Having the only daytime rally in 4 years, caliing it Stop The Steal, and timing it so it coincides with the certification of the election you are arguing is ‘stolen’ and needs to be ‘stopped’ ALSO goes a long way in signaling intent, right?
Did someone mention intent?
Story here:
Screenshot:
Yeah the mental gymnastics that Republicans go through must be exhausting.
The House rushed to impeach Trump vs. the House didn’t get the articles of impeachment to the Senate fast enough.
You can’t charge a sitting President with a crime vs. you should have charged him with a crime instead of impeaching him.
And most important: an attack on the US Capitol leaves six people dead, but let’s just move past it vs Benghazi!
It’s not the founders they think are stupid…
It seems obvious that the “it’s unconstitutional!” defense is just enough cover to convince the Trump base, and thus the GOP Senators who are scared of getting primaried, that they can just disregard what they literally saw and heard with their own eyes and ears.
And the “it’s a criminal issue vs. can’t prosecute the President” circular argument is just a convenient political way to pass the buck.
Both arguments will also apply to whatever other corruption and self-dealing are uncovered over the next months and years. The GOP can “tsk tsk” and then sadly say “sorry, there’s nothing we can do about it”.
I’m waiting for the Republican Senators to just come right out with it and explicitly say:
“It’s OK If A Republican Does It.”
Because that’s all they are really doing at this point.
I watched the 13-minute video compilation this morning.
Jesus. Holy. Fuck.
I understand that some Republicans stared at their desks or doodled on yellow legal pads while it was playing. Couldn’t bear to look at the monster they created, eh? Their Proud Boi?
And the cutaways to trump speaking and saying how he “loves” the rioters. And that gunshot right in the middle of it. 
It takes a massive denial of the reality-right-in-front-of-your-face to claim that trump did not tell these bums to take the Capitol building and praise them while they were doing it. Of course, denial of reality is the thing that Republicans are best at these days.
So well said.
Apparently the planning for ‘Stop the Steal’ started two months before the election, well before there was a steal to stop.
Shocked, I tell ya.
It is also what he said before, if he had accepted the election results and not lied about who won the election, the January 6 insurrection would not had taken place.
Aside: I have to say the title of the OP is one of the best I have seen in the SDMB. Making a reference to the ridiculous movie sequel title meme and the name of one of the insurrection groups at the same time.
This.
It’s the root cause of the Jan 6 insurrection; Trump’s repeated lie that he actually won the election.
Even then, there would have been no storming of the capitol building… Except there was a planned rally on January 6, located near the Capitol building, organized and paid for by Trump’s people, with the express purpose of creating and exhorting a mob to storm the building and disrupt the legal counting of Electoral Votes by Congress. Trump explicitly told the mob to do this.
It’s clear, it’s plain, it’s simple, and the Republican Senators are currently in the process of ignoring it, reading newspapers, doodling on paper and pretending it never happened.
I watched it just now.
Same reaction.
It was even worse than I’d realized.
In addition to denying Trump the right to ever hold office again (and then hopefully indicting and convicting him of inciting a riot, and throwing him in prison), every last one of those motherfuckers who invaded the Capitol that day should have the book thrown at them.
Is 100% steep enough? Of course, Trump will stiff him. Probably deservedly for once.
I’ll have to see if I can find an actual cite, but my wife was telling me yesterday that she read where Roger Stone was planning to use “Stop the Steal” way back in 2016 if Trump lost to Hillary.
According to the impeachment managers, what they showed yesterday is “dry” in comparison to what they will show today.
Yeah, like New Mexico! I mean, it has Mexico in the name, amirite? [/sarcam]
Like any of their ilk will care.
“Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.”
The only point of this trial at this point is to get the record out there and make it very clear to anybody paying attention that even an attack on the capital is not enough to get more than 5 or 6 GOP Senators to vote to convict Donald Trump.
Every single one of those Senators up for reelection in 2022 is furiously calculating the odds of a primary vs. the odds that voting to acquit will make them un-electable. Clearly only Murkowski figures the odds run against Trump. Note that Burr, Shelby, Toomey, and Portman (and likely Grassley) are retiring.
I guess Rubio (FL), Blunt (MO), Moran (KS), Scott (SC), Johnson (WI) either feel really confident that backing Trump is better than going against him or believe that voters will have forgotten about this is 1.5 years.
The following rant would have better fit in the late lamented Butt-Hurt Trump Takes to Twitter thread, but I’ll drop it here.
Seeing again Trump’s tweet of Jan 6 that “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.” made me grind my teeth.
Sacred. Trump keeps using that word… In the secular sense, the Constitution is sacred. The peaceful transfer of power is sacred. The right to a free and fair election is sacred. Any individual’s election outcome is absolutely not sacred.
I don’t miss seeing him torture the English language.
Here’s an absolutely amazing Stop the Steal timeline.
For once? all his lawyers have been terrible. Rudy certainly doesn’t deserve payment for his service.