In “War Game,” a new documentary from Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber, these men are members of the Order of Columbus, an extremely religious, paramilitary organization that refuses to accept the results of a contested presidential election. This is not real. It’s part of an unscripted, real-time “war game” simulation being conducted by a nonpartisan veterans group called Vet Voice Foundation — inspired by a Washington Post op-ed from three retired generals who warned that the government needed to start preparing for another, even more deadly insurrection in the wake of the 2024 election.
On Jan. 6, 2023, two years after the Capitol riot, a nonpartisan group of military leaders and government officials spanning five presidential administrations gathered in a conference room at the downtown Marriot in Washington. There, they had created a full-scale mock-up of the White House Situation Room, to game out an election certification in January 2025, in which a sitting president has narrowly won, but his charismatic, far-right challenger has claimed tohis followers that he is the only rightful leader.
“Players” included former Montana governor Steve Bullock (in the role of President Hotham), former senator Heidi Heitkamp from North Dakota (senior adviser to the president), former senator Doug Jones from Alabama (attorney general), retired general Wesley Clark (chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff), and former Army secretary Louis Caldera (secretary of defense), plus CIA and FBI agents, a Secret Service officer and high-ranking officials in the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.
For this simulated repeat of 2021, the stakes are raised. The D.C. National Guard has been compromised, and religious extremists have been actively recruiting for years within the military, creating a “splinter cell” of rogue members who seek to overthrow the U.S. government and install the election’s “true” winner, failed candidate Gov. Robert Strickland (actor Chris Coffey). They have just six hours to reconvene Congress amid an invasion of the Capitol to certify the election, preserve democracy and avert a civil war.