(01-26-2024, 10:10 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(01-26-2024, 09:26 AM)Sneakers Wrote: Trump's alleged pre-incident knowledge is pure speculation.  You desperately want it to be true, but where is the proof?  

What are "all these events"?  Some of the crowd breached the barriers, fought with police and entered the Capitol by force.  Subsequently, many others walked in past police who made no attempt to impede their entry.  The followers, for the most part, simply stood around taking pictures.

If you appear at a BLM protest, deliver a speech with fiery rhetoric, then leave, after which some of the crowd riots, does that make you a criminal, and thereby culpable for their actions?

It might.  Inciting a riot is a felony.  

Trump's pre-incident knowledge is indeed speculation.  But the same applies to Nancy Pelosi.  When people say Pelosi should have done more to protect the Capitol, they are implying that she should have known something bad was likely to happen.  Why not apply the same standard to Trump?  I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy in blaming Pelosi and letting Trump off the hook.  

Trump told the crowd to march on the Capitol, after telling them (falsely) that Mike Pence could stop the certification of the election.  So he set these events in motion, and now hundreds of people have been convicted of criminal offenses, many of them violent crimes, as a result.  I can't tell you Trump knew what was going to happen.  But I do know he set the whole thing in motion and then sat in the White House and watched it on TV and did nothing for hours, in spite of his aides and his daughter pleading with him to do something.

Rhetoric that does not very specifically urge others to break the law is protected speech.  

Pelosi should be held to the highest standard of all because Capitol security was her responsibility, not Trump's and there is no hypocrisy in holding her accountable.  That being said, Trump should have made a far greater and more timely effort to help quell the crowd after the breech.  

Telling a crowd to march is not a crime and neither is an incorrect interpretation of the VP's constitutional authority.  Again, sitting around the White House doing nothing is poor leadership, but still not a criminal offense.

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