As we watch these synchronous videos, I am reminded what I was doing when this was happening. We were actually recording an episode of our podcast. I don’t remember if I had a TV feed on or I was watching posted videos on social media. But I remember watching what seemed like just rowdy protests, people getting rowdy outside the perimeter of the Capitol. There’s nothing unprecedented about that. Protests get rowdy sometimes. But at one point I distinctly remember watching what seemed like breaking through police lines, or perhaps it was simply attacking the police lines.
So as we were talking in the podcast at one point I said something like, it seems to be getting a little out of control. I may go back and pull up that episode to see exactly what I said. I’m probably retrospectively shaping some of what I thought or said. But what I’m confident about is having a moment where I could tell things were escalating beyond any normal kind of protest. We know where it went from there.