Information On The GOP's Latest Terrorist Attack

     Ultimately, the January 6th Capitol insurrection failed in its immediate goal, to stop the certification of the 2020 election results confirming Joe Biden as president with a Democratic-led Senate and House of Representatives. What posed a more worrisome potential consequence (aside from nine deaths), and, ultimately, proved to be the case, was that it was the first breach of the U.S. Capitol in decades and opened the door to other attacks, not without the support of the Republican Party's rhetoric. 

     On April 2nd, Noah Green, a mentally-ill man with apparent sympathy for the Nation of Islam, killed Officer Billy Evans and assaulted another Capitol police officer before being killed himself. Last week, however, the GOP and its QAnon cult was responsible for two mass shootings: in the UK, the 23-year-old QAnon believer, Trump supporter, and Incel Jake Davison killed five people and then himself in the first mass shooting in the nation in a decade; in California, Matthew Taylor Coleman brought his entire family to Mexico before murdering them with a spearfishing gun, admitting to federal authorities he killed them because of his belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory.

     Now, we can add August 19th, 2021, to the list of GOP-induced terror attacks. In the third breach of the Capitol in less than eight months, 51-year-old Floyd Ray Roseberry drove his pickup truck from his home in Grover, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., where he forced the evacuation of the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the House Office Building after making a bomb threat. Roseberry has a minor criminal history, receiving 60 days in jail and two years of probation in 1993 for obstructing a police officer and settling a case involving the assault of a woman out of court in 2000. More telling is the fact that he had bankruptcies in 1998 and 2000 and apparently recently lost his mother due to illness while his wife was left with a deformed face from a cancer surgery she was forced to wait many months for.

     He streamed the drive to the Capitol live on Facebook before his account was suspended and the video removed. During the rant, he complained about the healthcare system, calling on "all Democrats" to step down and demanding a meeting with President Biden. He cited the situation in Afghanistan, apparently blaming the Afghan interpreters who risked their lives for 20 years for his predicament and being upset that they would likely receive healthcare he could not. Ironically, his home state of North Carolina is one of only 12 GOP-led states that has not yet expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act; had the GOP acted on this, his mother and wife might have been spared their expensive medical woes. He continuously talked about "revolution" and appeared willing to make himself a martyr in order to set off such an event.

     This ardent Trump supporter arrived on Capitol Hill in his suspicious black pickup and called in the bomb threat. During the tense, hours-long standoff, he communicated with ATF, FBI, MPDC, and USCP officers via a whiteboard and continuously displayed a black device he claimed was explosive. After the officers reached him on the phone, he surrendered, crawled out of the car, and was arrested without incident. The search of the car revealed explosive device components, and, at the same time, police searched his home in North Carolina and spoke with his wife and teenage son, who were told Roseberry was going on a fishing trip when their husband/father left.

     Floyd Ray Roseberry revealed during his court hearing that he only made it to eighth grade but later earned his GED and a welding license and that he hadn't taken medication for mental illness in two days. He was ordered to undergo a competency hearing and be provided medication after being indicted on the charges of threatening to use explosives and a weapon of mass destruction. He will likely be held without bond and, if convicted, faces up to two sentences of life imprisonment.

     This comes just two weeks after the government announced a heightened risk of terrorist activity in the United States because of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and the failure of Mike Lindell's "Trump Reinstatement Day" and 'audits" in states like Arizona. This is what the GOP thinks it takes to win. Pathetic and frightening.