Didn't the violence start while he was still talking? It doesn't make sense that people would leave the rally before it was over just to storm the castle.
Why not? It’s not like Trump’s speech was the first time he had anything to say about the election. This didn’t happen overnight.
I thought these were the true believers who would hang on his every word and not want to miss a thing. It just doesn't make any sense. I mean, if he was sending out coded messages, they would certainly want to make sure they got all of them. Once he said to do it peacefully, that surely was a code word to wait for the end. Didn't you get the memo?
I guess they just had the itch to go kill cops instead of getting the final blessing from cult leader.
Coded messages? Yeah, he’d been sending the message for months that if you don’t do something for him, everything you know and love will end.
Something? And you think that equates to "sending a mob to attack the capitol"? Here's where that goes out the window. He never told anyone to go kill somebody, burn something, tear something down, etc. He wanted people riled up, he wanted protest, that's clear. He also said to do it peacefully. This reminds me of the idiots who claimed W allowed 9/11 to happen because one warning said Bin Laden wanted to attack the US. You can't seize on a vague generality and claim it gives specific instruction. "I'm going to do something bad to you" is not the same as, "I'm going to kill your dog on the 13th of next month".
Saying peaceful once in his rambling stream of consciousness speech does not override the very fact that he summoned these people to Washington on that specific day at that specific time. Do you think they were unaware of what was going on in the Capitol?
Of course they were aware of what was going on. The bottom line remains, he didn't tell them to storm the castle, in fact, the most explicit direction he gave was to protest peacefully. The fact that the violence started before the speech was over tells us that there were other people intent on doing damage that were not involved in the speech.
See, when the explicit direction is to be peaceful, and the vague generality is that he's upset at something, you have a hard case to make that he was inciting anyone to violence. I know the narrative was in place long ago, but you have to go by what he actually said, not what the hate merchants claim he said.