But Did He “Incite”?

Nicholas Provenzo on those defending Trump against the charges of insurrection:

Some are claiming that Trump never actually called for his followers to unleash violence upon Congress. It’s interesting to read through this pro-Trump message board instrumental in the preplanned riot to see how quite the opposite was the case and that Trump’s followers clearly believed he sought for them to unleash mayhem in light of his sundry claims of election fraud.

“He can’t exactly openly tell you to revolt. … This is the closest he’ll ever get,” writes one. “Trumps (sic) tweet said ‘Wild’ implying wild West in my mind,” wrote another. “I think this is what Trump expects,” wrote a third. “Do not allow congress to certify a fraudulent election and get away with and don’t allow any government forces to intimidate us.”

And here’s this gem fomenting violent insurrection.

“When the Rule of Law is broken, we fall back to the next level, the Rule of War (don’t kill non-combatants if you can avoid it, don’t bomb hospitals or ambulances or shoot medics, etc). We appear to be there now. If that breaks, we fall down the the (sic) Rule of Force (might makes right).”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

By itself, this doesn’t demonstrate that Trump was encouraging his followers to revolt, only that they interpreted what he was saying as instructing them to revolt. Given their absurd lack of objectivity and their ability to read anything they want into the most innocuous of things, nothing Trump could have said would have made them interpret his instructions any differently.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that 1) Trump was in a position to know that this was going on, 2) that as the head of law enforcement he was responsible for knowing what was going on, 3) he did nothing whatever to tell them to do otherwise or to stop it, and 4) in the context of all that, he told his followers to march on Congress and to fight.

Finally, in a broader sense, over the long term he had been responsible for the lies and vilification that wound people up into a state where they would even consider doing something like this.