In the wonderful, detailed recounting of the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol and the events surrounding it by the Washington Post, published Sunday, an episode that deserves scrutiny may be overlooked. Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham urged the Senate sergeant-at-arms and other law enforcement officers to shoot the insurrectionists:
The Senate and House leaders also had been evacuated by Capitol Police and taken to an undisclosed location, but many lawmakers remained in their chambers for a few minutes before they were led to safety in the Hart Senate Office Building. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham was irate that senators were forced to flee their own chamber. He yelled at the Senate sergeant-at-arms. “What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You’ve got guns. Use them.” The South Carolina senator was adamant. “We give you guns for a reason,” he repeated. “Use them.”
A late supporter of Donald Trump’s–he once described Trump as an “interloper and a demagogue of the greatest proportion“–Graham’s order on January 6th demonstrates that the violent Trump addicts were viewed as a danger to even the most steadfast Trump supporters and that they wanted more violence at the time. Today, however, GOP members of Congress and Trump have attached their legacy to calling the only insurrectionist killed by law enforcement that day a martyr.