Okay something I’ve been thinking about this morning: WTF was the actual intention of the MAGAts who stormed the Capitol building?

There’s all these people on Reddit/here saying that this was an organized coup. And TBH I keep thinking that “organized” is a strong word. 90% of them had no aim other than showing up and shouting.

The other 10% are the ones that should worry everyone.
So Trump does his stupid rally, having fired up the MAGAts for actual months, then says they should march on the Capitol and of course they do, then sympathizers among the security forces let them through to the building itself.
SO many people are getting fired over that.

Anyway: so they’re inside and now what? Again, 90% of them have no clue, they just show up and shout and perhaps smash shit or steal, and generally be assholes.

The worrisome 10% had an aim in mind: kidnap/hurt/kill.
But here’s the thing: even that 10% didn’t have any fucking clue what to do. Look at the videos and photos, this was military cosplay. They made merchandise for gods sake. They loudly proclaimed their intentions to try starting a civil war.
I’ve no doubt that if they had found Pelosi in her office then she’d be dead right now. But if their actual goal was specific enough, such as: assassinate the Speaker of the House and enough congresspeople/senators for Trump to declare an emergency/martial law...
I mean, they failed pretty badly. A combination of external circumstances was what allowed them to even get to Pelosi’s office, being: sympathizers in the security forces, Trump pulling off the National Guard/ reducing the security presence leading up top the 6th
And pure stupid fucking luck.

I mean, they didn’t get into the House chamber because there were a couple of security people with guns who barricaded the door. That’s all it took to keep them out.

Actual competent insurgents would have had a plan for, y’know, armed resistance.
So I don’t want to downplay what happened, okay, but I also don’t like to see people positing some massive, narrowly-averted conspiracy as orchestrated by people who have, up to this point, shown that they couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery.
As for Trump, I’m not even sure WTF he wanted other than to keep the MAGAts fired up and on his side and... donating money to him. All the rest was just incompetence and racism.
The National guard wasn’t deployed in a timely manner, security wasn’t increased ahead of time, because he couldn’t find his ass with both hands and didn’t think an actual riot putting elected officials in mortal danger was a big deal when it was white people doing it.

More from Politics

My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016."
https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:

You May Also Like

Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.
1. Project 1742 (EcoHealth/DTRA)
Risks of bat-borne zoonotic diseases in Western Asia

Duration: 24/10/2018-23 /10/2019

Funding: $71,500
@dgaytandzhieva
https://t.co/680CdD8uug


2. Bat Virus Database
Access to the database is limited only to those scientists participating in our ‘Bats and Coronaviruses’ project
Our intention is to eventually open up this database to the larger scientific community
https://t.co/mPn7b9HM48


3. EcoHealth Alliance & DTRA Asking for Trouble
One Health research project focused on characterizing bat diversity, bat coronavirus diversity and the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in the region.
https://t.co/u6aUeWBGEN


4. Phelps, Olival, Epstein, Karesh - EcoHealth/DTRA


5, Methods and Expected Outcomes
(Unexpected Outcome = New Coronavirus Pandemic)