Americans divided on who’s to blame for violence on US Capitol Hill

Almost half the Republican voters support the mob of predominantly white Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol, the seat of American legislature, on Wednesday.

In a sign of how deeply polarised the country has become, the poll found that Democrats were overwhelmingly opposed to the protests with 96 percent strongly against it.

Only 43 percent of Republicans, however, were opposed to the protests slightly lower than the 45 percent that supported it.

The poll released by YouGov following the protests starkly shows the divisions that plague America’s political scene even as it grapples with a pandemic that is now killing more 4,000 people per day, a record in the country.

Only days after President Donald Trump implored his supporters to “fight” to keep him president and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani argued for the introduction of “trial by combat,” the president finally conceded in a speech following a day of violence.

In a video on his reinstated Twitter account, President Donald Trump shied away from his role in instigating the violence on Capitol Hill.

“My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote,” said in a message on Twitter.

Trump’s about-face came as the country’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos resigned alongside the Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Both cited the violence in the US capital.

“There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” said DeVos, one of Trump's longest-serving lieutenants who has stuck with the president through thick and thin.

Other more senior administration officials have so far decided against quitting citing that it would only further destabilise the country.

Trump’s campaign to delegitimise the election process, however, is starting to bear fruit and has slowly seeped into the wider American mainstream.

The YouGov poll found that 56 of Americans believe that enough fraud took place in the presidential election to change the outcome, suggesting just how effective Trump has been in ensuring that even people that didn’t vote for him believe that the election was rigged.

And while a majority of voters (55 percent) believe that the violence on Wednesday was Trump’s fault 13 percent of Republicans thought so, displaying clearly how Americans have a different interpretation of the reality they are consuming.

The bloodshed that left five people dead in Capitol Hill, is some of the worst political strife that the country has seen.

Even with twelve days left to his presidency, calls for Trump to be impeached for the third time in his four year presidency have once again resurfaced.

The violence in Washington is also expected to mar President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony.

It was already expected that crowds would be restricted as the US contends with a coronavirus pandemic that continues to spiral out of control but now the shadow of further violence from Trump supporters looms large over events.

As Americans grapple with a faltering trust in their electoral process and their institutions Biden’s term could find itself overshadowed by the aftereffects of a Trump presidency.

American news commentator on CNN, Van Jones, explained that the underlying uncertainty regarding the protests “We don’t know what we’re looking at yet. Is this the end of something? Or the beginning of something?”