The US House of Representatives said Monday it planned to charge President Donald Trump with incitement of insurrection this week.
The House moved quickly to …
The US House of Representatives said Monday it planned to charge President Donald Trump with incitement of insurrection this week. The House moved quickly to vote midweek on the impeachment of the president over his role in the violent breach of the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters on January 6. It was the second impeachment proceeding against Trump in less than a year. Fiona Hill was a key witness in the previous impeachment proceedings. Hill was Trump’s top Russia adviser from 2017 to 2019 and also served on the National Security Council. She told The World’s host Marco Werman that the idea to storm the Capitol didn’t come out of the blue. Marco Werman: Looking at the events of last week, what do you think President Trump was trying to do? Fiona Hill: A lot of people are saying, « Oh, it couldn’t possibly have been a coup. It didn’t succeed, the military wasn’t out on the streets, the president wasn’t using his formal powers. » Or « It just didn’t happen. You know, this was just a mob and an insurrection. » But it’s important to lock down all of these elements because — just because it didn’t have a high likelihood of succeeding in a classic coup fashion doesn’t mean it wasn’t an attempt and this wasn’t real. So, as I’m saying, we’re not out of the woods yet. One could imagine there could be factions of people within the military or veterans, which we’ve already seen, not just all of the right-wing and other militias that have been taking this stand in support of the president. That’s when it gets incredibly dangerous. We’ve seen a slow-rolling attempt. It wasn’t just a one-off on January 6th. It’s been building up for quite some time. And we’ve got a lot of concerns about what might happen outside of the presidency once we get past the inauguration. And then there’s also a lot of worries about the threats, possible threats to the inauguration itself. Trump supporters outside the Capitol building, January 6, 2021. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images You’ve used the phrase « soft civil war » to describe the US right now.
