Remember January 6th!
True to form, the former president set out to rally his foot soldiers by branding Thursday’s 37-count federal indictment against him, for his actions, as an attack on them. That is, to personalize it.
“In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,” Donald Trump told the convention of Georgia Republicans in Columbus, Ga. on Saturday.
Right. And I’m still waiting for Barack Obama’s jack-booted thugs to kick in my door and confiscate my guns, as I was promised over a decade ago.
The indictment is “ridiculous and baseless,” the most “horrific” abuse of power “in the history of our country,” so “many people have said,” Trump droned. “The Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice” has engaged in “vicious persecution,” a “travesty of justice.”
Blah, blah, blah.
“I will prevent World War III. … Without me, it will happen,” Trump told them.
The problem ahead is that Trump’s “fool me twice” Republican base is lining up once again to take seriously that only the man who stored nuclear secrets in a ballroom and a bathroom can save them. The subtext, of course, is Trump’s plea for them to save him.
The New York Times reports that experts fret that the inhabitants of MAGAstan will once again take to the streets and commit violence in Trump’s name:
Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be “wild.”
The former president alerted the public to the indictment on Thursday evening in posts on his social media platform, attacking the Justice Department and calling the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.”
“Eye for an eye,” wrote Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, in a post on Twitter on Friday. His warning came shortly before the special counsel in the case, Jack Smith, spoke to the public for the first time since he took over the investigation of Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents.
On Instagram, Mr. Trump’s eldest son’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, posted a photo of the former president with the words, “Retribution Is Coming,” in all capital letters.
Arizona’s imaginary governor, Kari Lake, spoke to the Georgia convention. She issued a threat against “Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media.”
Lake told the cheering crowd, “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”
She added: “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”
This could again go beyond fiery boasts. It did on Jan. 6. It did in Oklahoma City.