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Let's be clear on something: the Jan 6. insurrection was NOT Donald Trump's only attempt to retain his hold on power. It was the culmination of years of (luckily, mostly incompetent) attempts to corrupt the 2020 election. 1/12
First, he tried to use the power of his office to pressure a foreign government to discredit the person he perceived to be the most likely to beat him, Joe Biden. 2/12
When that failed, he tried to make voting harder, especially voting by mail. (And: He did this during a pandemic. We still don't know how many additional deaths from Covid were caused by in-person voting.) 3/12
When that failed, and it became clear he'd lost, he pressed his case in the courts, losing 60-odd lawsuits. 4/12
When the lawsuits failed, he called up election officials in various states and pressured and threatened them to "find" thousands of new votes for him. 5/12
When that failed, he pressured members of Congress to object to the votes in their own states -- the very ballots that had resulted in *their* election! -- and claim, somehow, that they were fraudulent. 6/12
And when it became clear that wasn't going to be enough, he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to somehow cancel the election result and call for a "revote." 7/12
When that didn't work, as his last resort, he summoned his fringiest and most violent supporters to DC, told them again the election was "rigged" and a "theft," and directed them to march on Congress, to "fight" and "be strong." 8/12
And that's when and why a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol: to violently coerce pressure "weak" Republicans into unlawfully overturning the result of a free and fair election and reinstalling defeated loser Donald Trump. 9/12
While only a tiny fraction of Trump's supporters invaded the Capitol building, a majority of the GOP believes the hallucination that the election was a fraud. Nearly half think the invasion of the Capitol was fine. 10/12
How does our democracy come back from this? Only by telling the truth and holding the liars accountable. That starts with impeaching, convicting, and shunning Donald Trump. 11/12
We need to expel the lie of election fraud from our body politic. Because what if the next demagogue is actually competent? 12/12
