The president, though, was digging in his heels. He remained singularly focused on the electoral challenge and had blinders on to everything else—at least, that was how everybody was rationalizing something close to his total failure, willful or not, to understand what was going on. At the same time, no one in the White House was seeing this as the full-on assault on the Capitol and the nail in the coffin of the Trump administration that the world would shortly understand it to be; they were, for perhaps another ninety minutes or so, still seeing this as “an optics issue,” as Ivanka was putting it.

It wasn’t until later in the three o’clock hour that Trump seemed to begin the transition from seeing the mob as people protesting the election—defending him, so he would defend them—to seeing them as “not our people.” Therefore, he bore no responsibility for them.

Giuliani and Epshteyn were still watching television reports from the Willard. Giuliani was on the phone with the president, relating, with growing concern, what he was seeing on television, but both men were still talking about the vice president and what might happen in the electoral count.

Shortly after 3 p.m., without the president knowing it, campaign HQ cancelled all sanctioned media appearances by Trump supporters and surrogates for the immediate future.

Ivanka suggested calling out the National Guard. Meadows said they had asked for the Guard—and been rebuffed by, unclear in Meadows’s telling, either the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, or the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser. In fact, the White House had suggested the National Guard be put on call several days before, when the president was hearing from conspiracy-minded sources, including Giuliani, that Antifa might disrupt the election challenge rallies. Bowser did reach Meadows after three o’clock to request assistance, and Meadows called Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense—but, in the telling, this almost immediately became a blur of responsibility: the Park Police, the Metropolitan Police, the Capitol Police, the Secret Service. The White House certainly took no leadership role.

Ivanka wasn’t casting off the protestors entirely—here was the base. “American Patriots,” she addressed them directly in a tweet at 3:40, which she would shortly delete, “any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful.”

The debate about putting the president out there to say something—something calming—continued for as much as an hour.