The January 6 Attackers Won

The fourth anniversary of the Capitol attack marks a dark day in American history

Four years ago, a violent mob of Trump supporters attacked the United States of America. In two weeks, their goal of restoring Donald Trump to power and effectively ending US Constitutional democracy will come to fruition.

Many January 6 participants did not understand the attack as such, or would not articulate it in those terms. But that’s what it was. Incited by Trump’s lies and illegal conspiracy to stay in power, they violently assaulted Congress in a last-ditch effort to keep the 2020 election loser in the White House. If successful, it would have upended the core principle of American democracy that the candidate who wins the Electoral College becomes the president-elect, with the outgoing president conducting a peaceful transfer of power.

The insurrectionists failed in the moment, but they set off a series of events that transformed US Constitutional democracy by upending the core principle that no one is above the law. Trump faced scrutiny from Congress, the FBI, and the Department of Justice for his coup attempt—along with his other crimes, including stealing and potentially exposing US national security secrets—and still recaptured the presidency.

The 2024 election changes Jan. 6’s role in history. From this vantage point, the Capitol attack and its aftermath exposed the institutions of American democracy as weaker than many believed.

Congress’s Jan. 6 Committee did a good job, uncovering important facts and getting them on the record. Federal law enforcement did a good job prosecuting Jan. 6 rioters, convicting over 1,000 people. They got the most dangerous insurrectionists, securing jury convictions for leaders of the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy, with decades-plus prison sentences. They correctly indicted Trump and some of his co-conspirators, such as attorney John Eastman, rather than preemptively forfeiting rule of law.

But they ultimately failed to uphold it. For years people will debate if Attorney General Merrick Garland, federal prosecutor Jack Smith, state prosecutors in Georgia and Arizona, and other organs of US law enforcement could’ve held Trump accountable for his crimes if they had more urgency or used different tactics. I don’t know, but whatever the answer, the result is they didn’t. 

With Trump regaining power, convicted Jan. 6 attackers are probably getting out of jail with presidential pardons.

It will be more surprising if Trump doesn’t pardon them, since he promised to, and venerated them at rallies, playing a recording of the convicted felons singing the national anthem with his hand on his heart. They’re the vanguard Blackshirts of America’s fascist movement, the citizen supporters who crossed the line into violent action. Pardoning the insurrectionists sends a message that violence and lawbreaking to empower Donald Trump will be rewarded, and recasts them as heroes — maybe not in history, but in the official U.S. account. At least for now.

Jan. 6 showed that most Republican politicians and GOP officials had no line, and would go along with Trump and MAGA no matter how fascist they got. After a violent attack on their own institution that left many of them cowering, a majority of House Republicans still voted to throw out certified Electoral College votes based on obvious lies, and over 80 percent of Republican Senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, voted to protect Trump from impeachment for inciting insurrection. Less than a month after the attack, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago to officially welcome Trump back into the fold.

The Republican Party made support for Trump’s election lies and defense of, or at least acceptance of, his coup attempt a litmus test, purging members who wouldn’t play along, most notably Liz Cheney. The institutional GOP raised funds for Trump’s criminal defense, prioritizing it over campaigns. The six Republican-nominated Justices controlling the Supreme Court got him on ballots despite the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists, and invented special new rules exempting presidents from laws only Trump had broken.

Jan. 6 exposed the warped disingenuousness of Republican slogans like “law and order” and “back the blue.” They’re not universal standards, they’re expressions of support for state violence against people Republicans don’t like, such as Latino immigrants and Black Lives Matter protestors. Assaulting police officers, disrupting order, and breaking the law is fine—good, even—if Republicans are doing it to advance Republican interests.

Jan. 6 also showed that Trump, MAGA politicians, and right-wing media—both professional and social—could bring enough of the American public along. In March 2021, two months after the Capitol riot, Pew Research found that 79 percent of Republicans thought it was important to prosecute Jan. 6 rioters. By September, only 57 supported prosecutions. Soon after it was less than half, and kept dropping.

In December 2021, a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that a large majority of Americans were appalled by the attack, and most blamed Trump. 60 percent said Trump bears a “great deal” or a “good amount” of responsibility, and another 14 percent said “some.” But the same poll in December 2023 found “great deal” + “good amount” down near 50 percent, primarily due to increasingly positive sentiment towards Jan. 6 from Republicans, but also reductions at the margins among Democrats and Independents.

Normalization happened through Trump’s incessant lying, backed by all sorts of right-wing media, and supported by Republican politicians, party officials, and donors. It made a lot of the public exhausted, and eager to drop the subject, like domestic abuse victims placating their abusers.

Normalization happened through mainstream media acceptance, as prominent outlets forced an unprecedented coup attempt and next-level lying into their old framework of American politics, where both sides’ claims are equally valid, even if one is blatantly lying about documented-on-video facts.

And normalization was finalized when a plurality of American voters showed they don’t really value rule-of-law democracy. Some are actively hostile to it. Others don’t care.

I don’t think most Trump voters consciously opted for democratic backsliding into authoritarianism by restoring a failed putschist to power. I know there are various informational, emotional, and policy explanations for why some voters swung, and other Americans didn’t vote. But whatever the myriad reasons, the result is the same.

For nearly four years, I’ve said that January 6 would be a near-miss or a prelude. To the extent I have a voice, I stressed that we should make it the former. Others did too, including people with bigger platforms and more influence.

It didn’t work. Events went the other way.

Politics is ultimately a competition for power, and while the rules may have changed, it’s never over. Trump and Co.’s efforts will be hindered by their own infighting and incompetence. Civil society will push back. Hopelessness at this point is unnecessary defeatism.

But still, this anniversary marks a dark day in US history. Unlike the forces that attacked America at Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, or the Twin Towers, the Jan. 6 attackers won.