Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
What's your opinion, if you don't mind me asking?
I think it's without a question that Trump
a) Wanted to remain President.
b) Really believed he could overturn the election and win.
c) Acted to make that happen.
His actions before/during/after the Putsch simply don't make sense otherwise. I don't think any other explanation really works, barring an extraordinary amount of evidence. My feeling is that Trump aimed to stop the certification of the election and intimidate the GOP Senate (which had a majority at the time) to object to certifying Biden's electoral votes...and in any case delay and forestall the day of certification. More than that, I don't think Trump planned further beyond because Trump is the man of the desperate gamble, the "hail mary" and the "inside straight" and so on. He's not someone who thinks about "and then what?"
Remember that the Putsch was by no means a spontaneous protest movement like the George Floyd protests, or for that matter the Storming of the Bastille, or the Arab Spring, those were spontaneous bottom-up revolutions. The Putsch by contrast was out of state activists coming to DC at invitation by Trump and his supporters and other mobilizers. This was not by any means an unplanned spontaneous thing at least in terms of assembly. So yeah, Trump was aiming for a coup d'etat, a self-coup, a Putsch. He wanted to overturn an election he lost, the will of the people, and come to power by means of force and intimidation on a co-equal branch of government whose authority he wished to subordinate directly to his whims. I don't think you can argue against that. Strategically that was his aim. Tactically I think is where you have the debate.
When I say "Tactically" I mean the question -- What Trump intended to happen with the Capitol? How far did he plan for it to go? Did he actually intend the deaths of Pence/Pelosi/others at Capitol Hill?
I think Trump's tactical aim was to arrest/halt/prevent the certification of electoral votes on January 6. That was his immediate tactical aim. He wanted to prevent Biden from having any legitimacy, and he wanted to use that to rouse the electorate and create enough hell and intimidate enough that he creates a situation like the Compromise of 1877 (which nearly led to two Inaugurations of two Presidents until a last minute corrupt bargain between two parties). Ted Cruz mentioned 1877 in the Senate a few days before the Putsch. Trump did assemble a crowd and sent them to march at Capitol Hill. That's inarguable. He told them "march down Pennsylvania Avenue" and "show strength". Now what did he intend to happen? I think Trump definitely wanted the crowd outside to intimidate the senators and representatives. Did he intened to go as far as kidnapping and murder? Did he actually plot to kill the VP and Speaker? I would probably say not but at the same time it's irrelevant because Trump and his coterie assembled and tried to assemble militias like the Proud Boys and others there and when you bring them over, he was gambling and angling for collateral damage. Tactically Trump was aiming for a constitutional crisis at the low end, and a coup d'etat at the high end. The likely result of "success" on Jan. 6 would be Civil War, what would likely be a very short and quick one.
Had Trump succeeded on Jan. 6...which would mean say the Putschists break in, kill Pence, Pelosi, and take some Dem Senate and Reps hostage, while survivors get smuggled out somehow...what you would have had is Civil War with Blue States and some GOP supporting the Blues, against MAGA-aligned territories. In a situation of Civil War, I think it ends quickly because DC is surrounded by Blue States (sure Maryland has the very centrist GOP Gov. Hogan but he absolutely would back Biden based on all he has done and said in his career) but the question is if the military in DC backs Trump or Biden, and so on. It would have led to a vicious street fight in DC. But Trump was in a very bad strategic position in that hypothetical scenario.