Their goal was to get him to walk back his claims on election fraud, they consider anything short of that to be incitement. It worked on other Republican congresspeople. But lets assume he did that...

"I take back everything I said about election fraud, please stop!" This would generate reactions like "Trump insincerely walks back claims of election fraud in a dog whistle his supporters understood as marching orders to continue." and "Trump just admitted he was lying the entire time and passively accepted that his lies started the riot."

Or just "this is not how you protest, go home!" This would generate reports like "His silence on election fraud claims is deafening. He knew his supporters would not stop while they continued to believe that the election was stolen."

It was a lose-lose situation. He's obviously not going to walk back credible fraud claims so they could go that route, but if he did they had an equally effective attack route. From a strictly strategic standpoint the media played their hand very well yesterday.