This is a story about police officers who were at the US Capitol on January 6. One tried to help Donald Trump overthrow democracy, while the others tried to defend it:
In November 2024, when Americans reelected Trump, Hodges felt a deep sense of grief. During 11 years of policing, he’d seen people do terrible things to one another—shootings, stabbings, maimings. But the election results strained his faith in humanity more than any of that. After all Trump has done? Hodges thought. After all we know about him? His friend Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who’d been called “nigger” for the first time while in uniform on January 6, later said that seeing the 2024 election unfold was like watching the end of Titanic : You knew what was coming, but it still hurt to watch. Both Dunn and Hodges long ago grew tired of talk about the “shifting narrative” of January 6. “Ain’t no narrative,” Dunn likes to say. “Play the tape.”
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