Comment by tetrometal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tetrometal | Hacker News Reader

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Let's be very clear: Trump did not "incite" an "insurrection".

The dude was trying to hold a rally. Shit got out of hand much like in the George Floyd riots, but to a much lesser degree. In spite of the relative magnitudes of the death and destruction in those events, the insane leftist media has somehow decided to paint the George Floyd riots as understandable at worst and freaking obligatory at best. At the same time that they paint the capitol building riot as an historic tragedy.

It's absolutely batshit. It completely beggars belief that anyone can't or won't see it, yet here we are.

And THIS is the primary reason we're seeing division in the nation today. It's not the handful of radical racists. It's not Trump's stupid tweets. It's the completely irrational and insane reaction by the left to anything that is not within their narrow and ever-shrinking Overton window.

So go ahead, make excuses. Tell me you're the good guys and we're the bad guys. It doesn't matter anymore. As long as you continue blinding yourselves, this division will grow and eventually break this nation, probably sooner than later. Frankly, I don't care anymore, and neither does half of America.

Let's not split hairs.

When:

You have the world's largest megaphone.

You bring tens of thousands of hardline supporters to the Capitol on the day that officially seals the transfer of power.

You and your henchmen spend hours forcefully lying and claiming that the entirety of the national election apparatus is in a conspiracy to steal the election.

You tell them to march on the capitol to 'fight.'

You are inciting a riot.

When, as the capitol is being ransacked, you double down on the lie and continue to say the election was stolen, and to say you love them, you are continuing the riot and you are trying incite nationwide unrest.

This isn't complicated or "a matter of opinion."

>You have the world's largest megaphone. You bring tens of thousands of hardline supporters to the Capitol on the day that officially seals the transfer of power. You and your henchmen spend hours forcefully lying and claiming that the entirety of the national election apparatus is in a conspiracy to steal the election. You tell them to march on the capitol to 'fight.'

Here is where opinion differ. You may consider this inciting riot, but not everyone will agree to it, many other people don't consider this inciting riot.

I agree that events are subject to interpretation, and I hope we can agree that he deserves a fair trial, has chance to testify at his trial and confront his accusers, and has competent legal representation.

I hope we can also agree that Twitter doesn't need to dispense with a trial and can use their own judgment, since they are not part of the US government.

” When, as the capitol is being ransacked, you double down on the lie and continue to say the election was stolen, and to say you love them, you are continuing the riot and you are trying incite nationwide unrest.”

You conveniently leave out the fact that he explicitly and clearly told them to stop doing it ”go home”. Yet this was again censored by the big tech.

I don’t like Trump either, but let’s stop lying about ”doubling down” etc.

If Trump said one sentence that "be peaceful go home" but wrapped it in two sentences "the election was stolen" why shouldn't we assume he means the thing he says more often and ignore stuff he says less often? And he repeated "it was stolen" many times before, too. To point that out is not a censorship.

It's crazy to me that you think the media should make that decision for us instead of just presenting the facts.

It's impossible to present all facts, out there happens a lot more stuff than would fit in any media. Media must curate or summarize it either way. If they're any good they clearly separate facts and commentary.

> continue to say the election was stolen, and to say you love them

You left out the last sentence, which was (paraphrasing) "Go home, go in peace."

Hours later after the plot had already failed.

True. It's also true that he told them to protest peacefully BEFORE the riot as well.

"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Frankly I find your dishonesty unacceptable.

This is precisely the expertly spun narrative I can watch on CNN or MSNBC. It's wonderfully constructed, people get paid a lot to do it. It's also just a lie. To fully half of the American population, and a rapidly growing proportion, this is a bald-faced lie.

So please, hold the speculative narrative. Don't repeat talking heads to me. Show receipts. Demonstrate with evidence that Trump tried to get his rally to invade the freaking capitol building.

In the meantime, respond to the rest of the arguments being represented here. You can't conveniently ignore the much worse riots that took place last summer as you try to spin your crazed narrative, we see through all of this now.

Show the receipts that the election was stolen before you decide to broadcast that claim to millions.

Trump's legal team had the chance to do that in court dozens of times, and failed to do so every time. He took the same discredited claims to a massive crowd in the capitol, and we see the result.

> You can't conveniently ignore the much worse riots that took place last summer as you try to spin your crazed narrative, we see through all of this now.

You can't "both sides" this because none of the marches for social justice this summer attempted to kidnap and execute the executive line of succession.

> Show the receipts that the election was stolen before you decide to broadcast that claim to millions.

Again, look at Matt Braynard's work. It's compelling, and has been completely ignored. [1] The right isn't pissed because they think they know fraud happened, they're pissed because the evidence hasn't been examined.

> Trump's legal team had the chance to do that in court dozens of times

False. Trump's legal team brought a handful of cases before the courts, most of which were thrown out on procedural grounds without looking at the merit, which again is the reason the right is rightfully pissed.

Many more cases were presented to the courts by third parties and thrown out. Some because they were batshit, some on procedural grounds, very few on their merits. The media has been presenting those cases as "Trump's cases being thrown out" in order to make him appear incompetent, but that is just more spin. That you bought into, apparently.

> attempted to kidnap and execute the executive line of succession.

More speculation presented as assertion.

[1] https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/matt_braynards_...

Again and again the lawsuits refused to even assert fraud and made procedural quibbles and asked that because of procedural differences the votes of millions of people cast in good faith to be thrown out until they got the right answer.

In the minority of cases that actually spoke to fraud in public filings or public statements they declined to prove it in court when given a venue.

It's not that they didn't get their day in court. They did and they had nothing to show or tell when the show and tell portion of our program came about.

Matt Braynard's evidence was not seen in court.

https://www.ajc.com/politics/5-georgia-election-fraud-claims...

There was no evidence to present in court in the first place. If there was compelling evidence the Trump admin would have clung to it like a drowning man clinging to their savior.

There ARE tons of things good enough to meme out of context but none that stands up the the kind of scrutiny required in a court of law.

On twitter you can claim thousands of dead people voted. In court you have to actually prove it.

This is a very programmery viewpoint. Trump didn't literally say "hey guys, go wreck up the Capitol", so his hands are clean. But... the real world is not a computer program. People can read between the lines. In this case, Trump planned a rally on the exact day of the congressional certification of the election results. He spent the previous two months telling his supporters the election was a fraud, and that they needed to "stop the steal". Then at the conveniently scheduled (and located) rally, he riled up the crowd and asked them to march to the Capitol. They were able to read between the line and follow his orders.

It's true that he didn't write a line of code like "minions.wreckUpTheCapitol()" but in the non-programmer world, things need not be as certain.

You believe Trump was making some kind of insurrection suggestion with his invitation to a rally in the capital. I don't. You think there's something between the lines of his words, but that's just speculation. If you're going to make a claim so grand as the sitting president was inciting insurrection, you need more than speculation.

My honest opinion is that Trump wanted a BIG rally to demonstrate that he had a lot of support to make the idea that he lost to Biden seem absurd. He used this reasoning over and over again, even in his call with the GA SoS.

Occam's Razor makes that far easier to believe than that he wanted people to take over the capitol building. Beyond just sounding like crazed conspiracy, it doesn't even make any sense to do. What is he gonna do with a building? Like, what if they managed to take congresspeople or senators hostage? How in the world would that lead to maintaining his hold on power?

Sorry, it just sounds like a bunch of conspiratorial claptrap to me, along the lines of the stuff I hear from the right with their Q and Lin Wood nonsense. The crazy thing is that it's become institutionalized on the left in the MSM. It's bonkers.

> My honest opinion is that Trump wanted a BIG rally to demonstrate that he had a lot of support to make the idea that he lost to Biden seem absurd.

He wasn't trying to win a rhetorical debate, he was serious as a heart attack about overturning an election that had been thoroughly litigated and decided by the states.

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