12 THENEWYORKER,JANUARY18, 2021
domestic and global security, can be ex-
cused for finding it curious that so many
are now taking the exit ramp for the
road to Damascus three years and fifty
weeks later. How surprising can Trump’s
recent provocation be when for years he
has served as an inspiration to bigots
everywhere, to damaged souls plotting
to mail pipe bombs to journalists and
to kidnap the governor of Michigan?
This dawning of conscience is as be-
witching as it is belated. The grandees
of the G.O.P. always knew who Trump
was—they were among the earliest to
confront his most salient qualities.
During the 2016 campaign, Ted Cruz
called Trump “a pathological liar” and
“a snivelling coward.” Chris Christie de-
scribed him as a “carnival barker.” Mitch
McConnell remarked, with poetic un-
derstatement, that Trump “doesn’t know
a lot about the issues.” And Lindsey
Graham warned, “If we nominate
Trump, we will get destroyed.” He added,
“And we will deserve it.”
Trump’s influences, conscious or not,
include Father Coughlin, Joseph Mc-
Carthy, Roy Cohn, Newt Gingrich, the
Tea Party, and more, but his reality-show
wealth, his flair for social media, and an
attunement to white identity politics
made him a man for his time. And,
when he won, nearly everyone in the
Republican establishment capitulated
and sought a place in the firmament of
power: Cruz, Christie, McConnell, and
Graham; Mike Pence, William Barr,
Betsy DeVos, Elaine Chao, Rupert Mur-
doch, and so many others.
Part of the bargain was ideological:
if Trump came through with tax cuts
for the wealthy and for corporations,
and appointed conservative judges, then
the humblings could be absorbed. Gra-
ham would overlook the way Trump at-
tacked the war record of his close friend
John McCain, as long as he got to play
golf with the President and be seen as
an insider. Cruz would ignore the way
Trump had implied that his father was
somehow involved in the assassination
of J.F.K., as long as he could count on
Trump’s support in his next campaign.
And Pence, who hungered for the Pres-
idency, apparently figured that he could
survive the daily humiliations as the
President’s courtier, assuming that his
reward would be Trump’s blessing and
his “base voters.” But, as Trump’s New
York business partners knew, contractswith him are vapor; the price of the
ticket is never fixed.
Donald Trump still has millions of
supporters, but he is likely a spent force
as a politician. The three-minute-long
speech he gave on Thursday night, call-
ing for an orderly transfer of power, was
as sincere as a hostage’s gunpoint con-
fession. He may yet be impeached again,
two feet from the exit door. He could
return as a TV blowhard for hire, but
in the future his most prominent place
in public life may well be in a courtroom.
In a disgraceful time, Joe Biden has
acted with grace. He has been clear about
the magnitude of what’s ahead. “The
work of the moment and the work of
the next four years must be the resto-
ration of democracy, of decency, honor,
respect, the rule of law,” he has said. But
repairing the “national fabric,” as Lin-
coln put it, is only part of what awaits
Biden. So many issues––the climate ca-
tastrophe, the pandemic, the racial cri-
sis––will not tolerate delay or merely
symbolic change. The moment will not
tolerate distractions. Donald Trump is
just days from his eclipse. It cannot come
soon enough.
—David RemnickONCAPITOLHILL
“MA’AM,WE’VEGOTTOGO”
W
hen one of the sergeant-at-arms
staffers on the floor of the House
of Representatives said that people were
starting to move toward the Capitol, we
didn’t think much of it. We’ve had plenty
of protests. But then you started seeing
more worry. You could feel the energy. It
wasn’t the tone, it was the face. Next they
said, “They’ve breached a wall, but ev-
erything’s fine.” Then there was another
breach over here, a breach over there. It
just kept cascading. That was when we
started hearing, “Do we have to bring the
Speaker down from the rostrum?”
I’m the floor director for Speaker
Nancy Pelosi. My job is to make sure
that the House floor runs properly. Any
legislative procedure that comes into
the chamber falls under my staff ’s pur-
view. I came to D.C. after college, in
the nineties, and started waiting tables
at California Pizza Kitchen while I
figured out how to get a job. I remem-
ber, when I first started working on the
Hill, someone said, “You’ll know when
it’s time to leave when you don’t have
that tingle when you see the Capitol.”
Now I live a mile away, and when I walk
to work the sun is behind me, shining
on the Capitol, and when I walk out, if
I turn around, I see the sun setting over
the Capitol. It’s special.
Originally, we’d been planning on
spending more than twenty-four hours
in the chamber. When the Arizona chal-
lenge happened, the Senate paraded
out. They took the certified ballots with
them in these big, fancy brown boxes
that have been used for years.
As the notices came in, I found my
old boss, Congressman Jim McGovern,
from Massachusetts. I said, “Hey, we
might need you up in the chair, just
hold tight.” He’s the chairman of the
Rules Committee. He knows that some-
times the Speaker just needs a break.All of a sudden, it hit. They say, “We
need to bring the Speaker down.” I asked
to not do this so fast that it’s chaotic.
Let’s make it look normal. She was not
expecting to come down. I said, “Ma’am,
we’ve got to go.” We put Mr. McGov-
ern up, she went out the doors, and
she was out of my sight. The Majority
Leader, the Majority Whip, and the
Minority Whip, they were pulled out,
too. That was when it really hit people.
It was a weird vibe. Some were calm,
some getting agitated, and then you
had a machismo from some people. The
noise in the chamber picked up. Peo-
ple were really loud, really not listen-
ing. I went into the center of the cham-
ber and just yelled, “Everyone sit down,
stay calm, let’s get some information!”
Capitol police said, “They’re com-
ing. They’re inside the building.” They
told us to pull out escape hoods—the
gas masks. They started pointing: “Lock
that door, lock that door!” We helped
the police move a couple of old, credenza-
type bookshelves into place in front of
the doors. We become a hermetically