What some call a protest and others call an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, catapulted several Americans into the limelight: Stewart Rhodes, 55, Texas-based founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia who sought to spur President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and was convicted of seditious conspiracy; QAnon shaman Jacob Chansley, 34, whose horned fur hat, bare chest and red, white and blue face paint made him the most recognizable of the mob; QAnon-inspired Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, 35, whose anti-government fervor climaxed when she was shot out of a bashed-out window frame leading to the House of Representatives; U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of complications that included vigorous struggles with Trump supporters; Trump supporter and Marine veteran Ray Epps, the sixtyish former Arizona resident driven into hiding in the American West by conspiracy theories and death threats by pro-Trump fanatics wrongly claiming he was a government agent assigned to incite otherwise peaceful Trump protesters to violence; gregarious Cowboys for Trump figurehead Couy Griffin, 47, the New Mexico politician and cowboy pastor who led the mob in prayer, then reveled in the mob's violence against police defending the Capitol and later found himself a test case for the 14th Amendment's key provision booting from office Americans who rebel against the U.S. Constitution; and, perhaps most notably of all, Metropolitan D.C. Police Officer Michael Fanone, a law enforcement officer since the 9/11 terrorist attacks who during the January 6 violence was pulled by insurrectionists from the police line defending the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, tased till he suffered a heart attack and beaten with a Blue Lives Matter flag as shouts to kill him with his own gun rang out. Fanone famously testified about the mob attack before the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol on July 27, 2021. Author of “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop's Battle for America's Soul,” Fanone, 44 and now retired after a career that saw him participate in more than 2,000 arrests for violent crimes and narcotics trafficking, recently concluded months of touring the American Midwest on behalf of Courage for America, talking about the Make America Great Again movement’s threat to American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law. He spoke with retired Waco Tribune-Herald opinion editor Bill Whitaker. A shorter version of this Q&A appeared in the Oct. 27 edition of the Waco Tribune-Herald.
Q What’s the most encouraging encounter you’ve had in your travels – and most discouraging?
A I was discouraged and continue to be discouraged to this very day. I was there on January 6 and I experienced the violence first-hand, and the fact so many Americans are willing to support a presidential candidate who would inspire that kind of violence, and not just that day – I mean, the former president continues to use the same rhetoric and espouse the same lies. I hate the term “double-down,” but he has allied himself with those who stormed the Capitol and attacked police officers on January 6. I mean, in so many words, at a recent event, he said “we” referring to those individuals who attacked the Capitol – “we didn’t have guns, the other side had guns,” meaning law enforcement. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Fanone refers to Trump’s answer at a Univision presidential town hall in which he was challenged by skeptical 56-year-old Florida construction worker and former Trump supporter Ramiro Gonzales about Trump’s rhetoric and presidential inaction during the January 6 violence.] How as an American do you support a person who clearly supports violent assaults not just on law enforcement but on fellow Americans? If you just take policy out of the equation, this guy is evil. Everything he stands for is anti-American – I mean, [just consider the idea of] using the military against American citizens [which Trump repeatedly espouses].
As an American and someone who dedicated 20 years of my life to law enforcement, I think we’ve failed. Whatever the outcome of the upcoming election, I think we’ve lost. I think we’ve lost something that my generation will never get back. I hope my children can make America great again because it ain’t. Our institutions have failed us. The fact that Donald Trump is a candidate is a failure of our democracy, the fact we can’t seem to hold him accountable for his criminal acts is a failure of our democracy. Because of the Supreme Court, regardless of whoever becomes the next president of the United States, that president will enjoy levels of immunity that I believe – again as a career law enforcement officer – were never intended for any American citizen, president or not. And so it’s terrifying that we should have to concern ourselves with, you know, if this person holds office, they will have the ability to summon SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, to use one example.
Q As discussed by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in Trump v. United States this year.
A Right. Now I’ve got to worry about whether this president may do that. I think we know what the answer is with Donald Trump. This is a person who inspires violence with his words every single day and does it intentionally.
Q What is the most encouraging encounter you had during your travels?
A I met a lot of people similar to me in that they had been adversely affected by some aspect of the former president’s administration and decided, “I’m going to get involved, I’m going to say something.” Many weren’t as fortunate as me in having this national and sometimes international platform, but they still decided to get involved. I think that’s what we need, more involvement, less sitting on the sidelines. That’s the most discouraging thing that I encounter, both from my trip and every single day – people just don’t give a s--t. I mean, most of the scheduled interactions were with people who were like-minded or at least were there to hear me describe the events of January 6 and were receptive. The one thing that worried me is I visited a number of colleges and spoke with students and they had at best what I would describe as a limited understanding of what took place on January 6, less so than the average person – just a general disinterest in that whole event.
Q Are they not reading or watching the news?
A I’ve always been disillusioned with politics. I think that’s about as American as apple pie. That said, I always vote. I pay attention to who the candidates are. I took civics, so I understand my part to play in democracy in this country. A lot of these kids I spoke with were disillusioned. Their lives hadn’t even started yet and they didn’t see how January 6 affected them or their issues. I tried to explain to them like, “Hey, listen, whatever your issue is” – like a lot of kids seem to be very invested in what’s happening in Gaza with the Palestinians and Israel. But in a democracy, you have an ability to influence and advocate for your position. Under an authoritarian regime, you just do whatever the f--k leadership tells you to do. And so whether your issue is abortion or the Middle East or whatever, to me the decision is easy in that you vote for the person, at least in this election, that’s going to provide you with the ability to advocate for your position and have your voice be heard.
Q A neighbor, a retired attorney who knows I long voted mostly Republican, suggests I need to "get past" January 6 and vote Republican again. He acknowledges he would prefer another Republican, almost any other Republican, besides Donald Trump on the 2024 ballot but says I need to return to the fold rather than voting for someone whom he reckons is a "socialist." How do I respond?
A The idea of being an entrenched Republican or an entrenched Democrat for the average citizen just seems ridiculous. Labels are for politicians. Political parties are for politicians. What’s more American than being a free-thinking, independent human being? I mean, that’s what this country is all about. As a free-thinking, independent person, you force these parties to align themselves more with the majority of us rather than allowing them to do what has now happened to the Republican Party in taking all these extremist positions and knowing full well there are going to be those out there who despise Donald Trump, think he’s a horrible presidential candidate, but will still vote for him because he has availed himself of the Republican label. I too have primarily voted Republican. But for me being a Republican and being conservative was about limited government and conservative spending. I don’t know where Donald Trump fits into that. He seems to be the polar opposite.
Q In your memoirs and interviews, you've acknowledged you voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Has that vote given you any special insight into those with whom you struggled on the Sixth of January?
A I tell people all the time: I was a career law enforcement officer, I was a cop. I was a cop during the post-2015 period when we saw all these polarizing incidents involving law enforcement officers and interactions primarily with communities of color. A lot of rhetoric was used specifically by people on the left that I found to be unproductive and unhelpful in that conversation and hence inspired violence against police officers. I went to the funerals of officers in Dallas and New York and elsewhere. It is not an outrageous statement to say that law enforcement was targeted and, you know, I’m the first person to tell you that police officers are not above reproach. Reforms are certainly needed in law enforcement. That said, the way we were being portrayed by some people in the media and elected officials was dangerous, just as dangerous as the way Donald Trump refers to the “enemy within” [referring to U.S. citizens with whom he politically disagrees] or the rhetoric he used to inspire people to storm the Capitol on January 6. Political violence from either side is wrong.
Q Let me then ask a painful question. Last month Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, announced that members of the Fraternal Order of Police voted to endorse Trump for president: “Public safety and border security will be important issues in the last months of this campaign. Our members carefully considered the positions of the candidates on the issues and there was no doubt – zero doubt – as to who they want as our president for the next four years: Donald J. Trump.” I don't understand how any police officer watching a mob arguably incited by a president who then did nothing for three hours while scores of police officers including you were brutalized at the U.S. Capitol could then turn around and vote for, let alone endorse, Trump. What am I missing here about police officers in general?
A First, it’s important to recognize that I was an FOP member for 20 years. Membership in the FOP is huge because every police officer automatically joins the FOP once they become a police officer, so if your department is represented by the FOP, your membership is automatic. Your dues are deducted from your paycheck automatically.
Q Like many unions.
A Exactly. But membership versus active participation are two completely different things. What Pat Yoes is saying is, “I’m just representing the membership, the membership tells me what to do, and I’m telling you what the membership says.” I [have accepted] in my mind that the vast majority of police officers support Donald Trump, FOP members. That said, I’m not aware of any vote that took place and, if it was, if it is in line with the typical FOP votes that took place in which I participated, then actual participation is less than 10 percent. We would have union elections – we have 3,600 officers, union members, in the [MPD] department and we might get 500 people to turn out to vote in those elections. So Pat Yoes is telling you what Pat Yoes wants. Pat Yoes has been an avid Trump supporter going back to the 2015-2016 campaign.
Q Granted, but there remains a sense of this regarding law enforcement in general. When Trump flies into some town for a rally, he always gets his picture taken next to a bunch of local police officers near Trump Force One. Is this just testosterone at work or something?
A That’s part of it. You have that aspect of it, this machismo that he portrays. I think the other aspect is there’s a lot of police officers who are still pissed off at Democrats about language that was used in the post-Michael Brown world [involving an unarmed 18-year-old African American shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri]. And, listen, if you source your news from Fox News, Breitbart, One America, etcetera, etcetera, you don’t know the reality of January 6. Quite frankly, enough has been done by right-wing media to portray officers like myself as some kind of liberal, lefty pussies that they can just discard and say, “Well, they’re not like us.” These are all arguments I’ve encountered in my interacting with police officers from all over the country. Now, what’s most concerning to me is that a lot of the language that Trump uses when he talks about, you know, going into communities and suspending the Constitution and bringing the military in and, “Well, we’re gonna handle it” – that’s appealing to a lot of cops. I spent the better part of my career looking at the Constitution almost as an impediment to me being able to do my job. You know, my job was to put the bad guys behind bars and this goddam document, the Constitution, is getting in my f--king way. That’s how cops think. That’s how I thought until, you know, probably the last five or six years of my career. So when Trump comes along and says this, they don’t think, “Oh, if he suspends the Constitution, that could directly affect me or one of my family members.” They look at it as, “This is what we need, somebody who is not afraid to take away the rights of communities that are plaguing us with violence.” And then, to a lesser extent, there are other things like racism, thoughts similar to that, that are baked in.
Q Were any U.S. Capitol Police officers or Metropolitan Police officers sympathetic to the Trump mob after January 6? I assume that’s an impossibility.
A A lot of them!
Q You’re kidding!
A Many.
Q How could they ever rationalize that?
A First off, police officers are just a microcosm of our society. They’re susceptible to the same – I had a conversation a few years back with a sergeant who told me that the whole thing was a f--king setup, that it was antifa dressed as Trump supporters. And this woman was there! She was at the Capitol! I mean, there are some people who just want to believe that so badly. And the other thing is that they say 800 Metropolitan police officers went to the Capitol on January 6. Well, that’s the grand total over the entire day. I will say that maybe 250 D.C. police officers and maybe a few hundred Capitol police officers were actually engaged in some type of hand-to-hand fighting, so the people who really witnessed the brutality were just a small portion. And, I mean, you’d be shocked – I don’t know the statistics, I probably should, of how many of those individuals just left the police department [after January 6]. I’d say probably close to a third. Many of them sustained injuries that were career-ending. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger told a Senate panel in January 2022 that more than 150 officers had retired or resigned in the year after the attack. In resigning from the MPD in December 2021 and assuming a position as a CNN contributor on law enforcement issues, Fanone acknowledged bitter differences of opinion with some fellow officers on the MPD force: “Clearly there are some members of our department who feel their oath is to Donald Trump and not to the Constitution. I no longer felt like I could trust my fellow officers and decided it was time to make a change.”]
Q I notice in your biography you became a police officer after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I mean, I live here in what used to be called “Bush Country” – President Bush has a ranch just 20 miles outside of town – but how should we view Sept. 11 and January 6? Are they two sides of the same coin or am completely wrong?
A There’s a lot of people who believe September 11 was a terrorist attack committed by an outside foreign adversary against the United States and who believe January 6 was a protest in which American patriots participated. I mean, look at all the members of the military, military veterans and whatnot, who were there on the Capitol steps, attacking law enforcement officers. [EDITOR’S NOTE: The nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation states nearly one in five of those charged in connection with the January 6 riot had a military background.]
Q I’ve never understood the involvement of veterans in the mob that attacked the Capitol, nor veterans who support Trump’s reelection in 2024. These guys are supposed to take an oath to the U.S. Constitution. Some veterans claim that oath endures even after active-duty service.
A Listen, I took a lot of oaths in my career. I never thought about any of it till I decided to testify about January 6 before the Select Committee. I went back and looked at my police department folders and a laminated card that has the oath you take “to uphold and defend the Constitution.” I read it. You know, my department did not want me to testify at the congressional hearing. They were vehemently opposed to it. And so, I said, “No. I’m a law enforcement officer, I’ve been asked to testify about something that occurred in the commission of my responsibilities as a law enforcement officer, and I’m going to testify about it.”
Q Why would they object?
A I think they just saw it as something political and they didn’t want to get involved. I mean, there was no f--king ticker-tape parade for the DC police. It was kind of like, “Yeah, that’s what happened yesterday at work.”
Q There was a lot of angst immediately after January 6 here in Waco. Our Republican congressman, Pete Sessions, only hours after being sworn into office on Jan. 3, posed for a picture with “Stop the Steal” protesters outside the U.S. Capitol and posted it on his Facebook page. He deleted it shortly after the insurrection and said the courts should handle the cases rather than Congress conducting a formal inquiry. However, he continues to press various claims of voting irregularities.
A Lies are a huge part of the problem. In this country where we have free speech, our politicians are afforded a wider berth than most of us. These are people who, just by their position, are supposed to be people that we can place trust in to carry a level of credibility. Yet they’re blatantly lying to us. And those lies, going back to January 6 – I mean, this wasn’t me and you at the bar and I’d had one too many drinks and I was like, “You know, Bill, that election was stolen!” No, it was the president of the United States. The president was telling people this and members of Congress, other elected officials, county sheriffs, are still telling people this to this day. It’s dangerous enough to be telling people the election was stolen when it wasn’t, but then to be telling them: “Listen, we may need to arm ourselves in preparation because they’re going to do it again!”
Q There are reminders of January 6 all over the place during this election, nearly four years later. I mean, the Republican running for reelection to the U.S. Senate here in Texas is Ted Cruz, who many regard as one of the ringleaders of the scheme to invalidate the votes of millions of U.S. citizens in battleground states. All this is going to continue to haunt our politics for a long time.
A Oh, yes. Even if Trump goes away, this movement, whatever you want to call it, I don’t think it’s going away for a really long time.
Q I notice that, while you voted for Trump in 2016, you began to part ways with Trump after he took office, including over his decision to fire FBI director James Comey.
A That certainly played a part in it. I have a very good relationship with my former chief, Robert Contee. But I was the first person to tell him, “You know, you got a little politician in you.” I hate when law enforcement plays politics or even participates, but I recognize in this day and age it’s almost impossible not to. But I really hate it when elected leaders [manipulate] people in leadership positions in law enforcement. Let law enforcement be impartial. And I saw that [President Trump’s terminating the lead official in a criminal investigation into whether Trump advisers colluded with the Russian government to impact the outcome of the 2016 presidential election] as really an attack on not only James Comey but the impartiality of law enforcement. It’s exactly what I didn’t want. I mean, it was like all these things [Trump] said to me in the moment are like, “Oh, this guy is just as full of s--t as everyone else.”
Q Some of us today see retired Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell; Daniel Hodges of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department; former Capitol Police Pfc. Harry Dunn; and you, as a retired Metropolitan Police officer and a Capitol police officer before that, as iconic law enforcement officers upholding American norms, values and traditions. For me, this comes from your jointly testifying before the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. You've acknowledged that you didn't originally go to the Capitol on January 6 as a defender of democracy but to help fellow officers under overwhelming attack by Trump supporters. What helped you put all this together into a greater vision about the fragility of democracy?
A I went to all of the Select Committee’s public hearings. I didn’t fully comprehend my part to play in all this when I testified at the first hearing. It wasn’t until I sat through and listened to witness after witness, most drawn from the former president’s administration, talking about his efforts and the efforts of his supporters within the administration and some of them outside the administration to thwart democracy. It was during that period that I recognized how serious this effort had been. I tell people all the time: If you had asked me on January 7, do I think Donald Trump is morally and ethically responsible for the violence of January 6, I would have told you, unequivocally, yes. If you had asked me on January 7 if he was criminally responsible, I would have said I don’t know. But having sat through the Select Committee hearings, I am now convinced that Donald Trump broke many, many, many laws.
Q My broad stretch of Texas witnessed at least three individuals convicted for January 6 crimes: One was a low-key, 39-year-old winemaker, Air Force veteran, former teacher and father of three who didn't even plan on going to the “Stop the Steal” rally till a buddy talked him into it 12 hours before the rally. He’s serving nearly seven years in prison because he unwittingly contributed to events that led to the shooting death of fellow protester Ashli Babbitt outside the Speaker’s Lobby. A second individual, a 57-year-old former rodeo bull rider, argued his innocence before District Judge Tanya Chutkan by saying that police more or less waved him into the Capitol, even though he witnessed all the violence by others beforehand. He became utterly immersed in social-media conspiracy theories and apocalyptic scenarios via a website he helped create that takes its inspiration from the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s. And there’s Stewart Rhodes, the former attorney and convicted seditionist who at age 55 coordinated the Oath Keepers in attacking the Capitol but subsequently claimed he never meant for his militia members to actually enter the Capitol. At the risk of a long answer, how do you profile the Americans we saw on our television sets on January 6? Seems like the unwitting and the defiant to me.
A It runs the gamut. If you take the individuals who assaulted me, most of them were, for lack of a better term, down-on-their-luck. Some were career criminals, people who had convictions for everything from drug trafficking to drug possession to failure to pay child support to domestic violence, other assault charges.
Q Going through court records, some of these people seemed to me to be down-on-their-luck ne’er-do-wells.
A Yes, and those are the type of people that typically fall into these traps. If you were profiling a gang member, that is typically what you would find. That’s how these organized efforts recruit people. They look for people just like that and I don’t think MAGA is any different. They look for people who don’t have very much to lose. Now, there are also people who are middle class and never got so much as a parking ticket. I mean, listen, Donald Trump at the time was the president of the United States and he is telling his supporters that the election was stolen, that he won the election and then it was stolen and, in saying that, it’s not just stolen from him, it’s stolen from them. Obviously there was a lot of people who were going to feel as though they had no other recourse than to go to the Capitol. Now there was an organized effort that day and then there were people who just got swept up in the mob.
Q Only last week, a Texan named Dana Jean Bell, a 66-year-old grandmother who has never gotten so much as a speeding ticket from what I can tell from court records, was sentenced to 17 months – almost a year and a half – in federal prison for her activities on January 6. According to prosecutors, she "belligerently pushed, grabbed and verbally attacked countless U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department officers who were attempting to clear rioters from inside the United States Capitol Building." She now claims President Trump “duped” her. What is your reaction to this sort of defense, which we've seen often?
A Listen, you’re responsible for your own actions. Being “duped” or being stupid is not a criminal defense. At the end of the day, she’s got to be accountable for the things she did on January 6, just like everyone else. That being said, in my mind it’s not an argument for her avoiding accountability, it’s an argument for why we need to hold Donald Trump accountable.
Q Right. But take this old bull rider I was talking about. He claims he was waved into the Capitol by police. Of course, this guy lives online and is immersed in imagined civil wars and fantastic crusades of righteousness with maidens and swords and such and, well, he’s got a following of similarly disposed online warriors all over the nation. He spent several months in prison, but he’s out now and I can’t see that he’s learned a thing behind bars.
A Listen, I’ve got a cynical view of jail and prison, but for me the criminal justice system was designed for accountability, to hold people accountable for criminal actions. If he wants to go or any of these individuals want to go [to prison], whatever their sentences, and they’re somehow convinced that what they did is wrong, then that’s great. If they’re not, I don’t care as long as the next time they commit a crime, they are held accountable again. At the end of the day, I have no control. There’s no way for me to convince somebody that tells me that I was not a police officer on January 6, that I am an FBI plant and that this whole thing was just created to somehow disparage the former president. I can’t argue with that and, quite frankly, I don’t give a s--t to [do so]. If that’s what you want to think, you can think it all day long. It’s a free country. To me, once you cross that line and your thoughts inspire criminal activity, then you need to be held accountable and those penalties need to reflect the significance of your actions and I think that’s what we’re seeing when we see some of these stiffer penalties for individuals who were in the Capitol committing crimes on January 6.
Q You have testified in trials and sentencings of January 6 defendants. Does one courtroom event stand out in memory?
A Because of my higher profile, mine are typically attended by a lot of nutballs and conspiracy theorists, so there have been contentious interactions. I’ve had at least two encounters where the judge ordered marshals to clear the courtroom of everyone but me. I’ve sat in front of defendants who threw themselves on the mercy of the court, apologized for everything and then, when handed down their sentences and I walked out, the mother of the defendant called me a “piece of s--t” and said I was going to rot in hell. Danny Rodriguez, the guy who tased me in the neck [on January 6], begged – begged – for the court’s mercy, told everyone he had been duped, and the moment the gavel came down and his sentence had been handed down and there was nothing else the judge could do to him, yelled out “Trump won!” as he was dragged from the courtroom. [EDITOR’S NOTE: During 40-year-old Daniel “DJ Rodriguez’s June 21, 2023, sentencing, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in imposing a 151-month sentence labeled Rodriguez a “one-man army of hate, attacking police officers and destroying property” on January 6.] There are some people who have gone down deep, dark rabbit holes that will never come back. When people describe it as a cult – well, there are certainly Americans who are susceptible to, you know, those types of conspiratorial thoughts. Many of them have joined the MAGA bandwagon. I mean, I couldn’t imagine receiving 12 years in prison for having participated in a riot inspired by the former president – I mean, by Danny Rodriguez’s own admission, he said: “The president told me to come here. I did this for Donald Trump.” And now he’s going to prison for twelve and a half years. I mean, that guy’s life is over. And yet he is still a diehard supporter of the former president.
Q Given your respect for American democracy, is there any election or law enforcement reform you recommend?
A Listen, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a legal scholar. I’m not a f--king scholar of anything. I have a GED. That said, all this January 6 election denialism has exposed pretty significant loopholes in our democracy. The Supreme Court recently ruled [to narrow] one of the charges the Department of Justice had been using for individuals who participated in the riot inside the Capitol – “obstruction of an official proceeding.” I think that law certainly needs to be amended so it is unambiguous, that if you participate in an act of violence with the intention of affecting an election, a hearing, whatever the case may be, you need to be charged with that. The Department of Justice needs to be able to level that charge. [EDITOR’S NOTE: The Supreme Court in June’s Fischer v. United States tightly limited the scope of a federal obstruction-of-justice statute, offering a legal loophole to at least some rioters who assaulted police officers, broke doors and windows and forced members of Congress to abandon certification of the 2020 presidential election.] And, I mean, I don’t know how we go forward as a democracy when we know the president of the United States is above the law. That certainly needs to be addressed. There’s a lot of great leaders in this country, really good people, yet a lot of them get corrupted by power. I certainly don’t trust anyone with immunity at that level of government.
Q Have you received any specific reaction from MAGA for your championship of democracy?
A I don’t know I would call myself a champion of democracy. I’m just a guy who experienced something and is trying to set things right. That said, the death threats stand out, the harassment, you know, of me and my family that continues to this very day – having people talk about you online, talk about seeing you hung. Listen, I was a cop for 20 years. People had some pretty unpleasant things to say about me, but the difference was I could count them on my fingers and toes. Now all of a sudden people who have never met me, don’t know anything about my wife, don’t know anything about me, have some pretty demented things to say and it’s not just the keyboard warriors. The other day I was in the self-checkout line in a grocery store and this older woman comes up to me and – I’m not going to lie, normally I’m pretty standoffish – but, well, I just assumed this little old lady was going to come up and thank me for my service. Nope, she spit in my face and told me she hopes I’m hung. That’s just an example.
Q Well, I guess there’s no point in asking you about former President Trump’s recent insistence that January 6 was a “day of love.”
A Yeah, Trump’s been calling it a “day of love” for three and a half years. January 6 was nothing other than a violent assault on law enforcement officers and an assault on our democracy and it was inspired by Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen.
Q Where will you be on Jan. 6, 2025?
A Maybe in front of a military tribunal being tried for treason! I don’t know. I would hope that if things work out for democracy and Donald Trump is not the next president of the United States, I would like to be in the Lower West Terrace tunnel with the U.S. Capitol Police watching the Architect of the Capitol install the plaque honoring the police officers who fought there that day. It was supposed to have been f--king installed two years ago.
Q How has all this changed your personal life? I mean, I assume there’s people with whom you are no longer friends, though you’ve possibly made new friends.
A My world got really, really, really big and then it contracted, got smaller than it has ever been. One minute I could pick up the phone and call a lot of politicians and I was on TV all the time talking about different issues and then all of a sudden it was gone. I think people had just given up. Fifty percent of this country just wants to forget January 6; 45 percent of the country has moved on because they don’t see accountability as something that is attainable; and then there is 5 percent of people who were there, people in journalism and others who recognize the significance of that day and are trying to keep the public’s attention on what happened. But I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle.
Q Is there anyone or anything that gives you hope? I mean, you’ve suggested that, no matter what happens on Election Day, we have lost something in America we may never be able to recover.
A Today I was at the gym having a conversation with a guy that I see pretty regularly. I live in Haymarket, Virginia, which I would imagine has pretty similar demographics to Waco, Texas. And, you know, this is Trump country and this guy knows exactly who I am and we talk from time to time. And one day he said, “You know, I’m ready for this goddam election to be over.” And I know he’s voting for Trump, but it’s like, “Hey, you know, you and I are old enough to remember there used to be a time in this country where we talked about politics during election season and then afterward this s--t just disappeared like it was not on anybody’s consciousness.” Yet it’s now infected everything. Like, now I hate the f--king [Kansas City] Chiefs, but I got to watch football and I hear about Patrick Mahomes’ wife is a Trump supporter and Taylor Swift isn’t and is a Kamala Harris supporter. I mean, there’s no escaping all this. Maybe that should be a f--king law. You can talk about elections only during election season. And after that I don’t want to see any f--king signs, I don’t want to hear anything about it, nothing. But I don’t know if we can ever get back to that community that we had, at least in this generation.
Interview edited for clarity by Bill Whitaker. A condensed version of this Oct. 21, 2024, interview was published in the Oct. 26 edition of the Waco Tribune-Herald.
