Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession. Trump posted a picture of himself holding a baseball bat, right next to a picture of DA Bragg.
Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Nehamas and Alyce McFadden at NYT:
Former President Donald J. Trump had a lot to say on the first day of the fraud trial against him and his company. Speaking to reporters at a Manhattan courthouse on Monday, he dismissed the judge as a “rogue” justice and said he did not “think the people of this country are going to stand for it.” And he focused on the official who filed the lawsuit against him, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.
“This is a disgrace,” he said, “and you ought to go after this attorney general.”
The remark urging people to “go after” a top elected official in New York, by a former president whose invective has become a familiar backdrop of American life, was part of a pattern of increasingly sharp language from Mr. Trump.
Days earlier, he told hundreds of Republican activists in California that shoplifters should be shot. Not long before that, he insinuated that the military general he personally appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed for treason.
No one served longer as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff than retired general John Kelly. So when he confirmed to CNN this week that the former president had made all manner of wildly disparaging comments about military members and veterans, he made waves.
But tucked away in Kelly’s wide-ranging yet sharp denunciation of his former boss — not an afterthought, surely, but not the headline-grabber — was a stark warning about Trump’s public attacks on anyone he thinks has crossed him personally, professionally, or politically.
When the former president accused the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, of treason and suggested he should have been put to death, he did so “in expectation that someone will take action,” Kelly told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a written statement.
Violence is Trump's brand. Inciting violence is central to his political project - it's how he got his Jan 6 army. It's why he kicked off his campaign at the Waco, TX extremist pilgrimage site and why he visited a gun shop. My Lucid essay: https://t.co/4cbY3xMVdc
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) October 6, 2023
