The Trust Is Gone

Things were just getting good again: Biden had been elected, Trump’s time was over. Then a dangerous mob attacked the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Everything has been different since then.

There are those moments in life that one almost misses only to remember every detail later, perhaps forever: the structure of the functional, hard fabric sofa in the hotel, a laptop on my knees, the view of a seedy parking lot. It was the working day norm of a correspondent, interrupted by the increasingly urgent voices of the news anchors to whom I hadn’t really been paying attention because there’s always something urgent on CNN.

I was in Atlanta, Georgia, to report on the runoff elections there for two Senate seats that would decide who controlled the Senate in Washington, D.C. In the early morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, were declared winners. The day was off to a good, almost euphoric start for everyone who had wished for political change after Donald Trump. Everything was OK again. Joe Biden would take control of the White House and have the majority in Congress.

With all the tension in the months leading up to the election, one could always sense a fundamental faith that democracy would win in the U.S. — at least in conversations with those who were fighting against Trump. America never gives up, especially not on itself. I always observed this resilience with a mix of awe and astonishment.

On this Wednesday in January, the TV was on in my hotel room because then still-President Trump had announced that he would speak to his followers who did not want to accept his defeat. After Trump’s defiant refusal to recognize Biden as the incoming president, no one was naïve enough to ignore what was happening that day in Washington. As I wrote about Ossoff as the new Democratic bearer of hope, I was expecting falsehoods in Trump’s speech, aggressive protesting from his followers, maybe fistfights in side streets, a lot of frustration and a large police presence — in short, with what had by then become normal. But Trump had lost the election, after all; Congress was about to certify the vote and Biden’s clear victory. Why would anything meaningful happen now?

The article on Ossoff was never published.

‘We’re In’

It was a little after 2 p.m. that Jan. 6 became a day that would decisively change the United States. In a scene of unfathomable chaos, freaks broke the barriers in front of the Capitol and stormed the building, together with your average Joe next to whom I had stood at countless campaign events. “We’re in, we’re in. Let’s go.” The attack on the building lasted approximately five hours; the storm across the entire country has not subsided since then.

From that hard sofa I tried to express in words what had happened. I was not able to for a long time; I kept looking at the television, at the images that kept being shown. At the aggression, the violence, the destruction. I suddenly felt that I as a reporter was in the completely wrong place, even though it had been precisely the right one in the morning because the country’s short-term political future had been decided here. But the distance also helped me to come to terms with what I did not want to understand.

Everything Felt Wrong

I waited for Trump’s reaction, for a clear message that this attack was even for him one step too far — even though I knew deep down that it would not happen. This action was making good on everything that Trump had said and done in the last few months. The sacred Constitution? Didn’t care. His own power? Nothing mattered more to him. The basic trust that everything would turn out OK in the end was suddenly gone.

In that moment it was hard for me to look objectively at a country that is a second homeland to me. I am connected to so many people here; I have an “American mom,” as everyone calls my friend Ann. She wrote to me from Ohio with just one concerned question: “Where are you right now?” I didn’t have time to ask her how she was doing during the attack. I was too shocked myself and was taking refuge in my work. How, then, was she supposed to be doing as she watched the people who were destroying the Capitol, her Capitol, her homeland!

We talked about it later, as we did with many others, too. And we are still having these conversations about the fragility of American democracy, about the role of the Republican Party, about polarization, about identity and about a future in which it’s not guaranteed that a president will be in charge who adheres to the Constitution and the fundamental principles of democracy.

The next morning, I sat with a colleague and friend in the Atlanta airport to take the first flight back to the nation’s capital. It was a beautiful morning; the day started with a picture-perfect sunrise, but everything about it felt wrong. In Washington, D.C., armored military vehicles were guarding the airport; everything about that felt wrong, too. The city was a high-security area; the Capitol, where Congress had finally certified Biden’s victory at 3:42 a.m., was cordoned off. In Washington, one gets used to helicopters circling overhead, but they circled endlessly in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration. And there were wanted photos everywhere; the mob was to be held accountable.

The FBI investigation remains ongoing; more than 160 people have pleaded guilty, more than 700 have been arrested and 350 are still being sought. A committee in the House of Representatives is also investigating the events of that day. The visible signs of the violent insurrection have disappeared with time. The National Guard soldiers who slept on the floor of the Capitol to guard it around the clock have been withdrawn; the barricades in front of the building and in front of the White House are slowly being taken down; the sound of helicopters is becoming more sporadic.

Every Day Is a Jan. 6

But the political effects of that Jan. 6 remain. For Trump, for large swaths of the Republican Party and for millions in the country, every day since then has been a Jan. 6. For them, the attack was just the beginning of their fight for America as they imagine it.

“The Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both.” These words were recently spoken by Liz Cheney, a conservative who has been as good as exiled from her party, who is speaking out against Trump, his lie about a stolen election and the downplaying of the insurrection a year ago.

For a year, politicians at every level of the Republican Party have made this decision over and over. And they have decided in favor of Trump, against the Constitution. They downplay the attack on the Capitol and support Trump by not calling his lies lies; they are willing to use anti-democratic means to regain power. People like them, who intentionally make it harder for some people to vote, no longer care about democracy.

During my travels across the United States since Jan. 6, 2021, I have hardly had a single conversation, no matter what I was reporting on or whether I was in Oregon, Texas, Wyoming or South Carolina, that did not at some point raise the question: Can America survive this? Will the democracy survive?

There is an untroubled answer from all those who care above all about their power, their privileges, their image of America. An answer that has nothing to do with how everyone in this huge country can live together and participate in society. And there is another, worried answer that is full of uncertainty and fear that the democracy will not survive. An answer from those who have understood that the relief after Biden’s inauguration two weeks after the storming of the Capitol was just an illusion.

No Longer Recognizable

Several months after Jan. 6, I asked my friend Ann how I could explain all of that to readers in Germany. The broken windowpanes in the Capitol had long been replaced, but no one still believed that everything was OK again. Trump continues with his lies, his manipulation and his fundraising. He is constantly floating the idea of running for reelection, and his party is once again playing along. The phrase “one united nation” is now nothing more than a corrupted, irrelevant expression of American self-assurance.

Maybe that is what I’m trying to explain: There is no longer one America. We must finally abandon the image of the U.S. that we thought we knew so well. In Germany, two days before the anniversary of Jan. 6, I received a postcard from Ohio saying, “Your other home misses you.” I miss my second homeland, too. But I am also afraid that someday I may not want to travel to the U.S. because I will no longer recognize it.

Jan. 6, 2021 laid bare in excruciating terms what is happening in today’s America. It has been irreparably divided beyond anything that Biden’s election victory over Trump can do to save it. Because part of society does not even want to be saved. Because the idea of a national authoritarian state in the United States no longer scares many people; it electrifies them. America has become a different country.