Þe Coup Plan for January 6
Worth pausing to note how close we came to total disaster...
FIRST: The Coup Plan for January 6, 2021:
I confess that I think that Chris Hayes and Dan Froomkin have it right here:
Dan Froomkin: Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Was Even More Terrifying than They’re Telling You: ‘Chris Hayes…. What… [others] are still missing is that [Trump] didn’t just plan to make an appearance and a speech… [but rather] storm into the House chamber at the head of the mob and demand that Congress declare him the winner….
[Hayes:] “Trump wanted to lead the armed mob into the Capitol as, essentially, the fascist point of the spear, with his security detail and the armed mob around him, and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, to part the seas and breeze past the Metropolitan Police, who are getting their brains bashed…. This is what we are left to understand the president of the United States wanted to do — not some lawsuit, not some lies through some cut out, not getting some lawyer to run an errand. This is Trump himself.”…
Jan 2… Giuliani and… Meadows… discussing the possibility of Trump going directly into the House chamber… Meadows was resigned to it… Giuliani was counting on it….
[Hutchinson] “I remember looking at him saying, ‘Rudy, could you explain what’s happening on the 6th?’ He had responded something to the effect of, ‘We’re going to the Capitol. It’s going to be great. The President’s going to be there. He’s going to look powerful. He’s—he’s going to be with the members. He’s going to be with the Senators. Talk to the chief about it, talk to the chief about it. He knows about it.’”… Hutchinson testified that she also knew of another conversation “about him going into the House Chamber.”…
[Trump] told everyone listening to him at the Ellipse:. “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them…. We’re going to try and give… our Republicans.. the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
When Trump’s Secret Service detail wouldn’t take him there, he exploded with fury. Then he went home and pouted. “He wants to be alone right now;” Meadows told Hutchinson. “He doesn’t want to do anything,” Meadows told White House counsel Pat Cippolone. After the two man talked to Trump, Hutchinson heard Meadows tell Cippolone: “He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”…
The Washington Post’s [story] came closest…. But… Mike DeBonis and Jacqueline Alemany didn’t… get to… “some discussed having Trump enter the House chamber itself, where Congress was set to gather to count the electoral votes”… until the 16th paragraph…
So what was the plan that Giuliani was counting on, and that Meadows was resigned to? I am tempted to reconstruct it thus:
Dan does not mention Grassley’s belief that he would be in the chair as President pro tempore of the Senate—that Mike Pence, who would not play ball, would have been spirited away out of the Capitol Building by his Secret Service detail.
And, of course, Grassley had (at least some of) the fake electoral vote envelopes.
Trump strides into the House chamber and gives his speech.
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?
Or is this a reality TV moment, where the force of the boss’s personality is supposed to carry the day?
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”?
Remember this?:
Amy Gardner & al. (November 9, 2020): Top Republicans Back Trump’s Efforts to Challenge Election Results: ‘Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans on Monday backed President Trump’s efforts to contest his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, despite the lack of evidence of significant fraud and sharp rebukes from election officials who defended the integrity of the vote.
McConnell (R-Ky.) said from the floor of the Senate that the president is “100 percent within his right” to pursue recounts and litigation. McConnell did not repeat Trump’s baseless assertions that fraud had cost him the election, but he said he had met with Attorney General William P. Barr earlier in the day and supports the president’s right to investigate all claims of wrongdoing. “We have the tools and institutions we need to address any concerns,” McConnell said. “The president has every right to look into allegations and request recounts under the law.”
Separately, Barr on Monday gave federal prosecutors a green light to pursue allegations of voting irregularities in certain cases before results are certified. The memo appeared to reverse previous Justice Department guidance that prosecutors generally should not take overt steps in cases involving alleged voter fraud until results are in and official. Meanwhile, other GOP officials also rushed to bolster Trump’s case, including the two U.S. senators from Georgia, who demanded the resignation of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, after his office said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the state. And the Republican attorneys general of about a dozen states threw their support behind a legal effort pending before the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out mail ballots in Pennsylvania that were received after Election Day — a small number of votes that state officials said would not be enough to change the outcome. A handful of congressional Republicans called on President Trump to produce evidence of widespread election fraud after Trump baselessly claimed he had won.
Behind the scenes, Trump advisers and allies are increasingly resigned to a Biden victory, according to people familiar with internal discussions, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private conversations.
But few so far are actively discouraging the president or his campaign from pursuing all legal paths to contest the results. Only a smattering of Republican senators have acknowledged Biden’s victory, and there has been little coaxing on the part of senior GOP lawmakers to help Trump come to terms with his loss. Some said there is value in ensuring the integrity of this year’s results, while others described a chaotic and scattershot operation that they hoped would eventually push Trump to cooperate in a peaceful transfer of power.
“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” said one senior Republican official. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave”…
One Video:
Oded Galor: How Our Species Can Survive & Thrive <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdYAbYwMtUU>:
One Image:
There appear to have been multiple options in the plan: Eastman's loony Constitutional argument (which the loony Court might very well have accepted); hope for violence from "antifa" in order to justify invoking the Insurrection Act; have Trump storm the Capitol as you describe; block the vote count and declare victory. And maybe more.