> indeed, the overwhelming majority of the ~10000 people in that march never set foot on the Capitol grounds.

That is true, which is why most people are not being charged with seditious conspiracy. But that doesn't mean there isn't a conspiracy. You're correct that he intoned some notions of peace, but I think you have to admit the totality of his message was pretty mixed. It's quite dire at times.

But it's been a year since Jan 6, so we have a lot more to go on to figure out what Trump actually wanted.

We know the morning of Jan 6, Mike Pence had told Trump that he was not going to decertify the election. That was his decision. Meaning, when Trump is at the ellipse wondering aloud "Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good of our country. And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.", Trump already knows what Pence is going to do.

Not long after, chants of "Hang Mike Pence" are heard in the halls of the breached Capitol, and this is televised across all networks. We know from people who were with him at this time, Trump was watching TV and rewinding it, wondering aloud "Look at all of the people fighting for me", while brushing off calls from his son, daughter, lawmakers, and other officials to send out something to quell the mob. He sends this message instead:

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

Video from the Capitol that day shows the chants to hang the VP intensifying as the crowd received that Tweet. I think this puts to rest any notion about the President's intent that day.

> Remember, Democrats formally objected to certifying results in 2000, 2004, and 2016

Notably, the 2000 objections were not meritless, yet were overruled by the loser of that contest. That I think should send a resounding message and example as to how electoral losses should be handled.

And anyway, the problem wasn't that there were objections on Jan 6. Objections are Constitutional and built into the process. They happen and there is a method to resolve them.

The problem was how the process was being used on Jan 6. Inside of the Capitol, the plan was to delay the proceeding as long as possible. Trump's lawyers wanted phony objections to 10 states, which would have been a 20+ hour delay. During this time, Trump's lawyer and probably the Chief of Staff were working overtime trying to get at least one state to decertify their results. This would have put renewed pressure on Pence to decertify the election and kick it to the House.

The crucial point here though is that the alleged fraud was a fiction at this point. Trump had already lost all his legal battles, all states had certified the results, the AG had said there was no evidence of fraud, the US Attorney in Georgia said he couldn't see any fraud... there was no basis for any of these objections whatsoever by Jan 6, let alone in 10 states!

> Look at the claims Hillary and the Democrats made about Russia interfering in the 2016 elections - polls showed that even in 2018, 2/3rds of Democratic voters believed that Russia literally tampered with vote counts

The problem here is that Trump's genesis was always suspect, and that suspicion has been proven legitimate, which guaranteed it would never be fully dealt with. The Republican-appointed special counsel found Russians did in fact interfere with the election, and the Republican Senate concurs and characterizes the events as follows:

It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era.

That's the conclusion of the Republican-led Senate Intel Committee's report [1], and the facts aren't even in question anymore. The problem is that this was never actually reckoned with. It was memory holed as "no collusion, no obstruction" and it's left a very real lingering doubt in people. While there was no changing of the votes by Russians, the Trump campaign did profit off the hacking of their rival, and then lied about their foreknowledge of the hack and dealings with the hackers, then covered it up after they were in power. Tolerance of that kind of behavior that should be a flashing warning sign as to why Jan 6 happened in the first place.

[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-sele...