From Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, after being told VP Mike Pence was in danger:
Who cares?
Longtime Trump aide Dan Scavino was in the Oval Office that day:
When Scavino and other White House officials learned that rioters had violently stormed the Capitol, they rushed into the dining room to urge Trump to help calm the situation.
....After unsuccessfully trying for up to 20 minutes to persuade Trump to release some sort of calming statement, Scavino and others walked out of the dining room, leaving Trump alone, sources said. That's when, according to sources, Trump posted a message on his Twitter account saying that Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done."
Scavino told prosecutors that Trump "was just not interested" in doing anything to halt the rising violence that day.
We could all see this happening in real time. The fact that he will be the Republican nominee, and may tease out an electoral college victory while being 10 million votes in the hole is a national disgrace.
It is. It most definitely is. And yet, we have permitted the Constitution to be so difficult to amend that, even though the "electoral college" thing has been opposed since (wait for it!!) 1800!!! -- the extreme partisanship of the minority party won't permit any modifications. Because they derive so much benefit from it.
Ditto for impeachment. The bar has become impossibly high, given total loyalty to Party over principle.
And now, the clear language of the 14th Amendment on disqualification of those who swore loyalty to the Constitution, then tried to overturn it... a total no-brainer, right? Well, it's like the punditocracy has become "no-brainers". Not to mention the Insurrection Party.
Sorry for the rant. Just dreading how ther Supreme (heh) Court is going to rationalize letting the Defendant run for office and maybe even win.
Je suis d'accord, the Constitution seems more and more everyday to me a suicide pact rather than a framework of governance.
The Constitution gave rural voters and small states an incredibly strong hand, which they will inevitably overplay. It will have to be taken away from them.
The Electoral College today is nothing more than affirmative action for republicans.
+1
Typical ‘pro-lifer’……
Do note that there is still some murkiness about what actually happened that day. Marcy Wheeler, who probably knows more about this than anyone outside the government or Mara Lago, notes inconsistencies in Scavino's story, among other things -
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/01/07/dan-scavino-alone-with-trump-had-access-to-the-attempted-murder-weapon/
strong second re: read Ms Wheeler on this!
Murky?
We know who and when the national guard was ordered up. (Or rather, was blocked.). We know when the administration pulled back while he told his supporters to march over there.
Not very murky from the major points of the day, in which a sitting president riled up a crowd and set them upon a Congress in session. Then did nothing to prevent violence - including nothing to stop it, once it was started.
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+1
And trump also ordered the people in charge of security to NOT check for weapons in the crowd he was egging on & that he knew had weapons - according to an older Washington Post account (sorry, having difficulty pulling links from their website bc it shifts me to the appl).
He repeats his lie about Nancy Pelosi ,who has NO authority over DC's National Guard - & he is the one with the authority to send the Guard 2.000 , not 10,000!
Do you seriously think that any one of Trump’s staff would have blocked a tweet from the President urging the rioters to put down weapons and leave the Capitol? Failing to call off his goons was in itself dereliction of his duty to uphold the Constitution, as was calling for the rejection of duly-certified Electoral votes. It doesn’t matter much who sent the incendiary tweet Wheeler discusses.
Whenever talk turns to January 6th I always wonder what would have happened if the Secret Service had allowed Trump to go to the Capitol like he wanted. Would he have marched in with his SS detail and followers in tow? Would he have demanded to be installed as the true victor?
I just wonder how that would have played out.
In a way, I think it might have been better because Trump's behavior would be stark and strip him of his typical mobster-like hints which give him deniability.
Also, it would have confirmed to me that I lived in the fever dream of PKD.
+100
Thanks!
I suspect that the outcome would turn less on Trump’s presence and more on whether the MAGA crowd could have successfully taken important hostages and the Republican militias like the Proud Boys could’ve gotten their weapons and reinforcements from across the river. I think that Trump would’ve invoked the Insurrection Act and pretended to “negotiate” his party’s armed wing to secure the hostages release. I think that the effectiveness of the resistance by some of the Capital Police scuppered the Republican Party’s plan to overthrow the government.
But those members of the Secret Service who would have allowed it to happen would then be charged as those who "[gave] aid or comfort thereto" under 8 U.S. Code § 2383 (Insurrection or rebellion) and 5 U.S. Code § 7311 (Loyalty and striking) for "[participating] in a strike ... against the Government of the United States." In one fell swoop, they would have been fired; and fined, or imprisoned.
Most of them aren't dumb enough to violate their oath to the Constitution, knowing their entire careers are at stake.
But in the spirit of your question, I would tend to believe that the cabinet would hold an emergency meeting to disqualify Trump from being President. With Pence in charge, he would trigger the Insurrection Act and order the military to remove, by force if necessary, all insurrectionists including Trump.
I think you’re overlooking the nature of an autogolpe or self-coup. A better, smarter gangster than Trump would’ve made sure of his plan before starting. In particular, he’d have made sure of the loyalty of both his and Pence’s Secret Service agents. And he’d have heavily armed people in place inside the Capitol in position to grab Pence, Pelosi, etc and kill the necessary Capital Police officers right before Trump turned the mob lose on the Capitol.
Trump’s fundamental problem with the autogolpe was the same as those which made his presidency such a chaotic mess. Namely, he is stupid, he’s lazy, and he surrounds himself with second rate people who are even stupider and more incompetent than he is. But, nevertheless, I think his plan was to have someone else do the dirty work of taking hostages and moving weapons and militias into the capital so that he could invoke the Insurrection Act and “negotiate” with the Republican’s armed wing and “accede” to their demand that his autogolpe be successful.
I think you’re overlooking the nature of an autogolpe or self-coup.
You're talking yourself into a circle. As you said, Trump hadn't properly planned it as a "smarter gangster" would.
Full stop.
There is no counterfactual where Trump is better than who he is. You're walking into the abyss of pure fiction.
It's a counter factual. It by definition doesn't exist.
I think I’m describing an idealized version of Trump’s autogolpe, not one that he actually planned or was capable of planning. I think Trump’s premise was that he’d set things in motion but that others would do the heavy lifting. My point is that these are things that, say, a Michael Corleone would have thought about and planned in advance but which simply wouldn’t occur to a Fredo Corleone.
But it would have been essential for Trump to have the loyalty of both secret service details and I think it would have been fairly easy to for a better Don to obtain either through promises of rewards or through blackmail. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Secret Service agents over recent years, it’s that they’re far from incorruptible.
Erdogan knew how to do a self-coup in a Democracy: stage it as a counter-coup to a fake military coup.
Me too. Would have clarified things. Probably would have amounted to standing next to the Escalade with a bullhorn (probably one in the car) and addressing the crowd still outside.
But what would he have said? Definitely not "thanks for your support, but the Capitol is actually closed and everyone should stay outside or leave if they are inside."
According to Cassidy Hutchinson this was his attitude at the time: (from interview w maddow)
They're calling for the vice president to be hanged.
The president is okay with it.
He doesn't want to do anything.
He doesnt think they're doing anything wrong.
He thinks Mike is a traitor.
This is crazy. We need to be doing something more.
https://twitter.com/DrydenNovelette/status/1743988904166891675
I've been trying to put together a timeline for the critical 3 hours in the White House but what happened has been mostly opaque. Until now. Is the dam about to break?
Personally. I’m glad the insurrectionists didn’t get their hands on Pelosi. I’ve got mixed feelings about them missing Pence. I’m reminded of the fact that upon being invited to join Trump’s autogolpe, he consulted with his political advisers who told him that Trump’s too incompetent to succeed. But he didn’t blow the whistle on Trump; he just waited to see if Trump would get close enough to change the political calculus and make it worth backing the autogolpe.
Trump claimed, the day after, that he had immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement. Of course since then there has been e.g. "I thought Pelosi had taken care of it." (maybe not an exact quote)
Reminds me of when he said "I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be [Russia that interfered in the election],” then the next day claimed he had meant to say "wouldn't" instead of "would." Then of course backed off of that bullshit too.
Jenna Ellis in 2016: “Why should we rest our highest office in America, on a man who fundamentally goes back and forth and really cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything.”
People who think sucking Trump's dick, --because, vicariously, they can imagine it's their own, --places them above citizenship or any other value
think they're smarter than we are
because they listen to podcasts from Nazis and radio shows from ninnies.
The only mistakes I find are punctuation style errors...
Hey, conservatives!
I realize you're all probably a little tired of me trying to talk you into moving to places you'd obviously like so much bettter, beautiful, freedom loving empty landscapes desperate for development where you'd fit right in as if it were made for you and you'd be really popular and successful and everyone will love you, like you've lived there since forever, places like Afghanistan or Russia.
But, how about Argentina?
Argentina is magnificent! They have great climate, incredible scenery, world class food and wine, great people, a lot of them already speak English, and they like Americans! That means they like you already!
They have a modern infrastructure, with television and electricity, and the whole country is stuffed full of wide open spaces that are crying out to be filled with fun and industry! They're famous for cowboys and horses, just like you are! They don't have nuclear weapons, but that just means they won't be directly hit in a nuclear war, so it's very safe! Not many black people and illegal immigrants are all heading away from Argentina! And they coughed up the Pope, so that's over with.
And they're going to be using the US dollar! Just like we do!
Argentina --conservatives, please think about it. This is the place for you.
(and it's in the Americas, so you're not really missing a thing).
Move to Argentina? No, they're gonna "stand their ground." It's typically us Lefties who will run when the going gets tough. Anybody remember Canada?
Thumbs up!
What do you have against Argentina? I think it took them a long time to rid themselves of earlier Nazi immigrants. I don’t think they really want our Nazis.
The details of happened on J6 are really uninteresting, because all the world knows that it was a coup attempt by Trump.
The interesting questions are whether he can delay the court case until after the elections, and if not, can he scare enough the jurors to not find him guilty.
I think we’ll know the answer to the first question very soon. Both the DCCA and the USSC have the ability to stretch out the trial date past November, in part by using their regular procedures such as giving Trump 90 days to file an appeal. Similarly, the DOJ would have to make a choice about whether to continue the trial date past the November election or violate their normal procedure of scrupulously avoiding even the slightest interference in an election, perhaps as early as July or August 2024.
As to the second question: I think we need to look at the different trials. The one in which a normal defendant would be most vulnerable is the Florida documents case. (Which is about as close to a “lay down” as anything I’ve ever seen). But Trump’s almost guaranteed to beat that rap because he’s got the judge in his pocket and there’s a myriad of ways in which she can guarantee an acquittal.
As for the other trials, I think he probably can terrify at least one juror in each trial even if the trial is miraculously conducted before the election. It would be a lot like sitting on a jury in a mafia trial except that you know that if Trump returns to power you can be killed by a MAGA-killer with impunity. Voting to convict Trump is basically hanging a target on your back.
I just noticed that the photo at the top changes each time you check out this blog.
Only in the El Ay area: Bob Hope and John Wayne airports. Both actors and both known as right wingers too.
New York City: La Guardia and JFK. Mayor and President, both liberals.
DC: Dulles and Reagan. Both conservative Republicans. When I lived there I only called the second one "National" although I don't now feel the urge to call JFK "Idlewild" (despite it being a cool name and somehow recalling Midcentury Modern jet setters). We have a couple renamed bridges here that no one wants to call their new names though.
It’ll always be the Tappan Zee Bridge to me. Not that i want them to take former Governor Cuomo’s name off, or anything; but the former name has Native (Lenni Lenape) and Dutch roots. Where else would you find that combination?
Minor correction: The article says "so what," not "who cares."