And what of the Trump card?

Don­ald is trumped, repeatedly.

And so it comes to this: a new record bro­ken by an Amer­i­can. This one’s a bit odd though, I have to say: Don­ald Trump is the first US pres­i­dent to have the dubi­ous hon­our of being impeached twice.

The first time Trump was impeached, it relat­ed to his ask­ing for favours from Ukraine, stat­ing that if Ukraine didn’t assist, funds would be with­held. This time it’s because he incit­ed the riot at the US Capi­tol. One odd aspect is the lack of loy­al­ty: the first time round, the Repub­li­cans closed ranks and so the vote con­cern­ing the impeach­ment was con­duct­ed along par­ty lines. This time, how­ev­er, things are dif­fer­ent. Trump has been thrown to the wolves by his own.

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has vot­ed to impeach Trump for ‘incite­ment of insur­rec­tion’. This relates to a speech Trump made:

“And after this, we’re going to walk down there, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down…to the Capi­tol and we are going to cheer on our brave sen­a­tors and con­gress­men and women…And we’re prob­a­bly not going to be cheer­ing so much for some of them. Because you’ll nev­er take back our coun­try with weak­ness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

In addi­tion to this, Trump spoke of the rig­ging of the elec­tions by rad­i­cal democ­rats and media that cre­ates fake news, before adding:

“We will nev­er give up. We will nev­er con­cede. It does­n’t hap­pen. You don’t con­cede when there’s theft involved…Our coun­try has had enough. We’re not going to take it anymore.”

Now, pre­sum­ably as a result of not liv­ing in the USA, I’m slight­ly at a loss to iden­ti­fy the con­nec­tion between these mes­sages on social media and the riot at the US Capitol.

“I know that every­body here will soon be march­ing over to the Capi­tol build­ing to peace­ful­ly and patri­ot­i­cal­ly make your voic­es heard.”

To my mind that’s not much incite­ment to riot, but again…I’m here, not there. Maybe the sit­u­a­tion in the US tru­ly is that of a gun­pow­der bar­rel with a light­ed match bal­anced pre­car­i­ous­ly on top.

Quite aside from whether Trump’s words do amount to incite­ment to riot, notwith­stand­ing whether the sec­ond impeach­ment can be con­sid­ered any­thing oth­er than a tac­tic by the Democ­rats to splash yet more mud over Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, there are things inside this milk­shake of an event which would well repay inspection.

Accord­ing to media reports about the chaot­ic scenes wit­nessed at the US Capi­tol, there were 10,000 peo­ple who marched to the Capi­tol build­ing. That’s an awful lot of peo­ple. Of those 10,000, dozens of pro­test­ers broke through police lines around the build­ing and ran riot inside. This is the bit which is caus­ing me trou­ble. This is the USA, a coun­try where some­times it seems like every­one is armed, civil­ians, and offi­cials alike.

This is the coun­try of the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co, Firearms and Explo­sives, police SWAT teams, the nation­al guard, Home­land Secu­ri­ty, the army, the navy, and the air force, and more besides. There are plen­ty of peo­ple who could be called upon whose job it is to pro­tect the prop­er­ty of the state.

So why weren’t they there?

Accord­ing to an FBI report:

“As of 5 Jan­u­ary 2021, FBI Nor­folk received infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing calls for vio­lence in response to ‘unlaw­ful lock­downs’ to begin on 6 Jan­u­ary 2021 in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.,”

Details of what should be expect­ed were also provided:

“An online thread dis­cussed spe­cif­ic calls for vio­lence to include stat­ing, ‘Be ready to fight. Con­gress needs to hear glass break­ing, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Antifa slave sol­diers being spilled. Get vio­lent. Stop call­ing this a march, or ral­ly, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our Pres­i­dent or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”

Sure­ly this, rather than what Trump tweet­ed, qual­i­fies as incite­ment. Typ­i­cal­ly, there seems to be some con­fu­sion about what the FBI knew. In con­trast to the mes­sages above, accord­ing to a senior FBI offi­cial, they had no indi­ca­tion of any­thing planned for Jan­u­ary 6^th apart from “First Amend­ment-pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty”. Clear as mud, as it might be, not only were “Oper­a­tion Occu­py the Capi­tol” pam­phlets being cir­cu­lat­ed on Insta­gram and Face­book in advance of the march, but the FBI vis­it­ed var­i­ous peo­ple it iden­ti­fied as poten­tial trou­ble­mak­ers and per­suad­ed them to stay at home. Facts which sug­gest they did know what was on the cards.Without sur­ren­der­ing to para­noia, with­out sign­ing up to the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries beloved of the Inter­net, I do think that something’s not quite right with all that we’ve been told.

Per­haps this is only due to what we expe­ri­enced in Hun­gary in 2006. The events in Wash­ing­ton seem to bear a strik­ing resem­blance to what the social­ist prime min­is­ter Fer­enc Gyurcsány, in cahoots with the head of the Budapest police, man­aged to set up.

In 2006, as a means of pro­vid­ing an excuse to crack down with all the force that the state could muster against those cit­i­zens who took offence at the admit­ted lies of the gov­ern­ment, a small group of under-equipped police were essen­tial­ly left to the mer­cy of a group of riot­ers at the state TV head­quar­ters. They radioed for help, but none was forth­com­ing. They bat­tled on alone. Unbe­knownst to them at the time, only a cou­ple of streets away, their well-equipped police col­leagues were con­cealed inside var­i­ous build­ings. How­ev­er, to utilise them would have spoilt the plan. So, hav­ing ensured that we all wit­nessed the bloody nose the police received, the green light to vio­lent­ly attack peace­ful demon­stra­tors was seen to be moral­ly legitimate.

When the dozens of riot­ers stormed the Capi­tol build­ing, they brushed the police aside. After they’d been sent pack­ing, 20,000 mem­bers of the Nation­al Guard were brought in to main­tain secu­ri­ty. 20,000. Why weren’t they called in ear­li­er? Is this not the pre­am­ble to some­thing which we first saw in Budapest?

Now, as Biden pre­pares to take office, what exact­ly can we see?

Yes, 20,000 sol­diers and extra secu­ri­ty fences.

We’ve seen this sort of thing before. And if things progress the way they’re shap­ing up to, then we know where it’ll lead.

The Democ­rats may have pulled out a card to trump Trump, but that one card might just turn out to be a falling domino.

Gav Dun­can

Source: kon​tra​.hu