Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here) What's the general beliefs here regarding Trump's culpability for the infamous events of January 6?
The two main takes are:
he incited what happened
he didn't incite what happen
each of those takes usually has two subtakes, ...and it was good/acceptable, or ...and it was bad.
I have a kind of in-between take when it comes to the two main takes - I'm not convinced he did incite it, but I am convinced his actions after it started make him ethically culpable for it anyway. His actions after it started, reportedly, are he watched it unfold on TV, just sitting there watching it, and people around him kept asking him to make an announcement to stop it, an announcement that would hopefully reach the people at the capitol somehow, a request for them to stop and go home. And when he was requested to do that, repeatedly, he refused.
This makes me think that one of the two situations is the case:
1) he did deliberately incite what happened, even if his literal words allow for some plausible deniability
2) he didn't deliberately incite what happened, but *he was perfectly happy to see it unfold anyway*
There's not a good argument to be made that he didn't want it to happen, because he's a Leader, allegedly, and as a leader if he didn't want it to happen, and he didn't lift a finger to stop it, then... that's no leadership at all. If you want to excuse his lack of action, you cannot simultaneously believe he's a good leader. So either he wanted it to happen, or he's an exceptionally poor leader, not both. And it's clear to me that he IS able to get people to follow him, so if it was his will to stop what happened, he absolutely could have. He didn't want to stop it.
But is that criminal? If he has (a) plausible deniability in the words that led to the riot, and (b) just failed to do anything to stop it, is that criminal? Should it be?
Obviously if you think storming the capitol was good or ethically neutral, then that question doesn't really matter. But if you think it was bad, what happened at the capitol, then the obligation of a person to stop something bad from happening does matter. Some people don't beleive in obligations like that - some people believe you don't have to stop anything bad from happening if you didn't directly make it happen, and his plausible deniability in his words at the rally that preceded the storming arguably give the defense that he didn't directly make it happen.
So, how much plausible deniability does he have for what happened?
And, regardless of that deniability, was what happend *bad*?
And what kind of responsibility does he have given his refusal to lift a finger to stop it?