The effort to understand how the
January 6 attack on the U.S.
Capitol last year happened is a
question congress, reporters and
the American people have been
confronted with for the past 15
months.
Lisa Desjardins is here with a
new look.
Lisa: Radicalized extremist
groups.
Law enforcement bowing to
pressure.
And the encouraging words of
president trump himself.
It's all part of a new podcast
called "Will be wild" that
explores the leadup to the
January 6 attack.
Andrea bernstine is an
investigative journalist who
covers trump's legal troubles
for NPR and is the cohost of the
challenge.
The name of your podcast is a
reference to something president
trump wrote in a tweet before
the January 6 rally, prepping
people for it.
He wrote, it will be wild.
I want to ask what you learned
about president trump's role or
influence on what happened on
January 6.
Andrea: At this point it's not
just what we found.
A federal judge ruled the former
more likely than not committed a
crime in the run-up to January
6.
We wanted to take a long look
not only at the trump
administration but at the years
prior and we found a trend both
of radicalization and the
government turning away from
white supremacist violence that
was accelerated during the trump
years.
Both the radicalization of
people from the country and also
the hollowing out of federal law
enforcement agencies designed to
protect against domestic
terrorism.
As a journalist, I covered
September 11 and its aftermath
and was completely baffled by
January 6.
How could there be a whole
federal agency set up to prevent
this kind of attack that didn't
work?
What we found as we began to
look as there had been a churn
at the department of security.
There had been six secretaries
or acting secretaries, people in
and out of important positions.
People who tried to confront
domestic terrorism were told by
the white house, do not do that.
When president trump's sent that
tweet and thousands of
supporters came to Washington,
it was like pushing over the
barricades with a feather
because the reinforcements
supposed to defend democracy had
been weakened by four years of
president trump.
Lisa: You spoke to different
security analysts, FBI
officials, homeland security
officials.
One was a former department of
homeland security analyst and he
talked about what was going on
inside the trump administration,
the problems he saw.
>> That administration
mainstreamed some of the
extremist narratives that I saw
on kkk message boards and
neo-nazi websites -- building a
wall, banning muslims from the
country, mass deportation of
Latino immigrants.
This was the first time in the
trending I looked at that these
right wing extremist groups
thrived under a Republican
administration.
Lisa: Can you help connect the
dots on how our security
apparatus missed this, this long
look you are talking about?
Andrea: Johnson is a very
interesting person because he
actually tried to warn, as far
back as the Obama administration
, that radicalization was taking
place in the military and
domestic terrorism was on the
rise, and was somebody whose
warnings were not heeded.
During the trump administration,
there were officials, for
example Elizabeth Newman, who
had worked in homeland security
since bush, reluctantly came to
the trump administration
believing she could make things
better.
When she tried to raise the
alarm and mobilize the country
against the rise of domestic
terrorism, she found constant
pushback from the white house.
What many experts we spoke to
came to conclude was that the
white house didn't want to fight
white supremacist groups
gathering because it saw those
people as among the former
president political base.
The former president saw it in
his interest to rile up these
groups.
The disastrous consequences came
together on January 6, when
people died, more than 100
police officers were injured,
people feared for their lives,
the temple of democracy was
desecrated.
We are still living with that,
not just the consequences, but
all the forces that came into
play, the radicalization and
distrust in government.
That's what we are trying to
explore in the podcast, how
these forces remain in play and
what it means for upcoming
elections, 2022 midterms and
2024 presidential race.
Lisa: Among those forces, the
thousands of trump supporters
who were there on January 6.
One you talked to was a woman
named Natalie of Idaho.
She didn't end up inside the
capital but she told you
interesting things about why she
went.
She said it was because of her
election doubts.
>> It's like these feelings
continue to compound, of
frustration.
We have the right to a free and
fair election and it continued
to become less free and fair.
It got to a place of, what can I
do to be part of a movement to
represent how we are feeling?
Lisa: Courts have ruled the
election was free and fair.
I want to ask you, what did you
gather about what drove those
people to the capitol that day
and what they still believe
today about that?
Andrea: This is one of the
disturbing things we are dealing
with.
Immediately after the election,
as we know, former president
trump said, frankly, I did win.
His allies began to pump out
disinformation.
We traced directly during the
course of this podcast how
people heard that and believed
there was some civil war coming
and they had to follow the
suggestion of their
commander-in-chief and go to
Washington to defend democracy,
when in fact they were attacking
democracy.
That is one of the disturbing
legacies, that millions of
people still believe that.
Former president trump is still
saying the results of the
election were fraudulent and it
is still a motivating force so
that right now the majority of
Republicans do not believe Joe
Biden is a legitimately elected
president.
That is not an interesting
factoid, that is an active trend
that will be confronting us as
soon the elections in the fall.
Lisa: The podcast is will be
wild.