Why would anyone say that? It wasn't a coup by definition and, even if it had been, neither the people you'd need to bribe/murder nor the records you'd need to burn and replace were present.
> there's no plausible way the people there would have seized power.
The sitting President was the one who attempted the coup. He didn't need to seize power -- he already held power. The objective of the insurrection on Jan 6 was to prevent the transfer of power, which they absolutely almost did.
> I'd call that a coup attempt. You might call it an insurrection. I think that's quibbling over semantics.
This seems like a good opportunity: since this scenario/though experiment is a product of your mind, you should have access to knowledge of whether it actually was a coup attempt (the people in question genuinely had the intent to overthrow the government, and a legitimate plan of sorts) - so, did they?
> In a coup, a leader with the support of the people is ousted by force.
Not necessarily. An unpopular leader can be even easier to overthrow, because the faction planning the coup has a higher chance of gaining popular support afterward. Or at least they can expect less resistance.
Of course, in reality, political and/or military leaders are often woefully bad at estimating how many people actually support them.
> No they're usually defined by military and government officials taking over institutions to overthrow the elected government.
No, a coup doesn't have to be by military and government officials (though they are usually best situated, and in any case were involved in the autocoup attempt of which the attack on the Capitol was a part—but neither the whole, the beginning, or necessarily even the end once it failed.)
And a coup attempt can (this specific subtype is called a self-coup, autocoup, or autogolpe) seek to irregularly extend the powers or the term of the current leadership, not overthrow anyone already in power, and this is what the one involving the 1/6 attack was.
And a coup attempt doesn't always involve taking over anything, in the same way a murder attempt doesn't always produce a dead body.
> Did we lose the Senate? What about the house? Do we have an enemy force occupying our capital? Are our nation’s leaders kidnapped? Are there insurgents fighting in the streets?
I see you understood the word “coup” but the “failed…attempt” surrounding that word.
Attempted murder doesn’t stop being a serious offense because no one died, and attempted coup doesn’t become a minor event because only a handful of people died and the attempt to improperly seize power by force failed.
Why would anyone say that? It wasn't a coup by definition and, even if it had been, neither the people you'd need to bribe/murder nor the records you'd need to burn and replace were present.
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