Funny that no one even bothered to respond to the number of cases and convictions, because those are the pinnacle of inconvenient facts that refute the peaceful protest narrative.
I'll add that the leadership of the group that Trump publicly instructed to "stand back and stand by" and with very close ties to Trump confidante Roger Stone, have all been convicted of Seditious Conspiracy and will be spending the next fifteen to twenty-five years in the federal pen for their trouble.
@PotimusWillie, I'll make a good faith effort to answer your question, though I know it won't change a single mind.
Many months before the election, Trump stated that the only way he could lose was through fraud. That's of course a lie, and a bad one, but it set up every other step he took to remain in power.
When Trump lost the election, he replaced his AG and his Secretary of Defense. He tried to replace his AG with an unqualified environmental lawyer who was so bad that the entire Justice Department leadership told Trump to his face that they would all quit if Jeffrey Clark was made AG. Trump wanted Clark because he would do his part to help steal the election and he is now an indicted co-conspirator in the GA case.
Trump replaced Mark Esper with loyalist Chris Miller because he knew his plans would be greatly facilitated by buy-in from the DOD. Miller has stated publicly that Trump ordered that Troops be deployed to the Capitol, but like so many of Trump's people, claimed the opposite when under oath.
Help me understand why else Trump would replace these two key positions when he is a lame duck president with less than three months remaining in office? What he didn't understand last time but will get right the next time, is that you can't count on an organization as big as the DOD or the DOJ to bend to your will based only on only replacing leadership. The next level down has to participate, which is exactly why Trump has made it very clear that there will be an ideological loyalty test for the next few levels of leadership if he wins in 2024.
When the DOJ refused to claim fraud as requested, Trump and team moved on to the fake elector plot. Accomplishing this required disrupting the certification, which is why he called his followers to DC for a rally to take place hours before the scheduled certification process.
More lies about fraud and a focus on stopping certification. We all saw the pressure campaign to get Pence to prevent certification, which of course he was not empowered to do.
And when it was clear Pence wouldn't play along, it was time to turn his followers loose on the Capitol. Many of them have stated, during their time in court, that they were there because Trump told them to be there, that they believed they were doing their patriotic duty, and that if Pence wouldn't prevent certification that they would.
Trump could have told them to go home as soon as the violence started and he didn't, for nearly three hours.
The entire lot of you make me laugh with the suggestion that a coup requires massive armed resistance, and I don't believe for a second that you are that ignorant regarding what a bloodless coup is. They thought they were there representing the POTUS and that the police would likely roll over when faced with righteous anger of "the people". They didn't think for a second that the police would fire on "the people' and I'm sure it was a shock to Ashli Babbit and those around her when the policeman who had his gun drawn and was threatening to shoot anyone who tried to progress past the locked doors to the Senate Chambers actually pulled the trigger when the crowd wouldn't stand down. Funny how the mob started to rethink their plan at that point.
BTW, DJT is 100% responsible for Ashli Babbit's death. He was the person who spun up the crowd with lies and he was the one person who could have deescalated the situation.
I could go on, but again I'm well aware this is yelling into the void. It's quite simple, actually. Trump lost the election. Trump wanted to remain in power. When his efforts to legally challenge the election results failed miserably, he moved on to his extra-legal efforts, of which J6 was one part of a larger plan. With out Trump, his lies about election fraud and his request for his followers to come to DC on the day of certification, none of J6 happens, end of story.
So, call that whatever you like. It's never happened before in our 246-year history and we should all hope it never happens again. The peaceful transfer of power may be the single most unique aspect of our political history, and we should value it beyond measure and punish those who work to undo it.
