Yesterday, I watched a video from my Congressional representative, @RepJohnCurtis explaining his views regarding Trump's historic second impeachment vote.

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@RepJohnCurtis, a Republican, feels that Trump indeed holds culpability for the attack on the Capitol, but ultimately voted no on impeachment, instead favoring (along with new Utah representative @ElectBlakeMoore) a censuring measure of Trump.

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He ( @RepJohnCurtis) stated that for a serious step such as impeachment, he wanted to see more due process and a deeper investigation.

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My point today isn’t to argue the political merits of impeachment vs. censuring vs. anything else. @RepJohnCurtis, @ElectBlakeMoore, and all others have already voted. Trump has been impeached for a second time, and right or wrong, it’s a done deal.

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He (Trump) is on his way out in a few days. There will be a trial in the Senate and ultimately that will decide his long-term political fate.

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What I want to talk about is something else that @RepJohnCurtis mentioned. He emphasized closely analyzing Trump’s speech just prior to the attack on the Capitol.

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He ( @RepJohnCurtis) said he felt this was particularly important in determining the extent of the outgoing president’s culpability in the whole affair.

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I’ve heard this from others too. There is an intense focus on this speech specifically. Some Trump supporting friends have adamantly defended the outgoing president, saying he did nothing to incite what happened.

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In most cases, they point to the fact that he (Trump) did not explicitly state anything like: “Go to the Capitol, push past police, kill or hurt them if you have to, commit vandalism, and cause all sorts of destruction and mayhem. Go forth my minions!”

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Granted, he (Trump) did not use this or other similar, explicit verbiage.

However, I strongly believe that putting so much emphasis on this single speech is only looking at a tiny piece of the puzzle.

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Consider this - why was this crowd of tens of thousands (perhaps even hundreds of thousands) of protestors and Trump-supporters in Washington, DC on January 6th in the first place?

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Most of course, were there exercising their first amendment rights to peaceably assemble. Probably almost all were angry, but most of those didn’t participate personally in the actions at the Capitol.

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Yet all were summoned. They didn’t just happen to show up at the same place on the same day.

Specifically, they were summoned by Donald Trump.
Several pro-Trump groups organized protests and rallies in Washington on that day.

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The date (January 6) was specifically chosen after the electoral college voted on December 14th, because it was known that this was the day (as specified in the Constitution) that Congress would be affirming the electoral votes from each state.

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On December 20th, Trump gave his official endorsement and encouragement. His now suspended Twitter account said: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

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Later tweets and communications further urged his (Trump's) supporters to flock to DC. They were led to believe that this was necessary to stop President-Elect @JoeBiden from becoming our 46th President.

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For the two months following Trump’s electoral loss on November 3rd, he had constantly and explicitly refused to concede the election. He has beat the drum of “election fraud,” even after multiple audits and recounts confirmed his loss in key states.

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Dozens of lawsuits were thrown out on lack of evidence, yet the narrative persisted that the election had been “stolen” and that this was all a setup against him.

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His (Trump's) message wasn’t: “I have some concerns about the election’s integrity. I would like to ensure that these questions are answered to ensure that Vice President @JoeBiden in fact won before I make a concession.”

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From day one it has been “This election was rigged. This election was stolen. We won. We need to fight!”

And a lot of his supporters bought it.

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I bring this up because in normal circumstances, there are always those who are upset that their candidate doesn’t win.

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And there have been presidential elections that were far closer than this one - where a few votes in a single state (i.e. Florida in 2000) ended up deciding an entire election.

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But this anger was cultivated. This anger was nurtured. And this group was ultimately summoned to Washington, DC, at the express encouragement and behest of the outgoing president.

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What kind of people were willing to make the effort to take off work for the day (or week), and in many cases pay a lot to travel to another city?

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The most passionate of one’s supporters, that’s who. You are naturally going to get a self-selecting group of individuals that is willing to “go above and beyond” to demonstrate their support.

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This already indicates a group that is willing to risk and sacrifice some for their cause.

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In this case, it naturally summoned from among those Trump supporters who believed the election was “stolen” those who were so angry and worked up enough that they were willing to make this extra-credit effort.

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While again, even among this cultivated group, the majority of these did not physically enter the Capitol or go past other restricted areas, is it any surprise that among this group of angry Americans there were a number of them with a mob-mentality?

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Not as I understand human psychology and sociology.
Trump was the one who placed the order for this hornet’s nest. He had it delivered to the doorstep of Congress.

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Should we be surprised that some of those hornets were at that breaking point? Should we be surprised that it only took the merest of nudges for them to start stinging?

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We can look at the outgoing president’s speech on that day. But that isn’t even close to what makes him culpable. That is only one tiny piece of the puzzle we must consider. If we ignore the rest of the picture, we’re doing ourselves a great disservice.

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