Capitol shame
Washington: In an unprecedented assault on democracy in the US, thousands of violent supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building here and clashed with police, resulting in four deaths and interrupting a constitutional process by Congress to affirm the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris in the election.
The Electoral College votes of Biden and Harris were finally approved early on Thursday after both the Senate and the House of Representatives rejected all objections raised by the Republicans to the votes in the states of Pennsylvania and Arizona.
The nation's elected representatives scrambled to crouch under desks and don gas marks, while police futilely tried to barricade the building, one of the most jarring scenes ever to unfold in a seat of American political power. A woman was shot and killed inside the Capitol, and Washington's Mayor Muriel Bowser extended the public emergency for 15 days following the mayhem and chaos created.
The rioters were egged on by Trump, who has spent weeks falsely attacking the integrity of the election and had urged his supporters to descend on Washington Wednesday to protest Congress' formal approval of Biden's victory. Some Republican lawmakers were in the midst of raising objections to the results on his behalf when the proceedings were abruptly halted by the mob.
Together, the protests and the GOP election objections amounted to an almost unthinkable challenge to American democracy and exposed the depths of the divisions that have coursed through the country during Trump's four years in office. Though the efforts to block Biden from being sworn in on January 20 were sure to fail, the support Trump has received for his efforts to overturn the election results have badly strained the nation's democratic guardrails.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers were resuming the counting of electoral votes on Wednesday evening after the Capitol was cleared of the pro-Trump occupiers.
The President gave his supporters an added boost on Wednesday morning during an appearance at a rally outside the White House, where he urged them to march to the Capitol. He spent much of the afternoon in his private dining room off the Oval Office watching scenes of the violence on television. At the urging of his staff, he reluctantly issued a pair of tweets and a taped video telling his supporters it was time to "go home in peace" — yet he still said he backed their cause. Later in the day, Twitter and Facebook blocked Trump's account.
A sombre President-elect Biden, two weeks away from being inaugurated, said American democracy was "under unprecedented assault," a sentiment echoed by many in Congress, including some Republicans.
"Let me be very clear: the scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not represent who we are. What we are seeing is a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness. This is not dissent, it's disorder. It borders on sedition, and it must end. Now," Biden said on Twitter.
Former President George W Bush said he watched the events in "disbelief and dismay." Trump, unrepentant, had tweeted: "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long."
"Remember this day forever!"
The domed Capitol building has for centuries been the scene of protests and occasional violence, including a 1954 shooting involving Puerto Rican nationalists. But Wednesday's events were particularly astounding both because they unfolded at least initially with the implicit blessing of the President and because of the underlying goal of overturning the results of a free and fair Presidential election.
Trump supporters posting on internet forums popular with far-right fringe elements celebrated the chaos. Messages posted on one turned from profane frustration over the content of Trump's speech to glee when supporters stormed the building. At least one leading figure was livestreaming video from inside the Capitol during the siege.
The mob's storming of Congress prompted bipartisan outrage, as lawmakers accused Trump of fomenting the violence with his relentless falsehoods about election fraud. Several suggested that he be prosecuted for a crime, which seems unlikely two weeks from when his term expires.
Despite Trump's repeated claims of voter fraud, election officials and his own former attorney general have said there were no problems on a scale that would change the outcome. All the states have certified their results as fair and accurate, by Republican and Democratic officials
alike.
The Pentagon said about 1,100 District of Columbia National Guard members were being mobilised to help support law enforcement at the Capitol. At least 52 arrests have been made.
