Timing doesn't line up for Trump to have incited violence at the Capitol
Timing doesn't line up for Trump to have incited violence at the Capitol
Democrats are calling for another impeachment of President Donald Trump. According to The Hill:
Trump has been widely condemned by lawmakers and global leaders for stoking tensions after he encouraged his supporters at a Wednesday rally in Washington, D.C., to march to the Capitol and protest against Congress's certification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.
Following Trump's remarks, a mob of his supporters breached Capitol security, broke windows, vandalized lawmakers' offices and temporarily delayed Congress carrying out the certification of election results.
Trump's speech can be seen here courtesy of NTD. The speech lasted about 1 hour and 12 minutes. At 18:10 into the video, Trump says, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol Building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." The Hill omitted that quote from its article, which is consistent with the rest of the mainstream media's coverage of the speech. In this article by ABC News, a full transcript of the speech is provided. However, in the first part of the article, in which the speech is described, this quote is omitted, and other quotes from the speech are given that lead the reader to conclude that Trump was inciting the crowd to violence. The best video of the entire event before the lawbreaking began is from Right Side Broadcasting Network, which shows the crowd and the stage and loudspeaker system.
To the best of my knowledge, neither the Democrats calling for Trump's impeachment nor the mainstream media have specifically told us who was incited to break into the Capitol by Trump's speech. The speech began at noon Eastern time on January 6, 2021, as seen from the time stamp on this video broadcast of the speech on C-SPAN2. Given the speech's length of about 1 hour and 12 minutes, it ended at about 1:12 P.M. Eastern Standard Time (EST).
As noted in the ABC News article, Trump's speech was delivered from the Ellipse across the street from the south lawn of the White House. From the location of the speech to the Capitol is a little more than a mile and a half.
According to tweets by Washington Post reporters, barricades were first breached at the Capitol at about 1:00 P.M. EST. Post reporter Rebecca Tan tweeted this video at 1:00 P.M. The tweet was retweeted by Post reporter Mike DeBonis at 1:06 P.M. Note that the time stamp on tweets is based on the location of the person viewing the tweet, as explained in this article in Adweek.
Based on this information, it appears that the breakdown of the barricades began at least 12 minutes before Trump's speech ended, by people who were over a mile and a half away from Trump. Although the loudspeaker system was massive, it is doubtful that the people bringing down the barricades could hear Trump from the loudspeaker system. Extremely vivid videos of the prelude to and a breach of barricades and entry into the Capitol Building are here and here on a YouTube channel that identifies "independent photojournalist Jon Farina" as the videographer. It does not appear that people in the crowd was listening to Trump's speech over their phones. The phones are mostly seen when being used to take pictures and videos. The videos show plenty of faces of people who should be arrested for defying the law. But where is the evidence that they were incited to do it by Trump's speech?
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