In Donald Trump’s first year in office, Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted that he had never “promoted or encouraged violence.” Even at the time, it was a difficult line to take seriously.
The Washington Post noted soon after that the claim was “laughable,” adding: “Even if you don’t believe Trump has technically incited violence (which he has been sued for), he clearly nodded toward violence at his campaign rallies. Sometimes it was veiled; other times it was unmistakable. Sometimes he was talking about self-defense, but it was clear he was advocating for a ‘form of violence.’”
Even Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas explained in 2016 that Trump had “a consistent pattern of inciting violence.”
While in office, Trump added to the pattern on too many occasions — culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was an insurrectionist riot the outgoing president helped incite.
It was against this backdrop that the Republican used his social media platform this week to promote a message from a pseudonymous contributor. The missive read:
“Then they will have to figure out how to fight 80,000,000 + it’s not going to happen again. People my age and old will physically fight for him this time. What we got to lose ? I’ll donate the rest of my time here on this planet to do it. And I know many many others who feel the same. They got my 6 and we Are Locked and LOADED.”
As a rule, Trump tends to rely on more oblique rhetoric. Last September, for example, while whining about investigations into his scandals, the former president wrote that he didn’t know “how much more our Country will be willing to withstand.” He used similar rhetoric in November. A month later, he added, “THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY AREN’T GOING TO TAKE IT MUCH LONGER.”
Around the same time, conservative host Hugh Hewitt raised the prospect of a possible criminal indictment. “I think if it happened, I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of…
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