Interview any protest with hundreds and you find exactly what you found in the Capitol. Outliers who said something beyond the scope of the protest. Like the mostly peaceful protests in the summer.
The intent of a few doesnt match the actions of the many. That's why I keep saying it's not a probability argument. You are assigning worse case scenarios to a situation where actual worse case scenarios would be miles higher.
Stealing a podium and carrying zip ties equals a coup. Lol. This was the first worldiest coup I have ever heard of. I didnt know my local grocery store carried weapons of government overthrow.
You continue applying an absurd standard.
They were protesting results, our consitution allows that. Now they way they did it isnt allowed, but that doesnt change it from what it was.
Thank you for the first paragraph. It suffers from proximity to the rest of the post, but it’s the thinnest kid in this fat camp of terrible rebuttals. You still have two major problems:
First is the rally. “Stop the steal.” The whole thing was literally a call to action to prolong Trump’s presidency, even after he lost the election. “Come support Trump’s [pretend] efforts to fight to overturn the election.” Which, by that time, was down to a Hail Mary in which Pence illegally throws out the electoral college votes. Which was the whole reason for throwing this thing on 1/6. Trump telegraphed it in advance on Twitter and at the rallies. May have even blabbed about it on Fox News. Theres no way these people didn’t know what the game plan was.
The bottom line is that even the non-violent ones were there to support an illegal and unconstitutional power grab in which the loser of an election would remain president. Their desire was for the constitutional order to be upturned and an unelected executive be retained. The only element of a coup that’s missing from that is violence or use of force in furtherance of that intent.
The other problem is that you’re trying to muddle the coup as some big-talking fringe element of the rally crowd, but the coup started while the rally was still going on. I can’t believe you didn’t know this. Trump’s lawyers pointed it out over and over during the impeachment. While it makes it clear that Trump’s speech wasn’t the genesis of the coup, it allows an easy distinction between the group that was willing to do violence and the group that may not have been (or at least didn’t get the opportunity). The ease of this distinction makes your efforts to confuse them completely inconsistent with what actually happened.
So then the question is whether both groups shared the same intent, which is easy. Yes. Journalists and other Trumpists recorded the comments, cheers, and chants from the attackers about what their ambitions were. They were recorded threatening violence on elected officials while carrying out violence against law enforcement. There were hundreds of them. The FBI has access to their social media messaging and phones and some allegedly contain discussions of plans to kill elected members of congress. They’re all waving Trump flags and wearing Trump paraphernalia. They predominately come from pro-Trump communities and live lifestyles that are consistent with Trump’s political coalition. Once their inside man sold them out they turned on him, too. Their intent was to use any means necessary to extend the presidency of Donald Trump. It could not be clearer that they shared this ambition of seeing Trump’s presidency extended.
And just to reiterate: they used violence to achieve that intent. They were overrunning barricades, overwhelming the police security perimeter, and shoving and fighting their way into the building. They were dragging the police out and beating them with anything that wasn’t nailed down. They literally trampled a woman to death trying to reach their objective.
They had the intent to help Trump illegally maintain power. They acted on that intent. They used violence to further it. So every single element of the common definition a coup is met.
Calling that an “absurd standard” is like putting window boxes on a burnt out trailer shell. You’ve got some work to do to get that thing water tight and livable before you go worrying about curb appeal.