Funny how democracy works, I recall an election recently not a coup.
Government is not a monolith, this isn’t the action of one single person, but the result of tens of millions people voting for change (that you disagree with).
When an elected official goes far beyond their legal powers to take control of the country, that's called a coup. Yes, even if they were perfectly legally elected.
People don't vote for the millions of public employees. They vote for the president. Everything Trump has said so far indicates Musk is doing all of this at the discretion of Trump.
People voting for an elected official is different than that elected official breaking the law. People can't vote to break the law. They can vote to rewrite the law, sometimes, depending on how the law is written. Often in the US we vote for elected officials who write law and then the elected president who enforces the law.
So whether tens of millions of people voted for Trump doesn't mean Trump can just disregard law because people liked him and maybe even liked that he said he would disregard the law. As far as I know, that's not how the rule of law works in representative democracies.
A riot where he specifically told them in the speech before "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." ?
This doesnt seem to change the fact there was a riot at all?? Surely you at least admit its a stain on the movement that this was the only non-peaceful transfer of power in a looong time, and if you consider how many western democracies have peaceful transfers of power, this is a huge abboration and absolutely not normal
Sure, it obviously wasn't great and obviously Trump handled it horribly. I'm just a little sick of people deliberately ignoring facts because it suits them politically.
Even Trump claiming the election was stolen wasn't new. Hillary Clinton did the exact same thing.
After being told to "fight like hell" that day or else they "wouldn't have a country anymore"? And that since trials in a court of law hadn't worked, "let's have trial by combat"? And when informed that the crowd couldn't get close to the stage because of their weapons and the metal detectors, Trump snapped at his staff that they're "not here to hurt me"?
Somehow, though all the plausible deniability winking and nodding, his fan base got the message; You can see it plainly throughout their communications and postings before and throughout the attack.
Because "fight" can only ever be used to mean a physical altercation?
More or less right after the "fight like hell" part of his speech:
"So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.
The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
It's clear (even through his rambling) that he meant they should march down there give the Republicans/Pence the guts (or whatever) to send it back to the states to recertify.
> Trial by combat
That was Giuliani, apparently, who said that.
“Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of, but if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail,” he told the crowd that day. “So, let’s have trial by combat.”
Yes, clearly he's talking about an actual trial by combat.
Honestly though, what were they even "protesting" about? If you say against a rigged election, you need way more than "I think it happened" you need evidence - which they tried very hard to find and never did, not to mention the supposed election rigger left office 4 years later, much more peacefully and smoothly than Trump did. I dont even understand what the hell they were supposed to be mad about, what was he trying to do if not overturn the election?
Trump actually outlines that in the speech before the riot, although he does it in such a meandering Trump-y way that it's hard to parse. He wanted Pence to send it back to the states to have a better look at things, although that would have been messy as hell.
"So as an example, in Pennsylvania, or whatever, you have a Republican legislature, you have a Democrat mayor, and you have a lot of Democrats all over the place. They go to the legislature. The legislature laughs at them, says we're not going to do that. They say, thank you very much and they go and make the changes themselves, they do it anyway. And that's totally illegal. That's totally illegal. You can't do that.
In Pennsylvania, the Democrat secretary of state and the Democrat state Supreme Court justices illegally abolished the signature verification requirements just 11 days prior to the election."
"More than 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania were illegally counted, even though they were received after Election Day. In other words, they were received after Election Day. Let's count them anyway."
There's a ton more. Some true, some not, etc. The annoying part is the media completely disregarded stuff like this, which only enraged his base more.
The real issue in my opinion that we don't have enough systems and transparency in place to be 100% sure our elections are fair. We should have random audits.
Hijinks with what same states pulled with their election laws during COVID shouldn't happen. Hillary Clinton claimed Trump stole the election from her, so this isn't a new feeling - Trump just had an actual support base he could rile up. Unfortunately for all of us, with the political system being so partisan I fear nobody can even propose more election security without coming off like a crazy person.
> He wanted Pence to send it back to the states to have a better look at things
"To have a better look at things" is a very euphemistic way of saying "to override the vote counts." In fact, Trump had a very specific plan for what Pence should do, involving slates of fake electors that Pence should seat, in place of the actual electors chosen through the electoral process. Those fake electors would then cast their votes for Trump, overturning the will of the voters. The whole thing failed because Pence refused to go along with such a blatantly illegal scheme. That's why the rioters that Trump whipped up set up a gallows outside the Capitol to hang Pence on.
> Hijinks with what same states pulled with their election laws during COVID shouldn't happen
Allowing people to vote without endangering themselves during a pandemic is not "hijinks."
> the Democrat state Supreme Court
It's the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Period. Not the "Democrat state Supreme Court." They made an entirely reasonable decision, based on their understanding of the law: any ballot put in the mail before the election deadline was valid. There was a legal dispute over this, the court made a ruling well before the election, and those were the rules for the election.
Really, that attempt was several steps down the line. First it was many attempts to overturn the election by convincing states to change their reported votes or just sending different electors. January 6th was the last-ditch attempt after those efforts failed.
I do recall Trump not wanting to let go of that power, in it? It wasn't out of his own magnanimity that he stepped down. Checks and balances still worked, appallingly sure, but they still worked.
He was unprepared last time, and made the strategic mistake of having a few non-sycophants around in positions of power who could tell him that he had to surrender.
Please read the Jack Smith final report. He broke laws to stay in power, he did not give up any power willingly. And if the Supreme Court hadn't delayed things so much, he would have gone to trial and been found guilty before he could be reelected.
Just because he's an absolute dumbass who had no idea how to effectively overturn the election doesn't mean he didn't try and doesn't mean the attempt wasn't violent.
I like how your literal argument is that Trump failed at becoming a dictator so he's obviously not one. Despite you know, demanding people find votes and organizing a riot.
A failed dictator is still a dictator. What's next, the events in South Korea weren't the result of a failed attempt at a coup?
Government is not a monolith, this isn’t the action of one single person, but the result of tens of millions people voting for change (that you disagree with).