by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
After Cassidy Hutchinson’s shocking testimony that Trump was only barely prevented from going to the Capitol on January 6th, it raises the question: what would have happened had he gone?
The key thing about such a clusterfuck happening is it would have dramatically escalated what was already a bad situation into a historic tragedy. There is a real chance that the presence of the sitting president at the front of a crazed, armed angry mob would, at a minimum, delayed the Certification of the vote for at least 24 hours.
Which, in a sense, would have been the whole point of him going to the Capitol in the first place: delay the process as much as possible to give Mike Pence as much time as possible to to contemplate what he was going to do when the time came. So, the case could be made that if there had been bloodshed because Trump went to the Capitol and that, by definition, delayed the Certification of the vote then there’s a chance Mike Pence would not have done his job.
So, there is a real risk that Trump’s coup attempt would have worked for no other reason than there would be such chaos that it would provide cover for it to work.
