Jan. 6 opened with hope and joy as a crowd nearing 1 million people gathered on The Ellipse, directly facing the White House, to listen to President Donald J. Trump. They gathered from all over the country for the “Save America March,” where the president would update them on the election.
The participants expressed their appreciation for the president by chanting, “We love you. We love you.”
Mary and John, neither of whom wanted to give their last names, traveled to the rally, one from California and the other from Florida. They both said they had come to “have the president’s back as he has had ours.”
In a carefully organized speech outlining election fraud, the president said, “Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our future.” The president recounted his landslide victory and the fraud discovered within each state.
The nearly 1-hour speech ended with a hopeful word from the president “… Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country.” He also said, “I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol. And we’re going to try and give our Republicans the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,” echoing the words of bestselling author of God, Trump and the 2020 Election Stephen Strang when he wrote, “A passive church is part of the reason the country is in the mess it’s in.”
At the rally, Mike Lindell, inventor and CEO of MyPillow, reiterated, “Donald Trump will be elected. God will come through for us.”
Just as the president was ending his address and the attendees began to move toward the Capitol as part of the march, word began to circulate about the betrayal of vice president Mike Pence.
Rather than anger, there was a deep sense of sadness at the lack of action of a man, long known as a “Jimmy Carter” for being deeply religious but weak and ineffectual when it came to standing up for the principles he so loudly espouses.
Longtime Washington prayer leader Dick Simmons, who often brings up the church’s weakness and compromise rather than strength and power, noted Pence’s decision as an example.
In fact, according to constitutional experts from Laurence Tribe to former Supreme Court law clerk Ted Cruz, the power of the vice president to not affirm electors with dual slates and concerns of integrity is both historic and constitutional.
Protesters routinely enter the Capitol and other buildings on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers and others who frequent the Capitol often see large groups involved in sit-ins in the halls, in front of members’ offices to protest just about every major issue. The difference following Wednesday’s rally was the overall response and coverage—and, of course, the sad and unnecessary deaths of four people.
The march to the Capitol was peaceful, albeit sad, as word of the great betrayal of Mike Pence was thick in the air. Many felt like “forgotten men and forgotten women” as they continued to believe in and stand for the president’s massive landslide win.
Normally, in such a situation, protesters would enter, occupy a hall or an office, make their points and, after a while, leave.
In this case, due to the pandemic, the doors were shut. Some protesters pried them open and entered as they chanted “Whose house? Our house,” a chant often heard in Washington, D.C., at times like this.
The president had already asked attendees, before they left The Ellipse, to be peaceful, echoing Romans 12:21, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Moments earlier, the president ended his message with the words, “I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to ‘Make America Great Again.'”
Immediately following the violence, Twitter promptly locked the president’s account.
Franklin Graham encourages people to “Pray that the enemies of God would be quieted and that all their plans would be put to nothing.” He also quotes a recent message by Albert Mohler, “The revival of socialism is a major challenge of our age. Christians must recognize that socialism … comes with a moral urgency.”
The MAGA movement continues even when betrayed by so many, bringing with it a silver lining of hope that, in fact, God still is in control. {eoa}
Amir George is the author of Liberating Iraq at liberating-iraq.com and is on Parlor @Amir George.
Daily prayer for the country continues, since 1991, at 7:30 a.m. and 12 noon at the Constitution Avenue entrance to the Senate on Capitol Hill. For more information, contact[email protected].