The first big theme the House managers will tackle Wednesday is how former President Trump provoked the Jan. 6 attack. Then their presentations will cover the attack itself and the harm it did, as Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) laid out to the Senate.
Neguse gave a preview of what his team will present about how Trump provoked the riot on the Capitol. He said that it was “predictable” and “foreseeable” that the mob that showed up in Washington that day would be violent.
The mob organized in “plain sight,” Neguse said, and the participants “truly believed” that what they did on Jan. 6, they were doing for Trump. They believed that Trump would protect them.
“In his unique role as commander-in-chief of our country, and as the one person that the mob was listening to and following orders from, he had the power to stop it,” Neguse said. “And he didn’t.”
Neguse pushed back on the claim that what Trump said to rally on Jan. 6 was just a speech, like any other political speech that includes fiery language.
“When in our history has a speech led thousands of people to storm our nation’s Capitol with weapons?” Neguse said.
To show how Trump’s remarks that day shouldn’t be viewed in isolation, the House managers are pointing to the months worth of Trump rhetoric that preceded it. That rhetoric imbued specific meanings in the words Trump said on Jan. 6 — meanings that the supporters who had shown up would have understood.
The three key phrases, according to Neguse, were: “the election was stolen,” “stop the steal” and “fight like hell.”
“This clearly was not just one speech. It didn’t just happen,” Neguse said. “It was part of a carefully planned months long effort with a very specific instruction: Show up on January 6 and get your people to fight the certification.”
Are any GQP Senators even present? Awake?
This January 6th Rally support all started just days after The Lincoln Project trolled Donny with ads (starting 12/8/20) in DC informing him about how it’s Pence who would preside over 1/6/21.
It still burns me that anyone so cowardly as Chump would talk about “fighting like hell” and “it takes strength, not weakness” etc. And his folks are just as cowardly as he is. Shooting up unarmed groups, death threats to children and spouses, kidnapping unarmed politicians, bombs and molotovs, etc.
Chump told them over and over he would be walking down there with them, but didn’t even try to fake that as he ran to his hidey hole and watched it all on tv while gleefully crapping himself.
One of the differences between Trump, Trump’s rally, and the “fiery” language he used that day, in juxtaposition to Dems pols language in speeches is that they weren’t talking in front of a crowd, gathered in DC, the place where Congress was going to accept the state’s certification of their elections.
Trump’s lawyers can play as many speeches from others as they like, but then they would have to show that the other factors of other’s speeches were similar in place, and message.
I maybe wrong on this but I, or anyone can yell “fire”, but if I video tape it at home and post to FB then it’s not the same thing as yelling it in a crowd.
Setting and audience matters.
Worth noting: While they posted that advert on their YouTube page, and tweeted it to their followers on twitter, they did, in fact, pay to run it on Fox News in the Northern VA/DC Market. It had an intended audience of precisely ONE.