> If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters.
There were military personnel friendly to Trump among them.
> He shouldn't have said "now go home".
I may be confused on the timeline; wasn't that after members and electoral votes had been evacuated safely so the people overtly calling to execute the Speaker and VP, or otherwise plotting to capture, injure, or intimidate members, or destroy the electoral vote certificates to provide a pretext for their Congressional allies to resort to a vote-by-states in the absence of certified votes or to count the votes with selected states excluded had already failed?
Could be; I'm not sure. Still, at that point, saying "Go look in the House Office Building" (or wherever - I have no actual idea) would have been a better move for someone attempting an actual coup.
But a cynic could easily think that Trump could tell that sufficient force was arriving to stop the mob, and that cutting his losses was therefore his best option at that point, even if he were really trying to do a coup...
There were military personnel friendly to Trump among them.
> He shouldn't have said "now go home".
I may be confused on the timeline; wasn't that after members and electoral votes had been evacuated safely so the people overtly calling to execute the Speaker and VP, or otherwise plotting to capture, injure, or intimidate members, or destroy the electoral vote certificates to provide a pretext for their Congressional allies to resort to a vote-by-states in the absence of certified votes or to count the votes with selected states excluded had already failed?