Capitol Police Officer Suing Trump Over 1/6 Riot Speaks Out: ‘I Was Called a N****r, I Was Called a Traitor’

Another police officer who responded to the Capitol riot has come forward with a harrowing account on January 6.

James Blassingame, a 17-year veteran of the U.S. Capitol Police, sat down with PBS NewsHour’s Lisa Desjardins to describe his experience that day.

Blassingame said no one had ever called him the n-word to his face in his 39 years on Earth. “That streak ended on January 6,” he said.

“I was called a n****r. I was called a traitor. I was called various epithets.”

Blassingame said in 17 years on the force, he’d never felt the need to draw his weapon until that day.

“I was like ok, this is it.”

But he kept his gun holstered.

“And the only reason why I didn’t do it,” he explained, “was because the mentality was, this is a four-alarm blaze. And if I pull my gun out and start shooting, I’m throwing kerosene on it. Maybe there’s a chance I survive if I don’t pull my weapon, but, if I do, I’m probably not going to make it out of here alive. You don’t have enough bullets.”

At one point during the interview, Desjardins played clips of congressional Republicans downplaying the riot, including one who said, “If you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

“What do you say?” Desjardins asked Blassingame. He said:

I would think certain things are above politics.

I mean, it’s deplorable to say — as bad as it looks on film, believe me, it was much worse. They can stitch together as much footage as they want to, but I’m telling you, and anybody in that was in that scrum will tell you, it was much worse in person than anything you’re ever going to see on film.

And for the narrative to be modify or changed, so that it’s trying to make it seem something other than what it was, it’s disheartening, especially — we go to work every day and we have to protect members of Congress. And for them to come and say, thank you for your service, and appreciate what you do, but you don’t, because this is very simple, just having a commission to find out what happened, so this doesn’t happen again.

Because I personally feel that, again, this is something that there’s a very real threat moving forward.

Blassingame and another officer are suing former President Donald Trump regarding harm incurred during the riot. He explained that “if the most powerful human being on the planet can — is not held accountable, can do whatever they want to do, what does that say about our democracy as a whole?”

Watch above via PBS NewsHour.