How can anyone doubt Donald incited violence, when he f%*king paid for it?

[kurtcagle]

2. The problem with protection rackets

Trump has always been a racketeer - his use of thugs and veiled threats to intimidate business rivals, politician, and regulators has been well documented over the years even before he became president, and The Art of the Deal usually involved an equal mixture of bribery and "protection". This was what I think the Capital Hill Coup was intended to be - a show of force and threat by a mob boss.

Yet protection rackets are brittle - intimidation and threats are used because the racketeer knows that they don't have the numbers to actually enforce their dictates, and Trump had failed in the one thing he had to do: ensure that the military was on his side. That's not to say that he didn't do a lot of damage to the integrity of the military in the process - they'll be weeding out insurrectionists for years - and it is arguable that he WAS able to suborn the Capital police.

The irony about all this was that had Trump been less lazy and more inclined towards obviously criminal approaches to everything, he could very well have won the election. As it is, the ex-President has made it very difficult for the Senate to NOT find him guilty of insurrection.