This story originally appeared in this morning’s Daily Post. Don’t miss what’s happening locally. Get in the habit of picking up the Post in the mornings at 1,000 Mid-Peninsula locations.
BY KYLE MARTIN AND EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writers
Congresswomen Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, and Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, had to flee to undisclosed locations yesterday (Jan. 6) when a riot erupted at the Capitol.
Before getting to the Capitol yesterday, Eshoo had a “bad feeling” because of the increased police patrols and Trump supporters who were spotted along D.C. streets. As Eshoo was walking chaos began and she was told to turn around and leave.
Meanwhile, Speier was in the chambers and tweeted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer were escorted out.
A few minutes later she tweeted: “The Capitol has been breached. We are in lockdown. Thank you, POTUS!”
Both congresswomen were evacuat-to undisclosed locations. “I’m exhausted,” Eshoo told the Post during a phone interview.
Speier reflected on yesterday’s mob and 40 years ago when she and her boss, Congressman Leo Ryan, went to Jonestown, Guyana.
“More than 40 years ago, as I lay bleeding from five gunshot wounds on an airstrip in the Guyanese jungle not knowing if I would live or die, I swore that if I did survive I would dedicate my life to public service,” Speier wrote on Facebook. “I thought of that moment today when the U.S. Capitol was stormed by a mob of Trump rioters emboldened by the president fomenting a coup d’etat.
‘Domestic terrorists’
Both congresswomen derided President Trump and the actions of the mob yesterday.
“I think they are domestic terrorists,” Eshoo said. “They didn’t smash their way into the Capitol hitting daisies at the window. They went in armed.”
“There are consequences for a president that continues to lie and manufacture things. And some people believe him. They believe him and he incited them. And the incitement was on display for people around the world,” Eshoo said.
“The responsibility for this act of domestic terrorism lays firmly at the feet of the President and House and Senate Republicans who refused to impeach him, stoked his ego and entertained his conspiracy theories about nonexistent voter fraud,” Speier wrote. “To see the seat of our government dissolve into anarchy with little to no resistance from the Defense Department or U.S. Capitol Police makes us no better than a banana republic.”
Eshoo said any rioters who were caught breaking into the Capitol, and especially those who did so violently, should be arrested and prosecuted.
And she said if this situation involved protesters with Black Lives Matter, “they would have been shot and killed on the plaza, I believe.”
“I think that the experience has really left us deeply shaken,” Eshoo said. “We can never take our democracy for granted. Every generation has to care for it and nurture it and protect it. It cannot be taken for granted and today was yet another example of that.”
Gee, I remember how outraged Eshoo and Speier were when Democrat-supported “peaceful protesters” torched and looted black-owned businesses in Minneapolis. And I remember when they were livid when the staff of Biden and Harris raised money to bail out the demonstrators. And they were so mad when antifa took over that police station in Seattle and killed four people.
Perhaps these politicians will now have a little empathy for what the citizens of Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, etc. had to endure during the rioting that they enabled and found politically useful.
Trump is a conspirator and should be removed by Congress today. Finish the impeachment. Make sure the impeachment conviction includes a provision that he can’t run again. He has 13 days left in office, so he can do a lot of damage in that time.