Republicans were saying it would all be fine, just ignore Trump’s tantrums, he doesn’t mean anything by them.

Those assurances were ridiculed at the time, and that ridicule was entirely vindicated Wednesday. As Congress began to accept the results of the electoral college, Trump supporters stormed the capitol, forcing both chambers to shut down as they were considering the first challenge to the results, from Arizona. Rioters clashed with police and forced their way into buildings and even the floor of Congress. There was broken glass. There was an armed standoff at the door of the House Chamber.

There was a woman shot and killed.

To be clear, this was something Trump and his allies flirted with repeatedly in the day and weeks before it happened — and indeed, not more than a couple hours prior. And the president also expressed approval for what he had seen shortly after the scenes subsided.

At a rally near the capitol earlier Wednesday, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani endorsed the idea of a “trial by combat” — an allusion to something being settled by physical violence rather than evidence. He cited supposed evidence of his baseless voter fraud claims but then turned to a method of justice that had no place for such things.

“If we’re wrong, we will be made fools of,” Giuliani said, despite courts having almost universally found his claims to be wrong. “But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. So let’s have trial by combat.”

Remember – that guy used to be New York’s top federal prosecutor.

Whatever Trump has personally said, his claims have led allies to more than flirt with the prospect of violence. Just this weekend, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), whose lawsuit on behalf of Trump was rejected by the Supreme Court, told Newsmax that violence was essentially what those court cases asked for.

“But if bottom line is, the court is saying: ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy’ — basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you got to go [to] the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM …” Gohmert said, referring to Black Lives Matter.

You got to – in order to overturn an election that your guy lost.