Many top political figures are converging on a stunning consensus: President Donald Trump personally incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, leaving four dead and an indelible scar on American democracy. Those assessments are coming not just from Trump’s political opponents, but also from members of his own party and even former members of his administration.
They include Gen. James Mattis, Trump’s first secretary of defense, who said last night that the “effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule…was fomented by Mr. Trump.” Gen. Joseph Dunford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, also laid blame on the President. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney directly blamed Trump for last night’s events, and Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois this morning called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which gives the Vice President and the cabinet the power to remove an unfit President.
Trump’s statements leading up to and during the storming of the Capitol building, however, did not include explicit calls for a violent attack on America’s democratic institutions. Instead, those laying blame on Trump are pointing in part to rhetoric that agitated his followers with conspiratorial lies and instilled a sense of imminent doom—while relying on them to make the final decision to act. This is a version of the “stochastic terrorism” tactics common to authoritarian leaders around the world.
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