Shomari Stone

Shomari Stone reporting from the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021

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Transcript

Stomping sounds

Shomari Stone: Well I still have flashbacks of January six...

Man: Your camera’s broken!

Shomari Stone: In which you had a mob of insurrectionist trump supporters storm inside the Capitol and take control,

Shomari Stone Jan 6th: And these people outside are trying to get in.

Shomari Stone: My name is Shomari Stone. I'm a reporter for NBC Washington News 4.

Shomari Stone Jan 6th: I’m on the East side of the U.S. Capitol. I wasn't wearing my NBC News or NBC Washington jacket because, as some people in the crowd kept chanting, "The press is the enemy of the people. President Trump hates the press."

Crowd: USA! USA! USA!

Shomari Stone: There was a small group that was on the Senate side, and you had AP photographers, um you had AP equipment, but not just that, you had other news stations, people who were waiting there about to do their live shots. And then all of a sudden the, someone said “There's the enemy of the people!” And, you know, in terms of conformity, one person hears that, “yeah, this is enemy of the people!” And they then just started going over to the press, knocking down the barricade. That was sort of like a bicycle rack just to separate, you know, the areas. And they started knocking down lights, pushing some of the photographers and just basically cleared them out.

They started pouring water on the equipment, kicking the equipment. And very symbolic because this just wasn't, you know, them targeting this group of media. This was an attack on the First Amendment.

Man: See you later Fake News - you guys can kiss my ass!

Man: Fuck fake news, fuck fake news.

Lisa Cohen: Were there photographers whose equipment it was around the scene, or, and were they was there some sense of like we should stop them or everybody just kind of went. (hands up)

Man: Fuckin’ move! Move!

Shomari Stone: Everybody just sort of went like this. (hands up) And I don't blame them because like the Capitol Police, they were outnumbered. You had a mob of angry insurrectionist Trump supporters who wanted to, you know, attack the press.

And I'll never forget one woman said, I've al- and I'm paraphrasing, "I've always wanted to do this. I've always wanted to do this. " And people were cheering and just the mob mentality and the anger

Cheering noise

Crowd: CNN sucks. CNN sucks! CNN sucks!

Shomari Stone: A lot of that has to do with the misinformation that is given out. A lot of people in that crowd. I said, so what news do you watch? Where are you getting your source of information? And some of them said Facebook, another one said Instagram. So their entire, and this is what I saw, their entire views of the world, their truth is coming from what some people describe as misinformation, such as that President Trump won the election and there's so much voter fraud and it was taken away from him by the Democrats. And many people in the crowd also believed that there were actually Democrat lawmakers, what they described as the elite that are, excuse me, drinking the blood of children. And I'm like, where are you getting this information? And that is what they believe. And you sit down with them. And some of these people are from QAnon. And this is what they think is really happening inside the Capitol.

Cheering.

Man: Take a souvenir.

Man: Fuck yes.

Whoooo

Shomari Stone: It was horrifying to watch. I've never I have never seen anything like that. And I hope to never see it again.