What happened when some officials role-played a bigger, noisier rerun of January 6, 2021
Near the end of Donald Trump’s first and possibly only term as president, a fad took hold in the political class: live-action role-playing games.
In the summer of 2020, amid all the other weirdness of that year, a collection of academics, officials, and pundits called the Transition Integrity Project gamed out what they thought might happen if Trump refused to concede the election. A few months later, two Trumpier groups—the Claremont Institute and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF)—responded with a post-election exercise built on a rather different worldview. Trump’s exile from D.C. didn’t end the trend: This year some folks from the TPPF joined forces with members of the Heritage Foundation to imagine the outcome if President Joe Biden refuses to leave office. (I think we can safely say that events have overtaken that one.) And now we have a documentary, War Game, that has been playing in select theaters and starts streaming on various platforms today. Here a cast ranging from retired Gen. Wesley Clark to former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (DNL–N.D.) simulates a bigger, noisier January 6 where a chunk of the military sides with the rioters.
The scenario in War Game was devised by the Vet Voice Foundation, a group concerned about radicalization in the armed forces. Its dungeon masters sketched out a scenario where the 2024 election is contested, with a right-wing challenger accusing President John Hotham, played by former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, of cheating at the polls. Sympathetic D.C. guardsmen help protesters breach a security checkpoint outside the U.S. Capitol. A militant group called the Order of Columbus floods the internet with disinformation and organizes a takeover of the Arizona state legislature, where it holds lawmakers hostage. There are rumors of guardsmen firing on each other, and of crowds forming outside other statehouses.
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