What Trump did and didn't do during the riot

The Jan. 6 Committee hearings have produced a combination of (1) probative evidence which, cumulatively, shows Donald Trump’s culpability for the riot at the Capitol, (2) headline-grabbing testimony of no relevance presented for the purpose of making Trump look bad (e.g. Trump’s alleged attempt to grab the steering wheel from a Secret Service agent), and (3) evidence of no relevance designed to make Trump’s friends and the Committee’s enemies look bad (e.g. Rudy Giuliani’s alleged drinking).

Last night’s hearing, the final one of the summer, was no exception. The Committee revisited the incident with the Secret Service, attempting preemptively to rehabilitate Cassidy Hutchinson, its witness on the matter.

It also took a shot at Josh Hawley for raising his fist to protesters outside the Capitol before he had reason to think they would riot, and later running away from the mob after it entered the Capitol and engaged violence.

I think Hawley showed poor judgment when he raised his fist to an angry mob. But there was nothing wrong with him running away, presumably on the advice of security officers, once the mob became violent. Nor was it hypocritical or inconsistent of him to display his fist to protesters he thought were peaceful and later to flee from a mob that wasn’t.

These excursions aside, the Committee produced damning evidence about what Trump did and didn’t do after he knew the protesters had illegally entered the Capitol and were engaging in violent conduct. Much of the evidence in this regard had already been reported. However, last night was the first time I know of that anyone presented it systematically on prime-time television.

The evidence showed that, for more than two hours after he started watching the rioting on Fox News (which he did no later than 2:00 p.m.), Trump neither asked the rioters to leave the Capitol nor called on any law enforcement group to disperse the mob. Instead, he published three tweets. One was inflammatory. The other two were lame, to put it charitably.

The inflammatory tweet, issued at 2:24 p.m., said:

Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!

This tweet could only have made the rioters more angry and more determined to stop Pence from doing his constitutional duty. Some in the mob were already threatening to “hang Mike Pence.”

Trump knew by this time that the mob had become violent. It’s unclear whether he knew it was threatening Mike Pence explicitly (the evidence is that Trump learned of this it at some point, but when?). Either way, though, Trump was adding fuel to the fire at a time when he should have been doing everything possible to douse it.

Fifteen minutes later, Trump tweeted:

Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!

What Trump should have said, of course, is “leave the Capitol at once.” By not saying this, I infer that he didn’t want it to happen. And by saying “stay peaceful” when he knew the mob was anything but, his statement can fairly be construed as “carry on, but don’t hurt police officers.”

The rioting continued (and Trump watched it) for 35 more minutes before he tweeted again. This time, he said:

I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!

This was essentially a repeat of his earlier tweet. Once again, he did not say the mob should leave the Capitol. Nor, despite the fact that his previous tweet had not made the mob peaceful, did he call on any law enforcement agency or military unit to come and put an end to the rioting.

Any reasonable person would have had to conclude by this time that Trump needed, at a minimum, to tell the mob to go home. Indeed, this was the message to Trump, not just from his staff and from family members, but also from his supporters at Fox News.

Laura Ingraham said: “the president needs to tell everyone to leave the building.” Brian Kilmeade urged Mark Meadows to “please put [Trump] on TV” because the riot was “destroying everything [Trump and Meadows] have accomplished.”

But Trump wanted to accomplish something additional. He wanted to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. That’s why he called his supporters to Washington and fired them up. The rioters wanted the same outcome Trump did, and by invading the Capitol, they were striving to achieve it on his behalf.

Is this why Trump didn’t tell them leave at this point? That’s what I infer.

But regardless of his motive, Trump had a duty to do everything he could to stop the rioting and get “his people” out of the Capitol. He didn’t fulfill that duty. Not even close.

Finally, after 4:30, Trump, recorded this message:

I know your pain. I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election. Everyone knows it, especially the other side. You have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order.

This, minus the stuff about the “stolen landslide,” is what Trump should have said more than two hours earlier — back when he was railing against Mike Pence.

According to one or both of the Committee members who handled yesterday’s questioning, by the time Trump told the mob to go home, authorities were finally gaining control of the situation. In other words, Trump waited until it was becoming clear that the mob’s run at disrupting election certification was ending before finally calling for it to disperse.

Thus, the argument goes, his eventual call on the mob to go home doesn’t dispel the inference that the motive for Trump’s prior inaction was his desire to have the mob stop the proceedings.

That’s a reasonable way of looking at the chronology. But again, whatever caused Trump to wait so long before trying to disperse the mob, his delay was a serious dereliction of duty. It was inexcusable.

I want to make a final observation. The Committee had the facts it needed to make this case in a clean, straightforward manner.

But instead of posting Trump’s tweets in full, it characterized them. This prevented viewers from seeing his use of words like “peaceful” and “no violence” (at least I never saw them during the hearing).

All the Committee said about “peaceful” was that Trump resisted using the word and had to be persuaded to include it. But Trump did say “peaceful” and the Committee had an obligation to inform the public, in full, of Trump’s exact words to the mob.

These hearings didn’t have to be so slanted in order to make the case against Trump. Indeed, that case might gain wider acceptance if the hearings were fair.

The evidence showed that from about 2:00 p.m. on, Trump sat in his dining room watching Fox News’ coverage of mob’s storming of the Capitol. Thus, Trump knew what was happening inside that building.