This is a great piece. Thank you for your courage in naming what seems obviously to have been the case. This was a COUP ATTEMPT. I've been surprised at how there's been relatively little discussion about this term. Your argument is very sound and convincing, although I didn't need to be convinced. Yet I appreciate your nuanced argument. Hopefully it will convince others who might not be pre-disposed to think this way.
There's a reason so many people thought the J6 Committee testimony indicating that DJT wanted the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol Building was so significant. Had he gone there and actively urged on his supporters - or even passively observed them from a safe distance - that image would have ended all debate about his intentions.
Clearly a coup attempt. It was a forcible attempt to throw an election that didn't belong in the House, into the House, where the presumption was that the actual Constitutionally legal result would be reversed.
Adding one other comment here. GOP leaders twist themselves into knots to avoid called January 6th an attempted coup because scores of their members were active participants, and if our political system wasn't so tribal, those members who supported the coup attempt would be expelled from Congress and prosecuted.
the entire effort to overturn the election was an attempted coup.
So we might argue that this "coup" is ongoing and still a work in progress? A coup may fail but the conditions that made the attempted "coup" possible are still there. A coup can be seen as a sudden and dramatic attack on the legitimacy of the government in power. But the coup can also be a slow moving incremental erosion of the authority and legitimacy of the government.
I think Trump's lack of a plan was his general preference for chaos. Chaos can potentially create enormous opportunities. The appearance of incompetence and lack of a plan was because Trump didn't care how the end goal was achieved - he just wanted them to go down to the capitol and do whatever they needed to do to achieve his desired result. He understood that sewing chaos could be more effective than detailed planning while at the same time reducing his own risk to the situation should it fail.
Yes, it was an insurrection or attempted coup to stop and overturn the election outcome, but it was not incompetence so much as he preferred creating chaos and seizing opportunities that may have presented themselves over a detailed plan that would likely have failed. I think this was Trump's risk/reward calculation in his own head.
This is a great piece. Thank you for your courage in naming what seems obviously to have been the case. This was a COUP ATTEMPT. I've been surprised at how there's been relatively little discussion about this term. Your argument is very sound and convincing, although I didn't need to be convinced. Yet I appreciate your nuanced argument. Hopefully it will convince others who might not be pre-disposed to think this way.
There's a reason so many people thought the J6 Committee testimony indicating that DJT wanted the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol Building was so significant. Had he gone there and actively urged on his supporters - or even passively observed them from a safe distance - that image would have ended all debate about his intentions.
Clearly a coup attempt. It was a forcible attempt to throw an election that didn't belong in the House, into the House, where the presumption was that the actual Constitutionally legal result would be reversed.
A coup attempt. Period. Full stop.
Adding one other comment here. GOP leaders twist themselves into knots to avoid called January 6th an attempted coup because scores of their members were active participants, and if our political system wasn't so tribal, those members who supported the coup attempt would be expelled from Congress and prosecuted.
the entire effort to overturn the election was an attempted coup.
So we might argue that this "coup" is ongoing and still a work in progress? A coup may fail but the conditions that made the attempted "coup" possible are still there. A coup can be seen as a sudden and dramatic attack on the legitimacy of the government in power. But the coup can also be a slow moving incremental erosion of the authority and legitimacy of the government.
The only attempted coup was what the Dems did for all of Trump's term. They're still attempting to control the narrative. Dems are evil. All of them.
According to this since I was in DC and thought about a coup I must have attempted one.
I think Trump's lack of a plan was his general preference for chaos. Chaos can potentially create enormous opportunities. The appearance of incompetence and lack of a plan was because Trump didn't care how the end goal was achieved - he just wanted them to go down to the capitol and do whatever they needed to do to achieve his desired result. He understood that sewing chaos could be more effective than detailed planning while at the same time reducing his own risk to the situation should it fail.
Yes, it was an insurrection or attempted coup to stop and overturn the election outcome, but it was not incompetence so much as he preferred creating chaos and seizing opportunities that may have presented themselves over a detailed plan that would likely have failed. I think this was Trump's risk/reward calculation in his own head.
Based on your multiple definitions of what constitutes a coup, anti-trumpers like you ran a coup against the Trump administration for 4 years.
This may be the only time I agree with a Cato Institute writer.