Even without the assault on the Capitol, it was still a coup. (Part 1 of 2)
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Even without the assault on the Capitol, it was still a coup. (Part 1 of 2)
It's time to get real about what Republicans tried to do after losing the 2020 election.
Hello and good day to everybody,
Today marks one year since an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election. If you’re looking for a blow-by-blow take on what happened, you’re not going to find that here, as there are people who are way more qualified to tell those stories. Hunter Walker over at The Uprising will likely have something worth checking out (he’s been doing a lot of writing over at Rolling Stone lately, too, so check over there, as well), as will Aaron Rupar at his Public Notice Substack.
As I was writing this, it… got a bit long, so I’ve split it into two pieces. The first (this one) deals with the somewhat misguided laser focus on the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The second piece, which will be published for paid subscribers on Monday, will look at the role the press has played in helping Republicans wash their hands of responsibility for Trump’s post-election attacks on democracy. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to receive that.
Without further ado…
I want to talk about something a bit more in my wheelhouse: the ongoing efforts to rewrite the history of not just that day, but the entire post-election period.
It’s extremely common for people on the right to argue that there was no “coup attempt” on the basis that people storming the Capitol building couldn’t have actually taken control of the federal government by force. There are lots of, “Mobs of people trespassing, physically confronting police, and steaming mementos is criminal — not a coup” and “People in MAGA hats walking around the Capitol taking photos was not an insurrection” takes out there. And… sure. Okay. But that’s not the whole story, is it?
The storming of the Capitol didn’t happen in a vacuum, and it’s wildly dishonest to pretend it did. The goal of the rioters was to create a disruption, to create so much chaos that Congress couldn’t get through the formality of certifying Joe Biden’s election, to create a delay that would have afforded either state legislators or Republican members of the House of Representatives the opportunity to flip the election to Trump.
Writing over at The Atlantic, David A. Graham explained the actual “paperwork coup” strategy:
The second prong was to persuade Pence to block or delay certification on January 6. Eastman wanted Pence to declare that there were no valid slates of electors from seven states that Trump allies claimed had major fraud. Ellis wrote in a memo that Pence should refuse to open votes from six states with putative controversies, though Sekulow rejected the theory. (She claims she was simply laying out legal theories, not endorsing them.) Waldron wanted Pence to accept alternative slates of electors from contested states, or else ignore the contested states altogether.
It isn’t hard to spin scenarios about how this might have turned out, because the proponents did so right there in writing. Eastman imagined that Democrats would object, so Pence would say the matter had to go to the House of Representatives, where each state’s delegation would receive a vote. Because Republicans controlled a majority of state delegations, they would elect Trump. Ellis foresaw a different possibility: Pence would demand that states make a response, effectively kicking the question back to state legislatures. Waldron, who was more of an outsider but did manage to meet with Meadows and members of Congress in the days before January 6, had the most chilling suggestion: that Trump declare a national-security emergency, effectively bypassing democracy in the name of a manufactured crisis.
Here are the facts: Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by every imaginable standard.1 Needing 270 electoral votes to win, Biden tallied 306 to Trump’s 232. Biden received 51.3% of the vote compared to Trump’s 46.9% (81.3 million votes vs. 74.2 million votes). It was decisive. Remember that Trump had long insisted that his 304 to 227 Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton2 in 2016 was a “landslide” (never mind that it was the closest election since 2004).
The people had spoken. We did not want Trump to be president any longer. And yet, to paraphrase Mitch McConnell, he persisted. Even had the assault on the Capitol not happened on January 6, 2021, Trump and his enablers in the media and Republican Party were still taking wildly anti-democratic actions intended to render the people’s votes moot. This cannot get lost in the larger discussion of the GOP being a party that is fundamentally anti-democracy.
On November 7, four days after the election, CNN projected that Biden would win the state of Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 electoral vote threshold necessary to win the race. NBC, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, the Associated Press, and yes, even Fox News came to the same conclusion within 16 minutes. This is the point where the losing candidate usually faces the reality of the situation and prepares to deliver a concession speech. Trump did not. Even more than that, the Republican Party agreed with him.
Right-wing media personalities such as Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Ken Starr, John Roberts, Tom Fitton, Will Cain, Kayleigh McEnany, and Jenna Ellis all promoted the fringe and anti-democratic “Independent State Legislature Doctrine” strategy, calling on states with Republican majorities in their state legislatures to simply ignore people’s votes and instead award their allotment of electoral votes to Trump, instead.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress and within Trump’s administration refused to acknowledge that Biden had won. A week after the election, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the transition of power between the outgoing Trump and incoming Biden administrations. His response? “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” Naturally, mainstream media outlets printed the lie in big, bold headlines, doing little to quash the lie.3
On November 9, 2016, Mitch McConnell said it was time for Democrats to “accept the results of the election, to lower the tone.” Exactly four years later, he lined up behind Trump to contest the election results, saying that it would be premature to say that Biden had won until the Electoral College voted in mid-December. And once the Electoral College confirmed Biden’s victory, McConnell reluctantly acknowledged what had long been apparent: Trump lost.
“But the Democrats…”
147 Republicans (139 members of the House and eight members of the Senate) voted against certifying the election results. Those 147 Republicans tried and failed to install Trump, the clear loser of the election, for (at least) a second term. A common defense of their actions has been to point out that a handful of Democrats filed objections to the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. The big difference between those objections and the GOP’s actions on January 6, 2021, is that Democrats weren’t actually trying to overturn the results.
In January 2001, 20 House Democrats attempted to file protests against the counting of Florida’s 25 electoral votes after the Supreme Court stopped a hand recount of the votes, effectively handing the state and election to George W. Bush.4 Vice President and 2000 Democratic candidate for president Al Gore presided over the session, gaveling down the objections one by one.
In January 2005, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones filed an objection to the counting of Ohio’s votes. At the core of the complaint were concerns about excessively long lines at polling places, but was not in itself an attempt to overturn the results. From Tubbs Jones’ remarks on the House floor:
I am duty bound to follow the law and apply the law to the facts as I find them, and it on behalf of those millions of Americans who believe in and value our democratic process and the right to vote that I put forth this objections today. If they are willing to stand at the polls for countless hours in the rain, as many did in Ohio, then I should surely stand up for them here in the halls of Congress.
This objection does not have at its root the hope or even the hint of overturning the victory of the President; but it is a necessary, timely, and appropriate opportunity to review and remedy the most precious process in our democracy. I raise this objection neither to put the Nation in the turmoil of a proposed overturned election nor to provide cannon fodder or partisan demogoguery for my fellow Members of Congress. I am convinced that we as a body must conduct a formal and legitimate debate about election irregularities. I raise this objection to debate the process and protect the integrity of the true will of the people.
In total, 31 Democrats in the House and one Democrat in the Senate (Boxer) voted to reject the Ohio votes. Senator and 2004 Democratic nominee for president John Kerry was not in attendance and did not vote, instead releasing a statement that morning announcing that he would not be taking part in the protest as “our legal teams on the ground have found no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.”
And finally, in January 2017, a handful of Democratic members of the House objected to the vote totals, but as there were not any members of the Senate willing to sign on to their complaints, they were dismissed outright by then-Vice President Joe Biden, who presided over the session.
None of the Democratic candidates — not in 2000, 2004, or 2016 — were still pursuing the presidency on the day the electoral votes were being tallied. You can call their objections foolish if you’d like, you can say they were grandstanding, you can say they were wasting everybody’s time, but you cannot say that what they did was an attempt to do an end-run around the will of the voters as Republicans did on January 6, 2021. Perhaps Gore, Kerry, or Clinton believe that they should have won, or even that the elections were unfair. That’s fine. And it’s fine if Donald Trump spends the rest of his days thinking the 2020 election was somehow unfair to him. The difference here is that Trump’s White House coordinated with members of Congress to try to actually subvert the election results to stay in power.
Trump advisor Peter Navarro recently explained Trump’s plan.
After months of trying everything from strongarming state officials into “finding” additional votes to trying to recreate 2000’s “Brooks Brothers Riot,” January 6, 2021 marked Trump’s last stand. And it bears repeating that even if the Capitol had not been attacked that day, the actions of Republican members of Congress were not a normal part of the election process but rather an attempt to install the loser of an election to a position he did not win. It’s dismaying to watch as Republicans who tried to do this not only face zero consequences for their actions but are still treated by the press as totally normal and not at all a threat to the republic. As Matt Fuller recently wrote at The Daily Beast:
In the aftermath of Jan. 6, most of the media still hasn’t really figured out how to cover Republicans. I’d include myself in that statement. We mostly just pretend Jan. 6 didn’t happen, as if it’s totally normal to let Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) pontificate about gas prices or inflation while we ignore the lies he continues to spew about who’s actually responsible for the attack—or the role he played in undermining our democracy and endangering those of us who were at the Capitol that day.
It’s difficult to write a story in which you stop in every paragraph to note whether the particular Republican you’re mentioning returned to their chamber the night of Jan. 6, with blood still drying in the hallways, and voted to overturn the will of the people. But maybe we should.
I certainly look at those Republicans differently. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma—the old John Boehner ally who’d post up in Capitol hallways and deliver colorful quotes about House conservatives—isn’t so funny to me anymore. The Freedom Caucus members who I spent years obsessively following just aren’t as interesting now. Their legislative maneuvering, while as important and impactful as ever, has a dark shadow of sedition to it.
Many of these Republicans would have proudly overruled the voters. They are people who not only downplay the violence and the seriousness of the attack but celebrate rioters, who lionize the insurrectionists who paid the ultimate price for believing their lies.
Peter Navarro, a Trump White House official who now regularly does his remote interviews in the style of a pro wrestling promo, has recently taken to telling anybody who will listen about the plan he and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon concocted called the “Green Bay Sweep,” which had the intended goal of delaying certification of the votes in hopes of either having them sent back to states Trump lost that were controlled by Republican legislatures (where they could be awarded to Trump despite his loss) or to simply keep Biden from hitting the 270 mark and letting the House vote on it (a majority of House delegations were controlled by Republicans, meaning that the Republicans in the House would be able to vote to keep Trump in power).
The tragedy of January 6 is much, much, much bigger than the attack on the Capitol. I worry that’s getting lost in these discussions.
Please stay tuned for part two of this piece, to be published on Monday. If you like my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Needing 270 electoral votes to win, Biden tallied 306 to Trump’s 232. Biden received 51.3% of the vote compared to Trump’s 46.9% (81.3 million votes vs. 74.2 million votes). It was decisive. Remember that Trump had long insisted that his 304 to 227 Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a “landslide” (never mind that it was the closest election since 2004).
You’ll notice that these numbers do not add up to 538. This was because of faithless electors (one of Trump’s ended up going to Ron Paul, another went to John Kasich; one that was supposed to go to Clinton went to Bernie Sanders, three went to Colin Powell, and one went to Faith Spotted Eagle). Usually, this doesn’t present much of a problem because it’s rare that elections are this close, but it’s yet another one of the many ways that the U.S. Electoral College system is messed up.
And as has become a bit of a running theme throughout the past six years or so, those of us who expressed any sort of concern about this were told to stop being “hysterical.”
Later independent studies would find that Bush would have likely still won had the Supreme Court let the recount continued, though there’s no way to know for certain. In any case, it’s understandable that people would be concerned about the Supreme Court elbowing its way in to stop the counting of the votes (which was exactly what Trump called on the Supreme Court to do in 2020 as his lead in Pennsylvania started to slip away).
Even without the assault on the Capitol, it was still a coup. (Part 1 of 2)
This is an excellent piece and, frankly, terrifying to see how hard so many Rs were working against the democratic process, setting aside the insurrection itself. I look forward to part two.