The Politics of Fury

Did Live Footage of U.S. Capitol Raid Threaten Our Democracy?

January 10, 2021 – Showing marauders rampaging through the U.S. Capitol last week had the potential to spark further political violence throughout the nation, a former longtime Washington correspondent who spent years reporting from the U.S. Capitol said Sunday.

“You think about, in terms of the TV impact, it’s like a 9/11 level impact,” Pete Leffler, who also served as political editor for The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pa. told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields. “For earlier generations, it’s a Kennedy assassination, a Dr. Martin Luther King assassination. Fortunately, those weren’t shown live on TV like this was.”

            Leffler accurately predicted in September that Pennsylvania, which gave Trump the 20 electoral votes need to win in 2016, and Biden the same in November, would play the crucial role in the election. In addition, he stated at the time that Trump followers would claim the election was stolen and that there would be “blood on the streets.”

And though the Capitol violence may have temporarily doused Trump supporter fury, Leffler is not convinced the nation’s Hatfield-McCoy electorate division is near being over.

            “I hope so but having been a journalist for 40 years, it pains me that two sets of facts have become the norm,” Leffler said. “If 70 million people believe one thing and the rest of us believe something else how do you unite that? That’s my concern. Trump is gone, but that remains.”

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Listen to the Pete Leffler Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields interview on Apple, Spotify and retailpoliticspodcast.com