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Incitement to Violence?
I want to respond to something that I’m encountering in various forums, this idea that the President incited the mob to violence.
I can find nothing in the President’s various comments that can plausibly be interpreted as a call to violence. Impassioned speech, unsubstantiated claims of fraud and victory, and an enthusiastic rallying of his supporters, I can find all of those things. But at no point does he call upon the people assembled to commit criminal acts.
(Rudy Giuliani is on shakier ground, I think. His choice of words was astoundingly poor; with all due respect to the man, I think he should have left the public eye years ago, and encourage him to do so now. I don’t know how his comments relate, in terms of timing and exposure, to the behavior of the small portion of the crowd that acted illegally, but I think he may well have exposed himself to serious and legitimate criticism. [Update: Or maybe not. I have to read more of what he said.])
But I can find nothing in the President’s words that any responsible adult would consider constitutes a call to violence.
This is important. The left would very much like to equate speech with violence, and to criminalize speech of which it doesn’t approve. This is a core thesis of Antifa, that violence in response to speech is justified when Antifa doesn’t approve of the speech. This is the “it’s okay to punch a Nazi” school of thought, and the justification for everything from Facebook and Twitter’s bald censorship of “wrong-think” to the shouting down of guest speakers at America’s premier universities. It’s wrong, it’s antithetical to essential American values, and it must be opposed.
Trump may well have been ham-handed, unwise, desperate, misguided, and simply wrong in his insistence that, absent fraud, he won the election in a landslide. All of that can be debated. But that does not constitute an incitement to violence, no matter how inelegant and undignified one considers his comments to be.
If someone can provide me examples of an actual incitement to violence by Trump, I’ll change my opinion. Otherwise, I encourage people to put respect for our freedom of expression ahead of their dislike for this President, and to stand for freedom as the higher good. Criticize him all you want, but don’t call for impeachment unless you want to make the argument that speech you find offensive constitutes a “high crime or misdemeanor.” Because the left would love to go there, and we shouldn’t be eager to give it our help.
Published in General
He didn’t call for specifics. He incited the violence. If this crowd had torched the Smithsonian for instance, it would have been the same thing. That they broke into the capital “to stop the steal” is actually more convicting.
I don’t take any joy in putting out my position above. I have been a Trump supporter for four years and have argued with NeverTrumpers until I have been blue in the face. But we don’t learn from our mistakes unless we’re honest with ourselves and our side. If this had been a Dem it would probably be more obvious to people here.
What I saw was a group of citizens who wanted to exercise their constitutional right to “petition for a redress of grievances” and a President who spoke to that exercise of a constitutional right. There was NO incitement there, no encouragement of the lawbreaking that did happen. When we start to accept the left’s characterization of these events, then we have drunk too much of the Kool-Aid they have been dispensing with fire hoses for the last 5 years. Some persons at the event did overstep legal bounds and what can be characterized as a relatively mild riot ensured. A block and a half away from the capital all was mostly normal and no one even knew what was happening. It in no way even starts to approach what the left is calling an insurrection. There never was any intent to overthrow the lawful government of the United States. Only to express the view that all conservatives were jobbed by the left during this election, and there has been no showing we weren’t. Was Trump his usual over-the-top self, yes. Should he have done it, probably not, but criminal? In no way. The thousands of incitements to violence of the left were all much worse over the last many years. We need to work to limit the suppression of free speech going on in this country else we will have none.
I agree.
And that, my friend, is an impeachable offense.
Honestly, I already knew that for several years, since that Mississippi primary.
It was a small and disparate mob and technically a riot, not an insurrection.
And his term isn’t up in 10 days.
Hopefully.
How about this: “But Brutus is an Honorable Man”?
Mark Antony never said a negative thing about Brutus, but the crowd picked up the understatement.
And we are going to impeach the President because Shakespeare?
Is that in the Constitution too?
Clearly? Clearly? Clear as the mud of an old grudge.
How poetic. ;)
And I happen to agree. If what Gary says were true, then Gary would be able to quote the President clearly abusing his authority. But I don’t think Gary can do that.
Once Bulwank comes up with a shallow rationalization, he’ll be sure to spam the link.
Now now. Let’s try to be civil.
Andrew McCarthy was Trump’s strongest defender during the first impeachment and Mueller Investigation. What does Andrew McCarthy say now?
“I do think the president has committed an impeachable offense, making a reckless speech that incited a throng on the mall, which foreseeably included an insurrectionist mob. These rioters ended up overwhelming security forces and storming the Capitol. They shut down a solemn constitutional proceeding, endangering the lives of the vice president and the people’s representatives. They ripped through the facility, causing not only significant property damage but grave injuries.”
…
“The president was utterly irresponsible in his demagoguery. He plainly intended for thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol to create political pressure on Vice President Pence and congressional Republicans — i.e., to induce them to take what would have been lawless procedural steps to invalidate electoral votes that states had cast for President-elect Biden. There is no evidence, though, much less proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that Trump intended to instigate the Battle of Capitol Hill. He did not want anyone to be physically injured, let alone killed.
“Yet the issue in impeachment is not criminal liability. As we extensively covered a year ago, impeachment concerns what Hamilton described as political offenses that call into question fitness for high public office. On that standard, the president’s incitement is indefensible, both for the undermining of our constitutional system that it promoted and the carnage it caused — however unintentionally. As someone who contended that the Ukraine kerfuffle was partisan theater masqueraded as impeachable offenses, I must say that this incident, to the contrary, is undeniably impeachable.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/impeachment-by-the-numbers/#slide-1
Of note, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey believes that Trump has committed impeachable offenses. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/09/politics/pat-toomey-trump-impeachable-offenses/index.html
Well, since you asked, here is an article from The Bulwark which calls for impeachment instead of the 25th Amendment. https://thebulwark.com/use-impeachment-not-the-25th-amendment-to-remove-trump/
McCarthy has been hard-core on Trump’s challenges to the election as well, so he appears to have “flipped.” But I still respect him. This, of course, will go overlooked.
Not questionable evidence. Not “insufficient” evidence. No evidence. None, Zippo, Nada.
Would that that would be enough to put this ridiculous charade to bed.
One should not be surprised that, when weasels are up for re-election in a marginal state, they will seek the low ground. That’s what weasels do, and such is the price of counting heads in the Senate. I’m interested to see if anyone of character says something similar. So far, no.
Gary, Andy voted for Trump in November. Was he right then, or is he right now?
I think he’s wrong now.
You know this gets me thinking again about the use of the word”liar”. For years I’ve thinking and wondering, Why don’t we call a lie a lie and a liar a liar in politics. it seems a reasonable thing to do.
And then it happened, and i was shocked. It was minutes after Trump’s 2016 inauguration, and Jake Tapper was interviewing Kellyanne Conway, and Tapper turned the subject to the size of the crowd, which Trump may have been exaggerating and the MSM was tersely disputing (as if it mattered) and Tapper asked or stated to Conway something like: But Trump is just lying about the size of the crowd.
Trump didn’t bring down or coarsen the level of discourse in the country, Tapper did. Now everyone in the Press, uses the L-word, it seems, daily. Funny that Tapper has lied for a living for four years now. I guess all democrats just don’t have the morality to resist lying. And now that it’s been made normal behavior they are accelerating their descent.
I can disagree. I think Scott Adams put it very succinctly when he asked if the government forming the perception that the election was stolen, and then not addressing it, and not allowing citizens to investigate it was a very serious thing.
And he went on to say, and I agree with him exactly, any protest is only successful if it makes people “uncomfortable”, and the level of discomfort should fit the initiating insult. And he said that the mostly peaceful (my words) demonstrators’ protests presented a properly fitting level of discomfort.
In this analysis, those in the Press who decried and those in the various governments who prevented the investigation of the alleged election fraud, are completely responsible for the protests, and its level of severity.
Not really, no. I wanted to see peaceful protests in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, and Oregon, but I didn’t see it. I was shocked and appalled.
The Capitol “riots” were incredibly tame by comparison. With the exception of the police officer shooting the protesting woman in cold blood.
One thing that has disturbed me in recent years has been the slowness of the justice system. The lawsuit against Mark Steyn is now going into its 9th year! I guess it really hit me a bit when I was younger with the O. J. Simpson case which took over 15 months. What does it matter if the electoral college votes are counted in January or in March the way it used to be done? Even if the Supreme Court were to hear a case, there would be no time for anything. The Durham Report would only be released if there were an endless string of Republican presidents — with a backbone. Like that is ever going to happen.
The court or legal system also punishes the lower and middle class folks which try to defend themselves. Corey Lewandowski had to spend $400,000 or so on lawyers for being loyal to Trump. The guy seems like a bit of a jerk, but that’s different than being a criminal. Besides there are a lot of jerk/fighters in politics. The political system actually probably needs a few jerks just to get a few things done. I live in something like the second-poorest Republican congressional district in the country. Where I come from, $400,000 might as well be 4 million dollars. It all seems like just another way to keep those of us from the poorer parts of the United States too scared to enter politics or to fight back.
That’s a hard truth, CG. Who needs socialism? We already live in a two-tier society within the “justice” system. Democrats and lefties versus everyone else.
Jonah Goldberg has lost his mind. Now pushing a conspiracy theory that the President knew about bombs. This . . . this is incitement:
Jonah Goldberg is very, very sick.
edit: Unless I am misunderstanding this tweet, in which case the ineffectiveness, leading to coarseness and rudeness throughout our society, of inter-personal communication, due to the use of Twitter, is just that much more apparent.
Don’t need to be to understand equal protection. Read the SCOTUS opinion of the Deray Mickkelson case. It is recent.
Well he’s obviously lost his mind when you put out nonsensical statements like that. Trump has said dumb things too Jonah, but weren’t you supposed to be an intellectual who was above that?
This just in: Jonah Goldberg joins with 9/11 truthers to condemn Presidents Bush and Trump! /s
TDS is a hell of a drug.
On a different subject the “I told you so” victory lap is annoying. I’m still waiting on someone- anyone- to quote Trumps call for violence for me.
How is this incitement? Personally, I don’t find this to be anymore inciting than President Trump’s words were. He’s not calling for violence. He’s simply calling for an investigation. Calling for an investigation, in my opinion, is nowhere near incitement – even if I disagree with the need for the investigation.