Jan. 6, Part 1: ‘The Herd Mentality’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Who exactly joined the mob that, almost a year ago, on Jan. 6, breached the walls of the U.S. Capitol in a bid to halt the certification of President Biden’s election victory? Members of far-right extremist groups were present but so too were also doctors, lawyers, substitute teachers and church deacons, many of whom had previously been nonpolitical. The question of why they were at the Capitol that day is hard to answer, but some of the most useful clues come from three F.B.I. interviews that have been released to the public. Today, in the first of a three-part look at what happened on Jan. 6 and what it tells us about the state of American democracy, using voice actors, we bring one of those interviews to life — that of Robert Reeder, a father and delivery driver from suburban Maryland.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is the Daily.
0:06.0	One year ago, tomorrow, an unfathomable scene played out at the US Capitol.
0:12.0	Matt has speaker members of Congress pursued the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
0:18.0	The Senate and House of Representatives are meeting in joint session.
0:21.0	That morning, Congress was scheduled to certify the results of the 2020 election,
0:26.0	making Joe Biden the next president of the United States.
0:30.0	For weeks, Donald Trump and his allies had been working to subvert those results,
0:36.0	pressuring state and local election officials, submitting lawsuit after lawsuit,
0:42.0	and calling on the vice president himself not to perform his constitutional duty
0:48.0	in certifying Biden's victory. All of that had failed, and so on January 6th,
0:55.0	our country has been under siege for a long time.
0:59.0	President Trump went to the National Mall, and you're the real people.
1:03.0	You're the people that built this nation.
1:06.0	You're not being the people.
1:07.0	And urged the thousands of Americans who had gathered there to march on the Capitol and quote,
1:13.0	we fight. We fight like hell.
1:16.0	Fight like hell.
1:18.0	And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
1:21.0	And so, we are going to the Capitol, where our problems are.
1:27.0	The country watched as scenes of chaos and violence,
1:31.0	played out in the halls of government.
1:37.0	As rioters flooded through the doors,
	...

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