Trump inciting violence is nothing new
The public has long been accustomed to Donald Trump saying outrageous things, even when he appears to encourage political violence. It’s almost as if his aggrieved and menacing rhetoric has become a normal part of American politics.
Zany: I’ve said this before, but since nobody reads my content, this is probably the first time you are reading my commentary (Hi! ✌️). Trump is a mob boss. How does that saying go? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck? I think I have too many “if qualifiers” there, but you get my point (Just like you get what I mean by “if qualifiers” since I just made that term up ?). He has loyal people under him who will do anything for him (like Michael Cohen in the past, and now the long red-tie goon squad in Congress). He doesn’t have to tell them to do anything, he just mentions something he wishes would happen and they know it’s an order. His followers are the same way—they interpret his angry “truths” ranting about someone attacking him, and they go and “take care” of that person; otherwise known as stochastic terrorism.
Trump loves dictators because he wants to be one. He fantasizes about walking in front of the White House with the entire military standing at attention… little kids waving pom-poms… a stadium full of adoring citizens cheering. I guarantee he was dying inside when his two besties got together without him and did what he fantasizes about.
He had Viktor Orbán visit him at Mar-a-Lago (to pick up classified documents he hid from the FBI? Just sayin’… ) which is odd in itself. A foreign leader visiting a former President’s home? Also seen entering Mar-a-Lago that day was a member of the Heritage Foundation and co-author of Project 2025. What I’m about to say wasn’t reported and there’s no proof, but you have to wonder if Orbán was there to lay out his guide to taking over a democracy since he has accomplished it in Hungary.
Trump would love nothing more than to have his own personal army to fight for him (January 6th) and win the 2024 election so he can take a permanent seat on his throne.
Now back to your regularly scheduled reading.
This normalizing effect is no accident; research shows it’s the result of a strategy utilized by autocrats. Ever since Trump was president, his approach to messaging has included a method of incitement known as stochastic terrorism. He frequently uses inflammatory and dehumanizing language that elicits rage against political “enemies” among his extremist supporters—yet his rhetoric is always deliberately ambiguous enough to deny that he inspired any subsequent acts of violence.
Exhibit A for how this works: Demonize a political adversary as “sick” and “crazy” and responsible for national demise—as Trump and his allies long did to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—and eventually some troubled person may stalk her with a hammer and zip ties and brutally attack her husband. Republicans in thrall to Trump then help him dodge blame by dismissing the violence with conspiracy theories and mockery. Trump further reinforces these effects by telling a crowd of roaring fans he thinks Pelosi is an “animal.”
Demagoguery in politics is as old as the republic, but no president has ever engaged in a campaign of incitement against Americans like Trump has. It has worked on individuals and mobs, the latter most infamously when Trump paved the way for the January 6 insurrection. After the 2020 election, I was among the first to report on this campaign of terrorism by the freshly defeated president, about three weeks and then just a few hours before the attack on the US Capitol. Pelosi’s name was on the lips of the armed and violent Trump extremists there, too. (It’s also worth reiterating that use of the term terrorism in this context comes from a bipartisan group of leading national security experts, as I reported back then.)
