If you look around Twitter today, you’ll likely run across photos of all the National Guardsman keeping guard over the Capitol Building, sleeping in hallways and in the rotunda, or keeping watch out front.

You might also remember how much the mayors of Democratic cities bristled over the summer at President Trump’s intention to send in the National Guard to get rioting under control. Portland Ted Wheeler was offered federal assistance by the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security and brushed him off: “We do not need or want their help.”

Rioting went on nightly for months and extremists laid siege to the federal courthouse, tossing fireworks at authorities and blinding them with laser pens. Portland reporter Genevieve Reaume wondered if perhaps Wheeler’s tolerance for violence against government property set the tone for the storming of the Capitol?

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