Many Americans and people around the world watched in horror as a mob of Donald Trump supporters rushed the US Capitol in Washington DC on Wednesday afternoon, wreaking fear and chaos with seemingly little resistance from police on Capitol Hill.
While fury over the mob was directed at various Republican lawmakers on social media, Trump bore the brunt of the blame from his most stringent critics. Multiple people, including George Conway, husband of Trump's former adviser Kellyanne Conway, and the US representative Rashida Talib called for Trump's immediate impeachment.
While images and videos of Capitol police pointing their guns and running around the building were shared, many more images of the Trump-supporting mob successfully overtaking the building, including sitting at the front of the Senate and walking away with a podium, spread on Twitter.
People were quick to point out the hypocrisy of law enforcement letting the mob, which was overwhelmingly White, take over the Capitol building with little hindrance.
Political scientists pointed out that the day's events would change the way the world views the US. "No one in the world is likely to see, respect, fear, or depend on us in the same way again," tweeted Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based thinktank.
Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, wrote on Twitter: "It is unimaginable that today's political disaster could happen in Canada, Japan, France or the UK," saying that the US "is the most politically dysfunctional and divided of advanced industrial democracies".
World leaders also condemned the insurgence, expressing alarm about what it meant for US democracy.
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www.theguardian.com