The PR Wing Of The GOP

[Fireball]

It is my considered opinion that every one of those assholes should be tried for treason. I may have said it upthread, but my opinion hasn't changed one whit, since then.

[Thumpalumpacus]

No one is arguing that everyone there on that day should be put away for the "rest of their lives".

In fact, the law itself only allows for a maximum of 20 years' incarceration for seditious conspiracy, and only a few have been charged at that level, so this exaggeration is revelatory of false motive to anyone who has actually followed the story from sources above and beyond TMZ.

Dude's trolling, clearly doesn't know the facts, and doesn't deserve honest discussion.

[Rev. Rye]

All good points, and they were certainly not innocent if they actually entered the building, but you know how riots go. Some people start it, then other people's minds just stop working as individuals, and they give into the mob mentality mindset like they've been infected with a virus.

Nope, they were not infected with anything they always intended this.....

Should the people there with less bad intentions have known better after seeing how dark much of the pre-entering the Capitol protesting and uttering of threats and such was looking? Yes, they should have known better, but still, do we put them away for the rest of their lives if they didn't partake in any violence and just got caught up in the moment like Helios wants to do? The courts are not treating things this way. Maybe some people are getting off too easy though. That probably is the case.

There were no people with less bad intentions and if they were not committing violence they were eager to see it and their punishment lengths are for the courts to decide i never said how long they should be punished collectively...

If there was anyone with less bad intentions, they’d have gotten the Hell out of Dodge once it started to get violent (like once it turned out that they were full-on rioting inside the Capitol, or once they built the gallows and started to chant “Hang Mike Pence.”)

[The Grand Nudger]

I remember that he talked about protesters doing their thing peacefully [i]once(/i] during that speech, and even then, it felt more like an afterthought to cover his ass on the chance that it failed than an actual,hope that they act peacefully.

Either way, we both agree Trump acted idiotically and his speech was idiotic and he shouldn't have been riling up those people like that. Thank goodness Trump eventually accepted that day that Biden was going to be the next President, and said so verbally.

You've not been listening to the man since, clearly.  He has never accepted it  That's the entire basis of the ongoing coup.

[Rev. Rye]

I get the feeling IA is trying to eat his cake and have it, too. Trying to minimise Trump's role in the horseshit while being merely 90-some percent full of shit and not 100%. Yes, Trump's speech was irresponsible, but to call it merely the tip of an iceberg does little justice to how much he was involved and how much of it was publicly known.

He spent the intervening two months promoting baseless conspiracy theories about how the election was stolen from him to a base that, to borrow an old saw, would strain at a gnat given to them by anyone a few angstroms to the left of Fox News, but gladly swallow a camel from Trump or Tucker Carlson or, well, anyone sufficiently batshit right-wing. And if their conspiracy theories kept failing, and if the attempts he made to overturn the election results legally (handily detailed in this article, published mere hours before shit got real), it couldn't be because Trump and his team were talking shit; it had to be because the Establishment was rigging things against him.

And Trump was known to try some really questionable shit to try and get the results of the election overturned; aside from his insistence (against all the constitutional scholars who disagreed with him) that Mike Pence could nullify the results of the election, the day before the riots, audio had been leaked of him strong-arming the governor of Georgia to find enough votes for him to win the state. This was briefly considered impeachment-worthy, until the next day rendered that issue little more than small potatoes.

The day of the rally, after Rudy Giuliani talked about "trial by combat", Trump gave his speech. One where he admitted he'd never concede and announced plans for his supporters to march to the Capitol and fight for him. And the rest is history, with the riot lasting for several hours (and many rioters claiming they were specifically ordered to do what they were doing by Trump), and only dispersing when Trump made a video telling them to leave the Capitol, but not before continuing to push the "stolen election" narrative and telling the rioters they were "very special" and that he loved them. Barely more than a token condemnation of their actions. Even something like this would have been better:



It reeked of mere damage control, something he had been ordered to do by staffers who were, to their credit, much saner than Trump is.

All the information in the preceding couple of paragraphs was part of the public record by the time America went to bed on January 6. And much more has come about in the intervening year and a half. Hell, in less than a week, we got a look at what went on in the White House that day which said that Trump had to be pressured into making that video statement, and, as dodgy as it was, it was apparently the most usable of three takes they made that day. And even that take still seems like the presidential version of this:



Only ignorance or sheer delusion can sustain these arguments at this point. Hell, the only reason Trump's second impeachment after the riot ended up failing was because, while seven Republican senators decided to cross party lines and vote for impeachment for once, the rest of the Republicans in the Senate prioritised partisanship over the law.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

All good points, and they were certainly not innocent if they actually entered the building, but you know how riots go. Some people start it, then other people's minds just stop working as individuals, and they give into the mob mentality mindset like they've been infected with a virus.

Should the people there with less bad intentions have known better after seeing how dark much of the pre-entering the Capitol protesting and uttering of threats and such was looking? Yes, they should have known better, but still, do we put them away for the rest of their lives if they didn't partake in any violence and just got caught up in the moment like Helios wants to do? The courts are not treating things this way. Maybe some people are getting off too easy though. That probably is the case.

Suppose I go to my bank to make a withdrawal (since I’m actually going inside the bank, we can also suppose this is happening in 1995). While the teller is taking my money out of the cash drawer, I see all those lovely bank notes and I get ‘caught up in the moment’, reach over, grab a handful of cash and run out the door.

Should I be punished any differently than someone who carried out a meticulously planned bank robbery as opposed to my ‘spur of the moment one’? After all, I went into the bank with less bad intentions, right?

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Just to make something very clear. The way the courts are treating Dur Rebels has to do with one thing, and one thing only..their belief in their ability to secure a conviction with a magat spiked jury. Not innocence, not guilt, not intent.

The DOJ is currently grappling with the question of whether enforcing the law would actually be good for our country - smart money says they'll decline - so that's where we live now. There may be no legal remedy to an attempted coup..or any crime, for that matter, when the perp is the executive. This has been so useful to our minority controlled republican government..that they're trying to extend this sort of protection all the way down to the level of a beat cop...and in addition, zeroing out the free speech of anyone who dares to push back against their vociferous lies for good measure.

AKA, big ole nothingburger...right? They're just throwing a full on pants shitting tantrum in public..because tuesday. Nothing to see here. They just tried to overthrow the government by force...failed, and then..after force failed, tried to end run democracy by lawfare..and also failed at that. Now they're leaning on misinformation and disenfranchisement as it's all they have left - there's no policy to run on, because they're a post policy post process white supremacist party. Nothing..to...see...here. Just the rahowists and their grand wizard working to (re)capture the indispensable nation. What could possibly go wrong?

[HappySkeptic]

What gets me about the right-wing shrugging off the Jan 6 committee, is that if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, and she had pulled an attempted coup, the Right wouldn't be asking for hearings or committees -- they would be demanding a charge of treason and death penalty.

[The Grand Nudger]

Never would have gotten that far. She'd have been assassinated by gqp cultists.

[Mister Agenda]

Then your point in response to my comment was what?

I read back your post and you did say pull a stunt, which I'm assuming is referring to breaking into the Capitol building, so yeah, Dems didn't do that, so apologies if you thought I was making a one to one exact comparison, but Hillary, the face of the party just 6 years ago, was preparing people for a stolen election narrative if Trump had been the one to come out on top in 2020. So yes, I'm aware that's it's not a one to one comparison, but the temperature in the country and the idea of rejecting election results was already happening in 2016. This temperature in the country didn't just pop up out of nowhere in 2020. Like I posted before, the media questioned Trump's legitimacy as President for years based on so called pee tapes and Vladamir Putin making the election illegitimate, somehow. Thousands were chanting not my President on the streets, and talking heads on the news and Hollywood celebs were making PSAs asking the EC to vote against Trump even though he was the choice of the people. Trump took it even further, of course, but he did decide against calling for that state of emergency or he was talked out of it at least, so thank goodness for that.

I get it. I would add that there's an IMMENSE difference between 'not MY president' and 'not THE president'.