Fox News’ Chad Pergram On The Journalists Who Covered January 6: ‘We’re War Correspondents’

For the journalists who reported from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, there was no way to cover the story from a distance—the historic attack put everyone, from members of Congress to the Capitol Police and reporters like Chad Pergram in danger. “As a reporter, you don’t ever want to be a part of the story,” the Fox News Congressional correspondent told me today, between live reports on the anniversary of that day. “This was inevitable to be part of the story. You know, I lived it.”

“I was on the air all day, and the energy, the tension…this is what we cover in Congress now. You know, it’s not just bills and markups and hearings. It’s life or death.”

Pergram says there’s only one thing that compares to the experience of reporting in Washington on that day. “We’re war correspondents.”

One year ago, Pergram had reported to work at the Capitol expecting to witness one of the ceremonial acts of America’s transition of power, the certification of the results of the Electoral College. But as soon as he reached Capitol Hill, he knew something was very wrong. “I couldn’t even get in the building,” he told me, noting that people had flooded the Capitol grounds and even members of Congress were being turned away for their own safety. Pergram made it into the Capitol by accessing a tunnel from the Longworth House Office Building, and arrived to find a scene of unfolding chaos. “The most striking thing for me was they cut the feed from the House and Senate chambers…but I could listen to audio from both.” Pergram listened from his broadcast position as members of Congress were advised to find hoods under their chairs and to prepare for an evacuation.

On the air that day, Pergram put the attack in perspective for Fox News viewers. “I want to be very clear about something. This is the most significant breach of an American government institution since the Battle of Bladensburg – August 24th, 1814, when the British came and burned the Capitol and also burned the White House. We have never had an instance of an incursion inside the U.S. Capitol building to this degree since that time.”

“Let’s be clear, the mob upended American democracy today as they try to count the Electoral College. You have people taking over the House chamber, the Senate chamber, gunshots on Capitol Hill, an utter breakdown of the constitutional process, bedlam…the scenes today of American democracy, of officials from the sergeant at arms office with guns drawn inside the House chamber. I mean, we haven’t had an incident with firearms in the House chamber since you had Puerto Rican nationalists shoot several members of Congress in 1954. I mean, this is remarkable that this has unfolded today.”

Looking back, Pergram told me his experience of reporting from the Capitol as it was overrun changed how he sees his job—and has left scars from the trauma of being caught in the violence that on that day.

“You know, it’s very challenging…and frankly upsetting and traumatic when people who come at you and say ‘this isn’t how it went’ or the what-about-ism and everything else,” Pergram told me today. “And even people who you know who don’t even ask about your well-being, my well-being for being there, my wife’s well-being who dropped me off at the Capitol that day and then drove right past the bomb at the DNC to get home. You know, that’s what bothers me on a personal level.”