Did Trump Think His Mob Had Taken Pence Hostage?

[PatSeg]

This hadn't occurred to me, but it does seem possible.

What if Donald Trump actually hoped that his mob would murder Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi?

What if he believed such a crime would create a crisis big enough to let him declare a state of emergency, shut down the government for a transition period through that emergency, and retain his position as President moving into the new year?

Senator Tommy Tuberville told Politico that he told Trump that “they just took” Vice President Pence, but there’s no indication on the current public record that Trump understood that “they” meant that Pence had been taken to safety. “They” could have been taken by Trump to mean the mob had taken Pence, just as easily as it could mean the Capitol Police had saved Pence from the mob.

It’s entirely possible Trump thought Tuberville was telling him that the mob had just seized Vice President Pence and was hustling him off to the sturdy gallows they’d built on the Capitol lawn.

https://thomhartmann.medium.com/did-trump-think-his-mob-had-taken-pence-hostage-dc5969479fc8

[samnsara]

1. ...and then he could have declared martial law..

[PatSeg]

3. Yes

Hartmann goes on to point out that Trump immediately appointed a new Secretary of Defense after Biden was declared the winner in November and THAT Secretary of Defense ordered the National Guard to stand down on January 6th. I think we're looking at a lot of investigations of a whole lot of people in the coming months. This cannot be allowed to be swept under the rug.

What on earth was being plotted in the White House in November and December? And who all was involved? It certainly wasn't just Donald Trump.

[sarcasmo]

11. Yep, Martial Law was Trump's end game.

[PatSeg]

18. By any means necessary

It doesn't seem possible, but Trump really is more diabolical than I'd imagined. Not only did he set his vice president up to possibly be murdered, he didn't give a damn.

[soothsayer]

2. Was there a sturdy gallows? I know there were two

But one was very flimsy. I imagine both were.

[PatSeg]

5. Personally

I don't think the gallows were "sturdy". I really thought that was more of an intimidating symbol, but I do believe they would have harmed or killed Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi if they'd found them.

[soothsayer]

6. Zactly

[milestogo]

17. That would have been horrible.

[PatSeg]

20. As bad as January 6th seemed initially,

each day it appears to have been even worse than we originally thought. And what looked like chaos was probably very well planned ahead of time. Trump isn't always as dumb as he looks, though he certainly is as evil as we thought.

[ecstatic]

4. That makes sense. Then tRump made his demands

"Delay the vote or pence will die."

Then trump went on Twitter to pre-explain why pence was being held by the mob.

[PatSeg]

10. Yes, the tweet reads a lot differently

if Trump believed Pence was taken by the mob, not the Secret Service. Kevin McCarthy was frantic and panicking when he talked to Trump, so it easily could have sounded like the people who took Pence were the mob, the same mob that was breaking McCarthy's windows while he was on the phone.

“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!”

Damn, that tweet almost sounds like an epitaph.

[ecstatic]

14. Chilling!! nt

[Sogo]

23. OMG....Yes!

[bluestarone]

7. Just thinking about this.

If they DID take pence hostage the COUNT would have stopped. Am i right on this?

[PatSeg]

12. Damn, that's true

[Sogo]

24. What COUNT?

I don't follow....

[bluestarone]

26. The electoral count

That was taking place that day. (they were officially counting each states electoral votes for the record.)

[lettucebe]

8. That makes a lot of sense, unless he simply wanted them to destroy destroy destroy

Either way, it's damning.

[PatSeg]

27. He does seem to get off on violence and destruction

I wish there was video of him watching the insurrection on TV. People said he was "gleeful". What a sick bastard.

[mtngirl47]

9. Same thought I had when Tuberville confirmed the call. n/t

[PatSeg]

13. Yes, everything reads differently

if you look at it from the perspective that Trump assumed the mob had taken Pence and his subsequent tweet makes more sense. Now I wonder if Pence saw it this way as well.

[OAITW r.2.0]

15. All the more reason to interview witnesses and continue gathering the facts

of the run up to and the day of the Insurrection. I want to know why the Pentagon ordered the CP to stand down on 1/4/21 and were specifically not allowed helmets and other riot gear on the day of the Congressional vote to certify.

There's a lot we don't understand about Trump's motivation as to allowing this riot to continue....martial law sure does seem to be a logical conclusion, given Trump's public comments before and after the actual election. I think we all know that the Presidency, in Trump's mind, was the best way to keep his crimes from getting exposed.

[PatSeg]

21. I think there will be investigations

for a very long time. This is much too important to brush it off and just move forward. Thanks goodness we control both the House and Senate. If McConnell was still majority leader, he would pay lip service to finding the truth and then add it to the pile of unfinished business on his desk.

[Qutzupalotl]

16. Tone of voice would clear this up.

This is an interesting point, and just from reading the words, the meaning is indeed ambiguous. But there would be a big difference in Tuberville's tone of voice between intending to convey on the one hand that capitol police had whisked away Pence for his own safety versus “OMG, a violent mob just kidnapped the VP!” The former would have been clear in Tuberville's matter-of-fact tone and I think Trump might have been thinking clearly enough to pick up on that.

I still think if Trump understood the actual developments, he would take them as an encouraging sign that he was shaking things up, even if not exactly according to plan. So it might not be a big difference in the grand scheme. But if I'm wrong, the later tweet is indeed chilling.

[PatSeg]

22. Yes, the tone of voice would make a big difference

It would also help if we could trust republicans to be honest about what happened that day.

[ellie]

19. Another thing about Pence

that has been bothering me. Trump knew that Pence had Secret Service protection. Did he think the SS detail would just hand Pence over? Or did he think the SS was in on it? There was that report after the election about that SS officer who was a Trumpist who quit to work for trump and then, inexplicably, got his job back and is now a trainer with the Secret Service. What the hell?

[PatSeg]

25. This is turning into a nail-biter political thriller

And knowing what we know about Trump and some of his people, this does not sound far-fetched at all. I hadn't thought about the possibility that there were Trumpers in the Secret Service.

[malaise]

28. A really good question

Rec

[PatSeg]

29. When it comes to Trump,

no matter how bad it seems at any given time, it just gets worse. I'm wondering how much don't we know about his presidency and how long will it take to uncover the truth?