“There was some shocking evidence in the latest hearing—it was chilling and disturbing and unsettling to see how the people attacking the United States Capitol were responding to Trump’s every communication, hanging on Trump’s every word, and awaiting Trump’s every instruction.”
“To clarify for the Washington Post editorial page staff, it would have been accurate to say that Trump ‘did nothing,’ if a mob of people, who he had no connection with, showed up at the Capitol and attacked the police and tried to kill members of Congress and the VP.”
“It came pretty damn close. If they had succeeded in killing Pence, Trump probably would have declared martial law and basically nullified the election.”
“I have no idea what the military would have done, but we basically would have been looking at a civil war.”
Now is the time to worry about the GOP, since right now US democracy is still intact—a successful second strike will be an absolute chaotic mess to deal with, so it will be way too late at that point to worry about Republican behavior.
I have a 18 June 2022 piece that discusses the reality that the GOP is attacking America’s institutional structure through both legal and illegal means. And the piece also discusses the reality that the GOP is getting ready to succeed where the first coup attempt failed—the GOP is implementing the lessons from the first coup attempt’s errors.
I haven’t followed media coverage—of the first coup attempt—closely. My impression is that the media is failing on the various fronts that I outline in my 21 June 2022 piece—my 21 June 2022 piece goes through some things that the public needs to understand and that the media seems to be failing to explain to the public.
It will be a nightmare for the whole world if a successful second strike occurs—see my 16 June 2022 piece that emphasizes how serious the threat is. People who don’t care at all about US democracy should still worry about how it will affect their life and their career and their family if US democracy falls—it will be absolute chaos around the whole world if the ongoing effort succeeds where the first effort failed.
There was some shocking evidence in the latest hearing—it was chilling and disturbing and unsettling to see how the people attacking the United States Capitol were responding to Trump’s every communication, hanging on Trump’s every word, and awaiting Trump’s every instruction.
You might wonder—like I have wondered—why Trump so industriously and strategically pursued his coup attempt after running such a lackluster presidential campaign. Why run a terrible campaign and then put tons of energy into a coup attempt?
But there’s no evidence that Trump didn’t do everything that he thought that he could in order to win the 2020 presidential election. And it’s not like voters would’ve taken seriously any promises about infrastructure and health care after Trump’s first term—he had limited strategic options. So there’s no reason to think that there’s a mysterious contrast between Trump’s approach to the election and Trump’s approach to the coup attempt.
Dean Baker made—on Twitter—some excellent points about the first coup attempt. I’ll just gather these points, since they’re really important points.
First, Baker points out that the Washington Post’s 21 July 2022 piece engages in a shameful and silly and bizarre distortion—Baker comments as follows:
“This Washington Post editorial is ungodly awful even by Washington Post standards”
“The issue is not that Trump did ‘nothing.’ Trump sent a mob to the Capitol to intimidate and possibly kill his vice president and members of Congress, in order to stay in power.”
“That is about as far from ‘nothing’ as you can get.”
“To clarify for the Washington Post editorial page staff, it would have been accurate to say that Trump ‘did nothing,’ if a mob of people, who he had no connection with, showed up at the Capitol and attacked the police and tried to kill members of Congress and the VP.”
“If Trump just sat around watching TV and throwing his lunch at the wall under these circumstances, then it would be accurate to say he did nothing.”
“It is not accurate to say Trump did nothing when it was his mob acting at his direction.”
So you have to ask how the Washington Post allowed that piece to make it to print—that’s a shocking journalistic failure.
Second, Baker observes that it was good to see the committee point out—in the latest hearing—that Trump “only made his go home message after he knew the National Guard was coming and would beat the s**t out of his mob”. Regarding the National Guard, that’s an important fact for people to think about.
And third, Baker lays out—in response to a question that I myself tweeted—that the first coup attempt was formidable and wasn’t a joke:
“It came pretty damn close. If they had succeeded in killing Pence, Trump probably would have declared martial law and basically nullified the election.”
“That would have been totally a violation of the Constitution and should have put Trump in jail for the rest of his life, but the Republicans would have said it’s just fine, as would the MAGA Five justices on the Supreme Court.”
“I have no idea what the military would have done, but we basically would have been looking at a civil war.”
“In terms of its likelihood of success, even now, with all the evidence in front of our faces, we have the brilliant minds who pontificate in the media debating as to whether Trump committed a crime and should be prosecuted.”
“I suppose that’s a tough call, sort of like whether the Buffalo supermarket shooter committed a crime and should be prosecuted.”
So Baker makes the striking point that we can evaluate the first coup attempt’s “likelihood of success” in the light of the fact that “even now” we “have the brilliant minds who pontificate in the media debating as to whether Trump committed a crime and should be prosecuted”—democracy’s guardians are unsettlingly slow to see the danger.
Will the first coup attempt elicit a big effort to secure US democracy? Hopefully—the GOP is hard at work regarding the ongoing machinations.