Donald Trump is going to get someone killed

Just in the last few days, a candidate for president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has called for the death of an active-duty four-star officer, General Mark Milley, for alleged treason.  He has threatened, if elected, to investigate the media company Comcast, with its news outlets, NBC News and MSNBC, for “Country Threatening Treason” (caps in original Truth Social post).  In Cassidy Hutchinson’s new book, “Enough,” published by Simon and Schuster today, she describes listening to a screaming match in the Oval Office on Jan. 6, 2021, during the insurrection at the Capitol, when Trump appeared to endorse the hanging of Vice President Pence.  In another conversation witnessed by Ms. Hutchinson, Trump the same day was described by his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as refusing to do anything about the ongoing threats to Vice President Pence because “he doesn’t think they (the insurrectionists at the Capitol making the threats) are doing anything wrong.”

A recent report in the New York Times said that threats against serving FBI agents and “the top prosecutors on the four criminal cases against Mr. Trump — two brought by the Justice Department and one each in Georgia and New York — now require round-the-clock protection.”  The Times reported that threats against other law enforcement officials, judges, and their family members have increased 300 percent in recent months.  Just two months ago, Trump posted former President Barack Obama’s home address on his Truth Social account.  Later that day, a man carrying two guns, more than 400 rounds of ammunition and a machete was arrested in his van driving around the Kalorama neighborhood in Washington D.C. where Obama lives apparently looking for a way to get past visible police and Secret Service protection of the former president.

In a new book by McKay Coppins, Mitt Romney described fellow senators who were so afraid of threats to their lives and the lives of their families, that they did not vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, which took place after he had left office.  Romney, himself a very wealthy man, arranged for around-the-clock protection for himself and his family, costing thousands of dollars per week.

In other words, Donald Trump, who no longer has his hands on the levers of government, has so frightened legislators that they are afraid to vote in a way that goes against Trump’s known wishes, and the threats are so numerous and credible against government officials that their safety is now provided by armed federal officers.  The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals Service are monitoring online postings by right wing groups, including militias, for threats by so-called lone wolf extremists operating on their own, like the armed man arrested near the home of Barack Obama.

We are in a presidential election year, and one of the candidates for the nomination of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, is using the word “treason” to actively inspire hate and violence against enemies he identifies as anyone publishing or broadcasting information about him that he finds objectionable, and against his political opponents in the Democratic Party. 

No one – that means zero people in the leadership of the Republican Party or even lesser party members – have spoken out against Trump’s calls for violence against his political enemies because that party has apparently now endorsed violence as a weapon in their political arsenal.  The list of these Republicans who have remained silent in the face of Trump’s calls for death and violence includes Speaker of the House McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  Practically every single Republican holding elective office in this country is so frightened by the wrath of Donald Trump that their silence effectively endorses his increasingly violence-prone campaign for president.  Every Republican questioned recently about Trump has said they support him for president because of the “danger” of another four years of Joe Biden, as moderate and non-confrontational a Democrat as any who have ever held the office.

We have entered the Putin-zone of American political life, where the endorsement of threats on the lives of political opponents has become the normal course of events in one of our two political parties.  Where are things headed from here?  If Donald Trump is elected, there are bound to be arrests and prosecutions and jailings of journalists.  He is already threatening to use the power of the federal government such as the Federal Communications Commission to threaten or remove the licenses of broadcast news organizations such as NBC News, CNN, and MSNBC.  Republicans are threatening to defund the FBI and the Department of Justice because of the prosecution of their almighty leader, Donald Trump.  He has said he will sign legislation doing just that.  Even some of his rivals for the Republican nomination have endorsed these moves.

I have attempted to cover Donald Trump as a threat to our democracy and the American way of life, but all of us in the media need to do more.  To report Trump’s statements on Truth Social or at his rallies as if they are mere rhetoric is unacceptable.  He has been calling reporters and broadcast networks that are critical of him “enemies of the people.”  That isn’t normal rhetoric.  Not even Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew went that far.  It is unacceptable.  It is a totalitarian threat and should be reported as such every time he opens his mouth and utters those words.

Cassidy Hutchinson, who witnessed Trump’s behavior up close, told Rachel Maddow last night that he has already tried one coup and “he will do it again.”  At age 26, this brave woman has shamed us into looking at Trump squarely and admitting the threat he represents to this country.  He is not running for president.  If that were true, he would not be making threats against people’s lives, he would be asking for votes.  He is campaigning, nakedly and in the open, for dictator.  Cassidy Hutchinson has warned us:  He means what he says.