How did Donald Trump incite a coup attempt?

Abstract

On 6 January 2021, supporters of Donald Trump after a Trump rally stormed the Capitol. This article asks: How Did Donald Trump incite a coup attempt? The presented research analyses parts of a dataset consisting of Trump’s most recent 8,736 tweets as well as Trump’s speech given at the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol. The article shows how Trump’s speech and use of Twitter triggered violence and that the coup was the consequence of a long chain of events that unfolded as a consequence of Trump’s authoritarian ideology, personality, and practices.