Don't forget the months of priming about fraud, (unproved) massive conspiracies against all True Americans (tm), and how Jan 6th would the last chance to save The Republic (tm).
A few thoughts about January 6, 2021
- Thread starter ObsidianJones
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Almost nobody, since words like that are in like 20% of all political speeches. And on top of that, the pile of texts with Trump's people saying "we have to stop them, they're ruining everything" should be sufficient for you to realize that wasn't part of their plans that day.
I think you don't want to engage because you know your case is a load of crap. "Precedent" is a sneaky way to be misleading, like pretending that jabbing someone in the leg with a compass is a meaningful forerunner of stabbing them in the chest with a sword.
There have been forms of legal challenges, false electors, fraud accusations and such and such that have existed. But it is absolutely plain that there has not been such a detailed, co-ordinated and determined attempt to disrupt or overturn a presidential election in living memory, if not the entire history of the USA. All it really suggests to me that you cannot or will not grasp the scope of what Trump and team were working on is that you have few standards you will not throw over to protect your beloved Republican Party.
Bollocks. There's not really much else to be said. If you're seeing the equivalent of those direct accusations of fraud, followed by exhortations to "fight" the fraud "like hell", in 20% of political speeches, then you're hallucinating.
EDIT: Also, "almost nobody"? What about all those people who went directly from that speech to the Capitol, or travelled across the country to attend after he made it? Do you think they were thinking, 'Trump doesn't want us to do this, but we'll do it anyway!'
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No, they were thinking "we want to do this." They are people, Silvanus, they have their own beliefs, concerns, and desires.
They organized movements to impeach Donald Trump before he took office. Is your memory only 4 years long?
There are two problems with this argument.
1) Impeaching Trump would not have overturned the election result. It would have merely elevated Pence to the presidency (and I can't help but feel that had that occurred, we might still have Pence as president today).
2) Trump was at most risk of impeachment for two reasons - the emoluments clause and conspiracy with Russia. The former was not an impeachment attempt, because no crime had been committed at the time. The latter was both technically after Trump took office and, as we later exhaustively found out via Mueller, by no means without justification.
Do you seriously not see the difference between a legal impeachment and an illegal attempted coup? Is world view so myopic you only see power vs lack of power?
Likely not, but being influenced by someone is not the same thing as taking orders from them.
a) They bugged Trump's campaign based on Russia misinformation, got electors to try and flip against their home states, etc.
b) What did Trump do to try and stay in office that was illegal?
a. No, that's not true, the Mueller report even said it was a good search with reasonable cause.
b. The Jan 6th operation
You're starting to sound like Houseman, just willingly ignorant and oblivious to what's going on, trapped in a illogic loop.
Indeed, which is why I used the word "incitement" rather than "order".
He knew what the outcome would be, because he's got the finger on the pulse of his supporters (unless you'd like to argue he's so hopelessly out of touch that he didn't foresee the results of his own words).
a. The FBI said that the FBI did nothing wrong. Sure.
b. There is no "the Jan 6th operation". You can't just gesture vaguely at a date and call it a crime. What was the crime?
Yes! Yes, Donald Trump is hopelessly out of touch with the consequences of his actions. His supporters got energized by him saying the election was stolen, so he kept doing that, he didn't plan any further than that. You may as well be the person acting like it's all 17th dimensional chess.
It hardly takes Chess-level planning to whip up violent thugs with the expectation they'll be violent. But if you think Trump was just inadvertently dangerous rather than intentionally, that's... fine, I guess? Still dangerous.
I mean the attempt to assassinate Pence, illegally install fake electors, change the outcome of a legal presidential election, inciting a riot, trespassing, murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and all the conspiracies to do those.
You may not understand those are bad things because your team was doing them, but trust me in the real world those are crimes and committing them will get prosecuted and punished. Also just because you vaguely wave at an operation and say you can't understand its organization doesn't mean its not an operation.
I find the contrast fascinating between how the Democrats reacted to Trump's victory and how extremely poorly the Republicans reacted to Biden's victory.
No. At the end of the day the Democrats never embraced or even vaguely accepted Donald Trump. However when comparing them to their peers it should be noted that Trump was allowed to take office. Even Trump was allowed to be installed as president. Trump the disaster president. Everyone knew Trump was uniquely unsuited for office, everyone he'd be shockingly corrupt, everyone knew he'd be less than useless during any crisis and everyone knew he'd try to subvert or even dismantle democracy if given the chance. But despite this Trump was allowed to be president. Biden didn't pretend to have powers that did not exist to steal the election and no coordinated effort was made to deny Trump the presidency.
But when it was time for Biden to take office the Republican party completely lost their minds. Biden: Boring, center-right and milktoaste Biden becoming president was deemed an unacceptable development that had to be stopped. Even if Biden lacked most traits that made Trump so uniquely unsuited for the job the Republicans still went berserk and desperately clung to every possible and impossible option to prevent him from taking office. There was an enormous wave of fanaticism against a president who genuinely wasn't extreme or even remarkable enough to deserve even half of that outrage.
Even when a walking disaster was installed as president in 2016 because the electoral college shut down the electorate the Democrats somehow still handled this with more grace than the Republicans their defeat in 2020.
No. At the end of the day the Democrats never embraced or even vaguely accepted Donald Trump. However when comparing them to their peers it should be noted that Trump was allowed to take office. Even Trump was allowed to be installed as president. Trump the disaster president. Everyone knew Trump was uniquely unsuited for office, everyone he'd be shockingly corrupt, everyone knew he'd be less than useless during any crisis and everyone knew he'd try to subvert or even dismantle democracy if given the chance. But despite this Trump was allowed to be president. Biden didn't pretend to have powers that did not exist to steal the election and no coordinated effort was made to deny Trump the presidency.
But when it was time for Biden to take office the Republican party completely lost their minds. Biden: Boring, center-right and milktoaste Biden becoming president was deemed an unacceptable development that had to be stopped. Even if Biden lacked most traits that made Trump so uniquely unsuited for the job the Republicans still went berserk and desperately clung to every possible and impossible option to prevent him from taking office. There was an enormous wave of fanaticism against a president who genuinely wasn't extreme or even remarkable enough to deserve even half of that outrage.
Even when a walking disaster was installed as president in 2016 because the electoral college shut down the electorate the Democrats somehow still handled this with more grace than the Republicans their defeat in 2020.
Yeah, okay, but being out of touch with the consequences of his actions is really worrying. Dangerously, recklessly incompetent is a bad trait in a president. Even if he did not intend them to storm Congress, he surely wanted them to exert intimidatory pressure on legislators, and when they did invade the Capitol he just watched them do it, in his name - evidently finding it satisfactory or enjoyable.
It's not just Trump himself though: it's evident that throughout his presidency Trump increasingly filled the executive with yes men and enablers; removing advisors and wiser heads who have an important role of offering alternative views and resisting autocratic decision making. As the executive increasingly filled up with cronies and cranks, it became institutionally representative of the character of its president. That also is a huge note of caution, because if there's a next time around, there might be no-one left in the executive to stop Trump's id running wild.
That's not a defence. Not legally, not professionally, not in any meaningful sense.
Why would someone who lost an election be trying to energize their supporters?
Like, it's all very well to pull the "oh, we can't hold Trump responsible for anything, he's just a funny clown man who doesn't know what he's doing." Trump was the president of the United States for four years. During those four years, he wielded immense power, and the way he chose to use that power made life concretely harder for a lot of people. If he was capable of holding that office and making those decisions, then he is capable of being held responsible for the consequences of his actions regardless of how "in touch" he is with them.
The attempt to assassinate Pence? You want to punish Trump for attempting to assassinate Pence? That's not anywhere close to a reasonable thing. You get that, right?
Say what now?
"How dare you try to punish someone for attempted murder, how uncouth!"
Granted admittedly it's not like presidents ever get punished for their successful assassination orders.
Brooklyn judge's son pleads guilty to Capitol riot charges
A New York City judge's son who referred to himself as a “caveman” eager to protest Donald Trump’s presidential election loss has pleaded guilty to storming the U.S. Capitol during the January 2021 insurrection
abcnews.go.com
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