 the House Select Committee, which is tasked with investigating the January 6th insurrection, held their first hearing today, and we heard from four Capitol Police officers, and I wanted to talk about their testimonies because what they reveal, it's not like the details here are surprising, we're not learning that much new, but they kind of share their personal experiences, and it really speaks to just how serious the situation was, and further confirms what we already suspected, that these individuals showed up because Donald Trump told them to. They thought that they were there to fight for democracy and Donald Trump, because Donald Trump led them to believe that the election was stolen, so they were just doing what they thought was, you know, the patriotic thing that they were obligated to do. Now, I get why a lot of leftists don't really talk about this issue too much, because it can be a relatively Libby subject, for lack of a better word. I mean, Democrats, we already know that they're going to use this to distract from the real issues, distract from the fact that they're in power, and they're not doing very much to actually help people in America who are suffering, and I don't want them to use this as some sort of a distraction, even if it is important, like I want them to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. I want them to do this, get to the bottom of what happened, hold people like Donald Trump accountable, and then also pass policies that will benefit the lives of their constituents, and on top of that, you know, another fear that I worry here is that the outcome will produce something similar to the Patriot Act, right? I don't necessarily believe anything significant is going to come of this at this point in time, but after 9-11, everyone was so worried and fearful that we basically gave the government permission to do what was necessary to protect us, which is what basically led to the Patriot Act, and of course, they seized the opportunity, they capitalized on tragedy to take advantage of us, but we have to look out for civil liberties. We can't let that happen again. And till this day, we haven't been able to undo the damage caused by the last round of attacks on our civil liberties, so I don't want this to lead to more surveillance. I don't want the outcome or the conclusion of this to be that we need to, you know, further enhance our police state. I don't want any of that. But having said that, this is still a deeply important issue. That is really something that we all need to pay attention to. I am absolutely of the belief that everyone should be concerned with the fact that one party in the United States of America is basically authoritarian now. They are fighting against democracy. So we're no longer having this conversation about socialism versus capitalism. We're having a conversation about democracy and no longer having a democracy. That's the difference now between the Democratic and the Republican Party. And I don't want to have this conversation. I want to accept that we all believe in democracy collectively as a society and move on and have the debate around policies. That's what I care about. But we can't do that. We can't even talk about policy and what's possible if a party is going to fight against democracy, which keeps us from making our voices heard. I mean, we see how the GOP is using Trump's stop the steel message to crack down on voting rights in state legislatures across the country. And the insurrection is only the beginning. I mean, you have former Trump administration officials like Michael Flynn calling for a Myanmar style military coup here in the United States. And this is not something that we can have in a functioning society or democracy in a healthy society, rather. But having said that, though, without all, you know, putting all of that aside, I want to play the clips for you because what the Capitol Police officers share is truly gut wrenching. I remember one of them distinctly lunging at me time and time again, trying to grab my gun. And I heard people in the crowd yelling, get his gun, kill him with his own gun. I believe that there were individuals in the crowd whose intentions were to kill me. They tortured me. They beat me. I was struck with a taser device at the base of my skull numerous times. I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country. I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them in the people in this room. But too many are now telling me that hell doesn't exist or that hell actually wasn't that bad. The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful. Nothing, truly nothing, has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day. And in doing so, betray their oath of office. As we came close to the terrace, our line was divided and we came under attack. A man attempted to rip the baton from my hands and we wrestled for control. I retained my weapon after I pushed him back. He yelled at me, you're on the wrong team. I, too, was being crushed by the rioters. I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself, this is how I'm going to die. He kicked me in my chest as we went to the ground. I was able to retain my baton again, but I ended up on my hands and knees and blind. The medical mask I was wearing at the time to protect myself from the coronavirus was pulled up over my eyes so I couldn't see. I braced myself against the impact of their blows and feared the worst. On January 6th, for the first time, I was more afraid to work at the capital than my entire deployment to Iraq. One man tried and failed to build rapport with me shouting, are you my brother? Another takes a different tack shouting, you will die on your knees. The rioters called me traitor, a disgrace, and shouted that I, I, an army better than a police officer, should be executed. The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags, mostly variations from American flags and Trump flags. There was Gadsden flags. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians. I saw the Christian flag directly to my front. Another read, Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president. To my perpetual confusion, I saw the thin blue line flag, a symbol of support for law enforcement, more than once, being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands and continued to assault us. And all of them, all of them were telling us Trump sent us. Nobody else, it was nobody else, it was not Antifa, it was not Black Lives Matters, it was not the FBI, it was his supporter that he sent them over to the Capitol. This is our house. President Trump invited us here. We're here to stop this deal. One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, You hear that guys? This is not your voted for Joe Biden. Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people joined in screaming, boo, another Black officer later told me he had been confronted by insurrections in the Capitol who told him, put your gun down and we'll show you what kind of you really are. There was an attack carried out on January 6th and a hit man sent them. After hearing their testimonies, I don't know how anyone can still maintain that Trump didn't incite that insurrection. Even if you still refuse to believe that Trump's rhetoric wasn't bombastic enough to literally incite the insurrection, they thought that Trump wanted them there. They thought that they were fighting for Donald Trump. I think that this is, it's obvious. He incited that insurrection. They were there because they believed democracy was at stake because Donald Trump told them the election was stolen. It doesn't get any clearer than that right there. And the reason why we still have to talk about this issue after many months have passed is because if there's zero accountability and I don't expect there will be any accountability, but if there's not even any meaningful pushback against this kind of authoritarianism, it's going to happen again. Right now, Donald Trump, who's been impeached twice, is still eligible to run in 2024 after the insurrection. And if he gets back in power again, which is highly likely if he runs again, I mean, who knows what's going to happen next. When he was in office, he joked about running three terms, but we all know that in the event, you know, his term limit was up and he remained in office, he would want more terms. So it's important to hold people in power accountable who are outright explicitly against democracy. That's incredibly important. And it's not just that people in power, Republicans, are anti-democracy. Their base has followed them off this cliff. And perhaps there's this, you know, feedback loop where they're afraid of their base. So they run away from democracy and attack democracy, but the base, you know, they learn from them and they want to hear more anti-democratic rhetoric because it behooves them and their political agenda. It's just, it's scary to think about the future of this country and democracy. I mean, democracy in America is already flawed. It's fundamentally fucked to its core, but we have to continue to fight to further expand democracy, consolidate democracy, but that's almost impossible when you have almost half of the population now openly hostile towards the concept of democracy. And they think that they support democracy. They think that they're the fighters of democracy, the people there on January 6th. But in actuality, that's not the case. That is not the case. They are the enemies to democracy. And we have to do everything in our power to either beat them or change their minds, deprogram them. Now, just to kind of give you a little bit of a taste of what I'm talking about, after one of the officers there shared his testimony, he got a voice message during his testimony. And it sounds like what I would assume many Trump supporters probably were thinking during his speech. Yeah, this is for Michael Fanone at your positive police officer. You're on trial right now, lying and that. You want an Emmy and Oscar? What do you try to go for here? You're so full of shit, you little faggot fucker. You're a little pussy, man. I can slap you up the side of your head or a backhand and knock you out, you little faggot. You're a punk faggot. You're a lying fuck. How about all that scummy black fucking scum for two years, destroying our cities and burning them and stealing all that shit out of the stores and everything? How about that assaulting cops and killing people? How about that, you fucker? That was shit on the goddamn pack. Well, I wish they would have killed all you scum bags because you people are scum. They stole the election from Trump and you know that you scum bag and you fucking, too bad you didn't beat the shit out of you more. You're a piece of shit, you're a little fag, you fucking scum bag. It was important for you. You did not want us to censor that. What do you say to that? What do you want people to know? And that idiot. I mean, I remember like my first reaction immediately after listening to that phone call, which I actually received while I was testifying in the hearing today. This is what happens to people that tell the truth in Trump's America. He's right. And it's not like getting one voicemail from a single lunatic is really that newsworthy. But the question is, how many people who weren't there on January 6th, who didn't storm the Capitol, agree? Think, yeah, the election was stolen and these people, they deserved what they got and it should have been worse for them. I mean, poll after poll shows that this lie that the election was stolen is absolutely prevalent in the Republican Party and that is incredibly dangerous. Democracy can't survive under these sort of conditions and it's only going to get worse if there is no accountability. And just from merely sharing his experience, that opened one of the officers up to that attack, probably all of them. And not to mention you have nefarious individuals like Tucker Carlson going on TV, mocking the PTSD of the Capitol officers. It's just, we have to really acknowledge how important democracy is and we have to fight to protect and preserve democracy. And that's why I think these hearings are important even if they won't necessarily produce much. And sure, they could be used as a deflection point for Democrats to ignore or make you forget about the fact that they aren't doing much politically. But still, this does matter and I hope that people on the left pay attention to this.