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In light of everything that's happened this week, I think the first tweet could easily be interpreted as having been intended to further stoke his followers' ou

In light of everything that's happened this week, I think the first tweet could easily be interpreted as having been intended to further stoke his followers' outrage. The 2nd tweet, while somewhat factual, I think also came off as incendiary and divisive. What excuse does he have at this point for not attending the inauguration other than to make yet another spiteful statement to increase tensions and, therefore, incite more violence? The full comments in the post detail similar reasoning. Update: As many people have pointed out (and as the Twitter post mentions), the 2nd tweet could also be interpreted as emphasizing that it would be safe to commit further violence at an event that he won't be attending. This is certainly a much more grave concern than the one I mentioned above.

xienze 6y ago
> What excuse does he have at this point for not attending the inauguration other than to make yet another spiteful statement to increase tensions and, therefore, incite more violence? What excuse do the Democrats have for threatening another impeachment when 10 days isn’t even enough time to follow the process to completion? Not to mention that such a thing would no doubt rile up Trump supporters.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  Precedent. You don't let someone get away with something simply because they're leaving shortly. Then you can argue at what point is the cutoff. Is it a year? a month?
  - xienze 6y ago
    But aren’t you concerned about the possibility of Trump voters going over the edge after that?
    - akiselev 6y ago
      They already have.
    - Veraticus 6y ago
      How would we be able to tell the difference between that and what's happening now?
    - effable 6y ago
      Frankly, are you not concerned that by not doing this, you would be signaling that there should be no consequences for this level of corruption, plain falsehood, and ostensibly deliberate attempts to overturn an election?
- dave5104 6y ago
  > What excuse do the Democrats have for threatening another impeachment when 10 days isn’t even enough time to follow the process to completion? Encouraging a violent attack on the US Capitol building seems like a pretty good excuse to impeach.
  - xienze 6y ago
    > Encouraging a violent attack on the US Capitol building seems like a pretty good excuse to impeach. What are your feelings on someone encouraging people to join a BLM protest that ended in violence? Are they culpable? What are your thoughts on the mayor of a major city allowing people to create an “autonomous zone” that ended with two murders? Are they responsible? So much of the argument against Trump hinges on “he knew this would happen.”
    - effable 6y ago
      Argument against Trump on what though? If you are talking about direct incitement to violence: Sure, he did not directly incite violence - he merely mumbled fire in a crowded theater. However, if the question is about impeachement: Yes. There's more than enough reason to go through with it. In the broader context of how the President has been lying to his supporters about election fraud, telling them to stop the steal, and that he will never concede. The President is on record trying to strong-arm election officials in Georgia to find him 11,780 votes, the exact number that would overturn the state. No, he does not say that they need to investigate. He wants them to find him the votes because he knows he won it. And that is just what has happened in the past week.
    - netsharc 6y ago
      > encouraging people to join a BLM protest that ended in violence. There's a difference between encouraging joining a peaceful protest, and having tweeted for weeks about 6th of January going to be big, getting the crowd mad by telling them for 70 minutes how they've been defrauded, and then telling them where to go and what to do: "So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we're going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give... The Democrats are hopeless, They're never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help, we're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country." Of course he didn't explicitly say "Go there and break the windows, beat some cops up and threaten our lawmakers with violence", but geez, he basically said "let's intimidate them". Yeah yeah, of course you Trump defender are going to say "He didn't say anything bad, it's not his fault that his followers interpreted things differently...".
- chrononaut 6y ago
  A conviction would prevent him from holding office again, and it doesn't have to be completed by the time he leaves his current office.
- tptacek 6y ago
  First, they can get impeachment done inside of a week if they have the votes in both chambers. Secondly, the real point of impeachment probably isn't to remove, so much as it is to give the Senate a credible threat to use to rein Trump in. I opposed impeachment (both times --- on the politics, not the merits) but seen in that light it makes a lot of sense.
  - skedaddle 6y ago
    That would be blackmail and an abuse of power. Like a judge or juror saying they'll throw the case if you do what they say.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      No, it wouldn't be.
      - skedaddle 6y ago
        Congress can't impeach the president to hold the indictment over him for the rest of his term. Otherwise they would do that on day 1 -- and the timeframe makes it make less sense here, not more. If dems impeach again then just convict him for gods sake. Is there a reason to keep Trump as the face of the Republican party for another 8 years?
        tptacek 6y ago
        You've lost me. They'd be impeaching because he incited a violent mob to raid the Capitol, which didn't happen on day 1 of his term.
        skedaddle 6y ago
        Sorry. He would be indicted for causing the riot on Jan 6, and I think you were saying the Senate could use that to keep him in line until the end of his term. But if he starts destroying evidence or something and they go ahead with the conviction, he's effectively removed for something the House did not impeach him for. So day 1 was an exaggeration but yeah, the House could indict a president much earlier on if ultimately the point is to let the Senate keep the reigns on him for everything thereafter. And in addition to the fact that this aught to be illegal, I don't think it makes sense as a scenario. With this House/Senate/Presidency, the same threat of conviction by the Senate is always there, because as soon as the Senate signals they'll convict Trump the House'll impeach Trump. And also the fact that all the other plans to "reign Trump in" over the years led Senate Republicans to exactly where they were on Wednesday, with Trump sending rioters to their chamber, gallows erected outside and a neo-Viking sitting in Pence's chair. If they're not going to acquit again then I don't understand why they wouldn't just be done with Trump and convict him on this rather than something later in the week.
- realbarack 6y ago
  I mean, the sitting president urged his followers to storm the capitol in order to reverse an election result. That's pretty much the most clearcut possible grounds for impeachment that exists.
  - xienze 6y ago
    Can you show me where he directly told anyone to break into the capitol versus attend a protest in the vicinity? There are plenty of politicians who have encouraged people to attend BLM protests that ended up in violence, but for some reason we don’t hold them personally accountable.
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      Trump is a master of equivocating - Michael Cohen said so, and if you listen to the hour-long call he made to Raffensperger, you may notice how good he is at saying things...without really saying them. This is super subjective though (which is why it's effective "Oh, no - s/he must have misunderstood me. I would never ask them to do something illegal").
    - metabagel 6y ago
      Trump stoked the anger and insecurities of his followers and left them to make the final decision about what actions they would take. You're leaving out that politicians who have encouraged people to attend BLM protests often encourage people to assembly peacefully but to make their voices heard. I haven't seen anywhere prior to the attack on the Capitol building where Trump urged his followers to be peaceful. He has done the opposite, which allowed his followers to infer that he would support acts of violence.
- kinghajj 6y ago
  You can impeach someone even after they have left office, which prevents them from holding any public office again. That's definitely worthwhile to pursue.
- davesque 6y ago
  When is he ever going to face any consequences for his actions? Our society needs to make a statement about this man and his behavior. Impeaching Trump would also have the effect of barring him from holding office again which seems pretty important at this point. And we shouldn't fear the backlash from his followers. There needs to be a signal that these kinds of actions have severe consequences. There is going to be chaos either way because we've sat by and pretended that we can ignore this problem for too long.
- netsharc 6y ago
  You're about to rent a new place. The landlords have just signed the eviction papers for the old tenant, and they just survived an attack from the dogs he let loose on them. Should the old tenant get to stay in the apartment 10 more days, and wreak havoc? Worse, the old tenant has the nuclear codes. I wanted to ask what if something big happens now, like an ISIS attack, but I suppose this administration has been so dumb the last 4 years, someone else lower in the chain of command can deal it it. On the topic of chain of command, from Obama's latest book: > What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it would make the problem worse.
- Volundr 6y ago
  Preventing him from holding public office in future and preventing any damage he might still do with his remaining days. Part of me agrees with you that there is no point at this point and it'll just anger his base. The other part remembers just how much power the president has and thinks at this point worrying what his base thinks is pointless. Anyone left can't really get any more riled up.
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    > Part of me agrees with you that there is no point at this point and it'll just anger his base. At this point: What's the difference? They're convinced democrats are blood-drinking satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that the election was fraudulent because the ghost of Hugo Chavez activated The Algorithm on the Dominion machines which moved votes from Trump to Biden through a server in Germany and a satellite in Italy. > Anyone left can't really get any more riled up. Exactly. The president incited a violent insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol, forcing the lawfully elected government representatives to flee and postpone their duty. He refused to call in the national guard to secure the Capitol, and published a video saying he loves the rioters instead. And then people are arguing that you shouldn't go ahead with impeachment because of political calculations that it might fail. What is the thing for if not exactly this?!?
- effable 6y ago
  I imagine that would be to hold an elected official to account for offences that are impeachable. When a president incites a riot and puts under siege the entire apparatus of your government, perhaps it would be prudent to show that there are real consequences for this sort of behaviour?
netsharc 6y ago
I hate the guy, but TBH when I saw the tweet I just thought "Little baby can't even muster up some courage to show up, and he's throwing more tantrum... par for the course for him." But now as I write this, I do realize, he didn't need to announce his no-show 12 days beforehand, he can just quietly not show up on the day, so this tweet does seem to be more of a signal to... well, incredibly, it's a signal for the members of his cult that they can attack the inauguration!

xienze 6y ago

> What excuse does he have at this point for not attending the inauguration other than to make yet another spiteful statement to increase tensions and, therefore, incite more violence? What excuse do the Democrats have for threatening another impeachment when 10 days isn’t even enough time to follow the process to completion? Not to mention that such a thing would no doubt rile up Trump supporters.

dawnerd 6y ago
Precedent. You don't let someone get away with something simply because they're leaving shortly. Then you can argue at what point is the cutoff. Is it a year? a month?
- xienze 6y ago
  But aren’t you concerned about the possibility of Trump voters going over the edge after that?
  - akiselev 6y ago
    They already have.
  - Veraticus 6y ago
    How would we be able to tell the difference between that and what's happening now?
  - effable 6y ago
    Frankly, are you not concerned that by not doing this, you would be signaling that there should be no consequences for this level of corruption, plain falsehood, and ostensibly deliberate attempts to overturn an election?
dave5104 6y ago
> What excuse do the Democrats have for threatening another impeachment when 10 days isn’t even enough time to follow the process to completion? Encouraging a violent attack on the US Capitol building seems like a pretty good excuse to impeach.
- xienze 6y ago
  > Encouraging a violent attack on the US Capitol building seems like a pretty good excuse to impeach. What are your feelings on someone encouraging people to join a BLM protest that ended in violence? Are they culpable? What are your thoughts on the mayor of a major city allowing people to create an “autonomous zone” that ended with two murders? Are they responsible? So much of the argument against Trump hinges on “he knew this would happen.”
  - effable 6y ago
    Argument against Trump on what though? If you are talking about direct incitement to violence: Sure, he did not directly incite violence - he merely mumbled fire in a crowded theater. However, if the question is about impeachement: Yes. There's more than enough reason to go through with it. In the broader context of how the President has been lying to his supporters about election fraud, telling them to stop the steal, and that he will never concede. The President is on record trying to strong-arm election officials in Georgia to find him 11,780 votes, the exact number that would overturn the state. No, he does not say that they need to investigate. He wants them to find him the votes because he knows he won it. And that is just what has happened in the past week.
  - netsharc 6y ago
    > encouraging people to join a BLM protest that ended in violence. There's a difference between encouraging joining a peaceful protest, and having tweeted for weeks about 6th of January going to be big, getting the crowd mad by telling them for 70 minutes how they've been defrauded, and then telling them where to go and what to do: "So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we're going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give... The Democrats are hopeless, They're never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help, we're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country." Of course he didn't explicitly say "Go there and break the windows, beat some cops up and threaten our lawmakers with violence", but geez, he basically said "let's intimidate them". Yeah yeah, of course you Trump defender are going to say "He didn't say anything bad, it's not his fault that his followers interpreted things differently...".
chrononaut 6y ago
A conviction would prevent him from holding office again, and it doesn't have to be completed by the time he leaves his current office.
tptacek 6y ago
First, they can get impeachment done inside of a week if they have the votes in both chambers. Secondly, the real point of impeachment probably isn't to remove, so much as it is to give the Senate a credible threat to use to rein Trump in. I opposed impeachment (both times --- on the politics, not the merits) but seen in that light it makes a lot of sense.
- skedaddle 6y ago
  That would be blackmail and an abuse of power. Like a judge or juror saying they'll throw the case if you do what they say.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    No, it wouldn't be.
    - skedaddle 6y ago
      Congress can't impeach the president to hold the indictment over him for the rest of his term. Otherwise they would do that on day 1 -- and the timeframe makes it make less sense here, not more. If dems impeach again then just convict him for gods sake. Is there a reason to keep Trump as the face of the Republican party for another 8 years?
      - tptacek 6y ago
        You've lost me. They'd be impeaching because he incited a violent mob to raid the Capitol, which didn't happen on day 1 of his term.
        skedaddle 6y ago
        Sorry. He would be indicted for causing the riot on Jan 6, and I think you were saying the Senate could use that to keep him in line until the end of his term. But if he starts destroying evidence or something and they go ahead with the conviction, he's effectively removed for something the House did not impeach him for. So day 1 was an exaggeration but yeah, the House could indict a president much earlier on if ultimately the point is to let the Senate keep the reigns on him for everything thereafter. And in addition to the fact that this aught to be illegal, I don't think it makes sense as a scenario. With this House/Senate/Presidency, the same threat of conviction by the Senate is always there, because as soon as the Senate signals they'll convict Trump the House'll impeach Trump. And also the fact that all the other plans to "reign Trump in" over the years led Senate Republicans to exactly where they were on Wednesday, with Trump sending rioters to their chamber, gallows erected outside and a neo-Viking sitting in Pence's chair. If they're not going to acquit again then I don't understand why they wouldn't just be done with Trump and convict him on this rather than something later in the week.
realbarack 6y ago
I mean, the sitting president urged his followers to storm the capitol in order to reverse an election result. That's pretty much the most clearcut possible grounds for impeachment that exists.
- xienze 6y ago
  Can you show me where he directly told anyone to break into the capitol versus attend a protest in the vicinity? There are plenty of politicians who have encouraged people to attend BLM protests that ended up in violence, but for some reason we don’t hold them personally accountable.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    Trump is a master of equivocating - Michael Cohen said so, and if you listen to the hour-long call he made to Raffensperger, you may notice how good he is at saying things...without really saying them. This is super subjective though (which is why it's effective "Oh, no - s/he must have misunderstood me. I would never ask them to do something illegal").
  - metabagel 6y ago
    Trump stoked the anger and insecurities of his followers and left them to make the final decision about what actions they would take. You're leaving out that politicians who have encouraged people to attend BLM protests often encourage people to assembly peacefully but to make their voices heard. I haven't seen anywhere prior to the attack on the Capitol building where Trump urged his followers to be peaceful. He has done the opposite, which allowed his followers to infer that he would support acts of violence.
kinghajj 6y ago
You can impeach someone even after they have left office, which prevents them from holding any public office again. That's definitely worthwhile to pursue.
davesque 6y ago
When is he ever going to face any consequences for his actions? Our society needs to make a statement about this man and his behavior. Impeaching Trump would also have the effect of barring him from holding office again which seems pretty important at this point. And we shouldn't fear the backlash from his followers. There needs to be a signal that these kinds of actions have severe consequences. There is going to be chaos either way because we've sat by and pretended that we can ignore this problem for too long.
netsharc 6y ago
You're about to rent a new place. The landlords have just signed the eviction papers for the old tenant, and they just survived an attack from the dogs he let loose on them. Should the old tenant get to stay in the apartment 10 more days, and wreak havoc? Worse, the old tenant has the nuclear codes. I wanted to ask what if something big happens now, like an ISIS attack, but I suppose this administration has been so dumb the last 4 years, someone else lower in the chain of command can deal it it. On the topic of chain of command, from Obama's latest book: > What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it would make the problem worse.
Volundr 6y ago
Preventing him from holding public office in future and preventing any damage he might still do with his remaining days. Part of me agrees with you that there is no point at this point and it'll just anger his base. The other part remembers just how much power the president has and thinks at this point worrying what his base thinks is pointless. Anyone left can't really get any more riled up.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  > Part of me agrees with you that there is no point at this point and it'll just anger his base. At this point: What's the difference? They're convinced democrats are blood-drinking satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that the election was fraudulent because the ghost of Hugo Chavez activated The Algorithm on the Dominion machines which moved votes from Trump to Biden through a server in Germany and a satellite in Italy. > Anyone left can't really get any more riled up. Exactly. The president incited a violent insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol, forcing the lawfully elected government representatives to flee and postpone their duty. He refused to call in the national guard to secure the Capitol, and published a video saying he loves the rioters instead. And then people are arguing that you shouldn't go ahead with impeachment because of political calculations that it might fail. What is the thing for if not exactly this?!?
effable 6y ago
I imagine that would be to hold an elected official to account for offences that are impeachable. When a president incites a riot and puts under siege the entire apparatus of your government, perhaps it would be prudent to show that there are real consequences for this sort of behaviour?

netsharc 6y ago

I hate the guy, but TBH when I saw the tweet I just thought "Little baby can't even muster up some courage to show up, and he's throwing more tantrum... par for the course for him." But now as I write this, I do realize, he didn't need to announce his no-show 12 days beforehand, he can just quietly not show up on the day, so this tweet does seem to be more of a signal to... well, incredibly, it's a signal for the members of his cult that they can attack the inauguration!