Mark Danner

“Trump's campaign rhetoric so often flirts with incitements to violence that most of those comments scarcely even make the news. We are long accustomed to him denouncing his opponents or his judges or members of the news media as traitors. He must come up with something truly striking and original—for example, calling for the chairman of the joint chiefs to be executed for treason—to make us take notice.”

“By virtue of Trump's embodied grievance, his shamelessness, and his daring and skill at shaping a narrative—and then, when it is debunked, shaping another—Trump proves himself victorious, again and again, in attracting and holding eyeballs, which are the golden currency of our age. That American politics was destined to be absorbed by television and the communication and entertainment media it spawned could be foreseen as far back as John F. Kennedy, but the "reality star" Donald Trump is this new world's first grand apotheosis.”

“That the Steal came fully formed from the president's mind and grew thanks to the fear and negligence of the politicians who thought they could "humor" him, that such a demonstrably false idea is now, as a firmly held belief of half the American electorate, a dominating strain in American history—that these astonishing events could come to disfigure the public life of the United States testifies to the decadence of the country's traditional hierarchies of power and information.”

“[After referring to warnings from the FBI and Trump's tweets to his supporters] Despite these warnings, Capitol Police leaders failed to request or assign a single extra police officer to duty that day, and few who were on duty were in riot gear. Mutual sympathies between police and Trump marchers are well known—"Back the Blue!" is a frequent chant at his rallies—and there were clearly many police and military among the marchers.”

“The thousands of crusaders were pouring from Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues and coursing freely, like blood from an open wound, onto the unobstructed Capitol grounds. Screaming protesters, some shooting pepper spray or bear spray or thrusting their flags like spears, had been facing off against the outnumbered and under-armed Capitol Police since before Trump had finished speaking. Already the flimsy line of metal barriers had been breached, the crowd had pushed past the base of the steps, the single line of police, broken and bedraggled, struggled to keep them out of the building.”

“[Observing the Trump rally at The Ellipse preceding the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021] The imagery of Trumpism is about strength and cruelty and dominance even as the rhetoric is about loss and grievance and victimization: about what was taken and what must be seized back by strength.”