Ayanna Pressley Recalls Terror of Capitol Insurrection: We Need to ‘Address the Evil and Scourge That Is White Supremacy’

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) said on CNN Sunday the storming of the U.S. Capitol was inherently rooted in the white supremacist beliefs held by the supporters of former president Donald Trump.

As Trump is about to face impeachment for inciting the insurrection, Pressley gave an interview to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, and she was asked for her thoughts who say the country should just “move on” from the attack on Congress. Pressley responded by pronouncing the rioters a “white supremacist mob,” and she lamented that it took the events of January 6th for much of the country “to appreciate the threat that white supremacy is to every American and to our democracy.”

“The reason it took that incident, that harrowing, traumatic — those events on January 6, is because as a country, we have been ‘turning the page,'” Pressley said. “If we really believe that this is a moment of reckoning in every way, then we must act accordingly, and that means that Donald J. Trump must be held accountable because he is culpable for having incited this insurrection by perpetuating this big lie.”

Pressley continued by saying Trump’s allies must also be “expelled” from power for how they “aided and abetted this insurrection” by helping the former president push the false narrative that the 2020 election was corrupted by mass voter fraud. She then lashed out at “those who continue to feign great surprise about what happened” during the invasion.

As a Black woman, to be barricaded in my office, using office furniture and water bottles, on the ground, in the dark. That terror, those moments of terror, is familiar in a deep and ancestral way for me. And I want us to do everything to ensure that a breach like this never occurs at the Capitol, but I want us to address the evil and scourge that is white supremacy in this nation. This is not only about securing the Capitol to ensure that members and our staffs and custodial staff and food service workers are safe in the Capitol. It is that we’re safe in America. And one of the images I’m haunted by is the Black custodial staff cleaning up the mess left by that violent, white supremacist mob. That is a metaphor for America. We have been cleaning up after white supremacist mobs for centuries, and it must end.

This video from CNN’s Daniella Diaz is likely the one Pressley was referring to.

The same House chamber doors where the armed standoff took place hours ago is being cleaned for members to return for the joint session: pic.twitter.com/JlZgzwci8n

— Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) January 7, 2021

Watch above, via CNN.

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