Three hours and seventeen minutes.
If you have any doubt Donald Trump INTENDED for violent insurrectionists to attack the Capitol Wednesday, meditate on 3:17 instead.
That’s the time between the beginning of thesiege and the Trump's 4:17 ordering everyone to go home.
/1

Maybe you believe you can argue away Trump's rally words.
Maybe you’re like Mick Mulvaney, and you can still pretend to be “shocked” anybody took Trump literally.
But you can't argue away 3:17.
(I call bullshit “We didn’t know they’d take us literally," btw)
/2
Ask yourself: How did it take a President 3:17 to ask a group of his own followers to stop attacking the Capitol?
What does that say about HIM?
What does that say about his intentions?
/3
The deafening silence of that 3:17 minutes is all the evidence you need that Donald Trump intended to incite insurrection and violence against the United States. It should be an exhibit in the impeachment against him.
/4
The facts are these:
1. 1 pm, first rioters attempt a breech at the Capitol.
2. 1:30 pm, there are reports of lockdowns at many Federal Buildings, due to confirmed pipe bombs. That moment SHOULD HAVE BEEN enough to push the President to say to everyone “please go home.”
/5
3. Trump *does* tweet a weak “CYA” tweet at 2:30, asking support for Capitol Police. He does NOT tell rioters to stop. (Remember: He's watching live. He has been informed of bombs and lockdowns,he knows there is a mob breeching the Capitol, and that the VP is in danger.
/6
4. The NYT's reports (2:40)Trump aides are imploring him to make a stronger statement. It will be more than 1:30 MORE hours until he does.
5. Congressional leaders, pundits, and even Joe Biden (at 4:05) go on TV to demands Trump call for an end to the siege.
/7
6. FINALLY. At 4:17…3:17 after the first attempt at breech, 2:30 since the pipe bombs were found, TWO HOURS into the actual take over, Trump puts out a video asking everyone to go home.
Even this, of course, was weak, as he told the insurrectionists that “we love you.”
/8
7. At 6, Trump tweets:
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long...”
/9
Stop parsing his rally speech, and defending him because of it. Pull your head out, and look at the big picture.
Remember that —as far back as 2015— Donald Trump has incited people to violence.
If you’ve forgotten, TIME has a video of many examples:
https://t.co/EJxZE36Deo

/10
During the 2016 campaign, Trump regularly called for his supports to “punch them the face,” or “rough them up a little,” or suggested that in the “old days” violence was allowed against dissent. He promised to pay the legal fees of anybody who was arrested.
/11
Wonder if he’ll pay the legal fees for those who murdered the Brian Sicknick?
Friends: Donald Trump has been cultivating violence among his followers for FOUR YEARS.
/12
You don’t have to parse his words at the rally. You don’t have to look for a smoking gun there, because by that moment there’s already a raging fire. That fire was already stoked, nursed, and curated by Donald Trump for FOUR YEARS.
/13
Donald Trump didn’t have to literally say “Walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and try to kill Mike Pence,” because he’s gaslit his followers for four years already.
They knew what he wanted.
And they did it.
/14
If somehow you’re still defending Donald Trump and his actions…go back and meditate on that 3:17.
Because THAT cannot be explained away.

3:17 is “Exhibit A” of Donald Trump’s treason against the United States of America.

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