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This pardoned Jan. 6 rioter's story reflects America's warping political reality

Alberto Mariani Jan.6 Capitol attack photo
Alberto Mariani
Insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

I know we already did whole segment on this, but if you’ll permit me, I wanted to share just one more brief tribute to the dearly departed film and television director David Lynch.

Last week we talked about Lynch’s knack for blending extreme horror and extreme sweetness. But something we didn’t talk about is his sense of humor. And there’s a moment in "Twin Peaks" that made me laugh as hard as anything I’ve ever watched.

Twin Peaks is one of the many seminal works of filmmaker David Lynch, who passed away last week at the age of 78.

It happens in Season 2, Episode 5. By this point in the series, FBI Agent Dale Cooper has arrived in a small northwest town where a homecoming queen has been murdered under mysterious circumstances. He begins investigating the murder, and along the way, he also uncovers a drug smuggling ring, follows leads based on elliptical clues from a giant who appears to him in a dream. He tries to figure out who burned down the local mill, gets shot in the stomach by an unknown assassin, and discovers that the town’s owls may be harbingers of doom. And then, well into the second season, there’s this scene where he’s having a drink at a bar with the local judge. The judge turns to him and asks, "Cooper, how long you been here?" And Cooper says, "Twelve days, sir."

That’s it — that’s the line that made me laugh. “Twelve days.” It just felt like this knowing wink from Lynch — a subtle joke that reveals the show’s deeper message: Don’t ever think you understand how the world works. A lot can change in 12 days.

Well, it’s only been 11 days since President Donald Trump took office for the second time, and our American reality is already practically unrecognizable. You listen to The Show, so I’m sure you don’t need another rundown of the various executive orders, many of which challenge our most basic assumptions about the relationship between the government and the people. With each passing day, we’re wandering deeper into the political wilderness, where there are strange, unfamiliar sounds coming from the trees. As the giant puts it in Agent Cooper’s dream, "The owls are not what they seem."

The uncanny nature of our new reality has me thinking back to my trip to AmericaFest back in December. AmericaFest, you may recall, is a gathering of several thousand conservative activists. And not unlike Agent Cooper, as I began my investigation, I found myself in the midst of a surreal encounter. There was this guy wandering around the convention floor wearing a T-shirt with his own face printed on it.

"OK, so, what’s your name?" I asked.

"Yeah, Nathan DeGrave. I did two years for Jan. 6," he said.

"So you were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 in 2021?" I asked.

"Yeah, I was the first one inside — one of the first people inside," DeGrave said.

Now you can probably hear the disbelief in my voice there, when I say “Jan. 6, 2021?” I know, I know — what a dumb question. But that’s the sound of me processing, in real time, the fact that I’m talking to a real-life insurrectionist. And I don’t know what comes to mind when you picture an insurrectionist, but I’ll admit I would’ve expected somebody like, say, Phoenix’s own Jacob Chansley, the infamous QAnon Shaman: shirtless, Viking hat, tattoos, face paint, lots of screaming.

Nathan DeGrave wasn’t like that. As far as I could tell, the most eccentric thing about him was the T-shirt with his face on it. Other than that, he was honestly the most chill person I talked to at AmericaFest. I asked him what it felt like to be at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Ever since the election, The Show's Sam Dingman has had this feeling — maybe you’ve had it, too. A sense that something fundamental about our politics has changed.

"Well, it didn’t feel like I was doing anything wrong. In fact, the doors were open, and I was fist-bumping cops on the way by. There was a lot of love there that day, and it certainly didn’t feel like the way it’s being portrayed in the media, that’s for sure," DeGrave said.

A couple weeks after those alleged fist bumps, DeGrave woke up to the sound of federal agents breaking down his door.

"Yeah, and they just said, 'You know what this is about, right?' And I said, 'Yeah, I got a feeling,'' he said.

Degrave said he spent about two years locked up, 18 months in pre-trial detention, and another six in a California prison. When I asked what that was like, he said he didn’t really think about it much while it was happening.

"I had a lot of the COs (correctional officers) actually come up to me and say, “DeGrave, how do you do it? You just seem so relaxed in your cell all the time. And they used to think I was a sociopath," said DeGrave.

Now, had I known I was going to meet Nathan DeGrave, I would’ve looked up his case. And later on, when I did, I discovered that prosecutors say DeGrave traveled to the Capitol that day in a rental car carrying two pistols, knives and a stun gun. That he attacked two police officers, and after the riot, bragged to a friend that he had “punched a guy like five times.” And that he ended up pleading guilty to “assaulting, resisting or impeding officers.”

But I didn’t know any of that when I met DeGrave. And as I stood there, listening to him calmly describing the insurrection as a “self-guided tour,” all I could think about was his demeanor.

"I just wanna say that my impression of you, based on your story, my assumption would be that you would be very angry. But you don’t seem angry to me," I said.

"Well, I don't think that anger really gets you anywhere. It’s sorta wasted energy. I don’t believe in getting angry. You know, I don’t get angry about really anything," he said.

"So even when you, you know because, in your version of the story, you ended up imprisoned for two years for just walking into the Capitol. All that time that you were sitting in prison — you never felt angry?" I asked.

"I never felt angry. You know, I did a lot of research and reading and studying into Stoicism. And in the stoic philosophy, you only focus on what you can control," DeGrave said.

I think DeGrave might be selectively applying the teachings of Stoicism, because he also told me that the reason he went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 was because he believed the election had been stolen.

I reached out to DeGrave for a follow-up conversation, but I never heard back. He’s probably busy. Before we parted ways at AmericaFest, he told me he has big plans.

Turning Point USA's annual event, AmericaFest, was held Dec. 19-22, 2024, at the Phoenix Convention Center.
Sam Dingman/KJZZ
Turning Point USA's annual event, AmericaFest, was held Dec. 19-22, 2024, at the Phoenix Convention Center.

"You know, I probably wanna run for president some day, so for me this is all practice," he said.

In the world as we knew it, having a criminal conviction on your record was the kind of thing that would sink a presidential campaign. Of course, in DeGrave’s case, that’s a moot point — he was one of the Jan. 6 rioters to receive a pardon from President Trump. And Trump himself is proof that in this brave new world, many people consider a rap sheet to be a job qualification.

Yes, things are changing, and it’s hard to keep up. We would be wise to heed the words of the giant from Agent Cooper’s dreams in "Twin Peaks" who said: "Don’t search for all the answers at once. A path is formed by laying one stone at a time."

Whatever day 12 brings, remember: We’ve never been here before. It’s gonna take a while to find our way out of the woods.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

Sam Dingman is a reporter and host for KJZZ’s The Show. Prior to KJZZ, Dingman was the creator and host of the acclaimed podcast Family Ghosts.
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