![]() Ayres just described how the trust he placed in President Trump as a camp follower derailed his life and nearly wrecked his reputation and his family. “In his Inaugural Address, Trump introduced one commanding image: “American carnage.” Although that turn of phrase explained little about our country before he took office, it turned out to be an excellent prophecy of what his rage would come to visit on our people. I wonder if he could even understand what motivates a patriot like Sergeant Gonell. “I wonder what former President Trump would say to someone like Sergeant Gonell, who must now go about remaking his life. Sergeant Gonell, we wish you and your family all the best, we are here for you, and we salute you for your valor, your eloquence, and your beautiful commitment to America. He must leave policing for good and figure out the rest of his life. ![]() ![]() “Last month on June 28th, Sergeant Gonell's team of doctors told him that permanent injuries he has suffered to his left shoulder and right foot now make it impossible for him to continue as a police officer. Nothing he ever saw in combat in Iraq, he has said, prepared him for the insurrection where he was “savagely beaten,” “punched, pushed, kicked, shoved, stomped, and sprayed with chemical irritants,” along with other officers, by members of a mob carrying “hammers, knives, batons and police shields taken by force” and wielding the American flag against police officers as a dangerous weapon. “Sergeant Aquilino Gonell is an Army veteran who spent a year on active combat duty in the Iraq War and then 16 years on the Capitol force. “I want to give you an update on one officer who was badly wounded in the attack and is well-known to the members of this Committee because he testified before us last year. “A violent insurrection to overturn an election is not an abstract thing, as we’ve heard-hundreds of people were bloodied, injured and wounded in the process, including more than 150 police officers-some of them sitting in this room today. In the very first Federalist Paper, Alexander Hamilton observed that history teaches that opportunistic politicians who desire to rule at all costs will begin first as “demagogues” pandering to the “angry and malignant passions” of the crowd but then end up as “tyrants” trampling the freedoms and the rights of the people. Chairman, the Founders were pretty wise about certain things and, at the start of the Republic, they actually warned everyone about Donald Trump-not by name, of course, but in the course of advising about the certain prospect that ambitious politicians would try to mobilize violent mobs to tear down our own institutions in service of their own insatiable ambitions. ![]() “You might imagine that our Founders would have been shocked to learn that an American president would one day come to embrace and excuse political violence against our own institutions or knowingly send an armed mob to attack the Capitol to usurp the will of the people. ![]() “On January 6, Trump knew the crowd was angry. Seizing upon his invitation to fight, they assembled their followers for an insurrectionary showdown against Congress and the Vice President. But no one mobilized more quickly than the dangerous extremists that we’ve looked at today. “He set off an explosive chain reaction among his followers. "When Donald Trump sent out his tweet, he became the first president ever to call for a crowd to descend on the capital city to block the constitutional transfer of power. ![]()
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