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Comment by elefanten | Hacker News Reader

The evidence more supports the thesis that security was underprepared and blundered into this outcome rather than a conspiracy to allow it.

Have you not seen the videos of officers swarmed and overwhelmed, being attacked and beaten?

Are you saying the police pulled a "false flag" on themselves? Seems like a Trumpist argument.

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Yes. They had to fallback because they didn't have enough police there. Then there's videos of masses of people trying to push their way past masses of police at the entryways to the capitol building. Including rioters using pepper spray.

Police on the ground were overwhelmed. Congress was asking for help. Rioters that were screaming stuff like "Hang mike pence" got to within a hundred feet of the the vast majority of the leaders of our country. Local governors asked permission to intervene from the man that incited it all - whose political opponents rioters were bearing down upon. Permission that was denied.

The more I think about it the more fucked up it all is. January 6th could have been fucking devastating for the country. And lots of people don't seem to really give a shit. We're one step removed from a banana republic.

I think their argument is there's no way in heck that security would have been underprepared if it were some other group protesting. Maybe they were lulled into complacency because this is the "Blue lives matter" group, maybe it was sheer incompetence. Hard to say.

This doesn't explain why the Governor of Maryland was prohibited from moving its troops into DC by the Pentagon while Senators were begging for backup; and why it took Pence, who was in the middle of the siege, to make the call.

IDK anything about the pentagon, but as for why Pence's call would have more gravity than Senators is fairly obvious: he's the second-in-command of the executive branch of the government. Emergency military mobilization is much more the prerogative of the executive than the legislative branch.

> IDK anything about the pentagon, but as for why Pence's call would have more gravity than Senators is fairly obvious

No, what happened was the Senators called Maryland Gov Larry Hogan who has command of the MD National Guard. He mobilized his troops but he needed permission from the Pentagon to move them into DC. He didn't receive authorization for over an hour while the Capitol was being overrun.

This is a separate issue from Mike Pence. This isn't about Pence vs. Senators; the question there is why wasn't Trump the one to make the call? Where was he in all of this in defending the Capitol. Reports are that he was reveling in the chaos, and making calls to Republican senators to lobby them to take more time and raise objections to the electoral certificates.

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