Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind by Robert Draper

Author:Robert Draper
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: United States, Non-Fiction, Politics, History
ISBN: 9780593300152
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

DC police officer Michael Fanone

Chapter Twenty

THE BLUE

A week after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced in late May that he would oppose an independent commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Gladys Sicknick—the mother of Brian Sicknick, the forty-two-year-old Capitol police officer who died the day after he fought the rioters—visited her son’s former workplace to meet with some of McConnell’s fellow Republican senators.

With Ms. Sicknick were her son’s girlfriend, Sandra Garza; a colleague of her son, Officer Harry Dunn, who had defended the West Terrace of the Capitol that day; and Metro police officer Michael Fanone, who had been beaten unconscious by the rioters on the West Terrace. Accompanying them was a former Republican congresswoman, Barbara Comstock, whose friend Liz Cheney had asked her to help set up meetings between Sicknick’s mother and GOP senators, in hopes that a few of them might defy McConnell and support a January 6 commission.

The first meeting, with Senator Mitt Romney, went well. The group expressed appreciation for his vote to convict President Trump and for his general supportiveness of the law enforcement officers who had defended the Capitol. The Utah senator modestly assured them that he had done nothing heroic. He sat next to Fanone and together they watched the officer’s body-cam footage of his being dragged down the steps of the West Terrace and repeatedly shocked with his own Taser. Romney pledged that he would vote to support a commission, against the wishes of McConnell.

Their meetings with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins were similarly encouraging. Everything afterward amounted to a letdown, however. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (who had brought along three other senators, including fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott) was inattentive to Fanone’s body-cam video and kept looking out the window until Sandra Garza snapped, “Brian loved you guys! And this is how you’re reacting? This is how you’re treating Officer Fanone?”

“No, no, I’m just upset about it,” Graham insisted.

“That’s just how Lindsey acts,” Scott interjected.

“I’m a licensed clinical social worker,” Sicknick’s partner shot back. “I know what I saw.”

“You’re wrong,” Graham said testily to her. Taking the temperature down, Graham then offered to put Fanone and Dunn in touch with Senator Roy Blunt, who along with Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar was amassing information for a Senate Rules Committee report on security failures during the riot.

“Have they arrested the guys who did this to you?” he asked Fanone.

“Yes,” said Fanone. He added that the assailants were all avowed Trump supporters.

“Why didn’t you shoot them?” Graham asked. “I would have.”

Fanone and Dunn attempted to explain the myriad ways in which firing off a few rounds into a crowd of rioters would have been ineffective at best and a prelude to a bloodbath at worst. The meeting broke up without any of the four senators so much as hinting at a willingness to support a January 6 commission. Shortly after that, Ted Cruz of Texas canceled their scheduled meeting after the group notified his staff that they were running slightly behind.

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