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Comment by rorykoehler | Hacker News Reader

This is a coup attempt. Why was the Capitol not cordoned off ahead of time (they even do this for small evictions etc) and why have the attackers not been shot? This is absurd. What kind of facts do you need?

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> the attackers not been shot?

Because that would have caused a bloodpath? Even the CCP didn't do that in Hong Kong, they let the protesters invade the local legislature and that was that, what are they going to do in there, anyway?

Right. The Capitol building, while historically important isn't magical. Effective coups typically begin by taking control over TV broadcasting facilities.

Maybe the next effective version will be hacking Facebook and Twitter, simultaneously...

I'm pretty sure that Foxnews was taken over.

It seems like Fox News put a stop on supporting the extreme aspects of Trump at the end of November though?

(Not supporting this horrible company that's responsible for so much suffering over the past two decades.)

Only when it became clear that Biden would win.

Hmm, how is Fox News/Breitbart/OAN/etc covering this...

I listened in on the Fox News TV stream an hour ago: They were interviewing moderate republicans calling for calm.

Patriot on XM radio is currently ignoring it, which is interesting, because they played Trump speech almost in its entirety. Guy was egging them on.

I guess they need to get talking points straight.

edit: One of hosts broke the silence. He compared it to BLM and called on CNN to call it fiery, but mostly peaceful. I could not help but to chuckle.

edit2: Even Trump got cold feet. He asked people to calm down. You can only play with fire for so long ( https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346928882... ).

Good question; I just looked at OAN and there is nothing, just an earlier article about Trump's speech and one from early this morning "Citizens Gather in Washington, D.C..."

I will never understand why pure statements of fact get downvoted on this site.

At the time I looked, 4 hours ago now, this was correct.

In a coup you race to arrest and maybe shot the leaders you're overthrowing. Anything else is less important.

Maybe not shot...but maybe tear gased? Rubber bullets? Remember when peaceful citizens protested the unlawful killing of a black man and the police happily used all of the above?

Lots of pepper spray directly into the eyeballs from point blank range if the BLM protests are any indication.

If this was a BLM protest at the Capitol people would be getting shot if it got to this point.

Edit: well apparently one women was shot.

Tiananmen square

They stormed the Capitol armed.

How is this a coup attempt? A handful of random, largely unarmed citizens can't just take control of the government by storming one building. The federal government is massive, not to mention all the individual state governments. A coup would have to be led by actual politicians or military leaders in positions of power.

Even Republican representatives are calling it a coup attempt. Storming a legislative building to prevent the legitimate succession of power and threatening the physical bodies of legislators is the definition of a coup.

Everyone identified and involved in this should be arrested, tried, and if convicted executed.

The current POTUS asked them to do this (both during today's rally and previously); it's literally an attempt at a coup.

Could you elaborate on what, specifically, POTUS asked the protestors to do that qualifies this as a coup? Protesting alone isn't enough to qualify as a coup in my book, even if some protestors disrupted congress. Every large protest these days has bad actors that break stuff and loot and disrupt (recent BLM ones come to mind).

Transcript from today's rally. https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-sav...

At the end, he literally calls for an unruly mob of armed insurrectionists to march down Penn Ave to the Capitol. Sure, he never used the words "break down the doors" or anything like that but what did he think was going to happen? He's been using dog whistles that hint at this for a month and here we are. Particularly given the armed stand-off at the Michigan statehouse earlier this year.

> So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol ... But we’re going to try and give our Republicans ... the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

That's it? No calls to illegally seize power, nothing. Just to march down a road and show support to a subset of politicians in the hope that they do technically legal things that are helpful to his cause.

and on Twitter:

> I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!

If this really constitutes a "coup", it's the worst, weakest coup I've ever seen.

It’s a trial balloon

> If this really constitutes a "coup", it's the worst, weakest coup I've ever seen.

That's how incompetent Trump is. Can't even coup properly.

A poorly organized coup attempt is still a coup attempt. You don't get much sympathy from the judge and jury if your attempted murder is poorly thought out and executed.

An attempt doesn't have to be effective

How is a mob storming the legislature at the direction of a politician not a coup attempt?

> How is a mob storming the legislature at the direction of a politician not a coup attempt?

Especially when the specific goal is to use threats of violence to induce officials to overturn the election in which the inciting politician was defeated.

This is an act of terrorism meant to effect an auto-coup.

You mean like the outgoing president, who tacitly encouraged this, or the congresspeople who support the "stop the steal" movement? There absolutely are politicians and people in positions of power supporting this. A failed coup it may be, but it need to be successful to have been an attempt.

The event taking place in Congress, which the protesters have successfully stopped, was the formal declaration of a new President. Preventing the peaceful transfer of power is a coup, even if we expect it won't last long.

They literally stopped the certification of Biden's win. What exactly do you call it?

A tantrum.

Nobody serious is under any illusion that Biden will not assume the Presidency. In a way, I think this kind of rhetoric empowers these kinds of protests and inspires people into thinking these actions might actually work.

In reality, the long term impact of these actions is only going to hurt Republicans. As per The Economist [1], in 2000 the election was decided by only ~600 votes in Florida but still only 36% of Gore supporters felt the election was fraudulent. Only 23% of Clinton voters felt the same in 2016. Yet now, with an election decided by margins an order of magnitude larger than in 2016 and three orders of magnitude larger than in 2000 a staggering 88% of Trump supporters surveyed said they believed the election was fraudulent. This kind of brazen hypocrisy, and now coupled by the actions today, are going to stick with the Republican party for a long time. Most of the Republicans I know are aghast. I'm sure the set of Republicans I talk to are not representative (mostly college educated professionals), and that they'll alter how they communicate with an outwardly liberal person like me (deliberately or instinctively). But I think the Republican party is going to recognize Trump as a catastrophe that is leaving a deep scar in the party.

1. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/11/21/donald-tr...

Speaking as a relatively conservative person, I would love "The Party" to tell Trump to stuff it, as I would have for the past 4 years. The reality is, if you allow me to make a comparison, in the UK they had a similar situation in the Labor party with a leader chosen by the membership that was hated by "The Party". "The Party" went and told the leader to stuff it and eventually got rid of him. In the meantime they're on year 10 or 11 of continuous Tory rule, with at least another 3 ahead.

It's really nice for left wing types to talk about Republicans doing the right thing and going to all out war with Trump for the health of the democracy, I want him gone too. But the Realpolitik for Republicans on that one is a bunch of self sacrifice while the Democrats enjoy their endless summer. I don't really blame them for taking the path they did, even though I abjectly hate it.

Support for Trump was understandable in 2016 when it was unclear how he would actually behave in the Presidency. Most Republicans I know saw it as a faustian bargian: have a Republican wacko in the White House or a Democrat. But I really don't see this persisting in 2020. I would not be surprised if Republicans employ ranked choice voting for their primary, or increase the number of superdelegates or otherwise take steps to avoid one primary candidate succeeding through appealing to a minority of Republican primary voters. We're already seeing Republicans like Romney distinguishing himself through opposition to Trump.

Ultimately who knows - Trump might actually live up to his promise to run in 2024. But I am dubious that Trumpism will be anything but an aberration in the party. He managed to lose as an incumbent. That's a substantial failure, and one I think Republicans will remember.

I agree, unless the GOP leadership already has been filled with his true believers (I don't know, I don't pay good enough attention), they're going to go the Democrat route with a lot more institutional control to prevent a Trump type from winning again. At the end of the day, the last thing any party machine wants is to be marginalized by a single member, especially an entryist like Trump.

Time for not taking them seriously is long past

I agree we should take them seriously for what they are: a group of agitators that aren't going to actually effect any change. No amount of protest or agitation among these groups is going to alter the outcome of the 2020 election. The main harm they're doing is to the reputation of the Republican party itself. The notion that there is any possibility of overturning the election is counterfactual. Legitimate avenues of disputing the election have been explored and exhausted. Biden is already working with a transition team. All important institutions like the military, judiciary, and others recognize Biden as the 46th President.

I agree, we need to take these events seriously. And the ones talking about a coup aren't taking them seriously. The staggeringly high rate of belief in a fraudulent election, and agitators like the ones we're seeing today are very serious indicators in their own right. Resorting to embellishment and hyperbole ultimately diminishes is not being serious.

Disruptive? If that's the definition of a coup, than this isn't a coup any more than an earthquake or hurricane is a coup.

Are they now controlling the military? Have they taken control of the media and silenced their critics? Have they rounded up in a sudden sweep all those in government who might oppose them? Are they pushing out prepared messages about how this is being done for the benefit of the people? Have they actually done anything involving taking control and establishing themselves as the legitimate authority, deposing the existing government?

If this is a coup, it's the shittest coup ever, being done by the least competent coup conspirators I've ever seen.

It doesn't stop being a coup attempt just because they suck at it. A stupid criminal is still a criminal.

It's a coup, an uncoordinated, piss poor attempt at a coup, but a coup non the less.

One does wonder if there is any kind of endgame strategy here. Are they going to occupy the Capitol building until Jan 20 so they can claim that Biden isn't president because the vote didn't happen?

This seems a bit spur of the moment. Also, didn't President Trump say he was going to lead them to the Capitol building in his speech? Where is he?

But is it? It's a bunch of people with little idea how their own government works walking around and holding up flags. They're not actually deposing anyone, they're not taking control of anything. You don't suddenly start running the country by just walking into the big government meeting room and disrupting things. That's not a coup; I see no seizing of the reins of power here.

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