Yet another disturbing detail about the Capitol insurrection has been revealed as it turns out Trump’s band of domestic terrorists nearly got their hands on the nuclear football as they pursued former Vice President Mike Pence to hang him.

The first day of disgraced former President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial featured a harrowing video compilation of the insurrection on January 6th as Trump supporters forced their way into the building with the intent to overthrow democracy.

Lawmakers fled for their lives, footage of which was shown on Wednesday so that they could all understand just how close they were to being murdered so that Trump could become dictator.

Pence was among those who narrowly escaped being caught by the insurrectionists as they missed him by mere seconds.

“As the rioters reached the top of the stairs, they were within 100 feet of where the vice president was sheltering with his family, and they were just feet away from one of the doors to this chamber,” House impeachment manager Del. Stacey Plaskett explained.

But they were not only close to getting at Pence and his family, they were close to getting the nuclear football.

The nuclear football is how the President would order an emergency nuclear strike. It’s a briefcase carried by a military aide. The Vice President has an aide who carries an identical nuclear football just in case the President becomes incapacitated.

According to CNN:

US Strategic Command became aware of the gravity of the incident after seeing a video played at the Senate impeachment trial Wednesday showing Pence, his Secret Service agents and a military officer carrying the briefcase with classified nuclear launch information running down a flight of stairs inside the Capitol to get to safety, the official said. It is not clear if other national security elements of the government such as the National Security Council or top officials at the Pentagon were aware of the gravity of Pence’s position and those of his team.

Now, if they had managed to take the nuclear football away from Pence’s aide, there are security measures in place that would have prevented it from being used by the insurrectionists. However, just ask yourself what would have happened had those security measures not existed? Well, militant right-wing extremists would have in their possession a weapon of mass destruction. And let’s not forget that Trump and his cronies prevented the military from immediately going to protect the Capitol that day.

The insurrection at the Capitol is already a national security failure, but this detail about the nuclear football makes it even more calamitous. These right-wingers and their Republican enablers are serious threats to public safety and democracy. They should be behind bars. They certainly should not be jurors in a Senate impeachment trial. They are complicit with this attack, which is revealed to be worse and worse as House impeachment managers show the nation just how close we came to being under fascist rule.

Trump should be convicted, but he should also be prosecuted along with his enablers and supporters to the fullest extent of the law and sent to rot in prison so they are never a threat to our nation again.

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