From prison vigils to inaugural balls, MAGA comes full circle

A nightly vigil was held on Saturday outside the Central Detention Facility in Washington, D.C., where dozens of J6ers are being held.
A nightly vigil was held on Saturday outside the Central Detention Facility in Washington, D.C., where dozens of J6ers are being held.

Summary

As jubilant Trump die-hards including Jan. 6 rioters flooded into D.C. at the weekend, it felt like a wartime capital changing hands—one army in retreat, another preparing to claim its spoils.

WASHINGTON—The last time Rebecca Lavrenz was here she was in a federal courtroom, standing trial for her participation in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Sunday, Lavrenz, 72, returned to the scene of the crime—this time in triumph. She had come to Washington to celebrate President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration. So besieged was she by well-wishers and admirers that she kept misplacing her handbag in a hotel lobby packed with men in black ties and women in sequined gowns.

With the distraction of Lavrenz’s red pumps, it was easy to overlook the black monitor around her left ankle. She had been found guilty and sentenced in August to six months of home detention. Lavrenz learned on Thursday that a judge would allow her two days’ leave to attend the inauguration.

“I get so emotional," she said, her face knotting in tears, as she tried to make sense of the past four years. “It makes me realize how much people love our country."

A day earlier, Michelle Garthe, 61, a retired schoolteacher, was also overcome by emotion. Garthe and her husband, Kevin, 62, had taken a train from Carbondale, Ill., to join the People’s March, a progressive protest against Trump.

It turned out to be a pale and rainy version of the original Women’s March that confronted Trump after his first victory in 2016. While that garnered an estimated million attendees around the world—including Garthe—this one was estimated to have fewer than 30,000. Many were seasoned activists—for the Palestinian cause, trans rights, climate justice, women’s rights, Congo, Sudan, and the Communist Party—as if the mainstream Democratic stock had boiled for too long and been reduced to the bones.

“I needed to see people on the same side," Garthe explained, sobbing, as she and her husband trudged away from the Lincoln Memorial. All around, merchants were setting up stands to hawk souvenirs to the Trump supporters who would soon overtake the city.

On this inaugural weekend Washington had the feel of a wartime capital changing hands, one army staging a staggering retreat, another breaching the gates and preparing to claim its spoils. Despair was being chased out by celebration. The tides were reversing.

Heightening the strange atmospherics was a sudden shift in the weather that brought snow and sent temperatures plunging. There were also the Village People. They reunited to perform on Sunday with a shimmying Trump in a spectacle that was surreal even by MAGA standards.

“It’s been four long years. It’s felt like 400 years," Stephen Miller, the senior Trump adviser and architect of the president-elect’s immigration crackdown, said in a fire-and-brimstone address at the Sunday rally. He was welcomed to the dais by the AC/DC anthem “Thunderstruck." No longer would the rest of the world “kick us around," Miller promised. “They’re not going to abuse us. They’re not going to exploit us."

While the city teemed with expectant donors, Republican Party officials and the joyous MAGA faithful, arguably none felt the whipsaw of emotion quite like Lavrenz and her fellow J6ers, as they call themselves.

Four years ago, they marched on the city as vandals. In the ensuing months, many were taken down in FBI raids—sometimes turned in by family members. Even those who avoided criminal charges and jail time say they were left with a lasting stigma and a kind of bewilderment at how they had been viewed.

On Saturday evening, a few dozen of them were gathered in a place far removed from the fancy inaugural balls but which had become hallowed ground: the sidewalk outside the Central Detention Facility, a prison in the southeast corner of the city where dozens of J6ers are being held. It was the 901st night of a regular vigil, but this time charged with excitement that Trump was returning to the White House and, in just two more days, might offer deliverance in the form of pardons.

“It’s an exciting time because Donald Trump will keep his promises," said Ben Pollock, who was waving an American flag with a torn Trump banner that was from Jan. 6. He had a son and daughter who were both still in prison for their involvement in the insurrection. “I should probably be in there, too," he reflected.

The vigil featured candles and music, unabashed patriotism and religiosity, and occasional dancing. In abstract terms, many swore hostility to “the media" while, in practice, they were polite—even solicitous—with actual reporters. Inmates, meanwhile, would take turns calling in from the prison just across the street, their conversations broadcast on a loud speaker. Every so often, one could be seen clad in an orange jump suit and waving from a window across the razor wire.

In all its prayers, rituals and anointed saints, it was an attempt to make the criminal sacred. Even with Trump’s restoration at hand, not everyone was jubilant.

“It was hard to come here today," said Bob Bagley, 72, a retired police officer from The Woodlands, Texas, who hadn’t been in Washington since Jan. 6. “I swore I’d never come back because of the evil that happened that day."

Bagley’s speech was halting, and he seemed visibly stricken at times. He was plagued, he said, by the idea that the wider public would never understand what he believed was the truth—that the violence that day had been engineered by the government.

“It was a great day until it wasn’t," he said, recalling the tear gas.

Lavrenz, who runs a bed-and-breakfast, also remembered the day that way—although she didn’t appear to be haunted by it. Perhaps that was because of her faith. “It was exactly where God told me to be," she said.

Her son had urged her to come to Washington on the day of the riots, and she made the two-day drive from Colorado after praying on it. God, she recalled, then led her into the Capitol to defend democracy. “I want you to carry my presence into the building if the doors open," she recalled the message. The spiritual experience was so intense on that day, she said, that she scarcely recalled the violence unfolding around her.

Even if Trump were to offer her a pardon, Lavrenz said, she might turn it down because she is determined to see out her appeal.

Not so Brandon Straka, who defies the usual preconceptions about the J6ers. A gay hairstylist who lived in New York City for 20 years, Straka was devastated when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. But he had eventually become disillusioned and then carved out a career as an influencer encouraging other Democrats to go MAGA as head of the #WalkAway campaign.

Straka was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and has spent the past four years confined to his home state of Nebraska, where he had been riding out the Covid pandemic when the FBI came knocking. He was sentenced to three years of probation for his participation in the riots.

Like Lavrenz, he had come to Washington for the inauguration with permission from the Justice Department. But he had turned down dozens of invitations to attend celebratory balls and political events and was mostly laying low in an Airbnb.

“For me, personally, this has been a very long and brutal four years. It’s been very hard," Straka said on Sunday night. His probation ends next week—after which he plans to return to New York. Still, he was desperate for exoneration in the form of a pardon.

“Until I find out what [Trump’s] going to do tomorrow, I just can’t let go," he said. “Am I on the list or not on the list?"

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