Welcome to "Late Night."
It's 12:37. We're live and very grateful
to be here with you. I swear, we were
writing jokes today, and then,
as everyone knows by now, today was a day filled with
surreal and horrifying scenes of armed insurrection,
an attempt to destroy, through violent means,
American democracy. It was a
sequence of events unseen in the modern history
of this nation. And the images should be seared into our
collective consciousness for the rest of our lives. And so, because of that, our show will be
a little different tonight. In a few moments,
we'll be talking with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, as well as rapper and activist
Killer Mike to break down what happened
and what it means going forward. But, first,
I think it's important, as the first draft of history
is being written and as we're all processing
what we witnessed today, to be as plain-spoken
and clear-eyed as possible. What we saw today
was a violent insurgency, an attempt to overthrow the legitimately elected
government of the United States. And it was incited, directed,
and encouraged by the president, Donald Trump, and more than
a few members of the Republican Party
and right-wing media. A violent mob of Trump
supporters stormed the Capitol. They violently forced their
way onto the Senate floor and into the office of
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and climbed onto
the side of the Capitol, where they replaced an
American flag with a Trump flag. They carried weapons
in violation of the law and they made it clear
what they wanted. They broadcasted it
to the world. Some shouted, "Trump won the
election" from the Senate dais. Others waved Confederate flags. And their goal was clear --
to disrupt and subvert the lawful counting of electoral
votes and prevent Joe Biden from taking office as the
legitimately elected president. And then,
as we were all watching these stunning scenes
of violence and sedition, of insurrection against
our democracy, anxiously hoping for a
restoration of calm and order, the President of
the United States told the traitors
and the mob, "We love you. You're very special.
I know how you feel." And he does. He knows how they feel
because he's spent four years telling them in great and odious
detail how they should feel. So we can be shocked,
but we can't be surprised. The president wanted this. He directed it, supported it. He incited it and encouraged it. He told that same crowd
just hours earlier that they should never concede, that they should
show strength and fight. His personal lawyer,
Rudy Giuliani, told the crowd they should have
a trial by combat. And for years, the president and
his band of seditious henchmen in the Republican Party and in
the right-wing-media ecosystem have fed their rabid base
a steady diet of unhinged fantasies
and conspiracy theories as a substitute for
leadership and governance. The people who listen to
Donald Trump, to the Republican Party,
to Fox News, and all the rest, what they've been told for years and what they
were told again today was that their country
was being stolen from them, that shadowy groups
and powerful forces were coming for them, that they
should never accept defeat, that they should fight. For two months, they've been fed
monstrous, inflammatory lies about the election,
and now, here we are. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley,
and the rest of the Sedition Caucus in the
House and Senate goaded this on. They're responsible for this. They should wear
this shame and disgrace for the rest of their lives. No one who aided and abetted
today's actions should ever be allowed to
serve in a democracy they so clearly detest. There must be consequences for
stoking violence and sedition. Otherwise, we're going to
see it again. And as for Trump,
the only way, the only way our democracy will survive this
harrowing moment is if he is immediately
removed from office by either the cabinet or
the Congress and prosecuted. Anything less is tacit
permission to continue to use his office and his influence
after he leaves office to foment sedition
and dismantle democracy. And if our government
fails to act, they'll be assenting to
the violent destruction of the democracy they claim
to care so much about. And I think
it's worth noting that while this is the first time
most of us have witnessed anything like
this in our lifetimes, our country has really
only been a full democracy, where everyone can vote,
for about 55 years. In fact, one of
the many great shames of what occurred today is that
it eclipsed a historic moment, a shining glimmer of
hope from last night in Georgia. There were black voters
who went to the polls in unprecedented numbers
to exercise a right that, just 55 years ago,
they did not have. They elected the first
black senator to represent the state and
the first black Democrat to represent any Southern state
in the Senate. They also elected
the Jewish son of an immigrant and, in doing so,
also helped repudiate the violent, racist
authoritarianism of Trump and his movement, a
movement that has never been embraced by
a majority of Americans and which has been rejected by
voters over and over again. We've seen violent insurrection
in this country before. In 1898, a mob of
white-supremacist terrorists marched on city hall in
Wilmington, North Carolina, and staged a violent coup
to overthrow the legitimately elected
biracial local government. Multiracial, pluralistic
democracy is fragile and precious,
and it requires our vigilant stewardship and protection,
and anyone not willing to forward that project with
the fullness of their effort must be shamed and disgraced
and removed from office. And that must start immediately
with Donald Trump. We are going to
try our best tonight to process what happened. I promise, I promise
if you come back tomorrow, we will have jokes. And we're going to be right back
with Nicolle Wallace.
