This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, January 6, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Protesters armed with baseball bats, Trump flags and anger over the erroneous belief that the presidential election was

stolen stormed the US Capitol on the day when Congress tallies up the votes of the

electoral college. They broke through police barricades, broke windows, entered members' offices, and the House

Chamber itself. One woman was shot and died. Direct action of a sort was urged by the president himself just before it all unfolded.

Cato's David Bowes comments on today's tragic and disgraceful riot at the U.S. Capitol.

What we witnessed on our television screens was a direct assault on the rule of law.

A large number of people came to Washington, D.C.

We could call them protesters. We might call them rioters. I think we can certainly

call them a mob, as it turned out. The President of the United States spoke to them. He told them as he's been telling them for two months

that the election was stolen, that he had won by a landslide. He told this group of people,

his people, waving Trump flags, we will never give up, we will never

concede, we will not take it anymore. He told them to march to the capital, you'll

never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong.

Maybe he did not intend by that to mean that they should march to the capital,

overwhelm law enforcement officers protecting the Capitol building,

storm into the Capitol, storm into the Senate chamber, break the windows to get into the Senate chamber

Senate chamber run up on the the vice president's dais where Mike Pence should have

been but instead there were rioters up there on that dais.

That's what happened today.

It's a direct assault on the rule of law.

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