MAGA FAMILY VALUES:

The history books will properly cast January 6, 2021, as a day of infamy, a horrific attempt on the part of rogue Americans to overturn a lawful presidential election by force. I happened to be there that day, a witness to federal police being beaten and pepper-sprayed, the kind of scene I might have expected to see in failed states but not in my native country. The spectacle of U.S. citizens busting their way into the U.S. Capitol--some chanting that Vice President Mike Pence should be hanged, others bludgeoning law enforcement officers--was an indictment of its own. Like the photograph of the white women taunting Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine Black students who were attempting to integrate Little Rock Central High School in 1957, the wide-angle imagery articulates an ugliness that can never be explained away.

It would be easy to view the insurrection only in its aggregate form and overlook the jolting peculiarities of that day. There was an Arizona man named Jake Angeli parading around in the Capitol shirtless, with bison horns on top of his head and a spear in his hand. Another man, identified as 23-year-old Joseph Brody, from Virginia, sauntered down the Capitol corridors in a suit and tie, as if it were any other workday, except that he allegedly was captured on video entering House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office and destroying equipment after assaulting a police officer. A rapper who went by the name "Bugzie the Don," also from Virginia, made his way into Statuary Hall, where he posed leisurely for a series of photos. And a 35-year-old Southern California woman in jeans and snow boots named Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and co-owner of a swimming pool cleaning company, attempted to vault herself through a window leading to the Speaker's Lobby, only to fall to the ground, shot to death at point-blank range by Capitol Police lieutenant Michael Byrd.

Amid this kaleidoscopic melee, another strange tableau unfolded, one that might have escaped notice but for the Capitol surveillance cameras. It occurred at 2:25 p.m., just twelve minutes after the first rioter breached the building and about twenty minutes before Babbitt was killed. A slender middle-aged man slipped through a broken window into the Senate wing of the Capitol. He wore a red sweatshirt, camouflage pants, and a black knit cap. Though the marble corridor was already crowded with rioters bustling along in both directions, the man lingered by the broken window. He helped a teenage girl wearing a camouflage coat climb through, taking care that she didn't land on the shattered glass covering the floor. Then the man assisted a second teenage girl who was similarly attired. A third woman followed, slightly older and wearing a Trump flag as a cape. Then came a middle-aged woman, hooded and wearing sunglasses. Finally, a young man clambered through the window. The six of them then proceeded through the U.S. Capitol in tandem, as the American family unit they happened to be.

These were the Munns. Just over an hour earlier, they had stood among tens of thousands of Trump supporters at the Ellipse, watching on the JumboTron as the president had said, "We're going to walk down to the Capitol," adding, "Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong." They had done exactly that, following other rallygoers all the way to the steps of the Capitol, in an atmosphere that Tom would later describe in an online post as "upbeat and patriotic." Minutes later, his post continued, "everything suddenly became very 'dark.' I do not know how else to describe it. Eventually resulting in our entry of the Capitol Building"--past police barricades, with tear gas swirling and accompanied by a soundtrack of flash-bang grenades, security alarms, and the roar of the mob. Through the broken window, they entered the restricted area of the Capitol while federal legislators were convening to certify the presidential election. [...]

Tom became a prolific political commentator on Facebook, gaining a following of 4,900. He was a fervent Trump supporter and alluded to the far-right political conspiracy theory QAnon, ending some of his posts with the QAnon hashtag #WWG1WGA ("Where We Go One, We Go All"). On election night in November 2020, when the key states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin swung for Joe Biden, the Munns hardly stood alone in their incredulity. As Gerald Cantrell, perhaps Borger's most prominent Republican activist, told me, "Biden didn't win them states. They cheated like a son of a bitch. It's obvious. That was the biggest conspiracy in American history."

Two weeks after the election, the Munns hung a replica of the "Come and Take It" flag in front of their house. In late December, Dawn reposted on Facebook a photograph of a bullet accompanied by the warning "By Bullet or Ballot, Restoration of the Republic Is Coming!" On December 28 Tom reminded his followers that President Trump had recently beckoned supporters to Washington for a rally in his infamous "will be wild" tweet. Wrote Tom, "Our President has only asked two things from us, so far . . . #1 Vote #2 January 6, 2021."

The Munn parents and their eldest daughter, Kristi, decided to take the family's two high school seniors, eighteen-year-old Kayli and seventeen-year-old Kassi, to Washington.

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