Wednesday’s deadly events involving an assault of the Capitol building in Washington D.C. have been met roundly by criticisms of the participants for storming the building, vandalizing it, and generally creating an unsafe environment in what is a building that represents such a great deal of reverence to the United States of America. The assault of the building was merely the result of what originated as a protest aimed at protesting the results of the 2020 Presidential election, an effort that involved members of our own backyard.
Some of the participants in Wednesday’s events are residents of the Kenai Peninsula, one of whom spoke to KSRM from Washington on Wednesday night. Trapper Alsworth gave an eye-witness account, where he discussed starting the day being front row as President Trump spoke at the early iteration of the rally. He noted that Trump rallied the crowd to encourage Vice President Mike Pence to prevent the electoral count from taking place, but Alsworth claims the President never encouraged violence.
The crowd then made their way to the Capitol building: “When I got to the Capitol, people were all the way up to the building itself. One thing I would like to say about the rally is the feeling I got – I paid attention to this – is that everybody was really angry at the Trump rally. I’ve been really unhappy with the way this election went. Not just because of all of the evidence of voter fraud, but the frustration we’ve had of what seems like corrupt Department of Justice.”
Alsworth added: “I heard that people were going up the stairs [of the Capitol]. I immediately lost all the other parties of my group – I just looked one way, I’d been up for 30 hours. I thought, ‘Where did everybody go? I’m gonna follow the crowd.’ So I did and marched up the Senate steps and got to the top. At that point, people had gotten through the Senate doors. There were people breaking down the doors. There was quite a lot of anger because there had been some word about Mike Pence saying that he was going to certify the election for Kamala [Harris] and [Joe] Biden. Nobody was violent! As a matter of fact, when we were going to the building, there was a guy with a megaphone saying ‘Respect our house!'”
He continued: “At one point I did gain access to the capitol building, I simply didn’t have any choice. But to gain access to the capitol building, there was such a sea of people in the area that I was at. What I saw there were 40 or 50 people deep, four people wide trying to push their way farther in the capitol, open all the doors and basically chanting ‘fight for Trump’ to see if there was anybody in there. I think at one point I did see a senator or a house member, I don’t know which.”
The day’s events left marked a historic day, one that the President may have predicted: “President Trump said it was going to be a wild protest. I think it really was.”
Photograph from Wednesday’s event in D.C. from Alaska State Representative David Eastman’s public Facebook page.
