16 THENEWYORKER,JANUARY18, 2021
listen to NPR.” She added, “I do not
listen to CNN, and I don’t listen to Fox,
because I’ve lost all respect. Hate ’em all.”
Krahn’s seventeen-year-old daugh-
ter, Annalee, wearing a wool Trump hat
and thumbing out a message on her
phone, approached with news. “They
found more than one explosive device
in the building. My sister just texted
me,” she said. Her mom was skeptical:
“I think they want to scare everybody
and get everyone out of here.” (Accord-
ing to law-enforcement officials, pipe
bombs were found Wednesday outside
the headquarters of the Republican and
Democratic National Committees.)
An hour or so later, after four o’clock,
word passed through the crowd that
Trump had put out a video. Two women
who had flown in from Seneca, Mis-
souri, huddled around a cell phone to
watch it. Sara Clark owns a gun store
that makes custom AK-47s. Her friend
Stacie Dunbar is a secretary in a hos-
pital. On the cracked screen of Dun-
bar’s phone, they watched Trump’s video,
a hasty production seemingly taped in
the Rose Garden. “I know your pain, I
know you’re hurt,” he told the crowd.
“We had an election that was stolen
from us. It was a landslide election, and
everyone knows it, especially the other
side. But you have to go home now; we
have to have peace. We have to have law
and order.”
What do you think? I asked.
“I don’t know,” Clark said. “It’s not
going to do us any good to beat the hell
out of everything. But we didn’t lose.
We shouldn’t give in.”
What do you do now? I asked. Clark
turned the question on her friend. “I
have no thoughts, honestly,” Dunbar
said. “I’m at an absolute loss. We’re dis-
enfranchised! It just sounded like he
just gave up. Our President! Sounded
like he just gave up. He gave in.”
Why? I asked.
“Because he doesn’t want us to do
this,” Clark said, motioning toward
the chaos.
“He doesn’t want anyone hurt. That’s
what he said,” Dunbar added. Tears
filled her eyes. “I did this for my kids,”
she said. “I have a son in the Navy, and
Trump’s done more for our military
than any President ever has.”
What did you honestly expect would
happen by coming here? I asked.
1
GEORGIAPOSTCARD
THERUN-ONS
A
dozen cars were parked outside Ad-
amson Middle School, a half hour
south of downtown Atlanta, last Tuesday
afternoon. Bundled-up and masked Geor-
gians, most of them Black, hustled in and
out to vote in the state’s Senate runoffs,
which one man referred to as “the run-
ons.” An informal exit poll of emotions
rendered a unanimous result: relief.
Joe and Tina, a couple in their thir-
ties, paused to describe low points from
the past few weeks. “It was a Democrat
who came to the door,” Joe, a logistics
technician who wore shades and a grim
expression, said. “I have Trump signs on
my lawn and whatnot. He put a War-
nock sign on my doorknob. I sent him
running away. And no one ever came
back.” Tina, an engineer with tattoos on
her midriff, reached into their truck and
pulled out “a barrage of stuff from today.”
She pointed at a piece of mail, addressed
to her using her maiden name. “I hav-
en’t had that name in, like, fifteen years,”
she said. She sifted through postcards
from strangers and flyers from the cam-
paigns and their PACs. “That’s a Perdue
one,” she said. “And a Trump one.” One
flyer claimed that the Democrats would
ban hamburgers. “That’s the most I’ve
gotten for Republicans,” she went on.
“A lot of times I get, like, ten to fifteenregister-to-vote little things as well.”
“I wasn’t going to vote,” Joe said, “be-
cause of election integrity. I’m still grind-
ing my teeth about what I just did.” He
added, “There are things I feel need to be
addressed. When you have dead voters
voting—that right there is a proven fact.”
He went on a while about things that he
said “pissed me off,” concluding, “But I
know there’s a lot of Americans count-
ing on us Georgians to save the Republic,
so I came to vote for the Republicans.” Tina
tossed the mail into the truck, nodding.
Joe returned to the doomed Demo-
cratic door knocker. “Let me tell you
how I sent him off running,” he said. “I
said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to vote.’
When he was going to leave, he said,
‘Let me take that off your door.’ That’s
when everything went upside down. I
said, ‘Why would you put this on my
door? You see all this stuff in my yard
and you’re going to put this on my effing
door.’ I think I threw it at him and said,
‘Get the eff out of here.’”
“That’s when they told you they were
from Detroit,” Tina said.
“Yeah,” Joe went on, “they weren’t
even from here. It almost seemed like
someone dropped them off.” He added,
before departing, “Republicans came by,
too. They were nice.”
The next voter to appear was a sin-
ewy owner of a small inflatables com-
pany, who introduced himself as Nick.
“Bounce houses, waterslides,” he said,
describing his company’s wares. It had
been a rough year. “I wasn’t able to rent
them out,” he said. “It’s nonessential. I
lost half the season.” He blamed the
Republicans in power, so voting for the
Democrats had been an easy choice. “A
lot of people need help.”
Election Day had a “weird vibe,” Nick
went on. “Nobody seems friendly right
now.” Interminable advertisements, he
thought, had much to do with it. “The
phone calls, the text messages, the e-mails,
then—coming down to the final week—
people showing up to my house,” he said.
“I don’t like that.” He had a video cam-
era attached to his doorbell, which he
used to address knockers. “The lady yes-
terday,” he said, shaking his head. “You
have to realize that what you find ap-
propriate, others may not. I said, ‘This
is borderline harassment.’ She was, like,
‘That’s your personal feelings.’ I said, ‘I
know what needs to be done!’ I’m cool“A win! Four more years,” Clark said,
with a mirthless laugh.
Seriously?
“Yes, absolutely,” she said.
“I wanted Pence to do the right thing,
but Pence didn’t do the right thing,”
Dunbar said.
As darkness approached, police fired
a series of flash-bang grenades to shoo
people down from the balconies and
steps. A heavyset man in a white MAGA
hat stood in a crosswalk, watching the
crowd begin to move. He was happy.
“They sent a message. That’s enough,”
he said. He turned to walk away and
added, “Of course, if we come back, it
will be with a militia.”
—Evan Osnos