Look At Our Exhausted Military Guarding The Capitol

Hundreds of National Guard troops sleep on the floor of the Capitol a week after Trump riots

One week after a riotous mob of terrorists who support Donald Trump stormed our nation’s Capitol, images are surfacing of National Guard troops sleeping on the floors of the historic structure while guarding it and its grounds around the clock. As President-Elect Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day approaches and more insurrectionist violence is expected, the troops are present to protect the building and those inside of it.

The photos are enough to break your heart — if you have one. This is not normal.

Requiring our own troops to protect our own buildings from traitorous mobs is not normal. The striking photos show the troops sleeping on the cold floor, weapons handy, covering their eyes with their own fatigues to block out the light so they can catch a little rest.

Is the MAGA crowd happy now? Is this what they were after? The “support the troops” party sure uhhh… doesn’t do that so well.

While Congress debated and voted on yet another article of impeachment against Trump, the troops remained camped out in the Capitol Rotunda and in the Capitol Visitor Center. As far as the season finale of America goes, this is a pretty powerful and heartrending scene. HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic lent some context to the images.

Bobic reported from the scene. “’If I walked into my place of work tomorrow and I saw this, I’d be stunned myself,’ one National Guard soldier tells me after I expressed my shock in some impolite terms.”

Rep. Andy Kim, who went viral last week after photos of him cleaning up some of the Capitol riot mess himself surfaced, commented to Bobic, “How did it get so bad here? How did we get to this point as a country?”

A soldier commented on the unprecedented nature of our military occupying the Capitol building.

Some members of the Guard had never even been inside the building before now.

And then there’s this quote that will tear your entire heart out. When offered cots instead of sleeping on the cold floor, one solider remarked that he wouldn’t want to risk damaging the marble floors of “one of the coolest buildings in the world.”

A handful of congressional reps brought in pizza and I’d like to call this a heartwarming offer, but you know what? It’s actually heartbreaking. It’s horribly sad that these troops are there for the purpose of guarding our nation’s Capitol from actual terrorists that live in our own country. It’s horribly sad that these terrorists did what they did at the behest of a traitorous president who shouldn’t be in office for another minute let alone the last week. Or the last four years.

So many lives ruined and some ended all because a geriatric infant dictator can’t accept that he lost the election, fair and square… and it wasn’t even close.

Let it sink in — our troops and police are being put in more danger than they would be otherwise because of Trump and his ego. Because of Trump and his army of violent, angry, insurrectionists. The very groups republicans pretend to support are the very ones being put directly in harm’s way all in the name of maintaining a shared delusion that the election was fraudulent and Trump should be serving another four years.

As reports emerge suggesting that Republican members of Congress possibly helped some of the insurrectionists learn the lay of the land during “reconnaissance” tours the day before the riots, the risk to our armed forces is even greater. If these reports are true, the enemy might already be inside the building.

Our troops deserve so much better than this — and so does our country.