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Screaming Matches, Oxygen Masks, and Wild Stampedes: A Congressman Describes January 6 From the House Floor
This is because of you! a Democrat yelled at a Republican as protesters battered at the doors and Capitol police officers urged lawmakers to move! In Adam Schiffs new book, Midnight in Washington, he recounts the horrific sceneand the events that enabled it.
By Adam Schiff
October 6, 2021
Please grab a mask! a Capitol Police officer shouted from the well of the House floor. Up until this point, I still wasnt sure what was happening outside the chamber and whether we were at serious risk. There were rioters in the building, that much I knew. How many of them, or how great a threat they posed, it was impossible to tell. I looked around at my colleagues to see if they were as perplexed as I was, and besides, what were we supposed to do in an emergency? I suddenly wished I had been paying more attention at freshman orientation twenty years earlier.
Sensing our confusion, the officer continued: Be prepared to don your mask in the event the room is breached. He told us that we did not need to put the masks on yet, but tear gas was being deployed, so we should get them ready. Be prepared to get down under your chairs if necessary. So, we have folks entering the Rotunda and coming down this way...Just be prepared. Stay calm. I pulled a rectangular canvas pouch from under my seat and unzipped it. Inside was a strongly sealed plastic container with no obvious opening. I flipped it from side to side and upside down, trying to open the damned thing. Finally figuring it out, I helped the members around me open theirs, and we removed the plastic hoods. These hoods didnt resemble the gas masks you see police wearing during a riot; instead, they were a large polyethylene bag that you pulled over your head, with a small motor attached to circulate and filter the air. As you removed the hood from its packaging, the motor began running, and suddenly there was a din of dozens of these hoods buzzing, which only added to the growing sense of alarm.
When you put on the hood, one of my colleagues and a former Marine, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, shouted, breathe slowly. Ruben was standing behind me, and he could see the panic spreading from member to member. Take slow, steady breaths. Your impulse will be to hyperventilate, but you need to breathe slowly. This was very helpful advice. I have a bit of claustrophobia, and the idea of pulling a bag over my head already had my pulse quickening. I resolved to wait until the last moment before I had to don the thing, since I wasnt smelling tear gas, not yet. Breathe slowly when you put it on, Ruben intoned again, or you will pass out. That is how people can die from wearing these. Okay, that wasnt so helpful.
This is because of you! yelled Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota from the gallery at Representative Paul Gosar, who had been at the microphone. Shut up! came the Republican reply. Call Trump, tell him to call off his revolutionary guards, screamed Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee. He was also in the gallery, above me and to the right, his face red with anger. Other members tried to settle things down and not allow the recriminations to spread, but Phillips wasnt wrong. We were here for what should have been the ceremonial certification of the 2020 presidential election results, but instead we were now in danger. For months, GOP members of Congress had propagated the presidents big lie about the elections, and you could draw a direct line between those lies and the threat we all now faced. Because of the pandemic, Phillips, Cohen, and other members had been required to wait in the gallery before their chance to speak, and they were the most exposed. Down on the House floor, we could barricade ourselves in, but upstairs there are multiple doors to the gallery and little to prevent the rioters from entering.
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/adam-schiff-describes-january-6-from-the-house-floor
crickets
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(16,234 posts)bury the repub traitors....