- Moderator
- #801
There is just no way a thinking person can come to the conclusion this was a threat. Protestors in the Capitol were unarmed.
LET'S BE CLEAR:
- The protest at the capitol went too far and got out of hand but was organized and started days earlier and planned for long before Trump's Eclipse speech.
- Pelosi and others knew of the event in advance and took steps to REDUCE security.
- Not one gun or firearm or real weapon was found on a single person entering the Capitol.
- The people who pushed into the Capitol were acting independently and no one was even sure where to go or what they were doing.
- Most everything brought in to use to gain entrance and to fight police was stuff they found THERE and picked up on the grounds.
- Ashli Babbit was a little woman. She was climbing through a small opening in a door or window with broken glass. Lieutenant Byrd was this BIG BLACK DUDE. He could have grabbed her and thrown her to the ground. He could have shoved her back with one hand to the face. The ONLY reason why he is being protected and not prosecuted is because he was a black guy and she was white, and it happened at the Capitol.
That's not entirely true.
There were multiple security failures on multiple levels - much of which has to do with the fact that no one though the mob was really that dangerous and no one wanted the "optics" of a militarized looking capital.
Many rioters came prepared for violence. This is reflected in the messaging between various individuals and groups both loosely and well organized. They came with baseball bats, solid metal "flag poles", zip ties, bear spray (you don't find that hanging around the capital), pepper spray and stun guns.
The mob was a mix of people - those who came for the protest and got caught up in the moment, those who came as individuals looking to cause mayhem, those who came as part of organized groups.
"Pushed into" the capital distorts what really happened, police viciously beaten, barricades used to shatter glass, people climbing up and breaking into windows...
The police did not have the time or the luxury to assume that because Babbit was a "little woman" she posed "no danger". For all they knew she could have had a gun on her they didn't see, and while they were engaged in "hand to hand" combat with her, the others would be pouring in and attacking the congresspeople who were still there.