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The next day, I followed thousands of people up the National Mall after Trump’s incendiary speech from the Ellipse. On the west side of the Capitol, two broad flights of granite steps descended from an outdoor terrace on the third floor. In anticipation of Joe Biden’s Presidential Inauguration, huge bleachers had been erected over the steps, with a ten-thousand-square-foot platform constructed between them; the bleachers had been wrapped in ripstop tarpaulin, creating a sort of monolith that functioned as a rampart. Trump supporters climbed the steps and began cutting through the fabric with knives. Officers blocked an opening at the bottom of the bleachers, but they were outnumbered and obviously intimidated as the mob pressed against them, screaming insults, pelting them with cans and bottles. Some people shoved and punched individual officers; others linked arms and rammed their backs into a row of riot shields, their eyes squeezed shut against blasts of pepper spray. A few Trump supporters used their own chemical agents against the police. The stone slabs underfoot were smeared with blood. “You’re a bunch of oath breakers!” a man making his way along the police line barked through a bullhorn. “You’re traitors to the country!”
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