There were three views: that he must, as fast as possible, say something—it was getting serious (though no one yet was seeing this as the defining moments of his presidency); his view, that he should say nothing—it was not his fault or responsibility, and he certainly didn’t want to give a speech that might imply it was; and, lastly, that anything he said, instead of helping to address the problem, might well, as it did when he was forced to make a speech condemning the racist protestors in Charlottesville, make matters much worse.

After Charlottesville, something of a dress rehearsal for the Capitol onslaught, Jared and Ivanka had urged a conciliatory, kinder-gentler approach to the president, but a furious Trump had broken his bonds with them and made common cause with the Charlottesville attackers—“very fine people on both sides.”

This now was a vast multiple of Charlottesville. Or at least it was starting to sink in that this is where they were.

Meadows, who had come into the chief of staff job seeing himself as an especially communication-gifted politician, blaming much of the Trump woes on the White House’s dysfunctional comms shop and vowing to get it into shape, seemed uniquely paralyzed—trying to answer both to Trump and to the real world—just at the moment when the demands to hear from the president were highest.

Aides put in front of the president two suggested tweets, written in Trump’s voice, that they hoped he might accept:

Bad apples, like ANTIFA or other crazed leftists, infiltrated today’s peaceful protest over the fraudulent vote count. Violence is never acceptable! MAGA supporters embrace our police and the rule of law and should leave the Capitol now!

The fake news media who encouraged this summer’s violent and radical riots are now trying to blame peaceful and innocent MAGA supporters for violent actions. This isn’t who we are! Our people should head home and let the criminals suffer the consequences!

He refused them or ignored them (other than Dan Scavino, Trump didn’t like anyone else writing his tweets).

The challenge now became how to use Trump’s own arguments to convince him that he had to do something—what passed for the Socratic method in the Trump White House. He had often said what he needed to say, so just say it again: He and the Republican Party represented law and order, so how could he not speak out about lawlessness? He should just urge his people, the good people, to go home and leave the bad people.

Still, he did not see the necessity of speaking out. It wasn’t as bad as the media were saying it was. People were saying it was bad just to blame it on him. It took thirty-five minutes from his “Stay Peaceful” tweet to get him to go further—with Scavino as the author: