As rioters beat and crushed him in a Capitol building tunnel on January 6, officer Aquilino Gonell kept thinking to himself: “Where the fuck is the president? Why is the national guard not being deployed?”
The bipartisan congressional committee that investigated the attack would later conclude that Donald Trump never ordered in the guard, which only arrived at the Capitol hours after the riot began, by the directive of the defense department. This week, the president showed far less hesitation to send national guard troops and federal agents on to the streets of Washington DC to respond to an “out of control” crime wave that city leaders say is not actually happening.
