> plainly called for peaceful protest and spoke against violence that day, yet they showed none of that during the "trials".

If you believe this is what Jan 6 was about, you didn't pay attention to what the Committee found.

In fact it was an administrative coup first, which involved various state GOP parties, various GOP House Reps (Biggs, Gosar, Greene, and Jordan among them), various GOP Senators (Johnson and Cruz among them), the White House (President, Vice President, Chief of Staff, and various lawyers including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell). It was a conspiracy to commit fraud at the highest levels of the government, and the Committee lays it all out.

Trump knew he lost the election very early on, but wanted to stay in power nonetheless. He admits this to many advisors and the Jan6 committee proves this through under-oath testimony which is not hearsay. They've released the transcripts, you can read them for yourself.

John Eastman comes to him with a plan. This was the coup plot he called the "Green Bay Sweep":

- Forge state certificates of the vote electing Trump, transmit them to the VP. This is illegal.

- Have senators and house members object to real certificates of the vote electing Biden. This is legal

- Have VP toss out real certificates. He does not have the power to do this.

- These contests start a clock, that when it runs out, if a President Elect is not certified, it goes to state delegations for a majority vote. Republicans controlled the majority of state delegations at the time, so they would have installed Trump despite him losing the popular and electoral college votes.

- The next step would probably be the Democrats would sue, it would make it to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS at that point likely wouldn't have taken the case, citing separation of powers (Constitution makes clear the only way to remove POTUS is impeachment or 25th amendment. SCOTUS has no power to do so, and how would they enforce it anyway?). DOJ wouldn't prosecute anyone because it would be controlled by Trump. This would have effectively ended democracy in America.

BTW that speech in question? Why did he need everyone there on Jan6? To pressure Pence. He was the key to the whole thing, as he was tasked with overstepping his clear duties as VP at the Jan6 vote counting ceremony, and in doing so would have violated the Constitution. But in the days leading up to Jan6, Pence made clear to Trump that he was going to do the right thing, and that would have been the end of Trump's administrative coup plot. That's where the insurrection comes in.

The Jan6 committee found that Trump knew the audience were armed. He instructed his SS to stop taking their weapons. He told the audience to go to the Capitol and "fight like hell". He told them there was a massive fraud and the election was stole, and the rules are very different in those circumstances. He was preceded by his lawyer, who told the audience that a "trial by combat" was in order. He instructed them to go to the Capitol to obstruct the vote count ("stop the steal"), which was exactly what his administrative coup plot required.

And they did. They did everything Trump wanted, and he played his part by sitting back and letting it happen, instead of doing, well.... anything. Well, aside from further inciting the mob over Twitter as he watched them attack the Capitol on TV. He did do that.

It would have worked too if it wasn't for two things:

1. Pence didn't leave the Capitol.

2. McConnell/Pelosi reconvened the Senate/House and they worked through the night to certify Biden as President Elect.

If those two things hadn't happened, Trump's plan (really Eastman's) could have very well worked, and we'd be living in a very different country right now.

That is why people don't like Trump -- because he's the kind of person (an authoritarian wannabe dictator) who worked to make that happen. We were saying so the whole time, yet people somehow still don't see it even after an attempted coup, only because he said the word "peaceful" once in an otherwise bloodthirsty and completely fraudulent series of speeches. There was no voter fraud and Trump knew that. Lying to a mob you know is armed that they are being defrauded, and telling them what to do about it, is incitement.

And if he gets elected again, he'll do it again except next time he'll have the benefit of experience; failed insurrections usually beget successful ones if the insurrectionists are left unprosecuted and free to try again.