Ben Hamilton: Witnessing the Insurrection

Show Transcript

Witnessing the Insurrection

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: We're all living in the aftermath of January 6th, 2021, the day that angry mob of thousands of Trump supporters violently attacked the U. S. Capitol, the symbolic seat of democracy, and tried to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president of the United States. Our guest today was there, not as a protester, but as a historian.

[00:00:26] And the result is his fascinating book. Sorry guys, we stormed the Capitol. Stay with us. 

[00:00:35] Now Ben Hamilton is a history teacher who has finally snapped. He created what he calls the Chasing History Project to try to throw himself into dangerous situations to create historical records for future history students to study.

[00:00:53] While chasing history, he was a first hand witness to the events of January 6, and he interviewed people as they left the Capitol to create an accurate record of what happened in those chaotic hours. Hamilton's interviews and photographs pieced together a fascinating first person account of what happened that day, from Trump's speech where he urged supporters to go to the Capitol, to the often crazy comments by those who did the actions and inactions of the police and of the politicians who the mob forced into hiding until the uprising was quelled. All of it was done by this former high school history teacher so future generations will understand what happened that day.

[00:01:39] It was the culmination of Hamilton's research for his chasing history project, which involved attending many rallies, both by Trump's MAGA supporters, as well as Black Lives Matter. Thanks for sharing your story with us, Ben. I really do appreciate you being with us today. 

[00:01:58] Now tell me, why did you create the Chasing History Project to begin with?

[00:02:04] Ben Hamilton: It was a combination of different things I was passionate about in my life, as a history teacher, one of the first lessons I try to instill in my students is about sources like history, ironically, is becoming a much more relevant subject nowadays than it was 20 years ago, because people need to understand how to measure what source they should trust and what they shouldn't.

[00:02:27] And the general historical rule is you want primary source. Historical documents, that is something written by people who actually witnessed it. And then after you get that, you look at the biases, ask how trustworthy they are. And I started applying that philosophy to what was happening nowadays.

[00:02:47] Like The news, so during COVID my contract ended up expiring as a teacher and I decided it was time to follow my original dream of being an author. Cause I, I wrote like a stack of books that I've never published. I'm one of those guys. And so it was my time to finally do it. And I thought this is my subject. This is trying to create a primary source document that's actually fun to read because there's always one or two books that I get through that I was like, Oh, I could actually assign this in class, or I remember when I was in high school and college, every now and then you get a book that's written by someone who saw something interesting, who's actually a good writer. I can still remember I was 16 or 17 years old, and I read John Steinbeck's travels with Charlie, huge influence on me like he drives around America in a truck that he's named. He named it Rossinante, which is the horse that Don Quixote rides when he's having his dream world adventures. And he just drives around searching for America, interviewing people, talking to people.

[00:03:52] And it's his only non fiction book. There's even a chapter in it when Stine, I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it. He hears that there's a, there are federal troops, this is 60s, being sent to desegregate public schools. And so he goes and watches the troops, the, I believe National Guard, escorting these, little, who knows kindergarten, first grade, black girls, and these mobs of angry white women, like the working class, middle class mothers of that school, screaming obscenities at this kid, trying to make them turn around and go home.

[00:04:29] And John Steinbeck is just I should witness this, like this should not go. This should not be forgotten. I'm going to watch this. I'm going to write it down and forever after people can open up my book and feel the horror I felt at this moment in history. And I never forgot that. And so like the chasing history project was my attempt to Do that on purpose cause Steinbeck is mostly just the little moments of life.

[00:04:52] He just happened to be there. I was like, what if I drove around deliberately looking for some event that someone might study in history later, that some teacher who's trying to get their kids interested can say this book's actually fun to read. And so that's more or less my mission. 

[00:05:07] Bob Gatty: Let me tell you something, my friend.

[00:05:08] You achieved your, as far as I'm concerned, you achieved your goal because your book is fun to read. And not only that, it really is informative and it helps to bring the reader into the events of that day. I love the first person accounts. I love how you call people by what they are, not who they are. 

[00:05:31] Ben Hamilton: Yes, That's a multitasking. I, obviously when I'm getting accounts of people where they might say something that might not put them in the best of light, I shouldn't use their real names. But so because I have to use new names. I make them like humorously fake.

[00:05:48] My favorite one is there was a guy who's just, who's, who told me about how he broke into the Capitol building, got tear gassed, then collected himself and broke in again. And then afterwards he was telling me, yeah, I'm not really sure if I'm allowed to be here or not. Maybe, so I named him instant Replay.

[00:06:08] But that's getting ahead of myself. What did you call it? I called it an instant replay. 

[00:06:12] Bob Gatty: Instant Replay. Okay. You got somebody here called the grumpy old man. 

[00:06:18] Ben Hamilton: Right. And this actually brings up a point that it's a it's harder to do than it sounds because I try to be funny. I tell jokes, cynical, like I, I don't believe that I need to be some sort of angel of neutrality, saying everyone looks equally good. If I interview someone and I'm like I think this person's an idiot. Like I will honestly report my feelings on that. But what I don't want to do is feel like I'm part of one team that's pushing only one political narrative. I don't, I want to be an independent operator at best.

[00:06:51] So I try very hard to call bullshit on the left and the right whenever I see it. This particular book happens to be at about an event that's mostly right wing people doing dumb shit, so they get the brunt of my, my acerbic wit a little more than the left in this one. But probably my next book, all the people who liked me for making fun of the right will be pissed that I'm making fun of the left.

[00:07:13] That's how I try to operate. And that's one of the things I'm proud of, actually, is everybody hates me. If you read the reviews on my books I have people who accuse me of being a right wing sellout, and people who accuse me of being a left wing sellout. And that tells me maybe I'm doing something right.

[00:07:26] That's what I'm going for. 

[00:07:27] Bob Gatty: I don't think you can, people can say that. I really don't. You just did a great job, and I loved it. And as I told you before we went live. I wish I had come up with that idea because it's a, was a really good one. And by the way here's the book, guys.

[00:07:44] Oh, you, I know. You can't really, there you go. Yeah. And I had a hard time putting this one down. It was really good. Let's do this. I wanted to ask you as a witness of January 6th, You interviewed other witnesses. What do you think really happened and what did the mainstream narratives get wrong about it?

[00:08:04] Ben Hamilton: I love that question because I do believe that the political narratives for both the left and the right cherry picked this at best to fit what they wanted to think happened. Yeah. The first thing I do have to make clear... Is that breaking into the Capitol building while Congress is in session is clearly a crime, like anyone who's not on board, at least that far, that is a little detached from reality. Having said that, though, a lot of the left wing people hate me because I'm a little hesitant to use words like insurrection or coup. A lot of the people I talked to just on the ground level, cause like I was outside the building interviewing people who had just emerged from running through the building.

[00:08:52] They seemed like idiots to me. They seemed pathetic. Like I, I think calling it an insurrection or a coup is not that accurate. And also it's well worth mentioning that I have a huge amount of sympathy for people who don't trust the mainstream news because there were straight up lies told about that day, like a lot of people are under the impression that the crowd killed people, like Glenn Greenwald did an excellent take down of that idea, which I source in my book, which is, there was a story that someone in the crowd beat someone over the head with a fire extinguisher, like a police officer, and he slipped in a coma and died the next day. This is reported by the New York Times. It was mentioned in Donald Trump's impeachment, his second impeachment.

[00:09:33] We should number them. So this was very much part of the official story and it never happened. There was one police officer who died of a stroke the next day, but he was never hit over the head. He went home. He was fine. He slept in his own bed. And the next day he had a stroke, probably related to the stress, but his body was examined. This guy, his body was put on display, like it lay in state, like the members of Congress had to walk past a dead body, like a few weeks after this as his body lay in state and were told he was beaten over the head with a fire extinguisher and died. And that was a lie. It was a straight up lie.

[00:10:08] So like the fact that there are these little lies about there makes me have tremendous sympathy for the people on the right who feel that this is some sort of lie or some sort of trick. The Democrats and the left leaning people within the media, they really shot themselves in the foot on their credibility.

[00:10:25] So having said that Go ahead. 

[00:10:27] Bob Gatty: No, I was just going to ask you if you felt like those kind of mistakes were mistakes. Are they deliberate lies? 

[00:10:39] Ben Hamilton: This is one of the big questions I always wrestle with because I have two missions. On the one hand, I'm trying to create accurate records that I can vouch for.

[00:10:48] Yeah. On the other hand, I am trying to get a larger sense, just like a gut feeling of what it's like to be alive at this time, those things that you can't put your finger on and fade away later. And those times I have to speculate. And this is one of the big questions I come up against. Like, why is the media wrong so often?

[00:11:06] Are they lying on purpose? Or are they just idiots? And I think it's at least a little of both. Yeah, maybe it's sloppiness. I think so. I think sloppiness is definitely part of it. Like I said, I think a lot of it comes back to narratives. So many people have been fully captured by political narratives nowadays.

[00:11:26] So they decide what they want to believe first, and then they look for anything to back that up. And the audiences do that. And the audience is they pay more money and they self select to the media channels that do that. So it's a more profitable thing to do and it just becomes a vicious cycle.

[00:11:44] I could go on all sorts of rabbit holes like that about how the media has changed in the last 10 or 20 years. They used to have so many other sources of income. Like they used to be like advertising income, newspapers made money from classified ads, people selling used cars. But now it's not like that.

[00:12:00] Now you have to have the headline that grabs people that gets the clicks, that gets the buys. And so I think for example, police officer beaten over the head with fire extinguisher. is an exciting headline. So they know they'll sell more and they'll get more views with that. And so maybe they're just a little willfully ignorant.

[00:12:17] I'm speculating here, but maybe it's easier just to not worry about it and, just put out the thing that they know will make the money. 

[00:12:24] Bob Gatty: It is true that the way it is today, the more clicks you can get, the more views you can get, the more money you can make.

[00:12:32] And that goes for the New York times. And it goes for individuals like you and me who have our own podcasts and we're, we're going one. One viewer and one listener at a time.

[00:12:47] Ben Hamilton: Just to follow up before I forget the New York Times themselves did admit that this story wasn't true, eventually issued like a partial correction. That was an important part of Glenn Greenwald's like fact checking of this just circle back on it like a lot of the things that I am often drawn towards is when the most official news media outlets take something back. Yeah, much later. Those to me are like, that's something that's worth investigating.

[00:13:13] So this was one of those. They eventually admitted that. 

[00:13:16] Bob Gatty: Okay, now let's go to Trump. Yes. Do you think he acted responsibly in trying to prevent violence that day? 

[00:13:25] Ben Hamilton: God, no, that is a well phrased question. Because like I said, a lot of people want him to want to accuse him of Insurrection that was planned in advance, and that's very difficult to prove.

[00:13:38] I don't have any evidence myself that would prove that, but he did do some things that I would have assumed were illegal that are just gathering together. a giant mob of people, the largest group I ever saw. I believe the news reports of that day underreported that. I'm not like professionally qualified to talk about crowd sizes, but I've been protest in DC before, and this was bigger than any of the other ones I saw.

[00:14:05] It was huge. So he gathers these people together and he's giving his speech and I thought the speech would be the big historically relevant thing. So I was taking notes on the speech. I listened to the whole thing and he talks for more than an hour and he keeps giving very specific numbers about how the election was stolen.

[00:14:24] He says 81, 973 dead people voted in Michigan, it's like all these incredibly specific sounding statistics, but he gives no sources. Remember class, what did we just say about sources in Mr. Hamilton's history classroom? Sources matter. So I've never heard anyone say where those numbers came from.

[00:14:47] As far as I know, he just made them up. Or maybe he was quoting something he saw on. Twitter, I don't know but, so he, this giant group of people, and this is something I think that's easy to forget for people who aren't fans of Trump. This is the sitting president of the United States whom they trust, whom they have trusted for years.

[00:15:08] He is the president. It doesn't get that much more official than that. And he has just vouched for the fact that the election was literally stolen. So the crowd believed that. And then he tells them. He says several times, we're going to march across the city to the Capitol building, because where he's speaking is a few blocks away from where they are.

[00:15:29] And he actually implies that he's going to march with them, which I remember thinking was impressive at the time. 

[00:15:34] Bob Gatty: I heard that speech, and I thought, oh my god, really? He's going to do that? 

[00:15:38] Ben Hamilton: There's some interesting things that like I've never been able to like fully confirm about that, that maybe he tried to in the Secret Service stopped him, but that's I don't know about that either way.

[00:15:50] But the point that I thought was important. At the time, what I noticed is he couldn't shut up. He talked way longer than he was supposed to. He got carried away by the sound of his own voice. Which I've, having seen, having been like a Trump groupie, having driven from, rally to rally, I got fairly familiar with his routine.

[00:16:08] And he does that. Like he'll just go on these 40 minute tangents and nobody stops him and they keep cheering. It's, he's hooked on that, honestly. He's like a junkie on that. And so he talked way too long, but see, on this day, it was different because there was a deadline. The Congress was there to officially vote to certify that he lost the election, and all the people were there to protest that, and in their minds, stop it.

[00:16:32] They really believed the election was being stolen. They really believed that. I want to stress that. People accuse, say them, that's important to understand at the very least. That doesn't make them right. And the vote was going on, and so they start, they left without Trump. People started leaving before his speech was finished.

[00:16:50] And this disorganized blob of people walked those few blocks away while Trump was still speaking. And those are the ones who broke into the Capitol building. 

[00:16:57] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I like how you described that in the book. They just blew him off and took off.. 

[00:17:03] Ben Hamilton: Yeah, which I again, it was out of character for him. I'd never seen him lose control of a crowd like that before.

[00:17:08] He's normally I think I described him as like a used salesman, dark source used car salesman, dark sorcerer. There's something really you'd notice the media almost never shows like clips of him talking for 30 seconds, 60 seconds straight. There's something strangely hypnotic about the way he speaks.

[00:17:25] Like he's good at certain things. I feel like people have this cartoonish caricature of Trump in their head. He's good at certain things. And one of those is working a crowd. Yeah. So he worked. He definitely worked them up. He got them angry. And then here's the next big thing that he did, which I would have assumed was a crime, some sort of public safety violation, specifically informed an angry mob.

[00:17:49] I think it's fair to call them an angry mob to walk across the city with no noticeable supervision. I was walking through the, there was a moment when I'm walking through there and I was remembering when I walked through those same streets for the Iraq war protests back in, the day and I noticed the differences. It's like the Iraq war protests. There's a guy with a clipboard and a megaphone telling you where to start and where to stop and where the permit says you can go. And also there's porta potties lining every street. It sounds silly, but like they didn't have the basic infrastructure that all other marches know to get.

[00:18:26] They just told people walk across the city. And so that's clearly irresponsible. I love it. Go ahead. 

[00:18:33] Bob Gatty: I loved your story about having to pee, and you couldn't find a port a potty, there were no port a potties, and you end up going in a bush, and then you found a whole bunch of other people who were doing the same thing.

[00:18:48] Ben Hamilton: Yeah, and that's what I try to do with my writing. I try to capture those little moments of what it really felt like to be the lived in moments that you're just not going to get in a more like academic or like coverage of things. 

[00:19:00] Bob Gatty: That cracked me up. I thought it was great. Once again, it was one of those ways that you brought the reader into the scene right there.

[00:19:08] Everybody. Can identify with having to pee and not finding anywhere to do it. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah.

[00:19:16] Ben Hamilton: So should I just continue the narrative here? 

[00:19:18] Bob Gatty: Cause I think I have a couple of things I do want to ask. Go ahead. Go ahead. All right. Maybe this'll get you to what you want. That is what were some of the most remarkable experiences that you had that day? 

[00:19:33] Ben Hamilton: Oh, There were a lot. I was definitely in sensory overload at a certain moment, like I was actually.

[00:19:41] This, I like to just try and flip through the book before each interview and read a random thing and see if I get to any anything that might come up in the interview, and this is good. So this if you don't mind, I'll just read directly from the book for a sec. This actually, couldn't have planned this better.

[00:20:00] This picks up right after the story you just told where I couldn't find a place to pee and I hid in a bush and met another bunch of guys doing the same thing. Alright, alright. Business taken care of. I round the corner and ascend the ramp up to the balcony. It's obviously supposed to be guarded, but the guard booths are abandoned.

[00:20:19] As I'm entering, I see a flare has been fired off. It hangs in the air like a furious red star. I stare at it, but I can't figure out if it means anything, so I push on. I'm standing on the balcony of the United States Capitol. There are what, a thousand people up here? What's actually happening here?

[00:20:37] I'm walking through it, but I don't understand it. People at turns laugh and joke, they break into angry chants, and then fall strangely quiet as if in awe of what they've done. A passing woman says the news is calling us all terrorists, so I hope I don't go to jail for this. But is terrorist the right word for these people?

[00:20:56] What did they come up here to do? I look over the ledge, I see the endless sea of people below us. The sea level continues to rise as the streets flood over with humanity. Amongst these elite protesters, whom the tide has carried up to the balcony, I recognize many of the same people I've been seeing all day.

[00:21:14] George Washington's, bright costumes, flag clubs, all the usual suspects, but the proportion of people wearing quasi military body armor with gas masks and goggles has shot up. Hey, look! There's that guy with a flag pitchfork again, and then there's the picture I took that is a flag mounted to a pitchfork.

[00:21:35] Bob Gatty: Speaking of pictures you took, the one behind you is one you took, right? 

[00:21:38] Ben Hamilton: Yes, this is the picture from about that moment actually. This came together better than I would have planned it. But yeah, I, the book also features pictures that I myself took of the events as they were happening. So a lot of them are, kind of blurry and bad. I think that adds to it. But that's another thing that I think makes the book interesting. 

[00:21:56] Bob Gatty: That's okay. On your website the Chasing History website. Chasinghistoryproject. com Chasinghistoryproject. com. Okay. You also include actual sound of videos. I mean of your, some of your interviews, right?

[00:22:13] Ben Hamilton: Yes. I, like I said, my first allegiance I feel is to the historical record. I try to keep that mission in mind. So any interview that I publish in the book, I publish in full on the website. Like it's a difficult, because my second priority is to make the book interesting. So I do occasionally cut off interviews. Like sometimes I'll just take 20, 30 minutes of recording just cause I don't want to miss anything.

[00:22:39] And then that would be too long and boring to put it in the book. So I just, I always want to make it clear that I'm not trying to edit out anything that might be valuable to the historical record. I just publish and maybe it'll be useful to someone someday. And to your question, that was, oh, sorry.

[00:22:52] That was one of the things that I did. Yeah, deal with a lot in the book, like there's a lot, there's so many images going on at once. And once I got to the balcony, it's hard to know what might be important. Like I did see a flare fired in the air and I initially, I instantly thought okay, people are going to have a million theories about this, like that this is some sort of secret government operation and the flare was the signal to do something.

[00:23:16] And I have no particular way of knowing that, but so like I wanted to make sure I included that detail in there in case someday someone found out that it was important because it also could have just been some asshole, like I haven't, but so a lot of times I'm gathering pieces and I don't know which ones will turn out to be important or not until later.

[00:23:35] I got lucky on a lot of things on this book, but this book was. It should be clear to people also, I was just traveling the country for months before this happened. I was going from MAGA Rally to BLM Rally, just writing a generalized book about the time period. And when this happened in the middle of one of the events I was at, I'm like this is clearly the book.

[00:23:58] But so people ask me like, how did you plan to be on January 6th? How did you know it would happen? I didn't specifically know this would happen. But I was just looking for any sort of hot spots that were something interesting might happen where there'd be people to interview. 

[00:24:11] Bob Gatty: Something interesting did happen.

[00:24:13] That's for sure. Now, there were chants of, Hang Mike Pence during that. And it's later been reported that Trump repeated that chant himself as he watched the events unfold in the White House. 

[00:24:29] Ben Hamilton: Interesting, I hadn't heard that before. Huh? I hadn't heard that one before, that Trump himself said hang Mike 

[00:24:35] Bob Gatty: Pence?

[00:24:35] Yeah, it was in the news the other day. Fascinating. Yeah. Did you think that, I think it came from maybe it's from the book by that young woman, what's her name? Cassidy, I can't think of her name now. The young woman who testified during one of the hearings, she was Trump's assistant or she had a desk right outside of Trump's office.

[00:24:59] And I think she wrote a book about this and that maybe it was from her book at any rate, what did you think about that? Did you think that was serious or was that, just I window dressing. 

[00:25:13] Ben Hamilton: I mentioned this a couple of times in the book is I heard that chant. I, in particular, I remember hearing Traitors get the rope.

[00:25:20] That was a popular chant. And there was a famous viral picture of a gallows or at least an art project that looked like it gallows set up outside there, I met a guy. After people had been flushed off of the Capitol by the police who was walking around with a noose, and I think it's the same one, I think it's the, so there were chance of that I, I don't I don't, I think if you asked some people, certainly some of them would say, Oh, we were just saying that, that was rhetorical flourish, but in the moment At the time, I do think there were some people who were a little unsure.

[00:25:58] I was unsettled when I heard that myself, because they're all, often they were like, they were smiling, happy people like they're, say USA. And then suddenly traitors get the rope, traitors get the rope. Like it, it was unsettling. It wasn't quite the way people picture it, I think.

[00:26:16] But I will say this during the speech, Trump made it very clear that he wanted Mike Pence to do something. It was vague. He, I, clearly in speculation, he didn't want to go on record saying exactly what it was. But if I had to guess, I'd say that Trump was pinning most of his hopes for the day on persuading Pence and maybe the crowd was just there to show how much support he had.

[00:26:40] Cutting to the end, that's my best guess. But he said that, and while I was walking down the streets with the crowds there were already some people fighting police that I did not know of this. I was just walking down the streets. I heard the shouts go out, Pence betrayed us. Okay. And so now getting back to what I was setting up earlier, almost like the chronological version of events, Trump's speech eventually ends and the rest of the people join the other people who've been walking down.

[00:27:08] So you've got, I don't know how many people, I easily believe a million people, certainly thousands upon thousands of people just streaming down the streets, no supervision. They're just been told the election was stolen by someone they trust, and now they're told they've been betrayed by Mike Pence.

[00:27:26] And you know what? Mike Pence is already in the building they're walking towards. And I do think that collection of events is part of the reason everything spun so wildly out of control, because I think people were mad specifically at him, and he was just right over there, like they're walking towards him now.

[00:27:42] All they have to do is not stop, just keep moving. And the police were. Badly. So again, like the violence did start before Trump's speech ends. That's an important part of the timeline. And I was there watching Trump's speech end. So I did not see the very beginning of violence. But what I did do is I stuck around in the city for over a month afterwards, interviewing every single person I could find who said they saw it personally.

[00:28:06] I'm hoping to write another book that's mostly just about the month after. Because that was fascinating too. But so I feel like I have a pretty good image of what happened talking to the other first hand witnesses. When you can't witness something yourself, history students, that's the next best thing, is talking to the other people who witnessed it for themselves.

[00:28:23] So the police were Badly outnumbered. They were under orders. I document this in the book to not open fire. So that they were hamstrung and they the mayor of New York of D. C. had turned down the offer of National Guard reinforcements. At that time, she published a letter being so proud of the fact that she turned down reinforcements because small tangent.

[00:28:47] Remember, we're still hot off of the George Floyd movement here, right? So saying that oh, we don't need police was popular for politicians at the time. Yeah. And so you've got this angry mob out of control, has a very specific target. The guy in there, Mike Pence, that they're mad at you've got this.

[00:29:05] Hopelessly outmatched police, so they bump into the police fall back, and they just keep going, they just spread in, and there was some level of pre planning, I don't want to discount that, I can go back over that, of the signs I personally saw of that, that people had some idea something like this might happen, but mostly I think it was a lot like a broken play in a football game, like whatever nefarious things Trump was up to, I don't personally think he was planning for a crowd of people to break into the building, that's my take on the day.

[00:29:33] Bob Gatty: Okay. Now, you didn't actually go in the building, right? You were smart enough not to do that. 

[00:29:40] Ben Hamilton: I was I was very close. And I will tell you, one of the things that really influenced my decisions was I did not have a valid press pass for that event. Had I had that, maybe I would have done it. I have no criticism of journalists who did go in.

[00:29:54] Like we have incredible records and pictures because of that. But me I was, like I said, the atmosphere outside the Capitol when I got there was a lot of the time it was almost like a beach party and a lot of people don't understand this. There were definitely pockets of violence of that day.

[00:30:11] Like any attempt to deny that is going too far, but there were a lot of like downtime. I bought a hot dog, it wasn't like the city was burning down. And so the people have a false image of it. So people were milling around. I was. Pretty much right where I am now, like right outside there with the crowd.

[00:30:29] And through some signal, I didn't even understand, they started surging in. It was like a bathtub and you pull the drain and the people were the water and they were just being sucked in, they went in through this broken window. And I was caught up in that crowd and like I could see it, like I had only seconds to make up my mind.

[00:30:46] I was like, oh wow, okay, should I go in? This could make a really interesting book. This could be really interesting at the last minute. I'm like, nope, bad idea. And I jumped out of the way and people surged past me. So that's where I stopped. That's how far I went. 

[00:30:57] Bob Gatty: That was a smart decision, I think, because you didn't have a valid media pass so you could have really ended up getting arrested with a bunch of other people. 

[00:31:06] Ben Hamilton: Yes. And like that's definitely a crime. I want people to have an accurate picture of what happened and not exaggerated into something that wasn't, but it's definitely a crime. 

[00:31:18] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Okay. Now, 

[00:31:22] Ben Hamilton: actually, do you mind if I say something else to this?

[00:31:24] This touches on the question you asked. Go ahead. Go ahead. So Especially the first few people to break in, they were banging on doors. I believe they chanting traders get the rope, and this is imagine if that happened to the place you worked, like just a mob of people break in and are banging on doors, chanting, traitors get the rope.

[00:31:45] It's terrifying. So I don't think for the historical record, it's very important to note that they did not kill anyone. Like when people say they killed someone, they didn't. Okay, that didn't there was a few people that was like a woman who got shot by the police, and a couple other things like that.

[00:32:01] But the mob didn't kill anyone. But thinking that they might kill you at the moment. That's totally fair. It's terrifying. And I do have think that if that mob of people had turned a corner and Mike Pence is standing right there. I think they might've killed him. I don't think that's impossible.

[00:32:18] It didn't happen, but I do think there could be some parallel timeline where they meet Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi or someone they're really worked up about. And I don't think that's outside the realm of possibilities. Speculation. I think that's worth clarifying.

[00:32:31] Bob Gatty: Speaking of speculation, what did you, what do you think about the claims by many of the Trumpers that it was Antifa or whoever that is or the political left who were behind this entire episode?

[00:32:46] Ben Hamilton: Yeah, there's, what I try to do when I'm faced with a complex question is give a short answer so I'm not accused of being a cop out and then add some nuance after that. My short answer is no, I don't think Antifa planned this. I don't think this was like an insider sting operation designed to make MAGA look bad from Antifa planning.

[00:33:11] But I do nuance. There do seem to be... Credible claims that a lot of the people in the crowd were FBI informants and maybe even some of the ones urging people on and this is I want to try and be fair even to people who I disagree with .A lot of the MAGA people at that time even were accusing people of being instigators.

[00:33:38] That was a word in the vocabulary I noticed came up a lot. This person's an instigator. This person's an instigator. And some of them were, chanting fed, fed about certain people. I saw that happen. Even as it was happening, I saw people being accused of that. It's not impossible. There was like one guy, for example, who was like breaking all the windows, like as near as I could tell, like all the broken windows was like just this one guy who kept going around banging everything, at least that I saw, banging everything in a hammer motion. Yeah. And he was very he was, I don't know, there was something creepy about that guy. He was so robotic. He didn't seem passionate. He didn't seem like into I'm so mad. He seemed to this is my job. I break the windows.

[00:34:20] This is, again, just, it's not something that would hold up in court, but having been there, I got that vibe off of him. And there were a lot of other people trying to pull him down saying, no, stop doing that. You'll make us look bad. And he just went right back to breaking windows. So I get where they're coming from where people say that, but I follow up with another point.

[00:34:38] Bob Gatty: Did that guy ever get arrested? Do you know? 

[00:34:41] Ben Hamilton: I do not off the top of my head know that Okay, first of all, if I had to pick someone who I would say is the most likely evil mastermind, the most likely nefarious person who was up to something, it would be the malicious, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

[00:34:57] The Proud Boys aren't technically a militia, but, people know what the Proud Boys are. Yeah. The Oath Keepers had a noticeable presence there that day. A lot of people, I think, thought they were military. They had so much military gear, they looked like military. And then there was, the three percenters, I talked to a few people who identified as members of those militias. If anyone was up to something, I would say it's them. And if you look at the people who have been convicted for really serious time, for playing an insurrection, they're mostly related to the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys.

[00:35:27] And that sounds about right to me. If it was going to be anyone you could credibly make that claim to, I would believe that they were the ones who were like, okay, this is our chance. Let's try to get the crowd riled up and get people to break in again. Speculating. I try not to discount theories that I don't personally believe in because I've been wrong so many times. Everybody's wrong so many times. There's always a few examples that they turn out to be right. So I try to run everything through the logical process. I would like to add this though, the idea that this was Antifa. That's something that I heard in the second half of the day, like when I was in the Capitol building, mostly I heard people who were just so proud, like they, this, they were sure they were going to be telling their grandkids about this because, oh, this is an important point to understand about January 6 at a certain point the smartphone stopped working. It may have been just the network overload. Everyone at the time assumed it was a jammer of some kind, but so people were cut off from their social media. So they didn't get feedback for what was being said about them. And for however long that was good hour or so, I think they had this story in their mind that they did it.

[00:36:38] They saved America. I felt it. I got a contact high out of them. Just being around them. There was this jubilant attitude, and I think they thought everyone would see them as heroes. So they weren't blaming it on Antifa when they were proud of it. I only noticed that narrative developing.

[00:36:55] For example, A counter example to what I was saying earlier, a lot of people that day showed me the picture of the QAnon shaman, the guy with the horns, who I actually talked to myself that day. I had a very brief interaction with him before he did anything. He became one of the viral images. After people got pushed out of the building, after they were back up with their social media, they instantly latched onto this idea that the QAnon shaman was a plant from Antifa.

[00:37:22] And there was this badly cropped picture of him at a rally. I have the original and the cropped both in my... My book where in the original, he's clearly protesting against BLM, but they cropped a picture to make it look like he was with BLM. And that I just was just shown that by so many people wandering around the city that day, they were so sure instantly.

[00:37:41] They believed it instantly. Ah, that guy's Antifa. He's the one who sold us out. So they were hungry. to believe the idea that this was Antifa's fault. So whether there's any truth to it at all, they're definitely predisposed to believe anything, even because the QAnon shaman is just verifiably conservative.

[00:37:59] Like whatever else you say about that guy, he's not BLM. So the fact that they were so quick to believe that he was BLM, it speaks to a level of bias to me. I don't think we should ignore that. Okay. 

[00:38:10] Bob Gatty: Now you spent a lot of time with the MAGA movement going to these rallies for your history project. Did your opinion of them change as you went along?

[00:38:24] If so, how?

[00:38:26] Ben Hamilton: I developed a lot of sympathy for them. Absolutely. It changed. Like I had, it was at a certain point before January 6th where I was almost thinking okay, you know what? I'm going to switch. I'm going to actually start defending these people a little bit to like my friends and family who talk shit about them.

[00:38:46] And then they blew that. But I think, I definitely changed my view. I don't think they're portrayed accurately in the media. I don't think they're the most wonderful people in the world, but I think the image most people have of them is not correct. As a matter of fact, do you mind if I read something else from my book?

[00:39:02] Like I think the very end of the conclusion

[00:39:06] If I can just get to the, oh, here we go. Yeah. So this is. Okay. Alright, I don't usually read this part, I usually read the paragraph before this but this is actually just the last few paragraphs of the book, I'll just start here. Alright. It's funny. I spent a lot of time with the MAGA movement for the Chasing History Project.

[00:39:26] I mingled with them for months. I interviewed church going moms who babbled incoherently about life changing videos of politicians performing satanic rituals, which they freely admitted they'd never seen. I felt their pain as they talked about real problems, jobs disappearing. Poverty running rampant, swarms of drug addicted homeless people sleeping in every park, and schools that taught kids almost no useful skills.

[00:39:53] All this taken together seemed to mean any hope for their children's future had slipped away, and In between rants about the child sex slave pizza parlor, they told me how no one in the media or the government cared at all about these problems that they faced. No one except Trump. I felt like I understood how they'd reached that conclusion.

[00:40:16] I even started to like them. I started to wonder if maybe they hadn't been treated unfairly. If maybe... But then all this happened. The Magamob's self destructive stupidity in storming the capital probably obliterated any remaining chance the country had of coming together to solve the very problems that had upset them in the first place.

[00:40:37] Because now the other side view them as not just wrong, but also insurrectionary terrorists hell bent on murdering and kidnapping the lot of them. And the leaders of the Democratic Party, the elected members of Congress, were the ones most emotionally traumatized, and they had the most legitimate reasons to think that's what happened.

[00:40:56] Who's going to work together after that? All right. There's little doubt in my mind that historians a hundred years from now will point to that moment as a handy dividing line, after which America's dysfunctional political system was beyond saving. I think I get why the MAGA mob was angry. And while parts of that were disturbing fantasies of paranoid children, parts were valid concerns about our declining republic.

[00:41:19] Chasing Congress out of the building didn't save our republic at all. It hastens our decline. And that's what happened. Really. The end. 

[00:41:29] Bob Gatty: You know what? I'm glad you read that because I was going to read part of that. Really? Yeah. I was going to read the part about the Magomob self destructive stupidity and storming the capital, etc.

[00:41:42] And ask you to explain it. So you just did. So you said, you saved me the trouble of asking that question. That was very good. Now... I want to ask you this Trump is under indictment for actions connected with January 6th. Meanwhile, many of those, like the people from the Proud Boys, have been convicted and given stiff prison sentences for their actions.

[00:42:07] One guy faces up, I think it's 20 plus years in jail. That one guy who is the head of the proud boys. I think he is at any rate, what do you think should happen to Trump?

[00:42:19] Ben Hamilton: When I'm about to enter speculation, I like to tag that. Like I feel like I am, I have some claim of being a legitimate expert on what happened on the ground, January 6th. If you're asked this question requires me to. Peer into the mind of Donald Trump and know what he was really thinking, which honestly, no one's very good at doing.

[00:42:39] So having said that first, everyone's innocent until proven guilty. Everyone should have their day in court. That is an important point. I argue in the book that the Democrats charged him with the wrong things. I think that gathering together an angry mob, telling them that the election was stolen and then telling them to walk across the city with no supervision is, by itself that should be some sort of crime, some sort of public safety thing.

[00:43:10] Ah I as for the particular things he's charged with, I'm not an expert on any of them, but it does look a little odd to me. Like I, I'm deflecting the question a little bit, but let me say the people I talk to who like Trump, I see no reason why they would believe these are legal. It looks sloppy.

[00:43:32] Like he's charged with something every couple of weeks and they're all coming out now when the election's happening, not over the last five years that on the surface is going to look suspicious to people. Let me add this. This is going into my larger declining Roman Republic metaphor that I always use like the death of the Roman Republic was around the time of Julius Caesar's when people mostly charge it.

[00:43:58] And Julius Caesar was constantly being charged with crimes that he was guilty of. But the people charging him with crimes were also guilty. Like the system had become so corrupt that it started to feel like a joke. Like the laws were applied totally unevenly. And so part of me does go in that direction.

[00:44:16] When we talk about the things Trump are charged with I find it very easy to believe he's guilty of these things, but it does seem a lot of other people are probably guilty too of these types of things, and we're being very selective, they're only selectively charging their enemies. Yeah, 

[00:44:33] Bob Gatty: I don't know if the people who actually carried out this and I will use the word insurrection, if you don't want to use it, I will anyway.

[00:44:41] But the people who carried this thing out, they're getting stiff prison sentences. And they're all saying they did it because Trump told them to do it. So shouldn't Trump suffer the same fate? 

[00:44:54] Ben Hamilton: As far as I know certainly nothing I witnessed backs up the idea that Trump ever said, go break into the building.

[00:45:03] If you listen to his speech this is, he did say repeatedly peacefully and patriotically protest. And he did send out a couple of tweets throughout the day that they always want credit for, where he says, stay peaceful. And I was on the other end of this. I saw people who were saying stay peaceful after they've already punched the cops and broken the windows and are going in, they, in their minds, they're still being peaceful.

[00:45:27] But here's the really important counterpoint to that, which I think is, this is the most, I feel, that I've seen that you can really lay out in Trump, is when Trump told everyone to go home, They did instantly and there were phone calls between Trump and members of Congress and also at least Rudy Giuliani.

[00:45:48] Members of Congress have said this in which Trump was negotiating with them while people are breaking into the building. While it seems believable that maybe they are going to kill them, people are saying to Trump, call them off. And Trump is saying like his exact quote was something like, I guess these people just care more about the election than you.

[00:46:06] So that would seem to me that Trump is using the implied threat of force to try and get concessions out of Congress. I feel like that's a crime you can plausibly lay at him. Like why didn't he call them off sooner? He had the power to call them off, but to accuse him of saying Trump told me to do this.

[00:46:25] I don't think he specifically said that. 

[00:46:29] Bob Gatty: He might not have specifically said that. He's very careful with what he says sometimes. But they apparently took it to mean that's, they were getting orders from him to do it. Yeah. 

[00:46:43] Ben Hamilton: This is actually a good thing for me to segue into another topic that is, I think, not discussed enough.

[00:46:48] Which is the online forums. Postulating about possibly breaking into the Capitol before it happened. I, you mentioned the grumpy old man interview. He's one. I had a few other people I interviewed who had some notion that maybe the point of coming here today is to break into the building. And in fact, I talked to, I heard a running thing, which I believe is probably from one of the forums they were going to, that was just like 1776, the founders went to the Capitol and forced them to step down with no shots fired. I heard a couple of different people say this and I went into history teacher mode what are you talking about? No shots fired. Like the American revolution lasted for years. It was one of the longest, bloodiest wars in American history.

[00:47:43] But like there was an image people seem to have that if you got inside the building magically, you could invoke some clause of the constitution to make them step down. And I talked to a few people who had some vague idea about that in the crowd. That was definitely there. And there were people, this has been documented elsewhere, but I meant at least one who left some kind of note to his mom in case he didn't come back from this.

[00:48:08] And there were lots of people who had they were smuggling weapons, cudgels in a lot of clubs with flags on them to make it look like a flagpole, but way thicker than that, although I did not see any guns. A lot of people assume there were guns everywhere. I never saw a gun. I think they're in their mind.

[00:48:27] There was some sort of. plausible deniability line that they had to not cross. But so there was definitely some level of foresight. I don't want to gloss over that. But I'm not convinced that was Trump's level of foresight. I think maybe, again, here I'm speculating, entering speculation mode. I think these are idiots just talking about things on the internet that Was not Trump's plan and then they showed up expecting Trump to tell them what to do.

[00:48:52] And when he didn't, they fell back on their plan B. They're like I heard somewhere I'm supposed to break into the building. I think that's a more plausible explanation. I don't, that's my best guess, more or less.

[00:49:04] Bob Gatty: All right. You brought up the Julius Caesar. Yes. Do you believe that January 6th was the day democracy died in our country?

[00:49:15] Ben Hamilton: I believe that there is a good chance that when history books are written, if things go into the worst timeline, then January 6th makes a handy point to in a history book to say, this is probably where things went wrong. I still think there's a chance we like, don't give up. Like I think there's a chance democracy isn't, I keep trying.

[00:49:36] I just I've have also. Learn to not let my happiness depend on democracy surviving in the United States. I have to find a way to laugh at it, even if it goes bad because it might. But I I think it's definitely an important historical moment just cause it's so dramatic, like a lot of to the point of Julius Caesar, like historians point to Julius Caesar getting stabbed to death by 15 guys in the Senate house as the end of the Republic, because it's exciting. I don't think that's quite accurate. I. Say it's maybe the death of Cicero, if it's anyone's death. But because it's so exciting, it's an easy moment to latch on to.

[00:50:15] And January 6th has that. It has that drama. It's related to the relevant themes of our time. So I'm sure it will be mentioned in some way in history books. 

[00:50:24] Bob Gatty: There is a history teacher talking right there. Now, where can people learn more about the Chasing History Project, Ben? 

[00:50:32] Ben Hamilton: Thank you very much.

[00:50:33] So the ChasingHistoryProject. com is our website. That is the central clearinghouse for everything. I just launched the podcast, also called the Chasing History Project, which is available on Spotify and Substack, and all these links are through the website. My book is called Sorry Guys, We Stormed the Capitol.

[00:50:54] That is the first in the Chasing History Project series. And I've already written another one. I was in, I managed, before this, it's a prequel, I managed to get myself in the middle of the the protesters who took over part of Seattle. Do you remember that? The autonomous zone? Yeah, I was there for that too.

[00:51:11] Like I, I almost died. I got my face kicked in and I escaped a gunfight. So that was actually my first book. And then This one I wrote after that, and I just published it first because I thought it was, there was more of an audience for it. So the Chasing History books will be available there as well.

[00:51:27] You can buy the book again is Sorry Guys, We Stormed the Capitol. And that's basically anywhere books are sold. You can get that on Amazon, it's on Kindle. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free. And I did register it with the IngramSpark network, which means you can order it from any bookstore.

[00:51:45] It's not. It's not popular to the point where it'll probably be on the bookshelf yet, you'll probably have to order it, but you could get it from them if you don't like giving money to Amazon, which I respect. I get that. 

[00:51:57] Bob Gatty: Okay. I'm hoping that a whole bunch of history teachers pick it up and use it in their classrooms.

[00:52:04] That's the dream. It's worth it. It really is. So listen, Ben, I really do appreciate you joining us today on our Lean to the Left podcast. It's been a fascinating discussion. I wish we had more time. I'd like you to come back and we can talk about it again, maybe when you get your next book ready or whatever.

[00:52:22] But this is important stuff and I thank you once again for being with us. 

[00:52:26] Ben Hamilton: Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.