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Given that the Constitution requires States to choose their electors and Congress to count the votes of the electors chosen by the States, the appropriate place to protest a choice of electors which does not reflect the popular vote would whatever the usual and customary place for large-scale protest is in the relevant State capital. Given US norms (which are not substantially different to other advanced democracies) I wouldn't have said that protesting on the Capitol lawn was inappropriate, but doing so while openly armed, carrying signs saying "Hang Mike Pence" and erecting a gallows crosses a line even if the building wasn't stormed. (FWIW, I would consider open-carrying at a political process to be per se a threat against government officials and therefore prosecutable, but I am aware that American gun culture sees things differently).
The ignorance of Trump's supporters is relevant to their culpability, but not his. Given his access to information, if Trump believed the things he was saying about how he won the election then he is sufficiently delusional that Pence should have invoked the 25th.
Eastman wrote a memo telling Pence how to install Trump. I don't know what would have happened if Pence had followed the instructions in the memo and declared Trump elected, but it wouldn't have been good whoever ended up being inaugurated. There were at least five obvious ways that the January 6 protests could have "worked" in the sense of using political violence to cause an unnecessary constitutional crisis, although only the first two seem plausible to me:
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