Trump's Trials - Four years after the Capitol riot, its meaning and legacy are still debated

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Trump has promised to pardon many who were involved in the violence of Jan 6. Experts on authoritarianism and extremism say that promise adds to the debate over how the day will be remembered. NPR's Juana Summers speaks to Odette Yousef.Support NPR and hear every episode sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detro and you're listening to Trump's Terms from NPR. We will have really great strong people. Donald Trump is unstoppable. Make America healthy again. The future is going to be amazing. Each episode we bring you NPR's latest coverage of the incoming Trump administration and the people who will run it. Cabinet secretaries, political advisors, military leaders. NPR is following their agenda and their path to

power to bring you stories like the one you're about to hear right after this. Wait, wait, don't tell me. Fresh Air, up first. NPR News Now, Planet Money, Ted Radio Hour, Thru House, the fight continues over what the legacy of January 6th will be. NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Youssef reports. Ruth Ben-Giott says in recent years, other countries have also had their January 6th moments. She calls them self-coos, attempts by someone in power to stay in power,

often by using illegal means and force. In Brazil in 2023, Bolsonaro attempted one in Peru in 2022, in South Korea very recently. Ben-Ghiat is a historian at New York University and author of the book Strongmen, Mussolini to the Present. And in all of those cases the perpetrator of the self-coup was either imprisoned or banned from politics. Not so in the US. Here the legal questions of whether January 6th was an insurrection and whether Trump bears responsibility were never fully adjudicated by a federal court.

Two state courts, both in Colorado, determined yes for both questions. But the narrative coming from Trump, Fox News, and a proportion of the GOP that has grown in the last four years is that it was actually a day of patriotic heroism. I want to look at everything. We're going to look at individual cases, yeah. On NBC's Meet the Press last month, Trump repeated a promise to pardon some

or all of those convicted of crimes related to January 6th. Within your first 100 days, first day? First day. Trump has also spoken of going after members of the House Select Committee, which investigated January 6th. And he has called that day, quote, a beautiful day. You do not want this fight.

You're on the wrong side, buddy. It's perhaps one of the most documented events in recent history. Michael Primo is a journalist and filmmaker. In August, his documentary, Homegrown, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It follows two proud boys starting in 2018. One of them, Christopher Quaglin, ended up being sentenced to 12 years for his violent

participation on January 6th. Primo filmed it all. He says many Americans still don't understand how the country got to that point. The election made the film even more relevant because the headlines trying to diagnose the 2024 election outcomes, talking about the increasing multicultural participation of the far right, the crisis of masculinity

are all ideas that our film squarely deals with. Primo says U.S. broadcasters have praised the film, but none have agreed to distribute it. He says they're nervous about the content. But he thinks an American audience will want to see it and talk about it. Something that has been an indication of how hungry people are for this film is the fact that at all our screenings, many of them are sold out. Virtually all of the audience stays to talk afterwards

because people are so hungry to sort of better understand what's happening in America. Pete Simi says the rewriting of the narrative of January 6th is itself another hallmark of America. This has happened before. It reminds me a lot of what happened after the Reconstruction era. Simi is a sociology professor at Chapman University.

He says after the Civil War, there was rapid progress toward democratic ideals. Rights of citizenship and voting were finally extended to people who'd been slaves. And then came the backlash. The level of violence during the Reconstruction era meant to dismantle those efforts. And then afterwards really kind of created alternate history in terms of the events that happened. And it ushered in a five-decade period of what many characterize as authoritarianism over Black Americans, the Jim Crow era. Simi and Ruth Ben-Giott see similar perils with January 6th revisionism. I wouldn't be surprised if it became a day of commemoration in America, almost a holiday.

Odette Youssef, NPR News. And before we wrap up, a thank you to our NPR Plus supporters who hear each show without sponsored messages and of course who help protect independent journalism. If you are not a supporter yet, you can visit plus.npr.org to find out how you can get a ton of podcast perks across dozens of NPR shows, like bonus episodes, exclusive merchandise, and more. Again, that's plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detro.

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