On Friday, taking to twitter, cybersecurity expert Matt Tait (who goes by the name Pwn All The Things on Twitter) tore into conservative analyst Noah Rothman for dismissing the efforts by former President Donald Trump's inner circle to overturn the 2020 election as "more like a harebrained scheme that evolved in response to obstacles than a premeditated plot to overturn the election."
"All coups that fail look ridiculous in hindsight," wrote Tait. "Every one of them."
The key point, argued Tait, is to think about what would have happened if the plan had succeeded. "What would happen in the country, as the public are told their leader is the person they voted out? And how would those riots be suppressed?" he wrote.
"And the second question is whether they were serious about pursuing that goal," continued Tait. "The answer is 'lots of violence' and 'duh, yes'. It was a violent coup. It failed, but it's easy to fall into the trap that it's failure means it was something less than it was."
IN OTHER NEWS: Trump is a domestic enemy. Treat him like one.
\u201cThe easiest way to understand the magnitude and violence of the scheme is to ask two questions in order:\u201d— Pwn All The Things (@Pwn All The Things) 1655467887
\u201cAnd the second question is whether they were serious about pursuing that goal.\n\nThe answer is "lots of violence" and "duh, yes".\n\nIt was a violent coup. It failed, but it's easy to fall into the trap that it's failure means it was something less than it was.\u201d— Pwn All The Things (@Pwn All The Things) 1655467887
\u201cThere is no doubt that had they been successful that there would have been widespread violence in every city in the nation, and they were OK with that, because their plan was then to use the illegitimately obtained armed power of the state to suppress it.\u201d— Pwn All The Things (@Pwn All The Things) 1655467887
\u201cPart of the reason they always look absurd is they rely on lining up intraelite power structures that are relatively opaque and fickle and all of whom need to make enormously high-stakes bets in the same direction to pull it off.\u201d— Pwn All The Things (@Pwn All The Things) 1655467887
\u201cBut that's the nature of coups. If the conspirators line up their dominoes correctly, they take power, and if they don't, everyone points and laughs at the two elderly generals and a would-be dictator with a plan that was never gonna work. But no less a coup because it failed.\u201d— Pwn All The Things (@Pwn All The Things) 1655467887
The public January 6 hearings in the House have revealed several new incriminating details about the plans of Trump's team to try to overthrow the results of the election.
Among those revelations are that Trump's "coup memo" lawyer, John Eastman, knew what he was proposing was illegal and simply trusted the Supreme Court would never take up the question — something legal experts have suggested exposes him to deep criminal jeopardy.
