What did Trump and his followers think would have happened if the Jan. 6 coup attempt had succeeded?

Politics & Elections
1

I haven’t seen this discussed pretty much anywhere, and that surprises me.

Let’s say that, through one route or another, January 6 goes as Trump desired (i.e., he remains in power). Personally, and I think many here would agree, that Trump himself would not have turned down any possible route to accomplishing this goal. Possible routes could have been:

  • Pence agrees not to recognize slates of electors; Trump gets elected through machinations in the Senate and House (i.e., “thrown to the House”).

  • Trump declares martial law outright; the military goes along.

  • Hi, Opal! (RIP.)

You get the idea. I think the second route is less interesting for the sake of this discussion, since that would have been an outright and obvious coup and, if we suppose the military would have been along for the ride (which apparently, IRL, it was not), then any opposition would have been quashed.

But let’s take a closer look at the “machinations” possibility. Let’s assume the military is not involved.

Did Trump et al. think that everyone would have said, “You got us, mate. You’re prez. We’re cool with that”?

They seem to be stupid enough to believe that. But I say: All hell would have fucking broke loose.

In fact, I said to a friend on the day after the election when the whole thing still seemed in doubt that states would secede (e.g., the West Coast) if Trump were reelected legitimately, and even with the benefit of hindsight, I still think that could have happened. (I also think that a Trump win in 2024 could have the same result.)

None of the blue states would have accepted or gone along with such a scam. It would have destroyed the country overnight. I think the military would have remained neutral and not obeyed any Trump orders to quell blue state opposition. There would have been a very complex swirl of forces in action, and I don’t really know what would have happened other than USA as we know it go bye-bye.

So my questions to you are threefold:

  • Per the title of this post, what do you think that Trump and his toadies really thought would happen? Were they naive and expecting everyone to just go along, or were they actually expecting a conflict over the scammed win?

  • If you believe that states and other entities would not have gone along, what do you think they would have done?

Thanks for your thoughts!

2

The hardcore Trumpers actually thought that Trump could just overturn the election and declare himself the winner. The less hardcore ones simply jumped on the stolen election bandwagon.

Of course the states would not have gone along with it. There would have been no secession, but the blue states would have stopped complying with federal mandates. No, we’re not sending any money to the federal government. No, we’re not complying with the federal courts. No, you can’t have control of our National Guards.

Even that would have never come to pass, though. Realistically, if the election had somehow been overturned, then Trump, his family, and his cronies would all have been dead by inauguration day.

3

Please elaborate on this scenario. Who would have killed them, and how?

4

Pick any of the 51.3% of the country who voted for Biden.

5

I have a less optimistic view than @GreysonCarlisle. Sadly, if the various machinations had the fig-leaf of legitimacy, I think most blue states would have protested, quite loudly, but rather than non-compliance, would have let things go to the Supreme Court while simultaneously challenging literally any actions taken by That Guy to court as well. In the very, very short term, it wouldn’t have made a difference, UNLESS (your second point) TG attempted to mobilize the military to force compliance with some new ‘Presidential’ Edict, or to arrest others (specifically Biden/Harris).

As long as it remained in the courts, Trump would probably continue his ‘normal’ actions, grift, self-promotion, and claiming that he’s the greatest of all. He’d certainly focus on finding ‘proof’ that supported his allegations, but I strongly suspect that everything would be slow-rolled on the remaining parts of the Justice Dept that weren’t fully owned, as even Barr had said the election was secure.

The problems would have arisen when it finally got to the SCOTUS. Recent actions there have proven that any semblance of an ‘apolitical’ Justice are dead and gone. If the judges punted and let it go to Congress to make the decision, we’d have ended up with Trump being declared the ‘legitimate’ President (for certain values of legitimate). At which point . . . the crystal ball grows foggy. I suspect prior to this point, there have been major protests in the more liberal portions of the country, but minimal organization and violence. With El Presidente now ensconced by a defacto control of at least two branches of the government, I suspect that the various states would cave, but with major legal passive resistance.

Individuals on the other hand . . . well, I’m sure individuals would consider such extremes as assassination, but I don’t think the Democrats as a whole would have done more than passive resistance. Especially as with Congress and the Executive Branch backing the Pres and SCOTUS checking out, the military (which is already far more conservative and political than I like) would almost certainly follow orders of his Orangeness rather than see any sort of civil dissolution.

6

Had Pence sent it back to the states then I there probably would have been a looot of violence. And since Trumpism is like 98% about hating perceived enemies, I think they think they’d get to live out their fantasies of the security state brutalizing people that don’t accept the coup.

7

Not only are the insurrectionists stupid enough to believe that, they also did their treason without any actual plan for afterwards.

8

If the January 6 coup had actually succeeded, I think the blue states would have grudgingly gone along with it - after a few months of intense protest - and gone back to normal life. Lest someone accuse me of underestimating liberals, I think conservatives would have done the same had it been the other way around.

It’s really, really, hard to get people off the couch and go out to revolt. People may talk a big game on the Internet about how they’d overthrow tyranny and all that, but the truth is most people are willing to put up with a HUGE amount of indignity and outrage before they are finally spurred into action. Trump seizing power through Jan-6? I think we’d see a huge firestorm of outrage, far bigger than the 2000 Gore-Bush election, but eventually it still dies down and blue America eventually goes back to work and back to school and life returns mostly to normal.

9

Last I heard there seemed to reasonably good evidence that some of those involved had plans to take hostages. It’s interesting to speculate what would have happened if they had actually done so.

I suspect that (leaving aside the extreme personal danger to those taken hostage) the outcome for the country overall might have been better. Perhaps I’m being overly optimistic but firstly I don’t think that the hostage-taker’s demands would have been met or even taken seriously - the only outcome would have been police/anti-terrorist action resulting in termination of the hostage situation - with maximum prejudice to the hostage takers if necessary.

And secondly I think that the less extreme right would have been revolted by the open lawlessness and attempt to take power by force and that would have set the fascists’ support back substantially.

The problem with the coup attempt on Jan 6 is that it was sufficiently pathetic and ineffectual for the less extreme right to be able to sweep it under the carpet as inconsequential. But I don’t think it was inconsequential - it was (probably unintentionally) a “testing of the waters” for worse things to come.

I’m with Velocity here - there is a grave danger of countries losing their democracy through a “boiled frog” process. Jan 6 was too small a temperature increase to cause the frog to jump out of the pot.

10

Yeah, if they’d posed more thread than they did, they would have been taken out. The black helicopters were there. And we already know the police had clearly had shoot to kill instructions if they even got close to the actual congress members, so I’m sure the special teams were ready to go in and clear the building.

Success would involve not the actual riot succeeding, but the rest of the insurrection—the part that was pretending to be legal. This includes stuff like fake elector slates as well as Trump trying to justify emergency powers. Plus you’d have a ton of martyrs.

11

Most of the Jan 6 crowd were like a dog chasing a car - even if they succeed in catching it, they would have had no clue what to do with their prize.

There were a few at the top hoping they could ram through a coup, but most of the followers were clueless pawns.

12

I agree with this. And, many conservatives have already gone along with “this” in their mind – a “stolen election” and “illegitimate president”, but they’re still paying taxes, collecting social security, going to their government jobs, serving in the army, etc.

13

I think this is a correct observation. Their failure was, in a way, the best success they could have achieved. The GOP fascists get to keep any benefits the coup attempt give them (e.g., Babbitt as a Horst Wessel-style martyr, etc.) and yet maintain a sort of plausible deniability about the whole thing. It’s disgusting and maddening.

14

I’ll talk about both RitterSport’s and Velocity’s excellent points here.

I don’t think there could have been a grudging return to normal. For one thing, I don’t think we have “normal” now, even with Biden having won. This country is a powder keg.

Second, do rightists believe in the illegitimacy of the Biden presidency in the same way that Liberals would believe that Trump’s is illegitimate had his coup succeeded? I don’t really think so. An analogous question is, “Do the QAnon crowd really believe in the conspiracy?”

I think, for the most part, the answer to the question is “no.” It is less a matter of these people believing in something false than saying “fuck truth” and using a particular narrative as a rallying point–as a method for coming together and trying to achieve power. I think Hitler’s anti-Semitism was the same kind of thing back in the day.

I will say the same thing about the Christo-fascists of our time: these people don’t really believe in the Jesus of the New Testament. They believe in an updated version of Positive Christianity that merges religion and politics into a complete belief system with a built-in vision of achieving power. Very similar to Nazism.

So I think rightists in some sense “know” that Biden is legitimate, and that is why they can live with the current situation. Had the coup succeeded, we Liberals would know know that it was coup, and I don’t think we could have moved on from it.

Also, there are many different entities in our country. I liken our system to a modern-day Holy Roman Empire run by, yes, federal, state, and local governments, but also international organizations (WTO, etc.) and multinational corporations. The coup would have fomented an international crisis in which many of these entities as well as foreign governments would not have simply shrugged their shoulders. The US would have been an international joke, and this would have put considerable pressure to act on those who were on the fence.

I think a Trump win in 2024 would trigger the breakup of the country, more likely sooner than later. I think a successful Trump coup in 2021 would have caused a quick implosion. I don’t see any evidence that anyone involved in the coup was considering that risk.

15

I think the whole issue of Diplomatic Recognition would have been dramatically in question if the whole 1/6 thing had gone DJT’s way.

How much impact on the US there would have been had most of our allies withheld Diplomatic Recognition (ie, “So what ?”) is yet another open question.

16

To answer the OP: There were a wild range of expectations.

On the tamer end, you had Trumpers who probably thought that if they could just somehow force the Senate to certify Trump as the victor (perhaps at gunpoint,) that the rest of the process would work according to how it normally works: Trump is then re-inaugurated on 1/21, Biden and Kamala go home fuming, America carries on as usual, a constitutional-republic democracy. In other words, little different than if Trump had simply won 270 electoral votes outright on Election Night.

Then on the wilder end, you had the Chris Yoon type of Trumper, who proclaimed prior to Inauguration Day that the military was going to arrest hundreds of prominent Democrats, including Biden, and install Trump back as president via coup. In that case, all bets are out the window and we’re talking a Burma-type military junta now, or an American version of North Korea.

17

I think this is a worthy topic to discuss on its lonesome.

18

One point I wanted to make is that the answer is absolutely different between the two groups mentioned in the OP: Trump, and the various followers. To break it down a bit.

Trump: Winning is all that matters, I can win this, if only everyone does what I say. No further expectations or concerns about long term damage, that’s someone else’s problem. My people (Senate, slavish followers, SCOTUS picks) will have my back and no one else will be able to do anything as long as my people stay firm.

Trumplican Party: Keeping our power is all that matters, and while putting myself at risk was a pain, we need to seize the moment. Keep things unclear, play up the risks, and point to this unrest as reasons to take extraordinary actions for the ‘good of the nation’. Obviously the will of the people must be respected, that’s why we, as unarguably duly elected representatives of the people, will make the decision (in favor of Trump) while we sort out all that corruption and fraud. After all, we own the Senate, the Presidency and likely the SCOTUS… just take it slowly and make sure it all -looks- like we’re taking it seriously and the majority will go along.

True Believers! - How dare those lying ratfink bastards try, but we showed them! As my preacher/bar buddies/Qanon/paramilitary group said, we had to be ready for total war, and we barely saved 'Murcia for good people like us from those commies/others/pagan! I’ll be watching my neighbor/furriners/leftists, and if they try anything, I’ll be ready along with my shotgun. And I’ll make sure my friends are as well. Yihawwwd!

Yes, a depressingly large group of people thought they could get away with it, and likely still do. And that they would be able to get enough people to go along at least passively, though the threat of violence, or implied violence, especially if 1/6 had be successful.

19

A lot of responses seem to be based on the premise that any of these idiots were looking beyond January 7, when preparations for the America-hating fuckstick’s second Inauguration and associated festivities would go into high gear. If asked, they’d have predicted a repeat of 2017-2020, with the A-H FS continuing to complain about being the most unfairly-treated president since presidents became a thing (including in other countries and fraternal organizations), and that he consequently deserved two more terms.

Instead, I’m seeing a lot of what Dopers think would have happened.

20

From what I gather, the opposite may very well have happened. In other words, had Trump managed to force Pence and Congress to certify him the victor, we could have had Biden giving the Army orders to arrest hundreds of prominent Republicans, including Trump and his enablers.