Fake News

The Real (Fake) Story Behind the Most Confusing Photo of the U.S. Capitol Raid

How did this Black man end up on the floor of Congress in the midst of an insurrection?

Tirhakah Love
LEVEL
Published in
5 min readJan 9, 2021

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Photo: Kojo Ebro/Twitter

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Not even a week into the new year, 2021 decided to show its ass. On January 6, Trump supporters raided the U.S. Capitol in a series of events that began as a “Stop the Steal” protest, then devolved into a full-blown insurrection — one that was incited and encouraged by the sitting president himself (and reportedly assisted by members of the GOP).

Anyone with even a baseline knowledge of American history could tell you how the hell we got here. But the same can’t be said for a man who is the subject of one of the more unusual photos capturing the chaos. First off, dude is Black, so there’s that. His attire — Nike Prestos, blue sweats, an orange hoodie beneath a bubble coat, a backpack, and a red cap turned to the back that may or may not be MAGA — is markedly different from the Walmart/Bass Pro/Rainbow Six chic sported by others who’d stormed the building. There he stood, seemingly lost and out of place amid vandals like Florida Podium Man and the guy rocking a skimpy

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Tirhakah Love
LEVEL
Writer for

African from Texas• Staff Writer at LEVEL • Black politics, Celebrity interviews, TV & Film Criticism • Previously: MTV News, San Francisco Chronicle