Tell me, what would you think is the appropriate response to the theft of an election?
Hire the best lawyers you can, file as many well-grounded legal actions as you can, and complain publicly. If you fail to overturn the election in the state of federal courts, then accept the result but commit to focusing like a laser on fixing as many of the issues as you can so it doesn't happen again.
As for 1/6, Trump gave a speech. He never said to go into the building.
That's missing a whole lot of context.
Trump had spend nearly two months telling everyone the election had been stolen, a lot of his supporters were very pissed, and he knew it. He also told them that the last real chance to stop it was going to be on January 6 when Congress and the VP were going to open and tally the electoral collect ballots, and declare the winner of the election. And he said that only hope left was for Pence to refuse to count the ballots, and to return them to the states. So what does Trump do?
He decides to have a "
Stop the Steal" rally in Washington D.C. itself, on that very day, a bit over an hour before the ballots are supposed to be counted. He anticipates tens of thousands (at least) of his most fervent supporters will be present. And then, they'll march to the Capitol itself. Well hell, if Trump has lost his legal challenges, and Pence already has issued a public statement the day before stating that he does not believe he has the right to stop the counting of the electoral college certificates...exactly how was anyone going to "Stop the Steal"? Hmmm....
So he gives this fiery, hour-plus speech telling everyone assembled how the election has been stolen in a million different way, that their only hope is for Pence (who is less than a mile away in the Capitol) to stop the count. And one of the last things he tells the his supporters is "
And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." Gee, such a shock that there was a riot...
Oh, and when later, Trump is sitting in the White House watching the riot, more than an hour after barricades have been breached, lots of injuries have been reported, etc., and after Congress has to evacuate the Chamber because of the riot, he sends out a tweet. Is it calling for peace and non-violence? No. Instead he says:
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
So honest question here. What do you think Trump was trying to accomplish on January 6 by having that rally so close to the Capitol, shortly before the official counting was scheduled to begin? What was the
point?
The Democrats "selected not elected" mantra after the 2000 election sucked. The claims after the 2016 election that Trump was "illegitimate" sucked as well. But neither Gore nor Hillary scheduled a mass rally of hard-core lefties for the day of the counting of the electoral college certificates, and then a march to the Capitol itself while the counting was going on.
Now, I personally think that if Trump had won in 2020, what the left would have done on January 6, 2021 might have been a lot worse than what actually happened. But that would have been massively wrong as well, and we'd have rightly called them out for it. Trump deliberately created a tinderbox, which I think was still protected by the First Amendment because he didn't throw the final match. But it was still irresponsible as hell.
