by the president himself. inside the capitol building i was just saying that the lawmakers were discussing this objection to the certification of the electoral college of votes what happens to the lawmakers when that happened. yeah right i mean today is the day when they have to confer the election will. they already rejected the vote from the state of arizona so and that's the normal process then they started to debate it and then this happened that people stormed the building so everything stopped and. vice president mike pence who is also in the building was brought to a secure plays and now we don't really know what is going on because today really is the day when the electoral votes has to be confirmed what we also learned right now with our learning as this is rolling news that

a woman obviously got shot in her chest with in the capital of these united states and is in a very critical situation so it's obviously really out of hands. ok so that's the situation as we speak and that's the week we can see. this sort of riot police that we heard a little. request to deploy the national guard had been denied and also with me here in the studio is that the w.c. had a huge. suffered so much this is quite a nice even at the tail end of his presidency in the last 2 weeks of donald trump's a presidency still able to shock and surprise everyone shock and surprise although we talked about this already i think is that the president himself already tweeted

and asked his supporters to remain peaceful but he did not ask them to draw back to disperse so that has not happened yet and this is indeed unprecedented i mean people here in germany are already calling this a coup saying at least it has all the characteristics of a coup and i can tell you that here in germany at least people are watching this in complete disbelief everybody knew that was happening in the states at the moment was important the senate election of course in georgia also the official confirmation of the president elect joe biden but that it would come to this nobody would have guessed anything like it on this side of the atlantic ocean ok so where in the situation where we're all in that there's a word that's been deployed extensively over the last year unprecedented everybody is a president where you got to be living through history so it's going to be interesting to sort of work out well what happens next because it seems to have calmed down when we looked at the those pictures earlier. it had it all come down and they were

just sort of hiding around so you you wonder if they're just going to eventually just sort of get it will get a bit hungry is getting that cold little wander off or if police will will sort of drive them away you know fill it reminds me a little maybe you 2 reminds me of little of what happened a couple of months ago here in berlin where we are at the moment where some corona protesters made it right up to the stock which is the german the german parliament and managed also to overcome the police barriers at that moment and and when that happened then i must say at this point they were much fewer than we have right. no in washington d.c. but they were quite they seemed at least quite surprised that they did make it that far you know because they were never suspected it was a show of we showed a demonstration a show of protest that actually overcame the barriers surprised even them i'm wondering if it's not the same thing that we're seeing happening right now in

washington d.c. surprised by their own success and then asking themselves ok what do we do know this bring back into the conversation that there's a lot of people are going to look at those the pictures that we're seeing now of all these people around and on the capitol building and say to themselves well we have seen a few of demonstrators attending black lives black lives matter protests and gets driven away by police they did doing much less than these people outside the very seat of the u.s. government are doing. well you know what we have to keep in mind this was really building up over the last 4 years this is not just a sudden development i mean donald trump is spreading this narrative of fake news of false information informations more than 4 years ago actually that he did that during his 1st election campaign so this does not come really as

a surprise maybe the extent it does indeed but everybody here in the united states was really really worried that this lead to let's say 2 weeks of the presidency of this president donald trump would might turn into while ns because he just refused to accept the democratic alex come of these elections and he sterte like the anger of his supporters and he encouraged them to take action whenever. they felt kind of not to be trade well so this is really fair to say that this is the outcome of the last 4 years of a president donald trump who did everything to undermine democracy and undermine and destroy democratic rules and this is and this brings me back to

my colleague max probably should be a warning to other countries who kind of play with the fire if you go if you work with someone like donald trump together if you let someone like done with donald trump in your party and think you just can like feed off his power this might be the outcome right stay with us it is poll in motion of in his poll in washington macsoftware the head of news here deutsch a fellow will get across to new york we're going to catch up with him bremmer who's president of the eurasia group that's a consultancy for a geo political risk welcome to d w. 2 was not. bremmer originally you're going to talk about the the biggest risks facing a 2021 and now we are in

a situation where trump supporters have mass and in the u.s. capital and i think number one on your list of the biggest risks facing 2021 was that joe biden presidency just explain to us why that was a big risk for the world. the risk was 46 asterisk it was the level of division in the united states the most powerful country in the world and yet by far the most dysfunctional and divided political system and for the last week everyone's been asking me how could you not make coronavirus risk number one and i think we're all seeing exactly how in front of our eyes right now this is a president of the united states who has personally done everything he can to deal of jet-a minds this election outcome to say that joe biden has stolen in spite the

fact that that is indeed not the case this is by far the worst election since 876 in the u.s. and it's the 1st time an american president has acted to undermine that rule of law in such a direct way since the founding of the republic it does me no good personally to say this i consider myself a patriot of what has been a great nation but this is the worst day for this country in my lifetime i mean it's right up there with 911 and yet this is self-inflicted that's what's so incredibly painful about what we're seeing in front of our eyes today so we're staying i mean it is bad and unprecedented but we're looking at live pictures now and what we're seeing is hundreds of people on and around the capitol building police as well but the there appears to be no violence i'm putting it up there with

911 but that sounds a bit strong explain to us why. first of all a woman has already been critically injured and shot inside the capitol building the virginia national guard is being deployed to the area i fear you're going to see a lot more violence but the point is not how many people die the point is that. nearly half of the american population actually believes that the selection was stolen believes that joe biden is not their president come january 20th and that is ill i that has been directly propagated by the president of the united states with the support of a majority of elected officials in the republican party in the house and the senate that is staggeringly unprecedented i want to be clear biden will still be the president on january 20th there will still be an inauguration but the impact on the

legitimacy of u.s. institutions will be felt for decades and for the most powerful country in the world the the the ostensible leader of the free world a country that exports to mocker see perhaps we've export in too much we should have kept a little more 'd here in the united states you know when when president trump says the election is rigged he's lying but when he says the institutions are rigged he's actually telling the truth a majority of americans believe that their political institutions do not reflect or represent them and that that's something that's in conceivable what's happening in the united states right now you could not imagine happening today in japan in germany and france in the u.k. and canada and australia could not happen that's happening in the united states because too many americans have felt what their political system has been rigged against them for decades and president trump has done everything he can to

accelerate that to 5 that's why this is such a. painful day it's not just about today it's about something that's been happening for quite some time if you just joining us this is a special extended program get where we're looking at we were looking at live pictures we're going to take a look in just a moment at the scene inside the u.s. capitol these are pictures from a few moments ago pro-choice supporters have rushed well clearly inside the capitol building there were standoffs with police little earlier and there have been injuries i was just reading that a curfew has been imposed in washington for 6 o'clock we're talking on the line to in bremen who's president of the eurasia group that's a consultancy for geopolitical risk and ian do you expect given everything you've said about what's happening now and the divisions that got us here in 2 weeks when

the united states has a new president does that make everything better we will we expect when we have heard the last of trump and everything will be nice under a new president who is the who talks a lot about unity. well president trump i mean as you know he's a lame duck and yet despite the fact that he lost the presidential election he was still able to get all of those republican congressman and senators to support the view that the election was stolen again obviously false and they know that the reason for that is because they all understand that after january 20th president trump ex-president trump is still by far the most powerful figure in the republican party and his hold over the republican voters continues to be greater than that of anyone else and so they feel like they have to align themselves with him it's hard

to know how that plays out come january 21st but this is a man who will still be worth billions of dollars will have the ability to gain capital from supporters all over the world it's someone who will have dozens of millions of followers on social media and media companies that are prepared to amplify his voice it's hard to see that going away on the back of the events that occurred today of course but worse they get perhaps the greater the numbers of of leaders that are willing to publicly go against him the way the senate majority leader mcconnell did just a few hours ago 'd when he gave a speech and he said that this was a direct threat at the heart of democracy he wasn't saying that as a supporter of president trump over the last 4 years so i mean we are watching history unfold literally moment to moment how does this and do you

think this this this right here where we are now with only hundreds of people on the capitol building how does this and does this end with police action or does everyone just get fed up and go. i think it ends with police action you have a lot of people that are armed that are barricading themselves in these buildings the national guard is on its way together with a couple of 100 more police especially as it gets dark relatively soon things get a lot more dangerous i expect we are going to see more violence but once the national guard is involved with much more capacity than local d.c. police you will remove these people in relatively short order and this will be put down. but the implications of this longer term the divisions that you're seeing in the country those don't get papered over on the back of this kind of activity trump doesn't go away his supporters don't go away they feel that

the election was stolen they are agreement and they are prepared to go to the mat for they believe the rightful 2nd term president that doesn't stop all of a sudden tomorrow. in the. presence of a eurasia group thank you so much for joining a sense of a sharing your expertise have a good day. it's a. let me just bring you up to date with what's going on so this special extended program we've been looking at the pictures of crowds of people hundreds of people perhaps thousands as they stormed the u.s. that capitol building in washington the f.b.i. is now said to be investigating. on a complete different story thank you poppy. national god now been called out and so we'll expect to see more action of that with me in the studio is. head of news max extraordinary scenes story there are scenes and we're getting more

and more reactions of the people that really matter in the situation now on twitter for example has tweeted has called on everybody to be peaceful but more importantly here the vice president mike pence has also tweeted something saying this attack on our capital will not be tolerated and protesters will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law so much much stronger language than by the president himself who only called on protesters to be peaceful did not call on them to disperse but this is certainly something we wouldn't have expected today in bremmer just now in the interview you led with him describe it in very stark terms and i think it's very correct what he said although i do disagree on one point when he says that something like this in germany or in other countries would be not possible actually we have seen something similar with. this extent and this number of people in

germany actually in the last months and this is so that the kind of thinking that has happened in the united states in during the term of donald trump has taken root all over the world has been exported to a certain extent it's not to the degree that we're seeing right now when you look at these pictures right here these are live pictures in front of the u.s. happen also we haven't seen anything of this. then for example in germany we have seen similar things in european countries for example the good news though phil is that we've heard that so far apparently there is one woman that has been shot we don't know the extent of the injury but that seems to be it at the moment but maybe you can also tell us phil what the situation is. because like you in burma just said nightfall is quite close and things might get out of hand then let's bring in . washington so we're. looking at live pictures now of the situation

side of the capitol building what's the latest you're hearing. you know it is interesting that. the national guard will be involved in as everybody is pointing out tonight will fall soon and that makes everything much more dangerous i mean we know that pretty much from every demonstration the moment it's getting dark it's getting more dangerous but here as so many people are out there i mean it's thousands it's tens of thousands we still don't really have any official estimate some people speak about 100000 demonstrators being out there at the mall a lot of things can happen the situation was in the road to and it's very clear i just talked to my colleagues who are out there and they talked to people who claim that they have been inside there were 2 in and out again so it's

a very kind of fluid situation right now but they say kind of the police is all the security. people are taking control again in the road too and i think we have to watch the news to follow but the situation is fall from being secured and i agree with ian i mean the police or the feds they really have to try to stop that as soon as possible before more people get hurt because i mean we have to always remember this is the united states of america we are just watching live pictures people storming the capital of the united states after 4 years of donald trump who i think it's fair to say really enabled the situation he prepared the situation with is this is rather a with his constant claims that the election was rigged the presidential election

was rigged and the georgian senate election was rigged so it's is him who stirred the pot with that very outcome. it is what we're just looking at pictures of what was happening inside the capitol building and all this going on while the business of the day was supposed to be the certification of the electoral college votes what's happened to that. exactly today was a day when the electoral college vote should be confirmed and kind of put an end to this long long long election process of 2020 it's put on hold they have to come together again today because today is the day when the election will it has to be confirmed.

vice president mike pence who is kind of the ceremonial master of this procedure is in a safe place within the capital that's what we're hearing and we expect this confirmation to continue in a couple of hours once the situation has calmed down so that democracy is taking place. what should take place today on this very generous 6 with which will be a day which will be i think be remembered in the history books ok. in this poll stay with us i've got with me. in the studio looking at some of the reaction coming in from around the world what he hearing from germany much we have the german foreign minister who has reacted he said. trump and his

supporters must accept the decision of the american people at last so this is the 1st official reaction we have from germany and you can say he's. interesting in the analysis because he's not just condemning what's happening at the capital which was what you would usually expect from a foreign minister but he's tying it straight away to the fate of the u.s. president so putting not only a description of the event and these events but also. analyzing those events it's probably a step further than he would usually go if it weren't. if it. weren't on his way out wasn't on his way out maybe. but nothing from chancellor merkel the chancellor merkel as far as i know at the moment but that is quite typical of her she would take her time to see how invents are unfolding a little longer she won't take as much time as she would for something that's not as clear cut as this i mean what we are talking about here is the storming of the

u.s. capitol people are tweeting this is a coup so it doesn't take a lot of. alice's to actually. condemn this but i'm going to back was very careful about these things and that's why she probably takes a little more time than her foreign minister at the moment we've heard the number of times a cross the things and certainly these are significant events you've quite a bit of experience as. bureau chief in the united states. coup it's such tight space being a fence going up a bit to father the authorities do same still to be in control well the definition of a coup don't quote me on this because we're obviously doing all this on the fly just as we're watching events unfold in the united states at the moment but would be the overthrowing the overturning of a government in this case the federal government as far as we can tell at the moment this has not happened it seems that all the lawmakers are safe and that

suppose he for example the speaker of the house safe mike pence the vice president the united states as far as we know is also safe so the federal government will not be overthrown tonight as far as we know but you might be you might want to call it a coup attempt you know we will have to see when the dust settles and i thank you so much. the head of news let's bring into the conversation rachel ray's a who is director of programs at the truman center of national policy she's also in washington welcome to you extraordinary scenes on capitol hill today what do you think. absolutely this is unlike anything i've ever seen before it's even worse than trump crowley that the trump rallies that have taken place last november and december i mean this is just absolute lawlessness these are white supremacists who have placated from for 4 years now and i think that a lot of us there's no other ending that we could have imagined here although i

think this takes said a few steps farther than we could have you know seen happening but the law lessness and the white supremacists marching in washington and these are people that trump has spoken to and encouraged and so while it's scary and terrifying unfortunately for a lot of us i think it's also on surprising. you know white supremacists if that's what they are who appeared to have taken the capitol building with impunity and suffered no consequence you know i can't help looking at this i'm wondering half of those were black faces would we be seeing a different picture. absolutely i mean looking back to last summer when there were black lives matter activists down in downtown washington who were literally tear gassed earlier today i believe that the d.c. mayor requested assistance from the national guard that was denied and if i

understand the reporting correctly the national guard is now i'm coming in but the simple fact is that the capitol police police were outnumbered they were outgunned and they were just more people that were part of the law less mob than there were police men and women who were able to stop them i mean these are scenes that are just unbelievable to see people with guns in this senate chamber in the statuary hall it's just an unbelievable and i'm hoping that when the national guard comes and they will be able to you know put it back in order but you make an excellent point imagine if these were black lives matter activists i can imagine a very different scene what responsibility does a president have for they seems that was saying. i think the president is emperor kate in all of this and he tweeted earlier that something along the lines of you know the protests should be should be peaceful but look at the language that he's

used over the last 4 years the conspiracy theories that he has had older regarding fraudulent elections there is no basis in reality to those claims he has refused you know to turn away people like you and on supporters and other conspiracy theorists that make up part of his base and so i do think that he is emperor k. directly and what is happening in washington today how should this. do we wait for them to go and to do the police go in and crack heads. well i hope that when the national guard gets involved the. crowds will disperse and hopefully the members of congress can go and certify the election which was supposed to happen today what i won't worry about is what happens after dark and

a few of your analyst before me that came on the show have mentioned this the d.c. mayor has instituted a 6 pm curfew so we're all supposed to stay home but as we've seen in protests in the past things do tend to get much more violent after dark and so i'm worried as to what might happen then but i'm hoping that in the next couple of hours things at least on the capitol get a little bit calmer and the election results are able to be certified but if you think that there should be arrests absolutely thank you for joining us right rachel reserve is director of the programs at the truman center for national policy thanks so much. thank you. now also with me here in the studio is maps hoffman head of news keep an eye on the reaction there what else are you hearing 1st of all we have we already told you what the german foreign minister said we have a little bit more of what he said of the quote he said that trump must or should

stop trampling democracy there was a very strong wording there even stronger than what we cited earlier and we've also heard now from the secretary general of nato. who said shocking scenes in washington d.c. the outcome of this democratic election must be respected you know it strikes me all these people that have to deal. with donald trump in the last 4 years especially someone like stoltenberg who's head of the north atlantic alliance and p's donald trump very often who would threaten to to shut down nato or to leave nato and. this seems like you know this is the point where they can say ok i've had it this is this is way overstepping and. finally saying what they thought the last 4 years at least that's what it feels like when you when you look at those

reactions it does feel like that you cannot help thinking well maybe you should maybe if you do if you do have spoken a little more strongly a little earlier on we wouldn't be here but what do i know so that's where we are. if you're just joining us you're looking at live pictures now of the capitol building washington d.c. in the last couple of hours hundreds perhaps thousands of people have stormed the capitol building they made it inside the building police confrontations with police one woman. we read has been injured national guard now apparently on their way to the situation as far as we can. tell there have been no arrests. with me here in the studio studio is d.w. head of news max hoffman and standing by in washington is washington and if you were a chief in this poll. what are you hearing from your end. yeah

it's an ongoing situation still and you know what i want to share with our viewers are my experience throw the last couple of months i had the ability to travel this country in the election come pain and what was really obvious that more and more people are living kind of in their own realities they are just kind of getting the news from their facebook groups from their. internet whatever that means and i think this is also playing into what we are seeing right now many many americans if not millions of americans really believe that these elections were stolen and we heard earlier on that this is kind of really undermining the democratic process today because today is the day when the election will vote should have been confirmed but again many people think the vote was stolen

from them and donald trump president donald trump plays a very very important role in that ad that he's kind of kind of has overtaken. a reality that many people are not connected to that what is really going on and this is this is see outcome of that and i'm sure that hundreds of americans who are down there at the capitol right now just have the feeling we are executing our right and i'm not talking about the proud by boys all militias who are carrying weapons i'm just talking about these average americans who flew in from from california from michigan from from north carolina they just came here to protest for their right and that is a huge problem and this won't go away on generating seconds how will joe biden how

will his administration be able to reach all those people who. who have the feeling that the elections are stolen from them we're just looking at pictures of this is some scenes inside the capitol building from and from a little while. in this. let's just recap for people who are just joining us a d w this is extraordinary evening. people have. massed inside i mean it's actually attacked the capitol building that interest you with there while you were outside the building when all this started at a trump rally just talk us through the sequence of events. yeah i think you know the rally started very early on this morning it's pretty cold today in washington people stood together they just had the feeling they're executing our right to

protest but it was calm. they shared their thoughts they talked. with us media people whom they normally don't like but the atmosphere was really peaceful until president donald trump himself. came into the picture and he delivered a speech around $1130.00 local time repeating the false claims that the elections were stolen declaring himself again the winner not only of the presidential elections but also the winner of georgia he said that the senate in georgia georgia is is wrong and this is i think very important to understand the current situation he told his supporters to walk towards the senate and that happened within like let's say half an hour an hour or so thousands of people and i was actually standing between the capitol and the white house thousands of people

were flooding towards towards the capitol and of god. angry more angry by by the minute so to speak they were shouting this is our how is we own that we take it bank and this is the outcome it was all stars by the speech it was donald trump around 1130 before that the march the demonstration today here in washington was really very peaceful and inside the capitol building what they were doing was certifying the votes of the electoral college. a session which was interrupted enos by by all of this obsessed. right they just had started let's say an hour before that happened and it is it was interrupted obviously i mean when people storm the place where you are working in you're just so working and what we what we learned is that many who are involved in

this or who were involved in this in this procedure were hiding in these desks because gunshots were fired one woman that's what we hear got injured. she's in a critical situation she got shot in her chest so they stopped this whole democratic process which is now this is scary actually to confirm the bodes for president elect joe biden so we shall see what the day brings because the following the books they have to come together again today and finish this confirmation of the electoral college but we have to wait and see i mean at this very moment all eyes are on the wild. just sort of see that joe biden is speaking now let's hear what he's saying camp to show an assault on the people's representatives in the capitol hill police sworn to protect.

in the public servants who work at the heart of our republic and assault on the rule of law like few times we've ever seen an assault on most secret of america not undertakings the doing of the people's business. the may be very clear the scenes of chaos in the capital do not reflect the true america do not represent who we are but we're sane or a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness this is not the scent is disorder it's chaos it borders on sedition and it

must and now i call on this mob to pull back and allow them work of democracy to go forward you heard me say before a different context the words of a president matter no matter how good or bad that president is at their best the words of a president can inspire at their worst they can incite therefore i call on president trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the constitution and demand an end to this see each the storm the capitol to smash windows to occupy offices the floor of the united states senate rummaging through desks

on the capitol of the house of representatives threatening the safety of duly elected officials it's not protest it's insurrection the world's watching like so many other americans. i'm genuinely shocked and saddened that our nation soul long the beacon of light and hope for democracy has come to such a dark moment through war and strife america's endured much and we will endure here and we will prevail again and will prevail now the work of the moment and the work of the next 4 years must be the restoration of democracy of decency honor respect the rule of law

just plain simple decency renaud all of the politics it's about solving problems looking out for one another that's stoking the flames of hate and chaos as i said america is about honor decency respect tolerance that's who we are a salute always bed the certification lecture college the electoral college vote supposed to be a sacred ritual which we have for our purposes to affirm the majesty of american democracy but today's reminder a painful one at the marcus is fragile and to preserve it requires people of goodwill leaders the courage to stand up who are devoted not to the pursuit of power of or the personal interest

pursuits of their own selfish interest at any cost but of the common good think when our children watching television is thinking think with the rest the world is looking at. for nearly 2 and a half centuries we the people in search of a more perfect union ever kept our eyes on that common good america is so much better than the received today. watching the scenes in the capital. i was reminded as i prepared other speeches in the passages in mind of the words of abraham lincoln the zendo message to congress whose work has today been interrupted by chaos. is that lincoln said he said we shall mobilise say or merely lose the last best hope on

earth went on to say the way is plain peaceful generous just a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and god must forever bless the ways plain here to actually are it's the way of the marcos of respect of decency of honor and commitment as patriots to this nation notwithstanding what i saw today we're seeing today. i remain optimistic about the incredible opportunities there's never been anything we can't do when we do it together

and this god awful of the splay today bring it home to every republican and democrat independent in the nation that we must step up this is the united states of america there's never ever ever ever ever been a thing we've tried to do that we've done together not been able to do it. the president trying to step up. god bless america they're talking about the situation in the capital and washington d.c. given the very presidential speech in lieu of the actual president who has been silence aside from a tweet saying let's all calm down and listening to that in washington is washington bureau chief in this poll welcome anus this is not who we are we are better than

this says joe biden. yeah and obviously really shocked joe biden who indeed was very presidential i mean this is his whole approach from day one on he wants to bring this country together he was very calm he didn't didn't kind of jumble in all the tweets of trumbull and all the provocation over the last couple of weeks ever since he was confirmed being president elect and phil what really stood out for me during his speech is when he said the words of a president matter and he refers obviously. to what donald trump said earlier the stay around 1138 local time when he talked to the to the big march to his supporters here in washington in the heart of washington

between the white house and the capitol when he said. then he kind of encouraged them to march towards the capital sure the words of a president matters and the words of donald trump have not been only spoken today this is his rhetoric since since many many months he's kind of refusing to accept the fact that he lost the election and he kind of encourages his followers to not give up to fight for him for another 4 years of donald trump and this is what joe biden was referring to and he said the words of a president matter and he explicitly he explicitly asked trump to step up now and address his supporters on national t v and ask them his.