Area man had close view of Washington, D.C. protest

When Jeff Brost of Colby traveled to Washington, D.C. last week with two of his kids, he was expecting to see something “historic.”

Like thousands of other Trump voters from across the country, Brost wanted to show support for the incumbent president and push back against what he and others see as a stolen election.

“I wanted to be part of the movement,” he said. “I kind of knew it was going to take numbers of people to show support.”

Brost said he had previously been to a Trump rally in Mosinee last fall, and felt inspired to come to the nation’s capital to demand that members of Congress refuse to certify election results confirming Joe Biden as the next president.

“What I was hoping for is that the Republican representatives would see the support and have enough backbone to stand up,” he said.

Instead, Brost and his son and daughter became groundlevel witnesses to a chaotic siege of the U.S. Capitol building that left five people dead and delayed the certification vote for several hours while police and National Guard troops worked to restore order.

“I was pretty disappointed,” he said. “That was not what this was supposed to be.”

Brost said he wanted lawmakers to be able to hear the protestors’ voices from outside the building while they deliberated, but he did not like to see people “go in there and raise hell.”

“That was really not helpful for anything,” he said.

By the end of the day on Jan. 6, both houses of Congress voted to certify the Electoral College results, officially signing off on Biden as the next president.

Mr. Brost goes to Washington

Brost made the roughly 1,000-mile road trip to Washington, D.C. with his oldest daughter, age 18, and his 15-yearold son. Not only he did want his kids to see something potentially “history-making,” he also said it was a “free vacation for them, because Dad was paying.”

“We don’t travel much,” he said. “That’s the farthest from home I’ve ever been, so it was kind of a big trip for us.”

The Brosts arrived in D.C. shortly after 5 p.m. on Tuesday night and checked into a hotel near downtown. The next morning, they headed to President Trump’s speech at The Ellipse just south of the White House.

Brost said he had watched the president’s speak at a rally in Georgia the night before online, and the one they attended was “basically the same speech.” He said the president laid out his suspicions of voter fraud in various parts of the country, repeating the same message he had been since the Nov. 3 election.

Although the speech has been widely criticized for “inciting” violence and encouraging the siege on the Capitol, Brost said that was not the message he got.

“I didn’t hear anything that said ‘Go down there and do anything bad,’” he said.

Brost said he and his kids were standing back by the Washington Monument during the speech, and word started to spread among the crowd that Congress was already in session. The president was still talking when he and many other audience members left and started walking toward the Capitol building.

For Brost and his kids, the first indication that something was going wrong was the sound of “booms,” which he initially thought might have been a ceremonial cannon going off.

“We got a little closer and we see that the crowd up in front of the Capitol was already being tear-gassed and flash-banged,” he said. “That was before Trump was done talking.”

Brost and his two children stopped and stood next to a monument dedicated to President Ulysses S. Grant, which gave them a good view of the Capitol’s front steps from a safe distance.

“We stayed there until we decided we were cold and hungry enough to walk back to the hotel,” he said.

Brost said there didn’t seem to be much of a police presence at the Capitol, especially compared to the throng of law enforcement he saw at the president’s speech. He said it was hard to get a full view of what was happening, but he could tell it wasn’t all “hunky-dory.”

“I don’t think that the police would be tear-gassing and popping off flash-bangs if everybody was up there singing Kumbaya, you know?” he said.

People around him starting getting text messages, and word spread that some members of the crowd had entered the building — a fact that surprised Brost. However, he did notice that an oval door or window was open, and he shared his video of it on Facebook.

“The crowd was kind of cheering at some of these people who were up top, but I don’t think anybody wanted anything bad to happen,” he said.

Brost said he also noticed some of the people who climbed up on scaffolding — images that were being broadcast around the world.

“Honestly, they’re just a bunch of dorks up there, waving their flags,” he said. “I don’t think they meant any harm.”

Most of the protestors came there without any ill intentions, Brost believes, but “obviously there were people inside that had other ideas.” Those he’d seen at other Trump rallies are “usually pretty happy people,” he said, but “there were trouble-makers” among the crowd at the Capitol.

Brost said the bare-chested man wearing Vikings horns — seen in many photos shown by the media — was standing about 10 feet away from him at one point, and there was also someone dressed in a black military-style uniform, carrying what looked like a nightstick.

The man in black gear was asking if anyone was “brave enough” to “come up front with me now.” Another man wearing a hard hat was spreading rumors that people in wheelchairs were being shot with rubber bullets.

“I don’t know who they were with, but they were definitely back there stirring up the crowd,” he said.

Brost said he started getting texts from friends and family back in Colby, asking if they were OK.

“I think most people who know me know that I wasn’t going to be one of the guys who rushed the building,” he said. “That isn’t what we went out there for.”

Before leaving for the return trip to Wisconsin the next day, Brost and kids did some traditional sight-seeing around the nation’s capital.

Looking ahead

When asked about the upcoming inauguration of president- elect Biden next Tuesday, Brost said “I’m really unhappy about that.”

However, he also said his outlook also depends on what kind of actions and decisions Biden and other Democrats make now that they are in power.

“They can do a lot to just calm things down by not getting too radical,” he said. “Radical is going to be bad on their part.”

Brost was also asked about his confidence in the electoral system. He said he trusts local officials in Colby to count his vote, as long as the voting machines are calibrated correctly, but nationwide, he said the system is “junk.”

“It’s broken. They need to fix it,” he said. “There’s no way it came out the way they say it did.”

A recount of vote totals in Milwaukee and Dane counties reaffirmed Biden’s win in Wisconsin, and all of the legal challenges mounted by the Trump campaign failed in the court system, but Brost thinks the evidence of voter fraud was never given a fair hearing.

“The ultimate goal was to get it to the Supreme Court,” he said. “I think everybody knew that, expected that and wanted to see that. So, when they passed the buck and said they were not going to hear it, that was a complete disgrace, honestly, in my opinion.”

Brost said a Supreme Court review could have gone a long way to calming things down. And, although he likes Sen. Ted Cruz, he did not think Cruz’s proposal to set up a bipartisan review of the election results was sufficient.

“I was not a fan of that idea,” he said. “I thought that was maybe just a way to pacify people and get us all to go home.”

Even though the events of Jan. 6 were not what Brost wanted to see, they have not diminished his desire to stay in engaged in politics.

“I’ve got five kids,” he said. “I’ve got too much committed to in this world to let it fall apart, so I’m going to be watching.”

Jeff Brost and his two kids stood by the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, along with other peaceful protestors, while others in the crowd overran police barricades and entered the Capitol.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO