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Biden Owes the Capitol Police an Apology by Marc A. Thiessen
By Marc A. Thiessen
Watching never-before-seen video of the mob assaulting the U.S. Capitol presented by the House impeachment managers was infuriating. For the first time, Americans saw surveillance footage that showed just how close the rioters got to senators, congressmen, and Vice President Mike Pence. But what stood out most from Wednesday’s presentation was the heroism of the Metropolitan and Capitol police.
We saw officers running toward the mob while senators fled, holding off the horde that was just 58 steps away to give them time to escape.
We saw how Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman saved Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who was headed right for the mob until Goodman ran toward him, waving his hands, and turned him around in the opposite direction.
We saw how Secret Service officers hid the vice president in an office less than 100 feet from the ascending mob as Goodman diverted them and then exfiltrated Pence and his family to a more secure location. If Goodman had not acted and the mob had arrived seconds earlier, they would have been in eyesight of the vice president.
We saw Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) escaping down a hallway and coming within “just yards” of the rioters, before his protective detail quickly rushed him back through a pair of doors at the mouth of the hallway, and then used their bodies to hold the doors closed.
It was a war zone, and there were casualties. “Officers ended up with head damage and brain damage,” lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie B. Raskin, D-Md., told a rapt Senate chamber. An officer’s “eyes were gouged. An officer [tased by protesters] had a heart attack. An officer lost three fingers that day. Two officers have taken their own lives.” and we love them.”
But that is not what Joe Biden said immediately following the riot. Instead of praising the Capitol Police for their heroism, he accused them
After the presentation, senators whose lives the officers saved were effusive in their praise. “It was very troubling to see the great violence that our Capitol Police and others were subjected to. It tears your heart and brings tears to your eyes,” Romney said. Schumer declared, “As for me and my situation, I just want to give tremendous credit to the Capitol Police officers who were in my detail. They are utterly amazing and great, of racism. “Not only did we see the failure to protect one of the three branches of our government, we also saw a clear failure to carry out equal justice,” Biden declared. “No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true. And it is unacceptable.”
Biden’s comments were not only shameful; they were flat wrong. The video shown by House impeachment managers clearly shows that police failed to stop the mob not because of the color of their skin but because the officers were overpowered. They showed D.C. police officer Daniel Hodges screaming in pain as he tried to stop the rioters from entering the Capitol, his body trapped against a door while the mob heaved and crushed him. They played audio of the frantic radio calls of the brave officers calling for reinforcements as they struggled to hold the multitude at bay (“Multiple Capitol injuries! Multiple Capitol injuries!” one officer screamed). They played video of a Capitol Police officer shooting and killing an unarmed white woman, Ashli Babbitt, outside the House chamber in a desperate effort to stop the mob from breaching the door while members escaped. To suggest, as Biden did, that the officers who risked and gave their lives to defend Congress failed to “carry out equal justice” is a calumny.
Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is responsible for what happened in the Capitol that day. He has yet to acknowledge his responsibility, much less apologize for his role in what happened that day. But Biden ran against Trump by promising to unite the country. And at the very moment when Americans of all political stripes were united in outrage, he sought to divide us. Worse, he did it by accusing the heroes who saved our elected representatives of bigotry, saying they would have treated Black protesters differently.
He owes the Capitol Police an apology.
