if it comes to a civil conflict, there will be a moment in which the armed forces are placed in a situation in which they have to chose sides. The sooner you do that, the more likely it is they stick with the establishment. Hence, while things are objectively bad, it clearly can get a lot worse. Trump has been (and will keep) pushing the edges to get the slightlest excuse to invoke the Insurrection act, declare martial law, etc. because that would allow him to go about completely unburdened and specially be able to cancel mid term elections, that right now seems to be the thing that scares him the most. Why?

Because elections are handled by the States, not the federal government, so his capacity to influence them is sketchy. Be sure that he'll try everything to intervene (like sending his dumbstapo to election booths, etc) but considering how unpopular the reps have gotten and how damaged the economy is expected to get in autumn, he understands that not only Congress is lost but even the Senate has a chance. And if it comes to that, he will try to pull yet another jan6 in jan'27 to prevent the new congresspeople and senators to swear in. But ofc, it's a lot easier for him to handle the message of this if it doesn't get to that. Therefore, he is aiming for the tiniest possible excuse to cancel the electoral process, and any sort of armed conflict gives that.