Because he was watching tv, duh
The questions around Trump’s encouragement or otherwise of the insurrection are boiling down to: was he evil or just stupid? Did he deliberately delay telling the insurrectionists to go home, or was he just having too much fun watching them on tv to get off his ass?
Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois who sits on the committee, underlined the laser-like focus of the investigation on Trump’s potential complicity.
Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, he said the key question now was: “What did the president know about 6 January leading up to 6 January?”
Kinzinger added that the panel wanted to know why Trump failed to take any action for almost three hours while the violence at the Capitol was unfolding on his TV screen. Was it a sign of weakness or complicity?
The answer is in the question – the violence at the Capitol was unfolding on his TV screen. He was watching. He was busy, dude. You don’t just stop watching a great show like that to do your job.
“It’s the difference between, was the president absolutely incompetent or a coward on 6 January when he didn’t do anything or did he know what was coming? That’s a difference between incompetence with your oath and possibly criminal.”
It will be very easy for his lawyers or just his press people to convince relevant parties that Trump is just too stupid and self-involved to get up off the couch and tell insurrectionists to stop.
…Which is why it is absolutely necessary to question him in person, he’s too vain to admit that he is stupid, and too stupid to weave through the questions with multiple admissions of guilt.
He certainly wasn’t a coward; he thinks that he is invincible. No, we know that he is driven almost completely by ego and vanity. He intentionally ignored his constitutional duty in order to sit there watching, and feeling like the big man on campus. As far as I am concerned, that’s criminal.
He said he would walk to the Capitol with his supporters, but did not. That part at least was cowardly. It’s also telling that he was not whisked out of the capital by his security team; they knew he was not in danger because he was not a target.
Convincing people he’s an incompetent moron should be easy, because that’s what he is. The only problem with that is when did ignorance of the law become an excuse?
James @2 I disagree, he has never displayed any courage about anything that I’ve ever seen. Bullies are cowards, and he’s a bully. But a criminal, absolutely. Trouble is, pampered, wealthy egotists aren’t subject to the same consequences as the rest of us. Crime?, yes. Punishment?, we’ll see.
twiliter@4, I didn’t say that he was being courageous, I said that in this case he was not being a coward. He wasn’t afraid of any repercussions from his inaction.
Maybe, he’s always been insulated from real world consequences. I think he’s an arrogant cream puff who would appear as the coward he is if it weren’t for his protected situation.
Are we sure he even knows that the little people aren’t actually living inside the TV?
Screechy Monkey can correct me if I get this wrong, but I believe the potential criminality that Trump and others are being investigated for this involves specific intent. A prosecutor would have to prove that Trump had formed the intent to do the illegal thing. It’s like all white collar crime, hard to prosecute. Little people crimes in contrast, you just have to do a thing that matches certain fact patterns and you’re screwed.