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On March 30 2024 19:54 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 13:30 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 11:31 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 11:15 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 11:13 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 11:09 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 10:58 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 10:13 Introvert wrote:
The first part is saying that they didn't have a way to respect it or disrespect it either way, and certainly not by the time of the riot. And again I don't recall much fervor for that path among the legislatures themselves. Listen, if we keep adding more and more things that didn't happen then yes, we can have a systemic collapse. But it was not nearly as knife's edge as you are saying, and thank goodness for that! The law as it existed then, and I think as ha been reinforced now, only provides for certain changes in very limited circumstances, and again by Jan 6 even those would have closed. Any state that attempted to send a second slate would have run into issues at every turn, within their own bodies, conflict eith executive officials, Congress, and the courts. At best I suppose Congress could have rejected a slate, but that wouldn't replace them iirc, and certainly not past safe harbor. But that would have had nothing to do with Pence. Okay, let's assume that in 2021 Trump would have run into issues with Republican officials choosing country over party and being unwilling to overthrow democracy in his name. Sure, a lot of them at the time and since have absolutely endorsed his election fraud theories and said that the election was stolen from him, but let's assume a world in which they weren't traitors. What we would expect to see in the following four years is that endorsement of the stolen election theory would become a requirement for Trump's support as a Republican candidate. Anyone unwilling to get on board with the theory would be treated as disloyal and would be targeted by Trump. Over time the Republican officials in the states would be replaced with individuals who could be counted on to support Trump when the time came in 2025. https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/republican-nominees-in-40-states-think-the-2020-election-was-stolen-heres-why-that-matters/Now the reality is that the Republican party in 2021 was already compromised. 139 out of 221 sitting Republican Congressmen voted against accepting the election results on Jan 7 2021. They're already mostly traitors. But if we set that to one side and pretend that they're not, Trump is actively reshaping the party to consist only of traitors. If your assumption is that the officials would have stopped them then you need to take a look at the officials and what they're saying in public. Actually what we would expect to see if they believed Trump's theory, or at least been open to it politically, would be for them to, you know, do it. which they did not. As for the future, i believe the reformed electoral count act deals with any problems that may have remained. But of course we were talking about 2020 not 2024. Are you at very least on board with the idea that Trump had a specific plan to overturn the election by attacking the capitol and pushing it back to the state legislatures? The plan that he explained during the speech inciting the attack on the capitol. That plan. Because getting consensus on that, which is literally something Trump himself explained, feels like it would be progress. I think he wanted to generate political pressure on Congress to do a thing that wouldn't come to fruition even if they wanted it. I don't think he intended violence but he was too much of a coward and vain man to stop it when he should have. Edit: if he should have been impeached for anything it should have been for something akin to dereliction of duty. Not the articles that emerged from the House later So when he said that the plan was “President Pence has to send it back to the states to recertify and we become president” which is, incidentally, the same plan that was uncovered in the emails and memos by the prosecution in Georgia your understanding of that plan is that he wanted to put political pressure on Congress? Why do you think the words he used so clearly describe something other than what they say? well ok in my hurry i left Pence out of the list, but as I laid out before his plan was to have the states get new electors. but that wasn't going to work. I'm not sure what you are unclear on, he wanted Congress/Pence to not certify the results and thought that would send it back to the states, which it wouldn't. What i said in that post is I don't think he was trying to incite a mob to attack Congress, but I also think he could have stopped it (and should have stopped it) but didn't. But the states already had new electors ready and waiting. The paperwork was already filled out and signed with a list of electors for Trump, there are investigations and cases running against them for falsifying federal documents.
You mean in Georgia? My understanding of thr Georgia elector indictments doesn't indicate they were actually alternates, but that they offered to be. One doesn't simply fill out a form to become an elector, they have to be recognized as one by the appropriate authority i.e. nominated or chosen as elector candidates by the state party or officials in some way, and the lists are determined ahead of time. Memory is foggy but I think they were indicted basically for being well meaning if mistaken citizens. Volunteering to be alternate electors in the event Gerogia needed them. But that wasn't going to happen. They weren't an actual slate, if they were why were they being indicted!
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To clarify for anyone else, KwarK moved from the riot to the scheme to send it back to states (though related). I said that wasn't a coup attempt at the riot, at no time have I commented on this plan with any such words, either to agree or to disagree with them. No mob was going to be able to force Pence to send it back to the states and no state submitted a second slate in time, even if such a slate would have been legitimate, which most people reading the law say they would not have been
Edit: the "easier" path might have been to get the House to reject enough slates to put Biden under 270 and then have the House elect him, but the new house was already sworn in and besides being a dem majority would not have done so with either party in charge. Which I think is why he wanted it sent to the states. Both were bad options, really. I belive even this remote possibility was foreclosed with the amended electoral count act, now removing a states vote reduces the number of electors needed to win.
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On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:On March 30 2024 03:41 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 03:24 Gorsameth wrote:On March 30 2024 02:16 BlackJack wrote:On March 29 2024 22:16 Belisarius wrote:
It's absolutely true that these goons were not some elite soviet takeover squad. They were idiots without a plan, no question. But the really important thing is that they didn't need a plan to be a genuine threat.
Democracy is a very fragile, low-entropy state. It depends on a lot of powerful people actively and consistently working against their own short term interests, in service to a fairly nebulous long-term shared goal. It doesn't take much at all to disrupt that.
To me, all the darkest timelines involve:
1. Trump switching from bitter, impotent old man to open insurrectionist once he realises there is an opportunity.
2. The R's in Congress being willing to certify for him and declare some kind of state of emergency
3. The military and the other organs of power failing to immediately resist this, and allowing power to crystallize.
Personally 1 and 2 seem very plausible. Trump would have no scruples at all about taking the crown if he thought he could. And you would absolutely be able to find some rump 30% congress willing to hand him that crown if you got in the chamber and killed and dispersed enough Ds and old-guard Rs. The mob was openly trying to do this of its own accord.
So, really, the survival of the whole edifice depended on the on-site law enforcement blocking or regaining control before Trump decided to take the mask off and stand them down. If that had failed, multiple organs of government would have had to turn against the newly congress-certified commander in chief, which would have basically constituted a counter-coup in itself. Maybe we could have trusted this to happen, but boy it's terrifying to be so close to testing that out.
All up, all it might have taken was a bit of extra entropy. These idiots were almost the crowbar that opened the gap to a world where enough powerful people saw their short- and long-term interests aligning for autocracy. The crowbar doesn't have to be smart, it just has to open the door. Sure we were just shades away from the Shaman guy swearing in Trump as Supreme leader while flanked by Boebert and MTG. Which would have taken heroic levels of “counter-coup” to undo. You honestly believe that if terrorists put a knife to congresspeople’s throats and demand they vote a certain way that whatever they voted for would be legitimate? it would obviously be illegitimate. And? Who is going to enforce that? And we're back to hoping the army 'does the right thing' and that their oath to the constitution out way their possibly loyalty to Trump. An issue the rest of the first and second world doesn't have to consider. But America apparently does. Um, yeah. If the army wanted to support an illegitimate government they wouldn't need permission from the shaman guy and his army of neckbeards. I don't understand this line of reasoning. The rebellion was squashed and the full weight of the justice system is coming down on them. How am I supposed to respond to "oh yeah but what if that didn't happen." What if the capitol police joined the mob too and started blasting all the congress people. What then, BJ?!? Are you just going to hope they do the right thing and not murder people?! Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions. The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
...
And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
...
They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
...
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me.
I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”?
But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post:
The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump.
See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office.
So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling?
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Its such bad faith from the conservatives to pretend all of this wasnt a huge deal.
The fact of the matter is Trump and a large swath of Republicans tried to subvert the will of the people. They are traitors.
Trump and a majority of republicans dont believe in a peaceful transfer of power or democracy/the republic at all. All they care about is power and the dolts arguing otherwise on this forum are complicit to whatever happens in the future. You need to consider yourself lucky you live in solidly blue states and are able to throw stones.
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On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:On March 30 2024 03:41 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 03:24 Gorsameth wrote:On March 30 2024 02:16 BlackJack wrote:
[quote]
Sure we were just shades away from the Shaman guy swearing in Trump as Supreme leader while flanked by Boebert and MTG. Which would have taken heroic levels of “counter-coup” to undo.
You honestly believe that if terrorists put a knife to congresspeople’s throats and demand they vote a certain way that whatever they voted for would be legitimate? it would obviously be illegitimate. And? Who is going to enforce that? And we're back to hoping the army 'does the right thing' and that their oath to the constitution out way their possibly loyalty to Trump. An issue the rest of the first and second world doesn't have to consider. But America apparently does. Um, yeah. If the army wanted to support an illegitimate government they wouldn't need permission from the shaman guy and his army of neckbeards. I don't understand this line of reasoning. The rebellion was squashed and the full weight of the justice system is coming down on them. How am I supposed to respond to "oh yeah but what if that didn't happen." What if the capitol police joined the mob too and started blasting all the congress people. What then, BJ?!? Are you just going to hope they do the right thing and not murder people?! Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions. The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
...
And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
...
They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
...
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: Show nested quote + The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling?
From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of?
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On March 30 2024 23:24 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:On March 30 2024 03:41 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 03:24 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]it would obviously be illegitimate.
And?
Who is going to enforce that?
And we're back to hoping the army 'does the right thing' and that their oath to the constitution out way their possibly loyalty to Trump.
An issue the rest of the first and second world doesn't have to consider.
But America apparently does. Um, yeah. If the army wanted to support an illegitimate government they wouldn't need permission from the shaman guy and his army of neckbeards. I don't understand this line of reasoning. The rebellion was squashed and the full weight of the justice system is coming down on them. How am I supposed to respond to "oh yeah but what if that didn't happen." What if the capitol police joined the mob too and started blasting all the congress people. What then, BJ?!? Are you just going to hope they do the right thing and not murder people?! Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions. The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
...
And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
...
They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
...
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of?
Ctrl+F-ing the word “majority” in my post just to make sure I’m not crazy. Where did I say a “majority” of any population supports them? I said the party is lionizing them, and Trump is explicitly endorsing them and promising to pardon them.
That’s a no on getting a ruling, then?
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Northern Ireland24981 Posts
On March 30 2024 23:16 Sadist wrote:
Its such bad faith from the conservatives to pretend all of this wasnt a huge deal.
The fact of the matter is Trump and a large swath of Republicans tried to subvert the will of the people. They are traitors.
Trump and a majority of republicans dont believe in a peaceful transfer of power or democracy/the republic at all. All they care about is power and the dolts arguing otherwise on this forum are complicit to whatever happens in the future. You need to consider yourself lucky you live in solidly blue states and are able to throw stones.
Especially as they so frequently invoke tradition, precedent, propriety and the Constitution and whatnot as sacrosanct in other scenarios.
Either such things are important, or they’re not. Within that framework (or indeed others) I don’t see how Trump’s behaviour isn’t completely indefensible.
Whether the scheme had any realistic chance of succeeding to me is somewhat immaterial, there’s pretty clear intent there.
It is better to ask than to presume of course, so I shall! What consequences should have happened as a result of these events from the conservative perspective?
For me the biggest problem in the aftermath was that the GOP didn’t censure their own in any meaningful way. So you’re kind of left with a scenario where either the Dems do it, and perhaps exceed their remit in a partisan fashion, or nothing happens at all. Neither of which I feel are particularly optimal scenarios.
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On March 30 2024 23:30 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:24 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:On March 30 2024 03:41 BlackJack wrote:
[quote]
Um, yeah. If the army wanted to support an illegitimate government they wouldn't need permission from the shaman guy and his army of neckbeards. I don't understand this line of reasoning. The rebellion was squashed and the full weight of the justice system is coming down on them. How am I supposed to respond to "oh yeah but what if that didn't happen."
What if the capitol police joined the mob too and started blasting all the congress people. What then, BJ?!? Are you just going to hope they do the right thing and not murder people?! Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions. The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
...
And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
...
They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
...
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of? Ctrl+F-ing the word “majority” in my post just to make sure I’m not crazy. Where did I say a “majority” of any population supports them? I said the party is lionizing them, and Trump is explicitly endorsing them and promising to pardon them. That’s a no on getting a ruling, then?
Apologies if you haven't used that exact word in the multiple posts you've made in this topic in the past few days. But to me blanket statements like "the party is lionizing them" requires some sort of evidence? If the position that they are heroes is so mainstream as to be dangerous, shouldn't at least most Republicans agree with that statement?
You are apparently unfamiliar with how this issue is actually discussed within the GOP. The position they are heroes is very small. The position they are being unfairly treated is more widely held, given stories about how some people were barely in the building and contrasting that with how the Biden DOJ had treated left wing violence. And finally, the single largest block of Republicans, a majority according to that poll, considers them criminals. Trump dangling pardons has more yo do with the second view than the first. He did, after all, fail to preemptively pardon them in 2021.
***
Edit:it is annoying, but not surprising, that apparently if I don't the absolute maximally hardcore stance I'm implicty and explicitly accused of saying nothing happened. I've said what happened on Jan 6 is bad, I've been saying it since it happened! But because I say, rightly, that democracy wa not actually hanging by a thread I'm basically an apologist.
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Northern Ireland24981 Posts
On March 30 2024 23:42 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:30 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 23:24 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:
[quote]
Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions.
The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
...
And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
...
They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
...
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of? Ctrl+F-ing the word “majority” in my post just to make sure I’m not crazy. Where did I say a “majority” of any population supports them? I said the party is lionizing them, and Trump is explicitly endorsing them and promising to pardon them. That’s a no on getting a ruling, then? Apologies if you haven't used that exact word in the multiple posts you've made in this topic in the past few days. But to me blanket statements like "the party is lionizing them" requires some sort of evidence? If the position that they are heroes is so mainstream as to be dangerous, shouldn't at least most Republicans agree with that statement? You are apparently unfamiliar with how this issue is actually discussed within the GOP. The position they are heroes is very small. The position they are being unfairly treated is more widely held, given stories about how some people were barely in the building and contrasting that with how the Biden DOJ had treated left wing violence. And finally, the single largest block of Republicans, a majority according to that poll, considers them criminals. Trump dangling pardons has more yo do with the second view than the first. He did, after all, fail to preemptively pardon them in 2021.
That is interesting and I must confesss not something I would have necessarily assumed.
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On March 30 2024 23:43 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:42 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:30 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 23:24 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:
[quote]
I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded.
The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn.
In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
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And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
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They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
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Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of? Ctrl+F-ing the word “majority” in my post just to make sure I’m not crazy. Where did I say a “majority” of any population supports them? I said the party is lionizing them, and Trump is explicitly endorsing them and promising to pardon them. That’s a no on getting a ruling, then? Apologies if you haven't used that exact word in the multiple posts you've made in this topic in the past few days. But to me blanket statements like "the party is lionizing them" requires some sort of evidence? If the position that they are heroes is so mainstream as to be dangerous, shouldn't at least most Republicans agree with that statement? You are apparently unfamiliar with how this issue is actually discussed within the GOP. The position they are heroes is very small. The position they are being unfairly treated is more widely held, given stories about how some people were barely in the building and contrasting that with how the Biden DOJ had treated left wing violence. And finally, the single largest block of Republicans, a majority according to that poll, considers them criminals. Trump dangling pardons has more yo do with the second view than the first. He did, after all, fail to preemptively pardon them in 2021. That is interesting and I must confesss not something I would have necessarily assumed.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter at all if polled Republicans consider them to be criminals, as those polled Republicans will still end up voting for the ringleader in the next presidential election.
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Northern Ireland24981 Posts
On March 30 2024 23:48 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:43 WombaT wrote:On March 30 2024 23:42 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:30 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 23:24 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:[quote] In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. [quote] So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. [quote] Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of? Ctrl+F-ing the word “majority” in my post just to make sure I’m not crazy. Where did I say a “majority” of any population supports them? I said the party is lionizing them, and Trump is explicitly endorsing them and promising to pardon them. That’s a no on getting a ruling, then? Apologies if you haven't used that exact word in the multiple posts you've made in this topic in the past few days. But to me blanket statements like "the party is lionizing them" requires some sort of evidence? If the position that they are heroes is so mainstream as to be dangerous, shouldn't at least most Republicans agree with that statement? You are apparently unfamiliar with how this issue is actually discussed within the GOP. The position they are heroes is very small. The position they are being unfairly treated is more widely held, given stories about how some people were barely in the building and contrasting that with how the Biden DOJ had treated left wing violence. And finally, the single largest block of Republicans, a majority according to that poll, considers them criminals. Trump dangling pardons has more yo do with the second view than the first. He did, after all, fail to preemptively pardon them in 2021. That is interesting and I must confesss not something I would have necessarily assumed. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter at all if polled Republicans consider them to be criminals, as those polled Republicans will still end up voting for the ringleader in the next presidential election.
There is also this, although equally if one is a conservative they’re as equally pushed into the ‘lesser of two evils’ box as the socialist left are, within their own belief system.
If there’s the expectation that folks from that tradition suck it up and tick the blue box, I’d fully expect conservatives even if they have big misgivings about Trump to exercise the same process.
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Lets be fucking honest here. Its misleading as hell to try to argue that Trump wants to pardon the Jan 6th traitors because they were oversentenced. GTFO with that nonsense. If you feel that way get into specifics? Who has been overcharged? What should their sentence be? Do they represent a majority or the minority of those overcharged. Lets go through every case and evaluate and decide.
That is not what Trump wants to do. His messaging is that these people were patriots trying to stop Crooked Joe Biden from stealing an election that he won. Full stop. They should be pardoned because they are loyal to him. Trump had stayed on message from the fucking beginning. Words matter. He will never admit he lost. He then tried to actually steal the election and overturn the will of the people and commit a coup.
Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit.
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On March 31 2024 00:08 Sadist wrote:
Lets be fucking honest here. Its misleading as hell to try to argue that Trump wants to pardon the Jan 6th traitors because they were oversentenced. GTFO with that nonsense. If you feel that way get into specifics? Who has been overcharged? What should their sentence be? Do they represent a majority or the minority of those overcharged. Lets go through every case and evaluate and decide.
That is not what Trump wants to do. His messaging is that these people were patriots trying to stop Crooked Joe Biden from stealing an election that he won. Full stop. They should be pardoned because they are loyal to him. Trump had stayed on message from the fucking beginning. Words matter. He will never admit he lost. He then tried to actually steal the election and overturn the will of the people and commit a coup.
Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit.
Theres been a fairly substantial discussion in certain righty media about particular cases, and Tump I think recently said, in a speech where he mentioned pardons, not pardoning people who "got out of control" or something like that. You can fairly say that isn't what he really thinks, but at least so far his rhetoric is right in line with the "many individuals were overcharged" viewpoint. Imo it's not a stalking horse for something else. Just because you haven't looked for the discussion doesn't mean it isn't happening lol
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Northern Ireland24981 Posts
On March 31 2024 00:04 JimmiC wrote:
It is very sad how often the American (and ours) legal system has the grunts serving the jail time and the leaders living in mansions eating caviar. And how many many people are OK with that.
Yeah it’s gross. We have this quite frequently in Northern Ireland where political leaders from my side of the aisle (British identifying) whip the more hardcore adherents into a storm and skate free as their useful idiots end up with jail sentences
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Northern Ireland24981 Posts
On March 31 2024 00:17 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 00:08 Sadist wrote:
Lets be fucking honest here. Its misleading as hell to try to argue that Trump wants to pardon the Jan 6th traitors because they were oversentenced. GTFO with that nonsense. If you feel that way get into specifics? Who has been overcharged? What should their sentence be? Do they represent a majority or the minority of those overcharged. Lets go through every case and evaluate and decide.
That is not what Trump wants to do. His messaging is that these people were patriots trying to stop Crooked Joe Biden from stealing an election that he won. Full stop. They should be pardoned because they are loyal to him. Trump had stayed on message from the fucking beginning. Words matter. He will never admit he lost. He then tried to actually steal the election and overturn the will of the people and commit a coup.
Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit.
Theres been a fairly substantial discussion in certain righty media about particular cases, and Tump I think recently said, in a speech where he mentioned pardons, not pardoning people who "got out of control" or something like that. You can fairly say that isn't what he really thinks, but at least so far his rhetoric is right in line with the "many individuals were overcharged" viewpoint. Imo it's not a stalking horse for something else. Just because you haven't looked doesn't mean it isn't happening lol
What are those distinctions being made in those circles?
I mean for me personally just being in the vicinity of a volatile and emergent phenomenon isn’t in and of itself damning. For folks who actually stormed the Capitol I’m not really sure what benefit of the doubt can be extended there though
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On March 31 2024 00:17 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 00:08 Sadist wrote:
Lets be fucking honest here. Its misleading as hell to try to argue that Trump wants to pardon the Jan 6th traitors because they were oversentenced. GTFO with that nonsense. If you feel that way get into specifics? Who has been overcharged? What should their sentence be? Do they represent a majority or the minority of those overcharged. Lets go through every case and evaluate and decide.
That is not what Trump wants to do. His messaging is that these people were patriots trying to stop Crooked Joe Biden from stealing an election that he won. Full stop. They should be pardoned because they are loyal to him. Trump had stayed on message from the fucking beginning. Words matter. He will never admit he lost. He then tried to actually steal the election and overturn the will of the people and commit a coup.
Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit.
Theres been a fairly substantial discussion in certain righty media about particular cases, and Tump I think recently said, in a speech where he mentioned pardons, not pardoning people who "got out of control" or something like that. You can fairly say that isn't what he really thinks, but at least so far his rhetoric is right in line with the "many individuals were overcharged" viewpoint. Imo it's not a stalking horse for something else. Just because you haven't looked doesn't mean it isn't happening lol
How many were overcharged? Who was overcharged? What did they do?
This smells like "People are saying X"
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On March 30 2024 23:42 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:30 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 23:24 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:
[quote]
Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions.
The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
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And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
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They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
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Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of? Ctrl+F-ing the word “majority” in my post just to make sure I’m not crazy. Where did I say a “majority” of any population supports them? I said the party is lionizing them, and Trump is explicitly endorsing them and promising to pardon them. That’s a no on getting a ruling, then? Apologies if you haven't used that exact word in the multiple posts you've made in this topic in the past few days. But to me blanket statements like "the party is lionizing them" requires some sort of evidence? If the position that they are heroes is so mainstream as to be dangerous, shouldn't at least most Republicans agree with that statement? You are apparently unfamiliar with how this issue is actually discussed within the GOP. The position they are heroes is very small. The position they are being unfairly treated is more widely held, given stories about how some people were barely in the building and contrasting that with how the Biden DOJ had treated left wing violence. And finally, the single largest block of Republicans, a majority according to that poll, considers them criminals. Trump dangling pardons has more yo do with the second view than the first. He did, after all, fail to preemptively pardon them in 2021. *** Edit:it is annoying, but not surprising, that apparently if I don't the absolute maximally hardcore stance I'm implicty and explicitly accused of saying nothing happened. I've said what happened on Jan 6 is bad, I've been saying it since it happened! But because I say, rightly, that democracy wa not actually hanging by a thread I'm basically an apologist.
I mean I hate to just link a Daily Show clip but it might be the quickest summary. Some highlights:
- Louis Gohmert meeting a J6er on release from prison to give her an honorary flag
- Trump rally starting with a voice saying “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages” followed by a recording of J6ers singing the anthem while Trump salutes.
- Trump calling on Biden to “release the hostages,” promising to release those “unbelievable patriots, and they were unbelievable patriots” when he gets into office
Now I don’t think I’ve accused you of being pro-J6 or saying “nothing happened,” but again, you’re someone who looks at Biden trying to forgive some student debt or Trump getting fined for the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of financial fraud he committed, and sees a slippery slope to authoritarianism. But meanwhile a sitting president incited an armed mob to threaten Congress into supporting him staying in office after losing. Now he openly celebrates the members of that mob as “incredible patriots” and wants to use presidential authority to shield them from consequences. I’ve asked three times now, would you consider that a concerning slippery slope or no?
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On March 30 2024 23:42 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:30 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 23:24 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:
[quote]
Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions.
The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
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And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
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They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
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Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of? Ctrl+F-ing the word “majority” in my post just to make sure I’m not crazy. Where did I say a “majority” of any population supports them? I said the party is lionizing them, and Trump is explicitly endorsing them and promising to pardon them. That’s a no on getting a ruling, then? Apologies if you haven't used that exact word in the multiple posts you've made in this topic in the past few days. But to me blanket statements like "the party is lionizing them" requires some sort of evidence? If the position that they are heroes is so mainstream as to be dangerous, shouldn't at least most Republicans agree with that statement? You are apparently unfamiliar with how this issue is actually discussed within the GOP. The position they are heroes is very small. The position they are being unfairly treated is more widely held, given stories about how some people were barely in the building and contrasting that with how the Biden DOJ had treated left wing violence. And finally, the single largest block of Republicans, a majority according to that poll, considers them criminals. Trump dangling pardons has more yo do with the second view than the first. He did, after all, fail to preemptively pardon them in 2021. *** Edit:it is annoying, but not surprising, that apparently if I don't the absolute maximally hardcore stance I'm implicty and explicitly accused of saying nothing happened. I've said what happened on Jan 6 is bad, I've been saying it since it happened! But because I say, rightly, that democracy wa not actually hanging by a thread I'm basically an apologist. Because the party leader is saying it. And therefor it is the position of the party.
You can disagree with it, you can not vote for Trump because of such and other statements.
That doesn't stop it from being the position of the Republican party.
On March 30 2024 23:59 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:48 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 30 2024 23:43 WombaT wrote:On March 30 2024 23:42 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:30 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 23:24 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:
[quote]
You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power.
Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? From what I can tell, that is a very minority position even though you keep repeating it. There are a growing number of people who think the DOJ has been too harsh, as certain GOP outlets are focus on some defendants who seem like they could be overcharged, but that is miles away from calling them "heroes". Found a random poll reported on by wapo that says 55% of gop voters think the j6 defendants have been charged fairly or not harshly enough. And given the wording, the percentage for "heroes" is probably miniscule. So where is this majority you speak of? Ctrl+F-ing the word “majority” in my post just to make sure I’m not crazy. Where did I say a “majority” of any population supports them? I said the party is lionizing them, and Trump is explicitly endorsing them and promising to pardon them. That’s a no on getting a ruling, then? Apologies if you haven't used that exact word in the multiple posts you've made in this topic in the past few days. But to me blanket statements like "the party is lionizing them" requires some sort of evidence? If the position that they are heroes is so mainstream as to be dangerous, shouldn't at least most Republicans agree with that statement? You are apparently unfamiliar with how this issue is actually discussed within the GOP. The position they are heroes is very small. The position they are being unfairly treated is more widely held, given stories about how some people were barely in the building and contrasting that with how the Biden DOJ had treated left wing violence. And finally, the single largest block of Republicans, a majority according to that poll, considers them criminals. Trump dangling pardons has more yo do with the second view than the first. He did, after all, fail to preemptively pardon them in 2021. That is interesting and I must confesss not something I would have necessarily assumed. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter at all if polled Republicans consider them to be criminals, as those polled Republicans will still end up voting for the ringleader in the next presidential election. There is also this, although equally if one is a conservative they’re as equally pushed into the ‘lesser of two evils’ box as the socialist left are, within their own belief system. If there’s the expectation that folks from that tradition suck it up and tick the blue box, I’d fully expect conservatives even if they have big misgivings about Trump to exercise the same process. If the choice was between Bush Jr, or hell even 2016 Trump and Biden, who had previously instigated a riot and attempted to subvert a legal and fair election to name himself President then hell no, go vote Republican, its less bad then re-electing a literal traitor to the constitution.
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On March 31 2024 00:22 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 00:17 Introvert wrote:On March 31 2024 00:08 Sadist wrote:
Lets be fucking honest here. Its misleading as hell to try to argue that Trump wants to pardon the Jan 6th traitors because they were oversentenced. GTFO with that nonsense. If you feel that way get into specifics? Who has been overcharged? What should their sentence be? Do they represent a majority or the minority of those overcharged. Lets go through every case and evaluate and decide.
That is not what Trump wants to do. His messaging is that these people were patriots trying to stop Crooked Joe Biden from stealing an election that he won. Full stop. They should be pardoned because they are loyal to him. Trump had stayed on message from the fucking beginning. Words matter. He will never admit he lost. He then tried to actually steal the election and overturn the will of the people and commit a coup.
Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit.
Theres been a fairly substantial discussion in certain righty media about particular cases, and Tump I think recently said, in a speech where he mentioned pardons, not pardoning people who "got out of control" or something like that. You can fairly say that isn't what he really thinks, but at least so far his rhetoric is right in line with the "many individuals were overcharged" viewpoint. Imo it's not a stalking horse for something else. Just because you haven't looked doesn't mean it isn't happening lol What are those distinctions being made in those circles? I mean for me personally just being in the vicinity of a volatile and emergent phenomenon isn’t in and of itself damning. For folks who actually stormed the Capitol I’m not really sure what benefit of the doubt can be extended there though
There is a view, which I don't necessarily share, that some people kind of just wandered in and were even treated well by police in the building, who eventually got slapped with heavy penalties. Now this topic is not one I've looked into much so I couldn't give names (re:Sadist) but the distinction is generally if, from the recordings, the conduct matches what certain people are being charged with. And iirc there have been a few cases where the government had failed to prove their most serious charges. And I think recently the DC circuit said someone's sentence was improperly lengthened. Finally, I believe the Supreme court had agreed to hear a similar case about the use of certain statutes wrt certain j6 defendants. So these aren't fever dreams.
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On March 30 2024 22:50 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 19:54 Gorsameth wrote:On March 30 2024 13:30 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 11:31 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 11:15 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 11:13 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 11:09 Introvert wrote:On March 30 2024 10:58 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 10:13 Introvert wrote:
The first part is saying that they didn't have a way to respect it or disrespect it either way, and certainly not by the time of the riot. And again I don't recall much fervor for that path among the legislatures themselves. Listen, if we keep adding more and more things that didn't happen then yes, we can have a systemic collapse. But it was not nearly as knife's edge as you are saying, and thank goodness for that! The law as it existed then, and I think as ha been reinforced now, only provides for certain changes in very limited circumstances, and again by Jan 6 even those would have closed. Any state that attempted to send a second slate would have run into issues at every turn, within their own bodies, conflict eith executive officials, Congress, and the courts. At best I suppose Congress could have rejected a slate, but that wouldn't replace them iirc, and certainly not past safe harbor. But that would have had nothing to do with Pence. Okay, let's assume that in 2021 Trump would have run into issues with Republican officials choosing country over party and being unwilling to overthrow democracy in his name. Sure, a lot of them at the time and since have absolutely endorsed his election fraud theories and said that the election was stolen from him, but let's assume a world in which they weren't traitors. What we would expect to see in the following four years is that endorsement of the stolen election theory would become a requirement for Trump's support as a Republican candidate. Anyone unwilling to get on board with the theory would be treated as disloyal and would be targeted by Trump. Over time the Republican officials in the states would be replaced with individuals who could be counted on to support Trump when the time came in 2025. https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/republican-nominees-in-40-states-think-the-2020-election-was-stolen-heres-why-that-matters/Now the reality is that the Republican party in 2021 was already compromised. 139 out of 221 sitting Republican Congressmen voted against accepting the election results on Jan 7 2021. They're already mostly traitors. But if we set that to one side and pretend that they're not, Trump is actively reshaping the party to consist only of traitors. If your assumption is that the officials would have stopped them then you need to take a look at the officials and what they're saying in public. Actually what we would expect to see if they believed Trump's theory, or at least been open to it politically, would be for them to, you know, do it. which they did not. As for the future, i believe the reformed electoral count act deals with any problems that may have remained. But of course we were talking about 2020 not 2024. Are you at very least on board with the idea that Trump had a specific plan to overturn the election by attacking the capitol and pushing it back to the state legislatures? The plan that he explained during the speech inciting the attack on the capitol. That plan. Because getting consensus on that, which is literally something Trump himself explained, feels like it would be progress. I think he wanted to generate political pressure on Congress to do a thing that wouldn't come to fruition even if they wanted it. I don't think he intended violence but he was too much of a coward and vain man to stop it when he should have. Edit: if he should have been impeached for anything it should have been for something akin to dereliction of duty. Not the articles that emerged from the House later So when he said that the plan was “President Pence has to send it back to the states to recertify and we become president” which is, incidentally, the same plan that was uncovered in the emails and memos by the prosecution in Georgia your understanding of that plan is that he wanted to put political pressure on Congress? Why do you think the words he used so clearly describe something other than what they say? well ok in my hurry i left Pence out of the list, but as I laid out before his plan was to have the states get new electors. but that wasn't going to work. I'm not sure what you are unclear on, he wanted Congress/Pence to not certify the results and thought that would send it back to the states, which it wouldn't. What i said in that post is I don't think he was trying to incite a mob to attack Congress, but I also think he could have stopped it (and should have stopped it) but didn't. But the states already had new electors ready and waiting. The paperwork was already filled out and signed with a list of electors for Trump, there are investigations and cases running against them for falsifying federal documents. You mean in Georgia? My understanding of thr Georgia elector indictments doesn't indicate they were actually alternates, but that they offered to be. One doesn't simply fill out a form to become an elector, they have to be recognized as one by the appropriate authority i.e. nominated or chosen as elector candidates by the state party or officials in some way, and the lists are determined ahead of time. Memory is foggy but I think they were indicted basically for being well meaning if mistaken citizens. Volunteering to be alternate electors in the event Gerogia needed them. But that wasn't going to happen. They weren't an actual slate, if they were why were they being indicted! *** To clarify for anyone else, KwarK moved from the riot to the scheme to send it back to states (though related). I said that wasn't a coup attempt at the riot, at no time have I commented on this plan with any such words, either to agree or to disagree with them. No mob was going to be able to force Pence to send it back to the states and no state submitted a second slate in time, even if such a slate would have been legitimate, which most people reading the law say they would not have been Edit: the "easier" path might have been to get the House to reject enough slates to put Biden under 270 and then have the House elect him, but the new house was already sworn in and besides being a dem majority would not have done so with either party in charge. Which I think is why he wanted it sent to the states. Both were bad options, really. I belive even this remote possibility was foreclosed with the amended electoral count act, now removing a states vote reduces the number of electors needed to win. I mean Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Only 2 of them (Pennsylvania and New Mexico) mentioned they were just in case Trump won legal challenges. The others 5 did not.
On the same day that the true electors voted, at the direction of Trump campaign officials, "alternate slates" of Republican electors convened in seven states, most of which Biden had won by a relatively small margin, (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) to sign false certificates of ascertainment.[38] This was ostensibly in case Texas v. Pennsylvania was ruled in favor of Trump. However, that case was thrown out on December 11, 2020, three days before the electoral vote was to occur, a fact that was withheld from most of the fake electors by Giuliani and Chesebro.[39] In each case the false electors signed a facsimile of an Electoral College certificate of ascertainment, proclaiming Trump and Pence the victors, and sent it to the National Archives and to Congress.[40]
The alternate elector certificates for Pennsylvania and New Mexico contained language indicating they would take effect only if the Trump campaign's challenges to the election results were sustained by the courts; but "alternate" certificates from the other five states contained no indication that they were not genuine. These self-proclaimed electors have no legal standing, and the National Archives did not accept their documents, publishing the official (Biden) results from those states as the result of the election.[41][42][43][44] en.wikipedia.org
Were they duped by the Trump campaign? Probably, I doubt they had the legal knowledge to know what they were doing. Was it another step in trying to falsely get Trump elected and overturn a legitimate election?
Absofuckinglutely.
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EPT
