt about what happened and that it was fueled by Donald Trump; for many Republicans it’s a day that is ignored at best or completely written off as a hoax at worst.
The collective shock that millions of people around the world felt that day watching America’s seat of government get overrun is dismissed by so many here, whose own “People’s House” was desecrated.
As we enter a year of critical midterm elections, the “Big Lie” remains alive and well. Polls tell us the majority of Republican voters believe the election of Joe Biden was not legitimate, and those in the GOP who have pushed back on that, or spoken out against the insurrectionists, have been ostracized by the party. In many respects the divisions revealed last January have only widened.
From a personal point of view, the shock of that day remains. I had never been attacked like that before, and like other journalists there I was simply doing my job. Fellow Americans, self-proclaimed “patriots”, chanting “traitor” at us, threatening to “destroy” us; I’d never seen animosity like that up close.
From a professional point of view, it is disgusting to see so-called journalists fueling the divisions and stoking the conspiracy theories that have caused so much destruction in this country.
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The writer is senior national security correspondent at CNN. Follow CNN’s special coverage of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on CNN International from 9:45 pm HKT and at CNN.com on Thursday.
