It's today explained, I'm Sean Ramosferum.

Back when we still went into our office in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, I'd bike pass

the Capitol building and the White House almost every day.

And it's impossible to not appreciate the openness of these institutions.

You can walk right up to them, you can protest in front of them, you can flip the bird,

and yell at your leaders if you want to go nuts.

But then last year there were the protests after the death of George Floyd and things got

a little less open.

There was more security around the Capitol and eventually they kind of turned the White

House into like a walled fortress.

It's still like that today and that is sad.

But it certainly suggests that the powers to be in Washington, DC, they know how to really

keep people away when they want to, which made yesterday's events all the more confusing,

dumb founding, a lot is still unknown.

But on the show today, we're going to try and explain what we do know, how a number of

players and agencies managed to let the United States Capitol fall.

Dan Lamath reports on national security at the Washington Post and we started with one

peculiar thing you need to understand about the district.

It's kind of like a police convention out there 24, 7, 365.

Yeah, even on a normal day, you're working with Capitol Police.

Park Police, DC Police, Pentagon Police.

And that's to say nothing of any kind of unusual day or event where you end up with other

...