After the Riot

What Was Trump Planning to Do?

Portuguese spinner, Fall River, Mass., 1916.

Let's look back for a moment to January 6 and say that Trump actually won the big battle on Capitol Hill. What would that look like? The ballots are not counted, possibly they go into a bonfire. Pence and Pelosi and Grassley are killed or captured. Many other members of the House and Senate are dead or in captivity. 

What does Trump do then? Declare martial law and announce that he will rule by emergency powers?

If he does that, what do the remaining power structures do? I'm talking about the armed forces, the FBI. The states, which have their own armies. The corporations. The list goes on.

I'm just wondering if, at that point - it would have been late in the day on January 6 - there was any plan at all for what to do next.  Or was there no plan? That's what happened in the conquest of Iraq - no plan for the occupation.

I think we need to publicly speculate about Trump's endgame. I think a lot of people assume he was just going to keep on being president, and everything else would look a lot like it looked last year. That in itself is not pretty, but there is a dynamic to these situations, and nobody is talking about it.

Maybe we'll even get lucky and find some evidence. We won't know if we don't start looking.

Photo credit: Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

See also A Home Invasion.