Inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6: A Senator Remembers Fear and Chaos
Senator Cory Booker told The Daily Beast Podcast hosts Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee about his experience at the Capitol that day.
Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Getty
As voters grapple with the possibility of a fresh wave of violence following Election Day, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) looked back on Jan. 6, 2021, in an interview on The Daily Beast Podcast. “I wasn’t prepared,” he said of that day’s insurrection. While rioters breached the Capitol, politicians and staffers inside were forced to decide seemingly between certifying the electoral vote and staying safe. As two of the Senate’s younger members, Booker said he and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) made a plan to stay behind in the Senate chambers to fight off any rioters. “Let’s just take the end, just in case people break through those doors and we have to fight them off,” he recalled telling Kelly. Once they left the chamber, Booker described running through tunnels beneath the Capitol while rioters “were screaming bloody murder.” He remembered seeing wounded Capitol police officers; five police officers died as a result of injuries they received that day. Once he’d found a secure location, “I turn on the TV,” Booker said. “And the first image I saw just feet from where I sit in the Senate chamber, was a Confederate flag.”
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