John Bresnahan Helps Us Understand What The Hell Just Happened

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This is an attack on the government of the United States.

It is an extremely serious thing.

It did not even happen during the Civil War.

Welcome to The Ticket.

I'm Isaac Dover.

This week, the President of the United States incited an attack on Congress.

They are telling members of Congress to shelter in place.

They are evacuating members of the House and Senate from doing their constitutionally prescribed duties.

A mob of Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol on Wednesday.

Look at this.

These protesters are inside Statuary Hall right now.

You see the statues.

This is a moment I never saw in my life.

These individuals just rushed through security.

They are inside Statuary Hall.

As members and staff who rushed to safety

riot or smashed and vandalized or just took selfies carrying on.

Ultimately, at least four people were left dead.

I don't know about you, but this is an incredibly dangerous situation that's unfolding here in the United States.

It's stunning, Wolf.

It's absolutely stunning, and it's quite frankly dangerous.

We've spent so much of the past four years attempting to put into perspective what may seem unthinkable, but the images from this week were truly unreal to witness.

I spent a lot of time over the years reporting in the halls of Congress.

Usually, you can't even walk around in some of the rooms without a tie and jacket on.

It's not just a symbol of American democracy, home to so much of our history.

It's a place of work for hundreds of people.

But with the lies about stolen elections coming from Republican politicians driving this mob, how do we even return to a normal work in Congress?

Wednesday morning, as rioters interrupted the objections over Arizona vote counts, I was in Wilmington, Delaware, watching it all unfold, reporting on the president-elect, who also could do nothing but watch, as a mob stormed the place he worked for 36 years.

So for today's episode, I wanted to talk to someone who knows the Capitol almost as well.

John Bresnahan has spent nearly three decades covering Congress.

I knew him from when we were at Politico together, where he was their senior congressional reporter.

John is now the co-founder of Punch Ball News, a newsletter and news service, which just launched this week.

I reached out on Thursday, and he shared everything he saw the previous day, what it means for Congress going forward, and where he thinks it leaves us as a country that something like this could happen.

Take a listen.

John Bresnahan, thanks for being here on the ticket.

Thanks.

You have been through a lot of stuff at the Capitol.

You were in the Navy long before you were a reporter.

What is the moment at which it becomes clear to you that it's cracked?

And is it a scary moment when that happens?

I didn't feel particularly scared for myself personally.

I was scared for everyone.

So I had been in the House chamber and they were doing the debate over the Arizona ejection.

So we're in the House chamber and it was kind of a weird scene because the Republicans were sitting on the floor and they weren't socially distant they were all there democratic members were sitting in the gallery it was kind of weird probably 50 members sitting around me democratic members i could hear them talking and everything and then my colleague jake sherman starts bugging me he's like look there's a problem with security fence outside they you know the police directed this temporary security fence so i got up out of the chamber and walked out and you can't hear anything and so i go outside and then once i get outside the chamber you can hear the crowd I'm on the third floor of the Capitol.

So I ran down to the second floor, the rotunda, which is the big dome where you can see.

And the sound was overwhelming.

There were hundreds of people pounding on this door from the east side of the Capitol.

It's the side that faces the Supreme Court, you know, the main plaza of the Capitol.

And the sound was overwhelming.

And then there were cops rushing up to the door and they started screaming at us, get out of here.

So then I went back up to the third floor.

and that's where i could see them banging on the door and it seemed they had tools or some kind of devices they had like iron rods or something they were prepared to try to break windows i mean these are bomb proof windows on the east side of the capital and these doors so they had to be prepared to do that and that was when when i went down to the rotunda the first time and there's the sound and the anger these people screaming let us in you know stop the steel and usa and all this stuff that's when i was like this is nothing i've ever seen before

They removed everybody from the chamber.

They removed the reporters to a safe location.

Yes.

So I had left the chamber.

And by the time I left the rotunda, they had sealed the members and the reporters inside the chamber.

So there's the house floor covers actually two floors.

There's one on the second floor is where you access the floor itself.

And then there's on the third floor where you access the viewing galleries.

And they have actually literally doors that close there.

And they have people who are doorkeepers, you know, it's an old traditional job, and so they seal those doors.

So I couldn't get back into the chamber, so I went into my press gallery.

This is where all the reporters who work out of the Capitol work in press galleries.

And the way that our gallery is constructed, I was actually able to access.

There's a catwalk above the statuary hall, which is where if you ever watch the State of the Union, where all the hundreds of reporters and members of Congress do interviews right after the president ends the State of the Union speech.

So I was up like a half floor above these people, and I could see them coming into Statuary Hall, and there were no cops.

I didn't see any cops.

I sat there and watched the whole thing.

First, you'd see a couple of protesters and then a huge, you know, was a trickle and there was a flood of people.

So they were walking from the center of the Capitol, the rotunda, and they were walking toward the house, which is on the south side, and the Senate is on the north side.

And they were trying to get in the house and you could hear them banging on the doors of the house at that point inside the chamber police officers had pulled guns and they were going to shoot anybody who's trying to get in the house floor because the members were still on the floor but i was actually down there i could watch what was happening from the outside so it was kind of an extraordinary my viewing point was probably one of the better ones for any of the reporters inside the building because I wasn't locked down at that point.

And then I was sitting there for at least an hour.

And it was weird.

I saw some of these protesters.

So they're coming to Statuary Hall.

So, you know, know, there's statues of, you know, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.

And, you know, that's the original marriage chamber.

That's like that.

Yes,

that's just a room.

It's

like the history there, right?

Right.

And some of them were taking like selfies with the statues.

You know, they were like tourists.

And others, it was strange.

I saw this woman come in.

And she,

you know, she pulls out this document.

She starts giving a speech.

And she clearly had people with her.

And they formed this crowd and they were filming it.

So, you know, she was reading a speech about the Constitution.

And, you know, she was clearly doing something for social media.

That was the other thing.

They were all, you could see they were all putting stuff on social media.

And then eventually, after, you know, an hour, 75 minutes, the cops got control again because

people were running amok in the Capitol.

The SWAT team came back down toward me.

And these were really serious guys with really big guns.

And they were screaming at me to get back inside.

So I actually ended up.

back at my gallery and then I couldn't see anything and then it was sealed off and then we were eventually taken out of the building and you know, for another three or four hours.

And members of Congress were scared.

You said you were, you didn't find yourself scared at any point, but you know, these people, you've covered them, many of them, for a long time.

I mean, it seems like there was real terror going on for folks.

There's a story of Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs in a helicopter crash in Iraq, serving in the National Guard, hiding in her office,

not letting anybody in the door.

There are lots of stories of, it seems like pure terror among members of Congress who showed up to the United States Capitol.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, look, they weren't targeting me.

I'm a white, middle-aged man, you know, a reporter.

But if I take my press pass, you know, no one's going to know who I am, you know,

not in this crowd.

So, you know, a member or a senator, that's a completely different thing.

A person of color, you know, Nancy Plosi, somebody like that, that they could direct their anger toward that, you know, clearly raging and, you know, Plosi and everything she stands for.

Um, I think the members, it's a completely different scene.

And I talked to a bunch of members, and they were scared.

Remember, these extraordinarily angry, this extraordinarily angry mom got into the Capitol.

They hadn't been searched.

They could have had guns and knives and other weapons.

And, you know, we did have one shooting there.

And there were actually three other people said that the couple of the

died of like medical.

We don't know exactly what it is yet, but like some kind of medical police there.

I do know that there was one police officer who was getting CPR.

I know that.

So I hope it's not a police officer, but I don't have any reason to believe that it is.

But, you know,

look, if I was a member, I would have been scared too.

You were at the Capitol at a lot of other major moments.

You were there on September 11th.

I was.

How does what happened on Wednesday compare to what you have seen there before?

There's nothing really that can compare it.

I mean, you know, at one point yesterday, some protesters had gotten in and they were trying to open the doors so they could let in more of the other protesters in.

And one police officer in riot gear was like pushing them, trying to push them out.

And they were fighting with him.

And he got knocked out.

He was lying on the ground.

And I actually ran down and picked him up.

And then two of his colleagues came and got him.

But like, I mean, the idea that you know they were attacking police officers to get inside the building and that you know a reporter had to like physically yell pick up a police officer and drag him to safety from a crowd I mean it was just I mean there's nothing I've ever seen like that you know I was there in 1998 when the two police officers were shot

I was there in 2001 and 9-11, which was just terrifying, but

it was a lack of knowledge.

We knew what was happening here.

We knew that there were going to be these protesters outside, and they didn't prepare adequately.

And then I just, the rage of these people, the anger, once they were inside,

you know, it was just crazy.

I mean, you were, you've been covering this for the last years, last couple of weeks.

You were on Tuesday.

I saw you tweeting from being at one of the rallies that was outside the Capitol, sort of in anticipation of what Wednesday was going to be.

It didn't seem until it started like things were going to go crazy, it sounds like.

You know, there was probably five, six hundred people on Tuesday, including Mike Lindell, the My Pillow Guy, and Ellie Alexander, the organizer Stop the Steal.

I mean, they were using some pretty incendiary language.

And that was a group called, you know, Moms for America.

They were, you know, talking about rebelling and civil war.

And so it was concerning, but you know you didn't you never think well i mean the the capitol police are a really interesting force i mean they have to deal with when the capital is remember it's a it's a you know the working capital united states but it's also you know an office building and an old one at that and you know a museum and a tourist destination and really a symbolic heart of the american democracy and so they deal with protests they deal with people from all over the world coming there and they want to be heard and they want to be seen and they suffer from all sorts of issues.

I saw a Capitol Police officer on a summer day once talk a guy waving a samurai sword down.

He was on the sidewalk and he was waving around and, you know, and they could have taken out their guns and tried to do that, but this guy talked them down.

And, you know, I've seen the Capitol Police, you know, handle the million man march and stuff like that.

I mean, they try to accommodate protesters, but you know, what happened yesterday was just, you know, shocking, shocking, shocking.

They either underrated the size of the crowd or the intensity of the crowd or both.

And, you know, and then there's a lot of people criticizing the force saying officers were too accommodating these people.

And some that some officers wave them in.

And I don't know if I believe any of that.

I mean, it does seem like there's a difference between the response, just the preparations versus those that were there over last summer when the George Floyd protests were going on.

Oh, absolutely.

I think if this was a minority crowd, I think the presence would have have been dramatically scaled up.

The aggressiveness of the police would have been scaled up.

I'm going to also, though, in their defense, I don't think anybody thought that the president of the United States would be egging his followers on from, you know, his own rally a mile down the road to, you know, go protest and go, you know, tell these people how angry you are and stop the steal.

I mean, he egged on that crowd.

Yeah.

And I mean, think about it.

We had to call out the National Guard to protect the Capitol from protesters egged on by the President of the United States.

The insanity of this whole episode is unbelievable.

We're going to take a short break.

We'll have more with John Bresnahan in a moment.

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Visit washington.org to plan your trip.

One of the things that I heard in a lot of the sort of TV coverage that was coming afterwards

is this,

well, this is the end of the Trump times.

He's finally pushed it too far.

And it seems to me like there's an element of wishful thinking in that

of people who never supported Donald Trump anyway and were hoping that there would be an end to it and wanted to declare that this was it.

And then

I saw somebody on TV say, no Republican will stand with him anymore after this.

But let's talk about the political situation going forward here.

There were about a dozen senators who were going to object to Joe Biden's certification as president.

About six of them peeled off.

But in the House, there's still about 100 who were supporting it.

What does this mean going forward?

I hope this is a sobering moment for the country.

I don't know if that's the case.

There was 120

Republicans voted to

substantiate objection to Arizona's election last night.

House Republicans.

I mean, 121, just hours after the Capitol was sacked.

Including the minority leader and the whip.

Yeah, including the minority leader and the whip.

Now, I understand part of the reasoning from the leadership was like, look, we have to protect our members from, you know, this vengeful president.

We have to give them cover.

But I think at some point that has to change.

I mean, Matt Gates from Florida, a Trump ally, was standing up last night, you know, suggesting it was Antifa, you know, disguised as Trump supporters that did this.

I mean, it was insane.

You know, I saw that crowd.

I was right there watching hundreds of them.

That was an Antifa.

And there was a fight in the middle of the night in the House floor, and Connor Lamb is a congressman from Pennsylvania who is a veteran himself.

He said, We know that the attack today didn't materialize out of nowhere.

It was inspired by lies, the same lies that you're hearing in this room tonight.

And the members who are repeating those lies should be ashamed of themselves.

Their constituents should be ashamed of them.

He is a Democrat.

He was talking to Republicans.

This created in the middle of the night a fight on the House floor over whether his comments needed to be struck from the record,

which seems like a ridiculously quaint argument to have given what was going on a few hours earlier in the hallways of Congress.

Look, I don't know if the Republican Party changes direction after this.

I don't know what happens to the Republican Party.

You know, I mean, we do have a two-party system and one party can't be a reasonable partner in governing.

We have a serious problem.

I mean, you know, we have an establishment Republican Party, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, the establishment.

And then we have the other Republican Party led by Donald Trump and whatever other elements that come under that, you know, libertarian, it's attracted fringe movements, the white supremacists, QAnon, anti-vaxxers.

I mean, you know, it's Nazis walking around.

The thing that I

have found myself saying is that I remember saying to an editor a couple, two years ago about that if I had pitched a story to say that there were Nazis that were involved in some elements of the Republican Party in like 2014, I would have been told, stop being an idiot and like hyperventilating.

And now, if I pitch a story to say there are Nazis that are involved in some of the elements of the Republican Party, I would be told by an editor, yeah, everybody knows that.

Yeah, right.

And that's like the change of what's happening here is very hard to process of what goes on.

And, you know, Congress is like they have to show up in that, in those chambers every day, in the House floor and the Senate floor and theoretically like work on legislation.

It just doesn't seem to me like

there's a real lesson that is being learned, despite the fact that most people watching this would hope that there would be a lesson learned.

I, you know, I don't know.

I mean, like, I've watched, you know, a thousand proud boys march down Pennsylvania Avenue and go to the Washington Monument.

I mean, I never thought we'd see anything like that.

I, you know, I don't know where this party goes.

I don't know how the moderate, you know, there is a place, of course, in American politics for conservatives.

I mean, there has to be, you know, that's, you know, the trap proud tradition in this country.

But, you know, since the rise of the Tea Party movement, this element inside the party, and then, of course, Trump, you know, the Tea Party led to Trump eventually.

But then, you know, you throw in social media and you throw in this, you know, this anger.

And I don't know where it goes.

I don't know where the Republican Party goes.

I mean, I think I'm hoping yesterday was like a high watermark.

And like, you know, people say, you know, God, we've got to change, but I don't know.

Yeah.

In the middle of all of this, the Republican Party is sorting itself out.

We're going to have a change in power.

The Democrats will take the majority in the Senate because of those races in Georgia.

So let's close with this.

I guess you've covered a lot of back and forth.

The House switches control, the Senate switches controlled.

What is going to happen now for Joe Biden is that he is going to come in as president with, very importantly, for a new president, both the House and the Senate in his party control.

That's the way that Donald Trump had it for the first two years of his presidency, and Obama had it for the first two years of his presidency.

George Bush had it for more than the first two years of his presidency.

Bill Clinton had it for the first two years of his presidency.

This is important for what an agenda will look like.

What

happens as now we have this new

alignment of power in Washington.

How much does it change the way that things have been operating?

I mean, it's a big moment for Biden.

I mean,

you know, the thing that's most important getting Senate control is he'll gain control of the nominations.

He'll have Chuck Schumer in there.

And otherwise, he would have had to go to, you know, Mitch McConnell on every nomination.

If McConnell's the majority leader, he can just kill a nomination.

He doesn't, you know, have to even bring it up.

We saw it with Merrick Carlin when Carlin was nominated for the Supreme Court.

Now, at least, you know, Biden's going to get a hearing on his nominations.

Now, the problem is it's 50-50, so any one senator can, you know, especially on the Democratic side, can, you know, has enormous, enormous power.

But, you know, we're also going to see a huge debate inside the Democratic Party between the progressive and

moderate elements on the agenda, on Biden's agenda.

Does he push Medicare for all?

Does he push, you know, climate change legislation?

Is tax legislation?

You know, can they get it through the Senate?

And will they blow up the filibuster?

You know, will they end the filibuster in order to pass Biden's agenda?

So the major, dramatic, huge change to Senate rules to do that.

And so we're going to see a number of real serious policy and

political fights, both inside each party and then, of course, against each other.

Do you think that we're going to see a functioning Congress in Washington in the years?

Let's take it one step at a time, in the year ahead.

You know,

I mean, I've been covering the Capitol Hill every day for 27 years.

First started coming 29 years ago.

2020 was the most frustrating year to ever cover Congress.

Of course, the pandemic, which is a national tragedy and how difficult that made it.

But like to see the inaction of Congress in the face of this disaster.

that the country was going was just really like you wanted to just yell at them be like come on guys you're american do something um i think that we're going to see a very energetic Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate for this year.

How much they'll actually able to get done, how much people will,

you know,

if they, you know, try to defend their own political future rather than thinking about the country or their party, you know, that'll be the issue.

You know, just a senator saying, I'm more worried about my re-election in 2022 than getting this bill passed, which I know would help people.

People are going to have to start setting aside their own careers and do the right thing, you know for the for the country and i think you know they have to have the political courage to do it so you know i don't know i think we'll see at the initial point of this congress i think you know the next six months i think we're going to see a pretty frantic legislative pace beyond that we'll see what happens

It's a strange situation to be in as a political reporter to say it would be nice if they would set aside their careers and focus on doing the job.

But that is where you and I, and I think a lot of people are left

at this point from just seeing what has gone on,

not just in the last couple of days, but in the last bunch of years of here.

So we'll see.

But

you were the Sherpa that we needed to guide us through this.

So, John Bradnan, thanks for being here on the ticket.

Thanks for having me.

That's it for this week of the ticket, Politics from the Atlantic.

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