Umair
When Donald J. Trump takes the oath of office on Monday in a rare indoor inaugural ceremony under the Capitol dome, the grand Rotunda will be packed with dignitaries, lawmakers and supporters of the incoming president.
It is the same ornate hall, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, where presidents and other dignitaries have lain in state and solemn national ceremonies are held.
But four years ago, the Rotunda was the backdrop for one of the darkest moments in the country’s history, when it teemed with a rowdier crowd of Trump supporters: the mob that overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent attempt to prevent the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election.
Rioters radicalized by Mr. Trump’s lie of a stolen election swarmed through the Rotunda that day and clashed with police. Some mounted the statues of prominent American figures including Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. They traversed the storied chamber as they roamed between the House and Senate and sought to disrupt a joint session of Congress, strewing trash and debris in the usually immaculate center of the building, which often overwhelms visitors with awe as they get their first glimpse of the soaring interior.
After the disturbance was put down and the building cleared, allowing the certification of the election to proceed, then-Representative Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, headed to the Rotunda in the early morning hours of Jan. 7. There he was photographed sweeping up the trash that almost inconceivably littered the sacred space where leading Americans are honored in death, most recently President Jimmy Carter.
“I thought to myself, ‘How did it get this bad?’” Mr. Kim, a Rhodes scholar and former national security official, said last summer during a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “So I did the only thing I could think of: I grabbed a trash bag and started cleaning up. What I learned on Jan. 6 is that all of us are caretakers for our great republic. We can heal this country, but only if we try.”
Mr. Kim, previously a little-known figure, was elected the new senator from New Jersey in November.
The images of that January four years ago will linger as Mr. Trump takes the oath in the chamber, where curved walls bear huge paintings of pivotal early American moments, such as the landing of Columbus and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Mr. Trump has said one of his first acts as president will be to pardon people who were prosecuted for participating in the assault on the Capitol.
