I am not going to go into yet another rant on Trump here. He is a manipulative liar and a contemptible excuse for a human being. At CPAC, he was more fixated on revenge for perceived disloyalty in voting for impeachment or validating Biden's election than issues, never mind it was his attempt to use US military aid to Ukraine to force an investigation of political rival, Joe Biden, and it was his idea to hold a rally in DC just before Congress was meeting to ratify Biden's election. I also loathed Trump's unprecedented refusal to concede the election and to honor our proud history of remarkable peaceful transfers of power. I write this as someone who didn't support the election of either Trump or Biden.
Let's be clear: I supported the impeachment and conviction of Trump both times. I wasn't impressed with GOP apologetics in either trial. These weren't criminal trials; they were political trials based on the Constitution. I didn't need, say, a smoking gun tweet, email or other communication tying him to any plot on the Capitol. As I've written before, Trump had a pattern of tacitly accepting the excesses of his "passionate" followers, e.g., roughing up protesters at his pep rallies, suggesting police were "too soft" in dealing with criminal suspects, all but endorsing "rough rides". He notoriously bragged that he could kill a man in NYC and not lose his political support. He didn't reject the support of the violence-prone Proud Boys; he told them to "stand by".
Now let's just recall eqfor a moment what happened in DC two days before December 16 electoral college vote:
On December 12, two days before the Electoral College’s formal vote confirming Joe Biden’s presidential victory, thousands of protesters rallied in Washington DC in support of President Trump’s attempts to invalidate his defeat. As night fell, violent clashes broke out on the streets between two sides known for their mutual animosity: the Proud Boys, a far-right “Western chauvinist” group, and Antifa, a far-left activist movement.
.No reasonable person can argue that Trump holding a rally on the day Biden's election would be confirmed by Congress might not trigger similar unrest. This is not an issue about the First Amendment, and I have no doubt many, if not most, supporters attended the rally in peaceful support of Trump. But it's indisputable that Trump wanted the protesters to confront the Congress confirming Biden's election, and he knew there was a high risk some of his followers would get violent. Constitutionally, Trump had a duty to protect the Congress, regardless of whether he approved of their constitutional actions. The fact that s violent mob stormed the Capitol constitutes a flagrant dereliction of duty. Trump could have scheduled the rally for a different day; he could have preemptively called up the National Guard; he could have told his minions from the start to cease, desist and go home, and from several news sources, he was reluctant to intervene as events moved forward.
It reminds me of a story I had once heard as a Navy ensign. A commanding officer was present at a high profile inspection when one of his sailors went rogue and started urinating on the deck. The officer himself did not engage in pissing, but he had to take responsibility for what happened on his watch. It effectively ended his career and any hope of getting promoted to Admiral. Similarly, Trump was responsible and accountable for what happened on his watch as POTUS, even if he didn't get his hands dirty, himself breaking windows, etc. To the best of my knowledge, there hadn't been a comparable assault on the central government in DC since the Wat of 1812 over 2 centuries ago.
That Trump resisted saying anything critical of his minions, telling the rioters that he loved them, that they were very special and they all would remember this day for years to come is unconscionable. I don't know if the infamous phone call from House Minority Leader McCarthy to Trump happened, but his dismissive scapegoating of Antifa and his suggestion that the rioters were more patriotic than McCarthy himself were consistent with past behavior; I 'm not familiar with leftist Antifa group clashes on that day with the right wing groups, "supporters of the boogaloo movement, the Traditionalist Worker Party, the Three Percenters, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, QAnon, the Groyper Army, and national-anarchism, as well as neo-Confederates and Holocaust deniers, among others, were present during the riot, with some wearing emblematic gear. Neo-Nazi and Völkisch-inspired neopagan apparel was also worn by some participants during the riots, including a shirt emblazoned with references to the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp and its motto" (Wikipedia).
I'm still unclear about pieces of the story. I'm definitely sympathetic to the idea that the National Guard is ill-suited as a SWAT-like rapid response squad, and by the time they arrived on the scene, the situation had already started to dissipate. There are multiple reports that DoD had approached the Capitol police before Jan. 6, making a proactive offer to augment security on Jan. 6. The Capitol police reportedly and tragically rejected the offer. Now I've heard the former head tried to blame House and Senate liaisons for not approving the support, but I'm unclear about 2 things: was Trump briefed about the Jan. 6 risks, and was he involved in the purported offers of National Guard assistance?
One of the Trump defense talking points, by his former Chief of Staff if not Trump himself, is that he offered 10,000 National Guard troops. Now getting estimates on the rally and the size of the riot group are difficult to come by because of restrictions on aerial footage, but I've seen estimates of 30K at the rally and hundreds or a few thousand at the Capitol.
Yet we know: "During Trump's speech, his supporters chanted "Take the Capitol": "Taking the Capitol right now"; "Invade the Capitol"; "Storm the Capitol"; and "Fight for Trump." Before Trump had finished speaking at 1:12 p.m., an estimated 8,000 supporters had begun moving up the National Mall, with some shouting that they were storming the Capitol." If anything, Trump had promised the crowd that he would join them on their march to the Capitol. And let's keep in mind the hints of a physical confrontation were no secret: reportedly over 100K times "storm the Capitol", was cited on social media over the prior month. Several media and organizations reported warnings, not to mention the FBI and others.
We're supposed to believe that Trump wanted to shield the Congress from the very crowd he was encouraging to confront the Congress? I don't think so. I think they're pulling a bait-and-switch. I think they were trying to mislead people. I know Trump was motivated to augment local police efforts during the George Floyd/BLM protests with federal security forces. Now keep in mind that DC does have related law-and-order/traffic issues for visitors to the federal district, but that area is in the jurisdiction of the Capitol police, not the local DC police. Now the DC mayor, like many urban mayors, didn't want unsolicited federal intervention in local policing.
I'm not sure to what extent any National Guard in the area could have been redeployed to the Capitol. And reportedly there were some recent restrictions on the National Guard being deployed bearing weapons and the like
It's clear that Trump is claiming he offered 10,000 troops specifically for the Capitol over concerns of crowd size (I haven't heard specific numbers in what the Capitol police turned down). So let's get this straight: he expected security issues in advance of the rally, but knowing assistance had been turned down, he didn't cancel the event and in fact encouraged the crowd to go down to the Capitol and that he would join them himself? If anything, that makes the case against Trump even more compelling, because it goes beyond negligence and suggests premeditation. And it does not explain the delay in mobilizing once protesters breached Capitol security. You would think a competent POTUS would have planned for such a contingency.
I read a great number of posts, including a timeline from factcheck.org on Jan. 6. My analysis is limited to my Internet search on the topic, and principals disagree on the facts.
