What did Trump really do on January 6?
Or, Will Trump start a bloody revolution? My Voting Diary, Day 10
The question of the January 6 attack on the Capitol and, with it, the question of Trump trying to reverse the election, is one of the most important, and emotionally most terrifying issues facing America in this election.
Not only because it was a horrific thing to do – but because it seems like a preview of things to come. If Trump loses again, will he really start a bloody revolution this time?
I looked it up.
First, what actually happened?
In a nutshell: A protest descended (intentionally) into violence and rioters broke into the capitol building while legislation was in session, vandalizing offices and causing nearly $3 million in damages.
The intent by some far-right groups (especially the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers) and individuals was to stop the ratification of the election results, which they believed were illegitimate.
The election results were ratified and about 1,500 arrests were made in the months following.
This is what didn’t happen:
The mob was not armed to the teeth – only a few guns were present, and only one protester – as far as I can tell – fired a gun, and that was outside the building and into the air;
the original protest was not illegal or unexpected – the demonstration was registered and scheduled;
at the same time, the rioting was no spontaneous – the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and some others had plans to break into the capitol building;
the rioters did not kill anyone – one female protester was shot by a guard and died; another protester was shot by another guard but lived; a third protester died of an overdose; the deaths of others, including police officers, that are often associated with January 6, occurred days later and by natural causes, for example by heart attack or suicide;
there were no bombs inside the capitol – at least one pipe bomb was found in the surrounding neighborhood and it is assumed to be connected to the protests, possibly meant to be a diversion (it did not go off).
But the big question is: Was it a coup?
No.
A coup requires intentional planning to overthrow the government. The only plan was to put pressure on congress to stop ratification of the election results. That’s bad enough, but it is not coup.
The lawsuits that followed January 6 never accused anyone of attempting to overthrow the government. The suits ranged from trespassing to “sedition.”
“Sedition” has many definitions, and the press have encouraged readers to equate it with “coup.” But the law used against the rioters was “seditious conspiracy,” which is more narrowly defined as an activity to “undermine the state without directly attacking it” (Wikipedia) or, more precisely, the attempt to interrupt or close down legislation in progress.
That’s what happened. There is no evidence of plans to take over the government, with or without Trump, only to stop the vote from being ratified.
That’s bad enough, but it’s not a coup.
Is a coup or a civil war even possible in America today?
No.
People today don’t seem to understand what it would take to start a coup or a civil war.
To manage a coup, you need a widespread conspiracy in many levels of government and civil institutions, including the military, the police, broadcasting and communication.
All at the same time, you have to take control of all or most institutions that the government and use against you. You need tanks on the streets, you need barricaded broadcasters and capitol buildings, you need thousands and thousands, maybe millions of soldiers and police officers either on your side or not coming to work that day.
In a country of 333 million, half of which hate Trump, there’s no way of getting that much support anywhere. Even if he got one Army battalion to agree, there would always be one guy who calls the newspapers. Even Trump’s own people in the White House went against him.
Not to mention: Americans like to talk about how everything is going to hell, but the truth is, they live in too much luxury, security and privilege to actually take it to the streets. The people have to be really suffering before they do that.
We have a good historical in example in Germany:
In the seventies and eighties, the popular terrorist group RAF tried for three generations to inspire at least part of the 6 million citizens to join them in rebelling against their evil capitalist overlords. They were good at what they did – every time the police locked them up, another generation took their places; they were careful to explain their arguments in manifestos; they killed, kidnapped and bombed regularly and effectively.
Yet, only a handful of kids were willing to join them. The citizenry they were trying to save just didn’t want saving.
The same goes for America today: No matter how much the left complains against racism and sexism and fascism; no matter how much the right complains about communism, immigration and China – Americans are actually having great lives.
Unemployment is down around 3%, the poverty level is lower than it ever was in history, including for minorities, and it’s hard to think of a right we do not have. We yell and scream a lot, but no one is going to join the revolution, and a handful of Proud Boys are certainly not enough to do anything.
But nothing like this has ever happened before – no?
Though the press likes to imply that the riots were unprecedented and a product of extreme right-wing politics, this kind of thing happens fairly regularly in the US.
In Tennessee in 2023, three Democrat representatives helped anti-gun protesters enter the capitol building and led them in protest chants that blocked legislation in progress (unrelated to gun laws). The occupation was legal and peaceful, but intentionally hindering legislation from taking place was not;
The Black Lives Matter protests and riots, which are associated with 19 deaths and caused $1–2 billion in damages, were widely supported by the left and by Democratic politicians;
In 2011 in Wisconsin, leftist protesters used a legal loophole to legally enter and occupy the capitol building in an attempt to “Kill the bill.” The occupation was peaceful, legal, little damage was done and it continued for two weeks;
Looking at actual terror groups in the US, most of them have been on the left, and they have been generally more violent than right-wing militant groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, especially in the Seventies, which in general were far more violent than today, most of it driven by the left;
In 1971, the leftist terrorist group Weather Underground succeeded in setting off a bomb in the capitol building. They called in a warning and the building was evacuated, so no one was hurt, but the bomb did extensive damage. Since then, security has been tightened.
And by the way – it’s not just America that storms capitols.
Here in Germany, 400 or more anti-Covid-protesters “stormed” the Bundestag in 2020 in an event now known as the “Sturm auf den Reichstag.” They overcame the barriers outside the Bundestag, but were stopped before they entered the building. Most of them were later slapped with charge related to trespassing.
Did Trump organize the riots?
No.
There is no evidence – and believe me, the Democrats have looked – that Trump knew about the plan.
He is guilty of encouraging the protests in advance, but he is not alone in whipping his supporters into a frenzy: The Democrats do it too.
Democrats have made it into a pillar of their campaign strategy to demonize conservatives in general and Trump in particular. It is rightfully argued that Biden’s constant labeling of Trump as a “threat to democracy” was probably a major factor in the two assassination attempts against him.
Is this there any truth to the claim that the election was stolen?
No.
Though Trump has claimed he “won by a landslide” but was a victim of “election fraud,” he has never provided any evidence or arguments to support his claims.
But that’s unprecedented, isn’t it? Claiming an election was stolen?
No.
Historians think it possible that at least six presidential elections have been “stolen”, starting with the election of John Quincy Adams in 1824: When no clear winner emerged, the election had to be decided in the House of Representatives, where a friend of Adams was the Speaker.
More recently:
The election of John F. Kennedy came down to votes in Texas and Illinois, which may have been manipulated;
the election of George W. Bush came down to a controversial vote recount in Florida – when Al Gore sued to get the recount repeated, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court stopped it, handing the election to Bush;
and many Democrats today claim the Trump election of 2016 was, if not “stolen,” at least illegitimate, since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.
Are you saying Trump did nothing wrong?
No. the whole thing was reprehensible and makes me sick to my stomach.
This is what I am saying:
In judging what kind of a threat he poses to democracy, you have to look closely at what he actually did.
His actions were inexcusable (more on that later), but he did not stoop intentionally to illegal or violent means – there was no blackmail, threats, murder or stormtroopers beating on doors in the middle of the night.
If you look closely, you see that everything he tried was based on some kind obscure law or legal loophole or in some argument that you could argue in court, even if not plausibly.
Even the schemes to send fake electors and to get Mike Pence to disqualify the election results were based loosely on some kind of legal precedents or procedure.
Also following the election, he did not try to assassinate his enemies or call for a revolution. Instead, his people put forward 60 court cases alleging election fraud, most of them based on obscure loopholes in state laws. (They were thrown out as meritless, even by judges that Trump had installed himself.)
The question What will Trump do if he loses the election, or what he will do to stay in power four years later? is valid, but we have to answer it with: He will probably go to court.
He is not an armed revolution guy – he is a guy who thinks in terms of getting around the law, as he has done or tried to do all his life.
It sounds like you are making excuses for him, Eric
You’re right, I am guilty of downplaying what happened.
The reason I do that is because it aggravates me so much that the press intentionally implies that it was a coup attempt and twists their reporting to make the impression that Trump is preparing a bloody revolution. As a journalist I dislike dishonest reporting and as a voter I dislike being manipulated.
And by spreading conspiracy theories, the leftist press is whipping up the division and panic in America to an excruciating pitch.
This is what I feel about January 6
There is no excuse for January 6, including Trump’s role in it and especially not for his attempts to reverse the election results.
It was despicable and anti-democratic and everyone involved deserved, in my mind, far worse punishments than they got, including Trump.
Yes, there is a long history of presidents bending or breaking the law, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton and, some say, to Obama. But Trump went too far.
I hate to agree with the Democrats, but they are right – abusing the law to this extent to try to reverse the decision of the people is a perversion of the idea of democracy.
This is my biggest problem with Trump. It is not the only reason I do not want to see him as our next president, but it is the biggest.
The Score
So this point goes to Harris (actually it should be more than one point, but that’s not how this works):