The insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow the U.S. government on Wednesday built a gallows outside the Capitol Building, and they apparently intended to use it.
Armed with ziptie handcuffs, they went looking for Vice President Mike Pence, whom they had vowed to kill, and other lawmakers. Their beef with Pence? He “refused” to throw out Biden electoral votes and declare Trump the winner.
He doesn’t have such authority. It takes a very wild imagination to fantasize that the Constitution empowers a single person, the vice president, to overrule a national presidential election.
While many of the rioters were an aimless mob, there was an organized faction that “seemed to act with purpose and knew their way around the Capitol,” the Atlantic said (read article here). They were armed with rifles, shotguns, pipe bombs, and molotov cocktails.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether the insurrectionists planned “to take lawmakers hostage, or set up a kind of kangaroo court for the politicians they consider to be traitors to the MAGA cause,” the Atlantic quoted an expert on extremist groups. “[T]hose are ideas that are widely circulating in [far-right] circles.”
“A Reuters photographer on the scene said he heard at least three different rioters say they wanted to find and hang Pence, who supported certifying the results of the election,” the Atlantic said.
The mob gained entry to the Capitol Building relatively easily because of a weak police presence, despite advance warnings that a violent attempt would be made to stop the reading of electoral votes on January 6. Now, extremists are arming for another confrontation on January 20, but if they have a violent coup in mind, they’ll have their work cut out for them. This time they’ll be met by 6,000 National Guard troops in addition to a beefed-up police presence. The president-elect also will be protected by hundreds of Secret Service agents, some armed with machine guns.
So we won’t be using Madame Guillotine when we get to the revenge portion of this revolution?
Of course if things are bad the new President will be sworn in somewhere in the Capital building and televised. With corvid there just is not going to be the normal pomp and ceremony and maybe it should just be a small ceremony at a non descript location. That is probably what the Secret Service is pushing for. Then again maybe Biden wants to walk to the White House.