moon
Satire for Sanity
Extract;
To be clear: when I say “coup” I’m not talking solely about the events that unfurled on 6 January. One of the key reasons, I suspect, that Trump’s insurrection attempt is not taken as seriously as it should be in some quarters is that still, there is too much focus on the riot itself, rather than the broader scheme that it was part of. And the riot, while violent, can easily be characterised as a haphazard, almost absurd, affair. One of the poster boys of 6 January, after all, was Jacob Chansley, AKA QAnon Shaman, who ran through the US Senate chamber sporting a horned headdress, face paint, and a bare chest. (After being arrested he also famously demanded an all-organic diet in prison.) It’s tempting to look at him and think: “bunch of weirdos who got out of control”, rather than “complex insurrection attempt”. But, again, the riot at the Capitol wasn’t the coup attempt: it was just one part (albeit the most dramatic part) of a broader campaign by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election via misinformation, intimidation and a number of complicated legal manoeuvres. Rather than being spontaneous chaos, 6 January was part of a calculated plan.
The seeds for the coup, you could argue, were planted the moment Trump won the 2016 election, when he insisted (with zero proof) that he would also have won the popular vote were it not for people voting “illegally”. Trump continued to baselessly warn of voter fraud throughout his presidency, reinforcing the idea in his supporters’ minds that his enemies were intent on undermining him. When Trump did lose the 2020 election, he immediately cried foul and complained that the election had been stolen. Then the more serious shenanigans began: according to a New York Times analysis, Trump put pressure on state and government officials to overturn the election results in more than 30 phone calls or meetings, starting in mid-November. He also memorably asked Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to “find” 11,780 votes for him, and tried to persuade justice department officials to open investigations into election fraud.
While all this was going on, the “fake electors” strategy was unfurling. After the 2020 election, a group of 84 people in seven states won by Joe Biden signed false documents claiming to be electors for Trump. The idea seems to have been to create the illusion of a contested election so that on 6 January, the day a joint session of Congress was due to convene to formalise president-elect Biden’s victory, vice-president Pence would have an excuse to block Congress from recognising Biden as the winner, or to delay the ceremonial vote count.
As the critical date of 6 January approached, Trump started focusing his efforts on pressuring Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes for Biden and block congressional certification of Biden’s victory. On the morning of the 6th, when it seemed clear that Pence wasn’t going to play ball, Trump upped the intimidation tactics by urging his supporters to converge on the Capitol building. As the riots got under way, Trump kept tweeting, suggesting Pence was a coward who “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country”.
READ ON;
January 6 was part of an attempted coup d’etat in America. Don’t let Trump and his allies tell you otherwise | Arwa Mahdawi
That so many seem willing to normalise that anti-democratic outrage is frightening, says Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi
www.theguardian.com