Here are the basics. Gruesome details are available everywhere for anyone who's interested.
- On November 3, 2020, Joe Biden was elected president.
- Donald Trump then spent months promoting lawsuits and other efforts designed to overturn the 2020 election, which he claimed Democrats had stolen. Fox News and the entire conservative press helped him along eagerly.
- Nothing worked, so as a last ditch effort Trump tried to compel VP Mike Pence to renounce his constitutional duty to certify the electoral vote.
- Pence did his best to figure out a way to comply, but in the end he couldn't quite do it.
- On January 6, the day the electoral vote was scheduled to be certified in Congress, Trump speaks to a rally of protesters.
- Toward the end of his speech, a mob begins to march on the Capitol building, hoping to stop Pence from certifying the electoral vote and thereby keeping Trump in office.
- Shortly after the attack on the Capitol begins, Trump sends out a tweet.
- Aside from a couple of tweets asking the mob to remain peaceful, Trump never asks them to stand down—despite relentless urging from family and aides.
- In the immediate aftermath, Republicans denounce both Trump and the mob. However, as time goes by their criticism wanes. Today, most of them pretend that it was no big deal.
- Two-thirds of Republican voters agree because they think Democrats stole the election in the first place. Fox News and the others continue to promote this idea.
If this happened in any other country, it would be called both an attempted insurrection and an attempted coup. Nothing like it has happened in American history.
UPDATE: The original post contained a couple of small inaccuracies in the timeline of events on January 6. I've corrected them.
He also had republican reps and Senators delay the certification to give time for his mob to stop it so that he could, by one of various schemes, throw out the election results and seize power.
2024 is going to be ugly, man, if he's running. Why bother concealing it at that point? He'll probably just openly run on the claim that it was stolen from him, and tell Republican legislatures to win it back for him.
Would it motivate marginal voters to vote Democratic if we ran fake ads for Republican candidates that told voters this is their big chance to create a one-party state ‘just like North Korea, Cuba and China!’?
Don't know if the marginal voters would be moved, but I'd sure like to see ads like this!
I say we run ads telling conservatives to not bother voting since it's all rigged anyway.
I say, run both ads, plus ones that claim that ______(state) is already a one-party state, Republicans have been voted into office in perpetuity, so no need to vote. Trumpies can’t recognize contradictions, anyway. They think a) Covid is the sniffles, and b) it’s a Chinese plot to kill off Americans. They think a) Biden is weak and senile, b) he’s a tyrant, c) he’s failed at everything, d) but he’s turning the US into a Socialist country.
Would it motivate marginal voters to vote Democratic if we ran fake ads for Republican candidates that told voters this is their big chance to create a one-party state ‘just like North Korea, Cuba and China!’?
Yes. I would motivate them. To get out and vote GOP.
If it's one thing that's clear, it's that large swaths of the Republican electorate is contemptuous of democracy. To many such voters, "one-party state" sounds great. They won't sweat the details (such as what example countries the ad cites).
"it" would motivate them.
"He'll probably just openly run on the claim that it was stolen from him"
There is no "probably" about it. He will literally be incapable of doing anything else.
And this further cements the GOP as the "Pro-Crime" Political Party in the USA.
Expand the IRS to catch tax criminals? No
Expand the ATF to catch gun criminals? No.
Expand the Dept. of Labor to catch labor and wage criminals? No.
Pro Criminal.
Yep.
“The Big Lie”, more accurately I think, was their commitment to democracy before the non-white vote got so large. Fox and its audience think old rich white people should be in charge. That’s the natural order of things. Democracy itself is the Big Lie, to them, if it doesn’t produce the result they want. That’s why they’re so quick to accept Trump’s “Big Lie”, I think.
Non White vote??? You still don't get it.
Yup. MAGAt acquaintances and some Trumpist family members are trashing Biden's speech and doubling down on Trump.
These are people who know better. It's just who they are.
"If this happened in any other country, it would be called both an attempted insurrection and an attempted coup. "
And we would be feeling oh so much more superior and exceptional condemning it.
As Biden's inauguration approached and one after another of his ridiculous lawsuits to overturn the vote in various states failed, Trump was looking for a Reichstag Fire moment -- a crisis that he could use to create chaos, enact emergency powers and prevent a transition of power. I think it came really close to working.
Quite so. Except he waited for other people to make use of the chaos for him. It was I think the weak point in all the alternate scenarios his people thought up. Trump wasn't going to run risks for himself. Yet no-one could declare martial law in his stead.
Bingo. He "takes no responsibility." At all. For anything.
It's worked for him so far.
We've had enough of this BullShit
Maybe it should be emphasized to the Trumpists that the SEAT OF GOVERNMENT of the United States was being attacked and for over two hours the COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF was repeatedly made aware of it and yet DID NOTHING.
Even if you think the election was stolen, how can that sound right to you?
You left out the part about Trump watching the insurrection on TV and rewinding to re-watch, proclaiming that they were supporting him.
Feh.
Perhaps you should add the Trump post by 7 million votes and 326 to 232. Put simply say Trump got crushed.
Also worth remembering is that Trump was behind Biden by several percentage points in pretty much every national and swing state poll throughout all of 2020, including before the pandemic was a thing. His approval rating was stuck at around 45 percent and never went much above that for all of his presidency, including the months leading up to election day.
Of course he lost - the majority of the country didn't like him and wanted him gone.
Lost. A hate spellcheck.
Kiner, your spellchecker must really dislike you. Look at your one-line response to the first auto-correct.
Maybe he's writing in Strine. I remember overhearing an Australian guy in a Western Union office in San Francisco trying to get the clerk to understand him as he spelled out the recipient's name: "Dee, Aye. No. Aye. Aye! Aye as in Apple."
As an aside, the guy looked like Crocodile Dundee, many years before there was a Crocodile Dundee.
Hahaha. My brain is in C fog I suppose.
Trump should be so lucky
How would he handle Schumer? With a DEM senate? DEM House?
He would be doomed to obstruction at every turn. He would have to legislate by Executive Order except where he needs help like SCOTUS judges.
Trump is naive in the political sense and guys like Graham, Jordan, and others KNOW this and probably told him this = that it's better to be Prez with a friendly Congress than it is with and Unfriendly congress.
He should be glad that he lost given the circumstances we're in now.
"Should be glad" describes a state of mind of a rational person. The syllogism fails.
Plus, Trump doesn't give a rat's arse about "legislating." He just 1) wants to be at the center of attention; 2) he loves the opportunities for graft provided by controlling the executive branch; and he 3) (most of all) values the legal protections of executive privilege and control of the Justice Department.
Trump meeting with supporters is irrelevant. The problem was not pushing off his lackeys after the meeting when 500+ of them started trying to get into the capital. The general view is they wouldn't be stupid. But after counter protesters didn't show up, they had nothing else left.
The lack of counter protesters is what your missing. The missing protesters are also a question best answered overseas. Whether Trump was promised or he was told to stand down, mistakes were made.
Lastly, Republicans don't say it's "no big deal", but your not going to get anywhere bringing it back up. It's a legal issue now.
"On January 6, the day the electoral vote was scheduled to be certified in Congress, Trump speaks to a rally of protesters."
You forgot the part where he called the protesters to show up at that specific day and at that specific time. The original protest from his supporters was scheduled for a later date and was only moves to the 6th at the request of the White House.
He wanted the rabid mob there to cause chaos and stop the certification as his last ditch effort to stay in power in case Pence refused to gonalong with his plan to not certify the election(which is what Pence eventually did).
No, it was moved to the 6th to pressure Pence to delay certification so the Trump Organization could grift for a few more weeks. Counter protesters would "show up" creating fights outside giving Pence cover. Oh yeah, pyrotechnics were planned as well.
However, that morning they knew it wasn't happening and by 1000AM were resigned to defeat. You could see the surprise when morons actually tried a backup plan.
In one of the lesser surreal moments of the day....I turned on the radio to hear the NPR announcer say we were listening to the moment of silence at the Capitol.
In the discussions, Trump was spreading misinformation or debunked claims...but never referred to as a liar spreading lies even when discussing the "Big Lie".
We have to be sensitive to right-wing sensitivities and be "politically correct." (snark)
I see Ted Cruz is getting trashed by his mob for suggesting the attack on the Capitol was a bad thing. The Republican Party is currently a right wing mob. It’s more the party of Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson than it is any of the people who think they lead it. They’ll even boo Trump for suggesting that the vaccine isn’t a bad thing. It’s all pretty scary. Republicans who think they can lead a mob like that are fooling themselves. The mob expects its leaders to follow them.
Tucker Carlson is a homosexual and global elitist. Bannon is a drunk and a global elitist. You fall for the con, you become it.
In the interests of accuracy, that's simply not true. He tweeted requests for the mob to remain peaceful at 2.38 and 3.13 pm. At 4.17 pm he published a video telling them to go home, and repeated that advice in a tweet at 6.01 pm.
Democrats have made a tactical error in focusing too much on the January 6 riot as if it were an "attempted insurrection" that occurred in isolation. Consequently not enough attention has been paid to the attempted coup which the Trump Administration had been planning for weeks, if not months. I'm inclined to believe Navarro's claim that the last thing they wanted was a violent riot on the day Republicans in Congress were supposed to stage a TV spectacle rejecting certification of the electoral college votes.
Yes.
Certainly the January 6th incident never had a remote chance of success. The republic was always threatened much more credibly by the various pre-6 January GOP legal and constitutional machinations. In many ways, Trumpism dodged a bullet that day. It sounds faintly obscene to suggest this, but the country arguably caught a bad break in that the death toll was so small. I think it's likely nothing less than a biggish body count involving multiple members of Congress could have provided the degree of outraged momentum necessary for the political class to take decisive action vis-a-vis the MAGA movement. But that's not what transpired.
As it happens, Trump easily survived impeachment and nearly all quarters of the American right are now credibly (to their own people) describing that day as a slightly over-boisterous protest in defense of democracy.
Lots of Republicans seem to believe, at the same time, that the January 6th riot was BLM and ANTIFA, and the FBI disguised as Trump supporters and that the “protest” was nonviolent and that the Trump supporters were wrongfully arrested and are heroic political prisoners. It’s weird that they can believe both things at once, but they do.
I think that Trump was hoping for Pence to do his bidding, egged on by his mob. When that didn’t happen I think he was hoping for a big body count so he could declare martial law and stop the electoral vote count until it could be rigged in his favor.
How about: The Democrats should have taken the Republicans at their word and assumed that all Republicans holding office were not actually elected. Maybe the Republicans DO know something we don't know. Then, the Democrats in Congress should have refused to seat them until the vote fraud issue was resolved.
Heads, I win.
Tails, you cheated.
Peter Navarro claims that Team Trump's Insurrection Committee had lined up 100 or so Republicans to vote against certification. This seems like a moot point as it would not have been enough to stop the certification.
It's a curious thing, though, to use what so many Republicans claim are "legal" actions to overturn an election outcome -- whether by stopping the certification or by adding new laws at the state level to allow unilateral (body of Republican lawmakers) decisions to ignore voting results -- as perfectly acceptable.
This republic is crumbling under the guise of legal, democratic actions, and the conservative members of SCOTUS appear to be aligned in large part, to participate in this disintegration.
IDK what Democrats are to do when conservatives are shifting the ground rules of how a democratic republic is supposed to operate, but it seems obvious that we're reaching a breaking point.