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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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Dude, don't move the goalposts. I was very, very clear.

[Trump] started trying to dissuade his supporters as soon as it became clear they were breaching the capital [sic]

Was the claim in question. I even quoted it out specifically. It doesn't mention violence, only breaching the Capitol building. If you'd like me to break it down even further, according to its two logically prominent parts:

As soon as it became clear they were breaching the Capitol (I gave a good timeline for when this was the case, and it was obvious Trump was watching TV during at least a good portion of this time) -> Trump started trying to dissuade his supporters (I listed the two tweets out which do NOT in fact dissuade the supporters of "breaching the Capitol" at any point, they only encourage people not to get hurt which is NOT the same thing, and furthermore there was almost an hour and a half gap between when this was first plainly evident and when he first said anything resembling "go home", meaning when he started recording the video at 4pm (and even then chose the video and not a tweet))

More broadly, in the preceding sentence, the user claimed "Trump did not support J6". I think a more fair answer is that Trump wanted some political pressure, but didn't have any specific desire to breach the Capitol or do something beyond a massive protest. At least, there's little to no evidence of this being the case. However, once a breach happened and was obvious, he didn't really disapprove very strongly -- or else he, like virtually every other political figure, would have made some plea for it to stop right away, which he did not. He dragged his feet about it for quite a while. So at best, you can claim, supported by the facts, that Trump mildly disapproved of J6, on the day it happened. That's the strongest permissible claim that matches the evidence we have. Painting a narrative that he actively disapproved of J6 is not at all consistent with any of his actions.


Now, moving on from the realm of straight facts and near-certain probabilities into opinion... A narrative definitely exists on the left that he was some super-plotter and wanted the whole thing to happen. I did not say this. I don't think it's correct! I don't think he was really happy about it happening either. I think he was exactly the most likely case -- he wanted some big protest to happen, it got bigger than he thought, but he was pretty apathetic about it getting bigger than he thought. He definitely wanted Pence to take a specific action and not certify. I think that apathy in the face of the Capitol break-in is plenty enough to be upset with Trump about and consider it in the broader context of throwing shit against the wall to see if it will stick and undermining the election in the process was a breach of his oath of office, in my personal opinion. I think reasonable people can come to different conclusions about that whole aspect, narrative-wise.