{"id":88965,"date":"2026-01-06T12:31:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T12:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=88965"},"modified":"2026-01-06T12:31:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T12:31:34","slug":"january-6-and-the-power-of-inaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/01\/06\/january-6-and-the-power-of-inaction\/","title":{"rendered":"January 6 and the Power of Inaction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We published this YouTube Short on the fifth anniversary of the events of January 6, 2021, this lunchtime.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"January 6 and the Price of Inaction\" width=\"422\" height=\"750\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nXM66Eh2DnI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the transcript:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>It's January 6, and it's five years since Donald Trump called his supporters to Washington and told them that the election had been stolen from them, that he was their rightful President, and he had been denied what was his.<\/p>\n<p>He told them to \" Fight like hell\", and he told them to march on the Capitol, and they did.<\/p>\n<p>I know there are disputes over the interpretation of this on the BBC, but the fact is that the Senate found that he was responsible for the claim that he made, that they should \"Fight like hell\", and that has had consequences.<\/p>\n<p>As Trump supporters marched on the Capitol, the lawmakers inside the building who feared for their lives, including his Vice-President, appealed to Trump for support for three hours, and he did nothing. And then, when the National Guard intervened without his command, he told his supporters that he was proud of them.<\/p>\n<p>He was indicted for this and rightly so, and he was found to be responsible.<\/p>\n<p>Even Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republicans, said he had to be held to account for what he did. But he hasn't been - not properly, because time intervened and time prevented his prosecution, and then the Supreme Court ordered that he could not be held responsible for an act that was undertaken by him in the course of his duties. How we could interpret that as calling upon people to prevent the way of democracy in the USA from being brought into force, I don't know, but that's what they implied, and now we see the consequences.<\/p>\n<p>We see Trump governing without restraint.<\/p>\n<p>We see the whole of the US democracy disempowered by a president who has contempt for it.<\/p>\n<p>We see that he is using his power to flout international law.<\/p>\n<p>We see that people are being abused.<\/p>\n<p>We see that the international order is being overthrown.<\/p>\n<p>This is the consequence of failing to hold a president to account.<\/p>\n<p>We are in an uncomfortable place, precisely because five years ago, nobody took the right action to hold Donald Trump for calling his supporters to overthrow democracy, which is precisely what he did.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>Comments\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p>When commenting, please take note of this blog\u2019s comment policy,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/about\/comments\/\">which is available here<\/a>. Contravening this policy will result in comments being deleted before or after initial publication at the editor\u2019s sole discretion and without explanation being required or offered.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We published this YouTube Short on the fifth anniversary of the events of January 6, 2021, this lunchtime. This is the transcript: It&#8217;s January 6,<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/01\/06\/january-6-and-the-power-of-inaction\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,106,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-politics","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88965"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88969,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88965\/revisions\/88969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}