Will January 6 Be Memory-Holed?

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts

There are two very different stories out there about what happened on January 6. One is the truth, laid down by then-Representative Liz Cheney and others on the House Select Committee: Donald Trump “mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building and halted the official counting of electoral votes” in an attempt to “overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney says. She has never wavered from that position. In fact, she issued that statement just last week following Trump’s suggestion in an NBC interview that she should go to jail for her work on the committee.

Trump, however, has often recounted his own version of what happened on January 6—and he is also not wavering. During his campaign, he called it a day of “love and peace.” Postelection, he has continued referring to people who were convicted for their actions that day as “political prisoners” and “hostages,” and he’s said a handful of times that he will pardon them. (The New York Times recently reported that the Trump transition team is asking certain applicants for positions in his administration what they thought about January 6.)

In a recent Atlantic podcast series hosted by me and my partner, Lauren Ober, we enter this universe of alternative facts. Over the course of six episodes, we speak with J6 prisoners and their families, and Ober reports on her experience as a juror in a January 6 case. Mostly, though, the series is about our neighbor, who we discovered one day is a crucial character in the retelling of January 6. The series is called We Live Here Now, and in this week’s Radio Atlantic, we air the first episode.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: The South rewrote the history of the Civil War slowly. What we now know as the Lost Cause myth built steam over time with lectures and magazine stories, then statues and monuments, until eventually it became for some southerners the official narrative of the war—eventually, meaning many decades later.

But back then, there was no TV, no Twitter, no Truth Social to speed up the process of revising history.

A few days ago, Trump did his first postelection interview on NBC with Kristen Welker, and by most accounts, his rhetoric seemed tempered. A typical headline about the interview was "Trump cools on taking revenge against foes.” But there was one part, about halfway through the interview, when Trump did not seem so mellow.

Donald Trump: These people—

Kristen Welker: Yeah.

Trump: —have been in jail. And I hear the jail is a hellhole. They’ve done reports, and you would say that’s true. They’ve done reports—this is the most disgusting, filthy place. These people are living in hell.

Rosin: The jail he’s talking about is the D.C. jail. “These people” he mentions have been charged with crimes related to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. And the big question Trump has just answered is whether he still plans to follow through with his promise to pardon those people who were convicted for the insurrection, to which he responded:

Trump: We’re looking at it right now. Most likely, yeah.

Welker: Well, you know—

Trump: Those people have suffered long and hard.

Rosin: And then he was asked about officials on the January 6 congressional committee, including Liz Cheney—people who put the real facts of that day on the official record.

Trump: I think those people committed a major crime.

Welker: Sir—

Trump: And Cheney was behind it.

Welker: Well—

Trump: And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee.

Welker: We’re going to—

Trump: For what they did—

Welker: Yeah—

Trump: —honestly, they should go to jail.

Rosin: Trump’s desire to rewrite January 6 as a day of “love and peace,” as he said during his campaign, seems as strong as ever. The day Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?”

The New York Times reported that the Trump transition team is asking applicants for positions in the Defense Department and intelligence agencies three questions, and one of them is what they thought about January 6.

Now, we don’t yet know who Trump will pardon and if he will actually go after Liz Cheney or anyone else on that committee. What we do know is that there are two very different stories being told about that day.

On one side are Liz Cheney, Bennie Thompson, and dozens of Capitol Police officers, not to mention the millions of American citizens who are determined to remember that day for the violent attempt to subvert democracy that it was. On the other side: Trump, hundreds of January 6 prisoners, and probably millions of American citizens who don’t know or care enough about that day to think it disqualified Trump from being elected.

On many, many things, these two sides are far apart. But the people who inhabit those two sides, they’re just people, and people can always find something in common. That is the spirit that drives what you are about to listen to. It’s the first episode of a podcast series we made just before the election. It’s called We Live Here Now, and it’s driven by the deep—maybe even desperate—belief that no matter who you are talking to and what they believe, you can always ask the question: What are you going through?

The series takes you inside the jail—the supposed hellhole Trump mentions. And in a later episode, we talk to some of those January 6 prisoners who Trump wants to pardon, and we think seriously about how the justice system has treated them.

But mostly, this series is about our neighbors. We discovered, one day, that they’re on Trump’s side of the January 6 divide. And that is putting it mildly. The podcast is hosted by me, Hanna Rosin, and my partner, Lauren Ober, who is also a journalist. This is the first of six episodes. You can find the rest on the podcast feed, We Live Here Now.

Here’s that episode.

Find the transcript of Episode 1 of We Live Here Now at: theatlantic.com/podcasts/we-live-here-now