Please don’t call it a coup attempt
Here’s the FT:
Donald Trump wanted to march on the Capitol with his mob of supporters on January 6 last year, even after he was told that they had weapons, according to damning new testimony revealed at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.
A former White House aide testified that the former president was irate after being told that he could not go to the Capitol. Trump said: “I’m the fucking president. Take me up to the Capitol now,” Cassidy Hutchinson testified.
Trump, who was sitting in his vehicle, then tried to grab the steering wheel but the Secret Service agent next to him took his arm and stopped him, Hutchinson said. “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel”, she said the agent told the president.
Hutchinson testified that Trump said of his armed supporters: “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”
Mags is a reference to magnetometer, a metal detector which was preventing armed supporters from entering his rally.
It wasn’t a coup attempt. It was an effort by a madman to lead a well-armed mob of right-wing crazed extremists to the Capitol with the goal of forcing Congress to overturn a democratic election and installing Trump as dictator.
Why do people insist on calling it a coup attempt?
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28. June 2022 at 17:21
and your proffered proof is?
28. June 2022 at 21:10
Sounds like Liz Cheney running another hoax.
https://twitter.com/TimRunsHisMouth/status/1535700229495869440
A source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.
https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/1541910389289635841
28. June 2022 at 21:47
And yet no one seriously considers the 1932 Bonus Army March anything less than a protest. The fact they are armed is irrelevant, carrying a gun publicly is no different than wearing shoes per our great Constitution. They were peacefully protesting and like most government protests, only got violent once the USG illegally attempted to prevent them from executing their constitutional right to petition their government. Besides tar and feathering of corrupt politicians has a longstanding American tradition.
Trump should have had that secret service driver prosecuted for kidnapping after relieving him on the spot.
28. June 2022 at 21:57
LOL at people still defending Trump. The only truthful thing Trump ever said is that his supporters would stick with him if he shot someone in the middle of Times Square.
28. June 2022 at 22:11
That first part wasn’t a defense of Trump, it was a defense of people executing their constitutional rights.
The second part was more just being against kidnapping as well as civil servants not doing their job. The driver works for Trump, if he can’t drive he can quit on the spot. Refusing to quit and then taking your passenger somewhere other than where they stated they wanted to go while physically detaining them is kidnapping in my books.
29. June 2022 at 06:27
There’s ample evidence this event did not actually happen as Hutchinson described it. That is, her reported source for her account (which she did not personally witness) denies telling her what she says he said. Eyewitness to the event also deny it happened as Hutchinson says. So why does Sumner accept Hutchinson’s testimony as unimpeachably true? Because it makes him feel good about himself, perhaps?
29. June 2022 at 07:36
Peter, “it was a defense of people executing their constitutional rights.”
The Constitutional right of a violent mob to attack Congress with the goal of overturning an election? Do you people even know what you are saying?
Stan, Other than the steering wheel grab (which is a trivial fact), her account was confirmed by others.
29. June 2022 at 09:15
I never knew there were so many crazed “right wing lunatics”. All of those patriotic factory workers, former veterans, blue collar folks waving their flags around while unarmed at the capitol — upset at their poor standard of living and their leaders — must be secretly trying to plot the overthrow of governance. Who would have known. What to do with these 75M people who disagree with you? Take away there rights? Put them in a reeducation camp?
So here we go again. Down the Sumner rabbit hole, into the topsy turvy wonderland where there is a secret plot to overthrow government, where Trump is the leader, determined to be the next adolf hitler.
Your logic is truly putrid.
Have you considered that the lunatic is not these hard working folks, but you? You continue to use nonsensical, poorly defined words like “hard right”. On Januray 6th, some of those interviewed by journalists were a barber from boston, a nurse from texas, and a veteran from California. I would say that is not the typical background of a “hard right nazi”. You called the moderate jordan peterson “hard right”. You even dared to call steven pinker “hard right”. What was once used sparingly to refer to totalitarians, has become an epithet used against anyone who disagrees with the “woke”.
It is clear that you are not a very well read, so let me help you understand how overthrowing government works. #1. To overthrow government, to establish a new constitution, you have to convince a number of generals to support you. I assure you that requires a lot more than a poorly organized event, where everyone shows up unarmed eating doritos, donuts, and waving flags. #2. You have to successfully negotiate and sieze assets upon announcing your intentions, which means an organized effort to sieze armaments, ammunition, and entire military bases. Not easy. #3. You would have to use tremendous force to crush separatist military factions. All of this is possible, even probable, in a small country, especially a country with top down governance and little to know decentralization; it is almost impossible in a decentralized republic the size of the U.S.
The republican dude cutting hair for a living, or working in a tesla factory is not adolf hitler. He simply wants his state to have more power than the federal government over his life, and that is not “hard right” unless you consider thomas jefferson “hard right”.
You have no idea what you are talking about. You continue to propogate the same lies, the same old boring narratives, none of which even remotely resembles the reality on the ground. You are quite literally regurgitating what you see on CNN.
29. June 2022 at 09:28
“A source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.”
An anonymous source “close the the Secret Service” is hardly proof of anything.
If you’re trying to counter on the record testimony, then proffer on the record testimony.
29. June 2022 at 09:30
“Why do people insist on calling it a coup attempt?”
A coup is “a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government”. The actions appear to be an attempt to do just that. Which parts of the definition are inapplicable here?
29. June 2022 at 09:56
Another post about jan 6th?
If those people wanted to overthrow the government they would have brought Ar-15s. And nowhere did Trump ask them to go inside the capitol. He told them to protest peacefully.
Is this another thought crime? Are you once again implying that you know what he was thinking despite no evidence to support your claim?
29. June 2022 at 14:53
Holy crap, these comments!! 😂
29. June 2022 at 16:44
well let’s see, with the Lafayette Square insurrection, the attempted murder of the GOP leadership for “healthcare,” and the AZ Roe riot last week we’re on at least our fourth insurrection in the last five years
not even counting several glorious weeks of CHAZ
but we’re increasingly a society in blinders, trained to look only in one direction
still holding out hope for Speaker Trump just for the head explosions, especially now that he’s provably knee-deep in human trafficking with Hunter
29. June 2022 at 19:23
Philip, Some of their “whataboutisms” are downright comical.
The GOP is becoming fascist? But a Democratic dogcatcher in Podunk was caught taking a bribe!!!
29. June 2022 at 20:05
At least you are being consistent because, based on your last post, it would only be a coup attempt if it was viable. This was not a mature plan, therefore it wasn’t a coup…
I wonder if liberals will go along with that in this case or if they will argue that even though it wasn’t a mature viable coup, it was a developing one, and hence a coup nonetheless…
30. June 2022 at 04:44
Scott,
Great post. Some of the other commenters are obviously so insecure in their views that they can’t even watch one hearing.
@Steve,
Cassidy offered 2 hours of testimony. The limo incident was one of a few stories that were second hand and could possibly be untrue, but my bet is those guys won’t really testify under oath. It’s on YouTube. Go watch the hearing. It’s damning, the limo story is the least interesting story she tells, and she is very credible.
You won’t watch it tho.
30. June 2022 at 05:42
They were not “well-armed”.
And the testimony from cassidy was debunked by Bobby Engel who was also in the car.
Trumps was also in an SUV not the Beast. It would not be possible to reach for the steering wheel in the beast. She may have misspoke. nevertheless, Engel says it never happened and he was the lead secret service agent in the vehicle. The lower ranked agent in the vehicle also said it never happened. Both are willing to testify.
It just seems to be another lie.
And this entire committee is creepy and weird. Seven people, all chosen by Pelosi? No defense? Pre-vetted witnesses? It’s like a soap opera.
It’s so unamerican not to permit a defense. I don’t know. I think the dems have lost their minds.
30. June 2022 at 05:44
Scott,
Are you trying to be ironic/sarcastic again, because you are giving the definition of a coup attempt.
30. June 2022 at 07:25
People who disagree with you are not just “hard right”, but apparently “insecure” too.
How can testimony be “damning” if there is no evidence.
And why use the adjective “damning”. Is it because the word “damning” is used by journalists, in unison, to describe the testimony? Hmmmm…
I have a hard time believing you chose that adjective because it was the first that came to mind. It’s more likely you chose it, because it is the propagated word of the day.
The entire committee has been a one-sided play, with handpicked actors and actresses. No defense. No cross examination. No witnesses.
The “star witness”, as described incessantly by the masters of media, told us all a fabricated story that was not just hearsay, but has now been debunked by the secret service.
She’d be laughed out of a courtroom. Hearsay is not evidence.
30. June 2022 at 07:35
i see our Russian ‘friends’ are back, course they might have also been joined from our Chinese ‘friends’ this time having seen how well that worked before
30. June 2022 at 08:11
I find the Trumpistas here to be endlessly amusing. “He didn’t try to grasp the steering wheel while trying to subvert American democracy!! The part about the steering wheel was a lie!!”
Christian, I’ll let readers make up their own minds. I’m just describing what happened.
The magical power of words never ceases to amaze me. Was it a “coup”? Is a fetus a person? It is what it is.
30. June 2022 at 09:29
@Sarah,
You clearly haven’t watched any of the hearings. Everything you say is right out of Fox or worse. Maybe insecurity is not the reason that you haven’t watched the hearings. But it’s clear you haven’t watched them, which makes your opinion on the hearings uninteresting at best.
I have watched them all, and they are all damning. They probably won’t have much effect, because of people like you who refuse to watch. But they are damning. It’s all on YouTube. I watched them all. You have not. And your comments would be funny if they weren’t so sad.
30. June 2022 at 11:12
if people want to believe Trump was going to ride around DC with Pelosi’s head on a pike while Jan 6ers rounded up Democrats for execution literally nothing is going to dissuade them at this point
lol but sure, why not one more hoax
Trump haters already fell for Fine People, Russia Collusion, the Steele Dossier, etc
meanwhile he’s out on the gold course, hitting hole in ones
but don’t worry, you’ll be trained to hate someone new as soon as he retires
30. June 2022 at 21:07
The next coup attempt will be called a “Special Operation.”
It will be upheld by the Supreme Court.
The Fed is controlled by Satanists who want to destroy the glory of the Blockchain.
1. July 2022 at 05:32
Trump planned a coup but didnt organize a ride to the coup site and didnt have a driver who would drive him where he asked to go?
They dont make ’em like they used to
1. July 2022 at 06:50
Well, the good news here is that the January 6th hearings have seemingly had more impact that was widely expected, and there are some indications that support for Trump is collapsing. Hopefully, this won’t be another false dawn. Of course, Trump didn’t need to lose much support to cease to be viable as a threat to be President again, as he never had majority support and depended on high turnout in select swing states.
To rational observers, Trump has obviously been guilty of many crimes for a long time. Many of his crimes were committed publicly, either live on air, or in revealed recordings, etc. There were so many crimes committed, that any comprehensive investigation will take a long, long time.
The biggest question in my mind now is how much of Trumpism survives without Trump. Republicans really hate losers and a Trump collapse could have collateral damage for all the imitators. We could finally see a time of reckoning.
1. July 2022 at 12:32
“The magical power of words never ceases to amaze me. Was it a “coup”? Is a fetus a person? It is what it is.”
To me “coup” is somewhat problematic because it has a traditional meaning (or “associations”) that corresponds poorly to the events of January 6. Maybe “coup” enables Trump defenders to mount a “legalistic” defense of Trump and avoid the hard questions, or the hard facts. I.e.:
1. Everybody around Trump was telling him that he lost. (Most of the True Trump Loyalists seem to be outside his inner circle, like our commenter friends above).[*]
2. There was no evidence of any election fraud in any state that moved the needle in Biden’s favor. (Hence the “affadavits” scam – lacking (then and now) one single piece of good evidence to point to, all they could do was toss out a superfluity of bad evidence).
3. Trump’s goal on January 6 was to somehow retain the presidency – to somehow prevent the normal transfer of power and win reelection by fraudulent means.
Call it a “froup,” if you will.
[*] True Trump Loyalists did/do have Navarro, Bannon, Eastman and Giuliani in their corner, to be sure.
1. July 2022 at 12:45
My last comment is probably not brilliant, but I am trying to capture the sense I had on January 6, and still have – I’m gobsmacked. I don’t see how the odds of what Trump was trying being successful don’t round to 0.0% or 0.00%. (Maybe not 0.00000000% though).
When I think of the word “coup,” it seems like a predicate must be something along the lines “it makes *some* sense what they were thinking.”
Even if I am a complete idiot, I think these Matt Yglesias tweets are brilliant:
“To me one of the most frightening things about Trump is that this plot was not only extreme and vile, but also incredibly stupid — he’d be so much worse off today if this mob somehow had managed to kill Pence and Pelosi.”
“It still feels to me like on some level we got lucky making it through four years of rule by an extremely reckless gambler whose approach to life is that you can always declare bankruptcy and leave someone else holding the bag.”
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1535073728744558592
I think Yglesias captures the idea – better than I – that Trump is at heart a fraudster, more than he is a coupster.
(One way I think Yglesias could have said it even better would be to have said “manage to kill *anyone*” or even “*almost* kill anyone” – forget about killing Pence or Pelosi).
1. July 2022 at 13:01
Michael Sandifer (just above):
“Well, the good news here is that the January 6th hearings have seemingly had more impact that was widely expected, and there are some indications that support for Trump is collapsing. Hopefully, this won’t be another false dawn. Of course, Trump didn’t need to lose much support to cease to be viable as a threat to be President again, as he never had majority support and depended on high turnout in select swing states.”
I think this is an excellent comment, except I wonder if a better way to think about it isn’t that Trump’s support is or isn’t “collapsing” – I think the issue is whether Trump’s support is or isn’t being slowly eroded over time.
For that reason I think the J6 hearings – while they probably won’t make a big difference – can make a small contribution by not letting people (normal people, not super-partisans of one side or the other) forget all the things they don’t like about Trump. It’s the steady drip, drip, drip – the accumulation of squalid details.
A big help is the decision of the House R’s (not mentioned by the Trump supporters above who are mad about the lack of a “defense”) to not participate – you get more of a focus on Trump, less of a focus on the usual argy-bargy.
Maybe you can see this erosion in the number of Trump dead-ender types that have already jumped ship and are backing DeSantis – my impression is that there are quite a few but I don’t really know for sure.
1. July 2022 at 13:40
TallDave, “meanwhile he’s out on the gold course, hitting hole in ones”
Don’t try to be a troll–it’s not your forte. Let Trump do the trolling.
Michael, You said:
“support for Trump is collapsing”
Tell that to the betting markets.
anon/portly, As I said:
“It was an effort by a madman to lead a well-armed mob of right-wing crazed extremists to the Capitol with the goal of forcing Congress to overturn a democratic election and installing Trump as dictator.”
I think we can all agree on that. Why people are obsessed with the term “coup” is beyond my comprehension. It is what it is. Isn’t that enough?
Yes, he was not likely to succeed. That was before the GOP started purging anyone who believed in democracy.
As far as surviving 4 years of Trump, that was never the issue. The issue is the global rise of nationalism—almost everywhere. (Trump’s just a symptom.) Whether we will survive that is still unclear–lots of Ukrainians won’t.
1. July 2022 at 15:28
Scott,
Which betting markets are telling you Trump is likely to be President again? The ones I see, like Predictit, for example, don’t even have Trump as the favorite to win the Republican nomination.
2. July 2022 at 10:35
“It was an effort by a madman to lead a well-armed mob of right-wing crazed extremists to the Capitol with the goal of forcing Congress to overturn a democratic election and installing Trump as dictator.”
“I think we can all agree on that. Why people are obsessed with the term “coup” is beyond my comprehension. It is what it is. Isn’t that enough?”
I guess I am just behind. As *dictator*? That hadn’t really occurred to me – I guess my lack of imagination is showing again. I had assumed Trump just wanted to be end up somehow as president again. After writing those comments yesterday, I came across this, by Delong:
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/e-coup-plan-for-january-6?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=auto_share&s=w
Even Delong seems a little unsure [what follows is all Delong]:
3. Trump strides into the House chamber and gives his speech.
4. Is this the March 23, 1933 Reichstag vote to give Hitler dictatorial powers—with enough members of congress prevented from entering or thrown out of the room that those left, under the eyes and threat of the Proud Boys, vote Trump a majority?
5. Or is this a reality TV moment, where the force of the boss’s personality is supposed to carry the day?
6. Or is it the strange combination of reality TV and coup—a “Society of the Spectacle” moment—that was Mussolini’s 1922 “March on Rome”?
2. July 2022 at 10:54
“The issue is the global rise of nationalism—almost everywhere.”
This is of course a great point, one of many points where I think SS has been ahead of everyone.
Will nationalism actually rise to the point of winning elections? (Not just when the other side chooses to lose them, as with the Democrats in 2016). Without knowing so much about what’s going on in Europe – in particular the extent to which anti-immigrant people have good arguments, at least of a sort – in America it seems to me nationalism needs a boost from the left and maybe also the center, a large boost, to be successful.
Parallel with the rise of Trump and the Trumpish has been the rise of a Dumbass Left – mostly “progressive” or pseudo-progressive – that is working overtime to tilt the field in nationalism’s favor.
Maybe this is the nuttiest comment in the history of this blog, but I actually feel that what Yglesias does, day after day after day, in his project to push back against the Dumbass Left, is kind of heroic.
2. July 2022 at 11:10
As a
Brad Delong retweets this:
https://twitter.com/gilmored85/status/1542937160227213312
“The @nytimes is an irreparably broken news institution”
Delong has tweeted or retweeted this basic sentiment many times, I’m guessing dozens.
Yglesias:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1543202098464100352
Yglesias is not only a better thinker than Delong, he’s better at *thinking like an economist*! (His model of the NYT is far superior to Delong’s model, obviously).
Someone like Delong, someone who is as super-super-smart as Delong, how is it that he’ll/they’ll read that Yglesias tweet, yet a week from now, a month from now, he’ll retweet the same insipid point again?
Again, nutty comment I know, but I really feel like it takes a lot of idiocy from a lot of Delong’s for one Trump to be successful.