I’m angry at MAGA leaders every day for the lies and manipulation and wreckage they’ve wrought on the very people who voted for them—not to mention the rest of us. I’m angry when I see faith manipulated and weaponized, while so many suffer in poverty, without healthcare access, amid collapsing job opportunities and an evaporating path toward the middle class.
For much of my life, I was your garden-variety MSNBC Democrat, but I’ve moved left and weaned myself off corporate news in recent years. After voting for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, I’ve found that it’s Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialist platform that has stood the test of time. And as my political consciousness has grown, so has my anger.
I am outraged by the Democratic Party’s failures—failures that ushered in today’s fascist hellscape. I’d even argue that Democrats are just as culpable as the far right when it comes to delivering fascism through a series of missed opportunities, by backing down for no reason and calling it “integrity,” abandoning the working class in favor of corporations, and remaining so obsessed with their own moral goodness that they forgot to do the job they were elected for.
It’s a profound betrayal of who they’re supposed to represent. And if they can’t protect their own—the people who believe in the goodness of the Democratic Party—they don’t stand a chance with people in the Bible Belt or the South, who don’t see the Democrats as the “good guys.” They see them as interlopers and as a threat to their way of life. They see them as demons. They see Donald Trump as the one fighting for them, even though his policies have gutted them.
When it comes to fighting fascism, Democrats are showing up with a cardboard knife to a gun fight.
The Republicans could set the world on fire on their march toward authoritarianism and it might not matter. Because when it comes to fighting fascism, Democrats are showing up with a cardboard knife to a gun fight.
*
On January 6, 2021, I was in my office, where I spent my days juggling 20 high-end interior design projects. I always kept my door closed, so I could play CNN or MSNBC in the background. That endless curiosity I’d had as a child hadn’t gone anywhere, and I was by then an avowed news junkie. I knew that Trump had a rally planned to coincide with the election certification, and that he’d been stirring up false allegations of election fraud since Biden’s massive win, but I was doing my best to laser-focus on my work for the day. Trump’s voice broke through my concentration: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore!” he yelled.
There was something in his tone that raised my cortisol. I swiveled to the TV, work forgotten. I saw a rabid crowd with their MAGA merch. The cameras followed as the crowd began to march, turning into what I can only call an invasion.
My eyes were glued to the TV as an armed mob rushed over barricades and ransacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the results of a free and fair election. An invasion? Of the Capitol? And I’m watching it on TV? To this day, it’s one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen.
For many of us, the details of that day have gotten lost in our memories, in the rewriting of the narrative of our shared trauma. But it’s critical that we remember exactly what happened.
At eight in the morning, Trump tweeted instructions at Mike Pence to not certify the election. At noon, he began his rally and urged his supporters to make their way to the Capitol, where, less than an hour later, the crowd outnumbered Capitol Police, who struggled to contain the armed rioters. One man hung a gallows complete with a noose.
Inside the Capitol, the election certification process began, and outside, the overwhelmed police called for backup, saying a riot had formed. The Secret Service evacuated Vice President Pence, while rioters breached more barriers and began to smash through windows, kicking doors open behind them for more rioters to stream in.
All my employees ran up to my office to watch it unfold on TV. We had our hands over our mouths in disbelief—not only at the violence, which should have been shocking enough on its own. But we simply couldn’t make sense of the lack of relief or rescue. The police collapsed, and it would be hours before the National Guard would arrive. It took about two seconds for me to realize what sworn testimony would eventually confirm: This was coming from the top.
The details here are important, and as I’d later learn, easily papered over. The rioters waved the Confederate flag, a clear symbol of racist hatred. Some wore masks over their faces; others wore tactical gear. One wore a shirt that said “Camp Auschwitz.” (This convicted, proud antisemite was later pardoned by Trump.) Some senators fled while others braced themselves inside the Senate chamber as Officer Eugene Goodman tried to reason with the mob, and Senate staffers barricaded themselves in offices, hiding. The rioters began to pound on doors, screaming for Nancy Pelosi.
They fanned out throughout the Capitol Building, opening more doors to let even more rioters surge in. The House suspended its floor debate, and members were instructed to prepare their tear gas masks. The sitting president tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”—egging on the rioters. The House tried to restart its debate and immediately suspended again, warning congresspeople to get down under their chairs. Trump spoke directly to Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, who told him that Pence had been evacuated. The tremendous danger was clear to me and anyone watching.
In the throes of this chaos, a colleague at the shipping dock that housed my clients’ furniture called. I answered without thinking, even though this woman, who considered Jesus Christ and Donald Trump one and the same, had made it abundantly clear what she thought of me over the course of our business relationship. Her question was mundane and hardly urgent, and I snapped, “I can’t even think about that right now! Are you watching TV? MAGA is ransacking the Capitol, and they want to hang Mike Pence!”
Without missing a beat, she lobbed back, “Well, this is what happened when Black Lives Matter protested. What did you think we were going to do?” What the hell was she talking about? Before I could get any clarity, she told me that her own brother-in- law was right there at the Capitol, the one I was watching being stormed on national TV. It was chilling, and it turned my stomach.
I’d avoided personal relationships with Trumpers. It was a moral division—not a political one—that I couldn’t bridge. That phone call was a perfect illustration of why. I was the sole Democrat in her life, and I am dead certain that she got joy out of that conversation and my sputtering responses. My reaction was the reason for the call in the first place.
Around me, my colleagues were in shock, too. We were so deeply lost as a nation. Biden had crushed Trump by over 7 million votes—and inside the Capitol, these rioters were throwing literal feces like animals. This woman wanted to rub it in my face because to her, this was good, and my horror was even better. I hung up on her, and I didn’t work with her again. It felt like the world had reached a point of no return, and soon I’d see that, in fact, we had.
Outside the House chamber, the mob tried to kick down locked doors, shattering the glass panes. One man used a baton—either he’d brought it or pulled it from a Capitol officer—to push through as the mob chanted “Break it down! Break it down!” An officer shot into the charging crowd, killing Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who is now known as a far-right martyr. The members of the House inside the chamber remained trapped, while rioters finally breached the Senate Gallery. Disappointed to find the senators evacuated, rioters picked through papers left behind in search of “something we can use against these scumbags.”
*
At 3:13pm, Trump tweeted again, urging rioters to “remain peaceful.” The mob continued to grow inside and outside of the Capitol. At 4:17, he instructed the rioters to go home, saying, “We love you.”
At 6pm, after Ashli Babbitt’s death was announced, Trump tweeted, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
I reconstructed this timeline from watching old news coverage and from the BBC’s impeccable minute-by-minute breakdown. It’s important to be crystal clear with exactly what happened, because from my point of view, this was the point of no return. I do remember that day, in spite of the chaos. Five people died in the 36 hours following the insurrection, and 140 police officers sustained serious injuries, including “cracked ribs, traumatic brain injuries, smashed spinal disks, and heart attacks as rioters used bats, flagpoles, chemical spray, stolen police shields, and batons to beat officers,” according to a House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary deposition. The accounts from lawmakers and congressional staffers are sickening. It was an act of terrorism at the center of the American government.
In my circle, in my friends’ homes, and on TV, Republicans were saying that, finally, MAGA had gone too far. And in that moment of certifying Joe Biden’s victory and transferring power from Republicans to Democrats, the party now in power had its shot to say, “No more.”
*
The descent into fascism was just on the other side of the mountain, and for a brief moment, on January 6, it seemed like the country might take a turn.
In that version, President Joe Biden, newly empowered with a decisive electoral victory and a country desperate for change, would have been strident in his defense of American democracy.
He would have been unequivocal in his choice of a prosecutor, a bulldog who would vigorously investigate wrongdoing. I believe that with a speedy and robust trial and all evidence revealed—including evidence that Trump-aligned organizations, one of which was founded by his son, budgeted millions of dollars for the January 6 rally—Trump would have served a federal sentence for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. As a convicted felon, he would never be able to hold public office again, and Biden would have staved off the dogs of fascism longer.
In those early days of Biden’s presidency, Trump hadn’t even decided he’d run again. Just imagine if Joe Biden had appointed someone to lead the Justice Department with the most basic sense of urgency. Imagine if the Justice Department had done its job—and, with the illegal deeds revealed by the investigation and trial, stopped the dictator in his tracks. Sure, the Republican Party would have found its next standard-bearer, but he would have to be one without the populist wind at his back, without the Divine Right of Kings.
Think about it for a second. Take yourself back to that day.
Did you ever imagine that man would be given the keys again? I sure as hell didn’t. I thought that the Justice Department would bring charges as one of their first acts to defend our elections and our country.
God, was I wrong.
When the dust settled on the Capitol and America went back to work the next day, President Biden nominated Merrick Garland as his Attorney General out of some supposed debt from Garland’s mistreatment during the Obama administration. (Remember, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, which Mitch McConnell blocked.) Whoever took over the Department of Justice—after rioters built a gallows and shouted “Hang Mike Pence,” defecated in the Capitol, and beat up cops—needed to move with a sense of relentless urgency to secure our democracy. But instead, Garland handled it as though he’d overdone it on the Xanax.
It took Merrick Garland two years to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 riot. While everyday Democrats threw their hands up in the air and wondered what on earth was happening, Garland’s Justice Department hemmed and hawed about staying impartial, objective, and neutral in the face of violent authoritarianism. They called it “integrity politics.” I call it selling out the American people, betraying democracy, and downright rubber-stamping the insanity. There’s nothing neutral about dragging your feet, and a rigorous investigation of crimes is the only job of the Justice Department.
As I sit down to write this four years later, people refer to it as the small dust-up at the Capitol. A peaceful protest. During Trump’s campaign, the one that resulted in his disastrous, fascist second term, he called the incarcerated rioters “hostages” and went on to pardon them once he was elected. Make no mistake: What unfolded on January 6 amounted to, in effect, a violent attempt on the life of the sitting vice president, which I believe was fueled by Trump’s own words and actions. But those two years gave him plenty of time to change the narrative, with an assist from the massive right-wing media ecosystem. The attempted coup became a freedom march. And those two years were handed to him on a golden platter by an asleep-at-the-wheel Justice Department. Two years to normalize terrorism. To sane-wash with hand-wringing.
It’s popular among dyed-in-the-wool Democrats to frown on my criticism of the Democratic Party. To think that criticizing mainstream Democrats’ failures somehow makes us weaker than fighting back. I get it—I used to agree with them, especially since the mainstream media maintains a double standard of covering the Democrats and providing cover for the Republicans. But with an approval rating from an exhausted and disappointed base falling—less than half of registered Democrats, or 42 percent, approve of Congressional Democrats, according to a Quinnipiac Poll at the end of 2025—I can’t imagine anything more vital than rigorous criticism and a new path forward. I am a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, and I’ll criticize the party until it meets the needs of the people—until it becomes a true opposition party that plays in all 50 states for all Americans. And I know what plays in rural America. I know what plays with working-class Oklahomans. They want a fierce defender.
Joe Biden and the Democrats didn’t meet the moment—the most critical appointment of our lifetimes. That one failure alone is enough to forever define his presidency.
Over time, that inaction would collaborate with corporate media and far-right media to gloss over the horrors of the coup with a peaceful sheen. We expect this of the Republicans, who have made lying the basis of their communication strategy. But when Democrats don’t fight back—when Biden didn’t fight back—it’s complicity, and it doesn’t get us anywhere.
There’s some sort of sickness infecting the whole party, where Democrats truly believe they’ll win by being deferential to the right wing. By collapsing in favor of white supremacy and patriarchy. But even if they don’t name it, that silent deference means selling out Americans. That silent deference smells of weakness, and voters sniff it right out.
In reality, the Democrats aren’t playing the same game as Republicans—and they pretend it’s some kind of moral goodness to take the high road.
Not only did Donald Trump get away with his insurrection, but he was also rewarded with two years of normalization—a critical foundation for the success of his fascism. Handed to him by the Biden administration, all that sane-washing dovetails beautifully with authoritarian religion, because Evangelical Christianity similarly preaches a version of forgiveness typically lacking in any accountability. If the Evangelical Christian political machine could make room for him morally, they surely could prime Americans to forgive him for unleashing a murderous mob, no questions asked.
*
Let me remind you exactly what we knew of Trump’s leadership when Biden was making his decision about how to proceed following January 6. To start, he’d thrown 500,000 children into detention centers, regularly violating the federal 72-hour limit on holding children. (If you’re keeping track of the fascist playbook, there are your scapegoats.)
There are immigration detention centers around the country, but most are located in the South, and the conditions are heart-wrenching and unconscionable. In 2018, reporters visited the Ursula detention center in South Texas, an old warehouse housing hundreds of children in a series of cages bound by metal fencing. It’s known as “La Perrera,” or Spanish for “dog kennel.” The Associated Press reported one cage had 20 children inside, with foil sheets as blankets. The children had been separated from their parents or other adult family members, leaving them to care for each other. “One teenager… said she had to show others in her cell how to change [another child’s] diaper,” and the warehouse kept its overhead lighting on around the clock. (24/7 lighting is well-known to “to cause sleep deprivation through dysregulation of the body’s natural sleep-wake cycles, or circadian rhythm, and may lead to cognitive disorganization, paranoia, and hallucinations.”) Elected officials and journalists reported widespread horrors: a child “so traumatized that she wasn’t talking. She was just curled up in a little ball.” A little boy sitting quietly, clutching a photocopy of his mother’s ID card. A little girl pounding her fists and screaming; none of the visitors nor the staff were allowed to hold her to provide comfort.
A Human Rights Watch report interviewed 110 women and children held in immigration detention along the southern border. (Of the interviewees, 103 were held in 2017, but it’s worth noting that some of these women and children were held in 2015 or 2016, under the Obama administration. While Trump’s administration ratcheted up the inhumanity, they did not create it out of thin air.) They “routinely described sleeping directly on the floor in uncomfortably cold cells, being unable to wash their hands with soap after using the toilets, before and after eating, and before and after feeding or changing infants, and being separated from other family members while in holding cells, among other abusive practices.” The frigid temperatures—while denied by Customs and Border Protection—show up consistently in detainee reports and in the reports of visiting officials or journalists. They slept on the floor, even if they were pregnant. They did not have toothbrushes, toothpaste, or menstrual products.
It was, in 2019, controversial to call these detention facilities “concentration camps,” as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did. But as M. Gessen wrote in The New Yorker:
[T]he argument is really about how we perceive history, ourselves, and ourselves in history. We learn to think of history as something that has already happened, to other people…As for history, the greater the event, the more mythologized it becomes. Despite our best intentions, the myth becomes a caricature of sorts…This has the effect of making them, essentially, unimaginable.
Eight years and countless unimaginable horrors later, I don’t find that characterization of “concentration camps” controversial—or unimaginable—especially using the most basic definition as “mass detention of civilians without trial.” I certainly don’t find it controversial considering the American history of concentration camps, like the 120,000 Japanese civilians thrown into “internment camps” during World War II. And when we look at the realities of today’s detention centers, with their inadequate nutrition, their inhumane conditions, and their excessive holding periods, it’s clear as day.
These modern-day concentration camps were an offshoot of Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration and broader inhumane migrant separation policies. (There’s your ultranationalism.) He banned Muslims from entering the country through his travel ban that targeted seven majority-Muslim countries. (More scapegoats.) Federal law enforcement used tear gas in response to the Washington, DC, protests after George Floyd’s brutal murder, violating First Amendment rights, and in Portland, Oregon, federal agents seized protestors into unmarked vans, where they were denied their constitutionally guaranteed due process. (There’s your state-sanctioned violence.) He banned trans people from the military, claiming that trans service members are unable to meet the military’s “high standards of readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” due to their gender dysphoria. There is exactly no evidence that trans identity makes individuals unfit to serve, and this move is a clear escalation in the administration’s attempts to simply remove trans people from American life. (We are piling up scapegoats.) That’s just the tip of the iceberg of his first presidency.
And so today’s fascism is not a surprise. Joe Biden and the Democrats didn’t meet the moment—the most critical appointment of our lifetimes. That one failure alone is enough to forever define his presidency.
_______________________________
Excerpted from Not Today, Fascists: The Lies That Got Us Here, and the Truths That Will Reunite Us by Jennifer Welch. Copyright © 2026 by Jennifer Welch Designs, Inc., Published by Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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