The tragic events of Wednesday, Jan. 6 will be etched in our memories forever. I condemn what happened at the U.S. Capitol this week.
As someone who worked in Congress for a decade, a "staffer" if you will, we are used to seeing protests and walking past peaceful demonstrators on a daily basis. And a large majority of the protesters were doing just that.
But what we witnessed on our laptops, phones and TV screens were throngs of unpatriotic rioters breaching barriers, destroying congressional offices, and looting the legislative body of the free world that ultimately resulted in the senseless deaths of five people including a U.S. Capitol Police officer. These are things every staffer and every American would say was simply unimaginable.
Why, though, did this happen? Well, we can look back on the Hillary Clinton-coined term, 'deplorables' when referring to Trump supporters, or the neglected Americans who have been crushed by oppressive Democratic governors and mayors who have helped to collapse economies, and bring businesses to their knees, with nearly half a million restaurant and bar workers losing their jobs in the month of December alone.
We can also how the left in the media euphemistically called the BLM and ANTIFA riots, looting, vandalizing and yes, even shooting police officers during the summer of 2020 "mostly peaceful." MSNBC's Ali Velshi said the situation was "not generally speaking unruly" while standing in front of a burning building in Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd's death.
Vice-President elect Kamala Harris, with a smile on her face, said when asked by Stephen Colbert about these protests, "They're not gonna stop. They're not gonna stop and this is a movement, I'm telling you. Everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they're not going to let up — and they should not. And we should not."
When monuments were desecrated, a federal courthouse dismantled by protesters, the Portland Police Association building set on fire, and business owners boarded up and temporarily closed their businesses throughout America after rioters looted and stole property where was the outrage from Democratic leaders?
President Trump has committed to a peaceful transition of power. President-elect Joe Biden now has the opportunity to heal and unite a deeply divided nation, where 70 percent of Republicans, 30 percent of Democrats and the President believe the elections were not free and fair. Despite the bleak projections for the GOP in 2020, Republicans limited Nancy Pelosi to a mere seven more votes than Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, hardly a mandate to move this country directly to an aggressive-progressive agenda.
If Joe Biden thinks he can push through defunding the police, court packing, giving DC statehood to pad their votes in Congress, repealing the Tax Law that eliminated Obamacare penalties and led to a historic boom in economic growth, he does so at a time when our nation is at a dangerous tipping point and there won't be a Donald Trump to blame.
These blistering and divisive ideas espoused by BLM, ANTIFA, AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar will land him exactly where Mr. Obama was after his first two years in office, with Democrats losing 63 seats in the U.S. House and the GOP regaining control of the gavel, and the Democrats losing a whopping 6 seats in the Senate in 2010. He knows he does so at the risk of more fissure and to only fan the flames of further dividing the greatest nation on earth.
Joe Biden, the eyes of the world are upon you.
• Amanda Makki was a 2020 Republican candidate in Florida's 13th Congressional district. She is a lawyer who worked in Congress for a decade as a health care policy adviser and at the Pentagon just weeks after 9/11. She is a native Farsi speaker and lives in Pinellas County.