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Comment by fphhotchips | Hacker News Reader

I'm not American, but what I saw on my TV last week was an outgoing President organising an armed mob outside the seat of Government and inciting them to disrupt the democratic transition of power. There were people inside the building that were clearly intending to take hostages.

There was a gallows out the front.

In any other nation on earth, this was an attempted coup. Just because it failed doesn't mean that those involved didn't have intent.

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Well, it was a very incompetent coup. If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters. He shouldn't have said "now go home". It's a very half-hearted coup on the part of the president.

Note well: I am far from saying that Trump is innocent. He absolutely should have known that his words would incite violence. In the most charitable light possible, he's still clueless about the effect his words would have. (I could kind of see his intent being to use the mob to pressure Congress, so that they would be inclined to see it Trump's way. He may have intended the mob surrounding the Capitol, but not the breach... in a very charitable interpretation. Even in that interpretation, though, he still very dangerously misjudged the effects of his words.)

And Trump may well be guilty of more than that. He may well be guilty of attempting a coup to remain in power, and just not have had any idea of how to do it right. (I prefer that rogues be incompetent...)

The Armed Forces [1], Capitol Police [2], and other law enforcement agencies around the country are investigating the participation of their members. It's going to take a while to sort everything out, but I'm betting it's more sinister than it appears give the gallows, flex cuffs, the former AF officers in tacticool gear, and the general rhetoric.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/military-investigating-servi...

[2] https://www.wesh.com/article/2-capitol-police-officers-suspe...

> If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters.

There were military personnel friendly to Trump among them.

> He shouldn't have said "now go home".

I may be confused on the timeline; wasn't that after members and electoral votes had been evacuated safely so the people overtly calling to execute the Speaker and VP, or otherwise plotting to capture, injure, or intimidate members, or destroy the electoral vote certificates to provide a pretext for their Congressional allies to resort to a vote-by-states in the absence of certified votes or to count the votes with selected states excluded had already failed?

Could be; I'm not sure. Still, at that point, saying "Go look in the House Office Building" (or wherever - I have no actual idea) would have been a better move for someone attempting an actual coup.

But a cynic could easily think that Trump could tell that sufficient force was arriving to stop the mob, and that cutting his losses was therefore his best option at that point, even if he were really trying to do a coup...

I think that's exactly what happened. He hit a point of no return and rather than go ahead, decided to save himself.

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