What exactly was the goal of sending an angry mob to attack Congress?

[Dr. Jack]

Based on what the January 6th committee has so far released, it seems Trump and his inner circle of fascist ghouls were planning on sending a fake slate of electors from states he lost, have Pence declare those electors as the real ones, and then Trump wins the electoral vote in Congress. Frightening and also completely batshit stupid. However, after Pence said “fuck all that” and wouldn’t play ball, Trump and his closest dickhead allies riled up a crowd and sent them to attack Congress.

My question is, what did they think that would achieve? After Pence said no the night before, what was the goal? What did Trump and his fellow scumbags think was going to happen after they unleashed the MAGA Army and how was that going to help them at that point?

The more I learn about the Plan A for January 6th, the less Plan B makes sense beyond just causing total chaos. Any insights?

[Grasswire2]

1. some say they expected Antifa to show up and battle the MAGATS

And then martial law could be imposed by presidential decree.

But wouldn't they be smart enough to send people posing as antifa?

[Dr. Jack]

3. That does kind of explain their post riot excuses

That the riot was BLM and ANTIFA. Of course it very clearly wasn’t so that isn’t a persuasive argument for anyone other than hardcore paranoid right wing nut jobs.

[Nittersing]

2. They were counting on counter-protesters.

My understanding (fwiw) is that the original plan was to call in the troops to arrest all the antifa folks.... declare marshall law... and then take over the count.

[Grasswire2]

4. they should have.......

1. Had enough "intel" operation going to know there was no antifa response coming, and..
2. Should have been prepared to send people posing as antifa

Dumb planning!

[Nittersing]

7. Twitter was *very* busy that week

with messages begging people NOT to go. I'm not sure anybody knew for sure who was gonna show up. Thank gawd it was all asshats.

[Dr. Jack]

30. So you think it was an attempt at martial law?

They wanted a big “ANTIFA and BLM” counter protest, the trumpkins insight violence, Congress is attacked and members are killed, Trump declares martial law and blames the killings and deaths on ANTIFA and BLM.

At least that’s the scariest place my mind could go trying to suss out what the Trump plan was. Hopefully it was never actually that dark.

[maxsolomon]

5. I think they planned to take Congress & Pence hostage

then at some point he would "see the light" and accept the false electors then throw it to congress, who'd have voted by state delegation (1 vote per state), with Rs holding majorities in more states.

given how spectacularly that would have failed, Trump's lucky a hostage situation didn't happen.

[jmowreader]

18. They weren't going to "take Pence hostage"

These guys had a list of people to capture and execute - specifically, Pence, Pelosi, all the majority leaders and The Squad. After they killed off enough Democrats and Trump threw away the electoral vote certificates, the House would have put him back in office.

[maxsolomon]

19. we'll never know.

i don't think the clowns invading the capitol were competent enough to pull that off.

i do think creating a crisis that justified martial law was in Trump's tiny pea brain.

[uponit7771]

27. Correct, they would've killed him. There were 85 armed terrorist attacking capital building on j6

[Trailrider1951]

6. I think that the bulk of the MAGAt army that day was cover for the real action:

Those guys in pseudo-military garb with the zip tie hand restraints. Who were they looking for? The ones chanting "Hang Mike Pence", no question there. The ones going through the halls of Congress chanting, "Nancy, Nancy". Fact: these people were the second and third respectively, in the line of succession to the Presidency.

[chowder66]

8. I think their goal was to hold them hostage and await further instructions.

"Stand down and stand by".

[MineralMan]

9. It's doubtful that they actually had a well-defined plan.

With very few exceptions, it was a rag-tag, completely clueless mob. There were a few groups who seemed to move in some sort of order, but they were unarmed with any lethal weapons. The rest of the mob followed them into the Capitol, but didn't seem to have any idea of what to do.

That mob accomplished nothing, and was dispersed as soon as backup personnel arrived. That was way too late, and if the mob had been organized, it could have been disastrous. But, once backup showed up with tear gas and enough personnel, the mob pretty much just disappeared back into the streets.

I watched the entire thing, from its very beginning. The only thing that would have made it more useless would be for some of the Capitol Police to shoot and kill just a few of the organized people who were carrying bear spray and other less than lethal weapons. That would have ended it much sooner.

[planetc]

10. I have thought for a long time that Trump was directing a movie.

Or a made-for-Netflix drama, or a street protest set indoors. I think what TFG understands is ratings, not power. In his own eyes, the ratings for "The Apprentice" were one of the high points of his career. He did have a strategy worked out to steal the election, but the existence of a rowdy, racist crowd not only didn't forward the plan, it condemned it to failure. He had people in that crowd who understood discipline, and battle plans, but they were not in charge, and the total lack or organization didn't faze the military personnel in the crowd. They and everyone else seem to have accepted that they were not to try to hold the building, or do anything in particular with the staff and congress, but mainly to express their anger, and indignation, and generally create a loud, rude statement of what the crowd thought of all the pansies carrying out the normal procedure for transfer of power. And TFG, back at the White House, didn't call them off, OR try to discredit them in any way. He let them express their emotions, and he basked in the message they all sent to the country. Which might have been: "My people are more entertaining than your people!" "I win the ratings war!" Although either of those two statements is more coherent than anything TFG has ever said.

He was sworn in to the presidency understanding nothing of the country's history, and he left office in the same state of ignorance. The mob was helping TFG express his utter disdain for the hicks who run our government.

[Botany]

11. The unified field 1/6/21 conspiracy theory

The mob was sent to the Capitol to cause as much violence, confusion, and bloodshed as possible
while you had a 2nd group of more trained people who were either active duty or retired law en-
-forcement, fire fighters, and military right wingers such as the "Oath Keepers" and their job was to
get into the Congressional Parliamentarian's and steal the electoral ballots so as to stop the certification
of Joe Biden as POTUS and in the meantime the GOP and people like Rudy G. were producing forged
electoral ballots which they hoped to introduce so as to replace the real ones from the 7 states that
put Biden over the top. Now, "they" knew that those forgeries would be spotted quickly but the coup
plotters were hoping for such much confusion and GOP TV like Fox to push "do we really know who
won?" memes.

Long story short the mob was there to give to the theft of the electoral ballots and TFG was backing all of
this in order to stay in power and avoid all the criminal and civil prosecutions he knew were coming once
he was out of office.

Lock 'em up and then take 'em out and ***** 'em. Fucking traitors all of them.

[planetc]

23. This is a beautiful theory, and may be correct. But as we know, it was doomed to failure because ..

the intel the rioters had was garbage. Apparently, the electoral ballots were hand-carried from the House chamber to the secure location of the legislators, possibly by a couple of women. Whoever was planning that fiasco was deeply ignorant of a number of things: like any plans the Capitol Police had to protect the congress, like exactly what stage of the proceedings the House had arrived at, like the belief of the Capitol Police that this was an outrage, and it mattered, like the capacity of the Capitol Police for quick thinking and misdirection. These were people who actually believed that BLM is a dangerous force, and Antifa is too, and that everybody except them was incompetent. So both the small focused unit and the large loud group were as ignorant as their leaders, and had no back-up plans if anything went awry.They were doomed to failure by the fact that they and their leadership believed their own propaganda.

As poetic justice, it's perfect.

[Botany]

26. They also did not know that the states all had copies of their own electoral ballots too.

TFG was looking for so much confusion, bloodshed, and no electoral ballots so as to
delay the certification of the E.V. after which he could try to declare martial law and
stay in power.

[uponit7771]

28. They needed to "influence" pence to stop the certification of electors

[Generic Other]

12. They never accepted the fact

That ANTIFA was mostly in their heads. A group that never existed but were able to pose an enormous threat.

I recall that Ali “proud boy” guy shouting that he had just spoken to some ANTIFA folks in the thick of the takeover of the building. No doubt part of the plan to pretend this was so.

Also, they were constantly acting like their own MAGATS were ANTIFA posing as Trump supporters. Such rubbish as subsequent arrests and rudimentary background checks have shown.

[qazplm135]

13. Scare Pence to go along

I think the plan was to create the idea that there's a massive groundswell for this to convince Pence to play ball.

[gab13by13]

14. Well said, short and to the point.

The gallows they built was planned ahead of time and it was meant to scare Pence. They wanted the mob to delay the certification.

There was zero expectation that Antifa or any other counter-protesters were going to show up.

[lame54]

16. Who first yelled "Hang Mike Pence"?...

Was it this guy?

[uponit7771]

29. +1, cause Pence was the lynchpin in the whole deal. If he plays ball Putin's Whore is president

[bucolic_frolic]

15. To fascists, an angry mob is grass roots chaos as a cover for other operations. /nt

[SoonerPride]

17. To kill all Democrats and Pence and have trump decalre martial law.

The chaos would have installed him as supreme ruler.

It was their kristallknacht.

[kentuck]

20. It was the last step in the conspiracy, if all else failed.

There was no intent for Donald Trump having to leave office. Therefore the Lie about the Big Steal was a reactionary movement simply because they lost the election.

They had planned to bring weapons to the Capitol. They would store them across the river for quick reaction team.

Their final goal was to keep Donald Trump in the Presidency.

[Whiskeytide]

21. Two different but related things were taking place. Тяцмp And his ...

… henchmen we’re planning to steal the election via the Eastman plan and the fake electors. That was their plan all along.

They had also planned a rally as a show of support (and because Тяцмp loves rallies), but I think that was all that was really intended in the weeks leading up to the 6th. Just a big crowd of slobbering magats Тяцмp could masturbate to that afternoon.

But as the DOJ had failed to intervene via the Clarke letter, and Pence was not committing to going along with the plan, they began to get desperate. They sic’d the crowd on the Capitol to pressure Pence into executing the Eastman plan. “He’s being weak - go motivate him!”

I think simultaneously, the “standing by” militia groups planned to do more. They came prepared to do damage to keep Тяцмp in office, and they believed they were doing it with his blessing. But I suspect it was more a tacit blessing. There may have been some coordination between people in Тяцмp‘s orbit and these militia types, but I actually think that’s unlikely. Even Тяцмp‘s admin cronies and sycophants would not have been deluded enough to think they could really take the Capitol by force, and the potential consequences of that plan would have scared the shit out of them. But the Militias? They WOULD have been insane enough to hatch that plan.

I’ve said here before that we are tending to conflate the plan to steal the presidency with the mob insurrection. Related, but really two different things. At least, that’s my take anyway.

[jobendorfer]

22. Move of desperation

I think the original plan was to contest the validity of electoral ballots from the battleground states, chiefly relying on Pence to orchestrate throwing out enough of the electoral ballots to ensure a win at the January 6 joint session. However, I think that at least a few days before January 6, it became clear to Trump that Pence was going to count the electoral ballots straight and was not going to participate in the scheme.

Thus the plan to attack the Capitol, which came together (like everything Trump does) haphazardly. I think there were two objectives: 1. Capture and destroy the electoral ballots. The most heavily ransacked room in the Capitol was the Sergeants' office, which is where the electoral ballots were stored between Dec 3 - Jan 6. 2. If possible, as a secondary objective, kill whatever Democrats and/or unloyal Republicans they could get their hands on. The crowd of protestor-attendees were encouraged to attend, to provide cover for the real attack, which was carried out by the paramilitary groups that were seen marching up the steps and through the police into the building.

Destroying the electoral ballots and spinning it as a left-wing attack would have bought Trump time -- time to file a bunch of lawsuits, and possibly arrange other false-flag attacks in state elections offices or legislatures to completely ensnarl the transmission of backup copies of the electoral votes -- at which point, Trump could declare that the electoral process had failed and the only thing to be done was to place the matter in the hands of House, in a Constitutionally-defined process where each state gets one vote for the Presidency. At that point, Trump had 26 states behind him.

I think what saved us comes down to two things:

a. Two quick-thinking Capitol Police officers who distracted the mob into following them away from the Representatives and Senators, as well as one Officer who had to, regrettably, open fire to stop another part of the mob: buying time for the joint session to evacuate.

b. Two staffers, who work for Senator Jeff Merkley, who had the great sense to grab the electoral ballots and take them with them during the evacuation of the joint session, thus maintaining legal custody of the ballots.

That is my $.02. There are also certainly other interpretations that are as plausible, and the January 6 committee and DOJ certainly have more information than I do. I am just inferring from what I read in the papers.

J.

[11 Bravo]

24. To fluff up the ego of a pathetic narcissist who couldn't deal with the fact that ...

he was a fucking LOSER, and was willing to incite an insurrection rather than face reality.

[Xolodno]

25. To get Pence to leave the Capital.

The main plan was to have him declare the ballots for the contested states as invalid. One thing that keeps coming up, is the timing, just enough time to quickly get state legislators to send new ballots but not enough time for the Supreme Court to weigh in (and I wouldn't be surprised one of them was ready to go along with procedural blocks). But he refused to go along with it.

When the mob hit, the Secret Service was ready to transport him into a safe car and get him out. He refused. As he knew if he left, he wouldn't be able to come back in time before a Trump supporting Senator would take his place in his absence and either declare the contested states invalid or validate the bogus state ballots.

I won't be shocked if it comes out later that he knew there was going to be a coup attempt and he was the only person stopping it from happening. He had to know that once he refused to go along with the first plan, they had another back up. Its known that Trump told everyone that was in on it that Pence won't play ball. Did they stop? No. Because they had another plan should that occur. Pence knew, he had two choices, leave the Capital and go down in history as the guy who inadvertently brought down US democracy. Stay in the Capital to stop it, even if may cost his life.

Remember, for awhile he was "homeless" because of death threats.

I don't like his politics, views, etc., but, respect him for doing the right thing.