The mob I see here is clearly armed with liberated riot shields, flag poles, sticks and billy clubs, and pepper spray / bear spray, and they are attempting to forcibly push their way into the congress building via mass mob shoving.
https://youtu.be/cJOgGsC0G9U?t=748 (30 minutes, probably NSFW) timestamp links to a coup attempt participant deploying bear spray against the police.
I would call that an armed violent action, if unorganized. Could they have overtaken the government (congress)? Maybe with a bit more time, weapons, violence or energy, yes.
> It is literally impossible to change result of the election by jumping on a desk in a Congress.
And if the coup attempt participants had managed to take 20 or more congresspeople hostage and beaten them with sticks until they passed a law that made Trump's term in office infinitely long? Sure, it wouldn't pass the sniff test or the Supreme Court, but it would be an attempt to overthrow the functioning of government.
You can't say it "wasn't an attempt" because they didn't succeed. I can say it was an attempt because a mob broke into the congress building, with some of the members intent on forcibly stopping the election results from being accepted (as has been seen in other arrested individuals and those who had zip tie cuffs).
'Giuliani tells Tuberville that McConnell wants to narrow the objections to just three states and explains that the Trump team wants to object to 10. “So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote, particularly after what McConnell did today.”'
https://thedispatch.com/p/giuliani-to-senator-try-to-just-sl...
It's not a huge leap to imagine a deadlock on certification leading to Trump declaring he'd just hold on to the presidency. That's basically been the whole game plan for months.
Most people who chant performative calls for violence don't normally, build a gallows and then go looking for the target. But sure, no doubt they had no intention of using violence, other than, you know, against all the police officers who were seriously injured or killed.
But fine, let the record show that it's remotely possible they were merely trying to overthrow a government by the threat of violence against Congress and the VP, and not actual violence.
> There's no possible way of overturning any election this way [...] It is literally impossible to change result of the election by jumping on a desk in a Congress.
The people involved were acting on the belief that Congress has the power to change the result of the election, and they were trying to force Congress to use that power. That's also why they were after Mike Pence.
And were they wrong? As a matter of strict constitutional interpretation, I think so, but as practical matter, there's no particular reason to think it couldn't work. They wanted to get a resolution out of Congress announcing that Congress had counted the electoral votes and Trump had won (or failing that, some sort of resolution purporting to delay the inauguration, re-run the election, etc.) How the nation would have responded to that I couldn't say. I don't think it would have worked, but who knows?
In any case, yes, this is one of the ways you can overturn an election. It's happened before; no doubt it will again. It didn't happen this time, but it's absurd to pretend it wasn't an attempt, however inept it may have been.
> means armed violent action
And how did Sicknick die again?
Attempt at what? Takeover of the power in the US? B-u-l-l-s-h-i-t.
> People were chanting "hang Mike Pence",
People chant a lot of shit. People were chanting "hang Trump" for four years, nobody ever called it an insurrection. Before that, they were chanting against Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. Nobody ever has been hanged. Pretending not to understand the difference between chanting slogans and actually hanging somebody is silly.
> And they did this, let's reiterate, in an attempt to overturn the election.
There's no possible way of overturning any election this way. It's like I point a finger at you and say "bang!" and you'd claim I tried to murder you with a gun. It is literally impossible to change result of the election by jumping on a desk in a Congress. It was an act of protest, that went out of the way and grew violent, but it is no more insurrection than pointing a finger is gun violence. Let's not mimic an idiot school principal that calls the police on a elementary schooler that shows the other kid a finger gun and complain about "gun violence". There were no attempt to overthrow anything because it's not possible to overthrow anything this way.
> But words have meaning, and the word "insurrection" means precisely this.
Nope, the word "insurrection" means armed violent action in order to overtake the government, and this is no more insurrection than finger gun is a mass shooting.