by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Background
The bonkers thing about what happened on January 6th is Trump was so fucking lazy and stupid as an autocrat that he waited to the very last moment to attempt an autogolpe (self-coup). Any other autocrat would have wrapped up the theft of the 2020 election before it was even held by firing whomever stood in the way of an indictment of Joe Biden.
It is testament to what lazy, moronic brat Trump is that even a rando like me kept thinking up the most obvious ways to steal the 2020 election and Trump just could not comprehend how to do it. The political conditions existed for Trump to steal the election without an autogolpe right up until the point where the election was officially called for Biden.
The Plot
First, given what we know of how Trump thinks, I doubt there were all that many specific elements to the plot. Probably, Trump knew what he wanted — stay in power no matter what — and he just ranted about that around his toadies so much that they began to use the spaghetti method to see what stuck. For some reason, a number of opportunities for Trump to pull the trigger on the “just say it was corrupt and I’ll take care of the rest” idea — and he didn’t do it. This is is very, very weird. Why he would choke simply because of the prospect of mass resignations is very strange.
But back to the plot.
I suspect it went something like this — in a general way, Trump and his co-conspirators created the conditions for a mob to attack the Capitol in hopes that when Trump told them to attack they would and this would either buy them time or force Pence’s hand on the certification of Electors or both.
When you have a very powerful brat to deal with as normal human being, your main goal is to buy time so you don’t have to deal with their disappointment. The theory Trump had was every moment the election wasn’t certified by Congress was a moment they might be able to somehow win.
But more specifically, they probably had a two pronged approached to their autogolpe — neutralize Pence and get the election thrown into Congress where Trump and Rudy could muddy the waters on a political level so much that they might, just might, get within shouting distance of winning that way.
If they could just put enough pressure on Pence so that he refused to certify the election — even though that isn’t within his power to do — then they would throw everything at Congress. All they needed was to get the extremely poorly written Electoral Count Act involved and all the bullshit agitprop techniques that were so successful for them over the years would take care of the rest.
Once they got past the huge personal obstacle of Pence, and they got the Electoral Count Act involved, their next goal would be to get the election thrown into the House and Senate. If the House picks POTUS, then each state’s delegation has just one vote.
And that would be how Trump would “win” in such a way that gave Fox news a media narrative that would simply be Bush V. Gore Redux. Get over it, libs, you lost, Trump is YOUR president, too, (again.)
An unknown is what was Jim Jordan’s involvement in this plot. Why did Trump in the waning days of his administration give Jorden, of all people, the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Was there something specific that Jorden did over and above the call of duty in this particular plot that Trump felt forced his hand? Does Jorden know something that no one else does? He got the medal AFTER January 6th, so it sure does sound like Trump was both thanking him and making sure stayed loyal in the future, no matter what.
I do believe there was a specific, coordinated attempt to stage an autogolpe on January 6th. What I don’t think happened was it was all that well thought out or had any specific sequence of events they thought they could pull off, which was why it failed.
They just wanted to buy time, get the election thrown into Congress and then attack the process with everything they had. It’s possible that some very smart, well educated people actually did have a specific goal in mind — get the House to pick the president — but they failed because of how stupid, lazy and disorganized the leader of the plot — Trump — was.
All I know is we won’t be as lucky next time.
