“This Is Like an Active Shooter Drill”: Trump Supporters Storm the U.S. Capitol

On Wednesday pro-Trump protestors in Washington D.C. stormed Capitol Hill in an act of violence stoked by the president. Staffers and members of Congress took cover as chaos broke out on the House floor, with Senator Mitt Romney reportedly yelling, “This is what you’ve gotten,” to his colleagues including Senator Ted Cruz, a vocal supporter of Trump’s crusade to delegitimize Joe Biden’s victory.

“I was in line to get the vaccine when it started really ramping up outside,” said a senior Democratic Congressional staffer. “[A] cop outside was listening to his radio. At one point [they] said, ‘Things are getting dicey.’ Then the nurse had to tell me three times to relax before she injected me.”

“Since then, basically, we’ve been hunkered down in our office watching this on TV and Twitter like everyone else,” the staffer said.

An aide to a Democratic member of Congress recounted their boss’s experience: “[She] barricaded herself in the office [and is] putting furniture in front of the doors. She was trying to stay quiet because she was afraid people could hear her inside her office…this is like an active-shooter drill that we helped our kids prepare for.”

“I was checking Twitter to see what people were saying to tell my boss,” said an aide to a progressive staffer describing the chaos. “All I wanted was an email from [Nancy] Pelosi’s staff being like, This is real, do this. That’s the purpose of leadership, right? That’s why we have people in leadership positions: to tell the rest of us in times of crisis what to do. I get that…safety was first. But everything was dropped about this. Absolutely everything.

“It’s shocking to me because we all knew this was coming,” the staffer added. “People call you for weeks. I moved my car this morning—I was very prepared for this. These are the people that are supposed to protect us [from] another 9/11? Are you kidding?”

Drew Angerer