Insurrection, Sedition, Coup
How we got here and what must come next
When in doubt, there’s always a tweet. Or at least, there used to be (RIP to Trump’s Twitter account… gone but not forgotten).
Remember, remember the Fifth of November. Or in this case, January 6th.
What transpired as elected officials sought to certify electoral votes has been described in many ways. Insurrection. Sedition. Coup. I never thought I would use this language to describe electoral politics here in America. Perhaps I should have known better. We are living in the age of Trump where norm busting is, well, the norm.
So how did we get to this point? What must come next? Let’s start back in 2015…
Fraud! At The Iowa Caucus
At first, I like many others dismissed Trump’s candidacy out of hand. I figured it was a publicity stunt. He would run, drop out, then leverage the media attention to market the next season of Celebrity Apprentice. There was nothing more to it.
But then something strange happened… he started to look like he could win.
Within a month of announcing his candidacy, Trump surpassed 15% support in national polling. By early August 2015, Trump eclipsed 20% support in polling for the Iowa caucus. He had solidified his status as the Republican front runner in little over 2 months of campaigning.
By December 2015 it became clear Ted Cruz was Trump’s biggest threat to winning the nomination. Polling suggested Cruz had a legitimate chance at winning Iowa and stymying Trump’s momentum. And for just a moment on February 1st, 2016, it seemed the GOP establishment would have its way as Cruz managed a +3.3 margin of victory in Iowa, overcoming Trump’s +4.7 polling lead.
Any guess how Trump responded to losing?
I actually came in probably first [In Iowa] if you think about it.
Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he illegally stole it.
Ah ha! Here we see Trump’s calling card (or Trump’s trump card, if you will). There was Fraud! At The Iowa Caucus.
Ted Cruz’s campaign did spread a false report in Iowa that Ben Carson would drop out and as such, Trump’s comments were dismissed as little more than politics as usual. Trump went on to win New Hampshire with relative ease putting him well on his way to winning the Republican nomination.
Trump’s handling of his Iowa caucus defeat proved instructive. The general election mapped out just how far he was willing to go.
Dead Voter? I Hardly Know Her
Let’s set aside Hillary Clinton’s emails and focus on what proved to be Trump’s most revealing attack in the 2016 general election: This election is going to be rigged.
Trump informed supporters at campaign events that undocumented immigrants gave Barack Obama North Carolina in 2008 and that 1.8 million dead people would be voting for “someone else” (aka Clinton) in the 2016 general election.
Now you might be thinking “Hey, isn’t voter fraud exceedingly rare?” The answer is yes, it is! Even Trump’s 2018 voting integrity commission failed to find evidence of widespread fraud in the 2016 election.
But let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good time. Just listen to Trump and the crowd’s reaction on October 20th, 2016 as he describes his attitude toward the eventual 2016 election results.
I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic Presidential election…
If. I. Win.
Fraud. No fraud. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is winning. But even that wasn’t enough for Trump.
As the Green Party filed for vote recounts and Democrats honed in on voter suppression and Russian interference to challenge the election (but not the outcome), Trump went back on the offensive. His focus? Losing the popular vote.
In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.
Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - So why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias - big problem!
What did we learn about Trump from his 2016 candidacy?
Trump accepts election results… if he wins
And if he wins… he should be winning more bigly!
This is and has always been who Donald Trump is. The script for Trump’s 2020 grievance tour was written in 2016. We simply chose to ignore it.
Rigged Election 2: Electoral Boogaloo
In response to disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, 30+ states made changes so voters could more easily vote from home. This included swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Other key states like Arizona already had widespread vote-by-mail systems prior to 2020.
Trump was quick to attack vote-by-mail because, like many Republicans, he fears anything that expands access to voting rights hurts Republicans (although evidence suggests neither party gains advantage from vote-by-mail).
Check out Trump’s comments from April 8th, 2020 on the subject.
Thousands of [mail-in] votes are gathered and they come in and they’re dumped in a location and then all of a sudden you lose elections that you think you’re gonna win…
I won’t stand for it.
Trump continued his attack on mail-by-vote throughout the summer and fall. In May he tweeted:
NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent.
This will be a Rigged Election.
At the Republican National Convention in August 2020, Trump continues:
In 2016 we caught them doing some very bad things… we have to be very careful because they’re trying it again with this whole 80 million mail-in ballots that they’re working on…It’s not fair and it’s not right.
Tell us how you really feel, Donald.
Alas, the stage was set. Just as he had done in 2016 (and once again without evidence), Trump prepared a built-in excuse were he to lose the general election: It was rigged!
Unlike in 2016 when Trump won, 2020 showed us just how far Trump is willing to go in defeat. How would he leverage his contrived excuse to try and maintain power? By doubling down of course!
On December 2nd, almost one month after election day, Trump delivered his most disturbing press conference to date.
In case you don’t have 46 minutes to spare, let me give you a hand. Here’s what was claimed:
Democrats rigged the election in advance by using the pandemic as pretext to send millions of mail-in ballots with no safeguards.
This resulted in outright fraud in all swing states, including millions of illegal votes, which the Trump legal team will overturn via the courts. Specifically, SCOTUS will agree with Trump’s legal team and rule in Trump’s favor.
If Trump is correct that there was fraud, Joe Biden cannot be President.
The evidence of voter fraud is overwhelming.
You all know what comes next. And it’s been covered ad nauseum elsewhere. Recounts in states like Georgia and Wisconsin upheld Biden’s victory, Trump’s legal team failed to secure any legal victories, and his own DOJ came out and said “Look, guys, there’s no fraud here”.
Sidney Powell and friends may have failed to release the kraken, but at least they’ll have something to show for their efforts!
The Coup Was Planned In Broad Daylight
Within a week of losing the general election, reports surfaced that Trump had asked aides about subverting the Electoral College by appointing Trump loyalists as electors via GOP-controlled state legislatures. People were quick to dismiss it as little more than Trump’s unserious musings in the waning hours of his dying Presidency. Yet we watched as Trump met with GOP state legislators from swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and listened as resident White House ghoul Stephen Miller announced they would seek to seat an “alternate slate of electors in the contested states”.
These efforts to subvert the Electoral College seemed destined to fail (and ultimately did). As such, the GOP turned to the opposition party’s usual means of protesting a failed Presidential election: Challenging the Electoral College votes on January 6th.
Many Republicans, in particular Mo Brooks, Josh Hawley, and Ted Cruz, chose to challenge the electoral votes, but Trump wanted more to be done. In a tweet on January 5th, Trump claimed:
The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.
Of course this is nonsense, but that doesn’t matter. Trump was not pleased by what he viewed as disloyalty from Pence when he refused to carry Trump’s electoral water.
Which brings us to January 6th and Trump’s speech at the “Save America” rally. On this day, Trump carried with him all the rage, frustration, and paranoia that had consumed his two month crusade to overturn the election.
Let me piece together parts of what Trump said throughout his speech to make it very clear why Trump directly incited the coup attempt on January 6th. Some of the quotes are out of order, but they are all exact, word-for-word transcriptions of what Trump said.
We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s Capitol for one very, very basic and simple reason, to save our democracy.
Our victory [was] stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats… that’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing.
This year using the pretext of the China virus and the scam of mail-in ballots, Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft. There’s never been anything like this. It’s a pure theft in American history, everybody knows it.
We will never give up. We will never concede. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.
Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.
We will stop the steal.
I think right here. We’re going [to] walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.
In an America willing to condone political violence at unprecedented levels, there is no denying what transpired. Trump and his allies set the stage for January 6th months in advance, and Trump himself showed up in person to light the fuse.
Insurrection. Sedition. Coup.
Stay tuned for part two covering ‘what comes next’