Since March, there have been more than 150 physical threats against judges in Trump cases, according to a Reuters special report filed Tuesday.
“The rhetoric is inspiring widespread calls for violence. In a review of commenters’ posts on three pro-Trump websites, including the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Reuters documented more than 150 posts since March 1 that called for physical violence against the judges handling three of his highest-profile cases – two state judges in Manhattan and one in Georgia overseeing a criminal case in which Trump is accused of illegally seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 election results,” Peter Eisler, Ned Park and Joseph Tanfani reported for Reuters.
“When Donald Trump attacks the integrity of judges hearing cases against him, his followers often respond with posts urging that the jurists be beaten, tortured and killed,” they wrote, after a review of three pro-Trump websites.
“The April 23 post by Trump and the menacing responses from his followers illustrate the incendiary impact of his angry and incessant broadsides against the judges handling the criminal and civil suits against him. As his presidential campaign intensifies, Trump has baselessly cast the judges and prosecutors in his trials as corrupt puppets of the Biden administration, bent on torpedoing his White House bid.”
It is not s a surprise that the man who incited a deadly insurrection against his own country is also inciting physical threats against the judges who are in charge of three of his high profile cases, two in Manhattan and one in Georgia.
Indeed, Reuters spoke to former New York City Police Department director of intelligence analysis Mitch Silber, who drew a comparison between the Trump supporters who are today calling for violence against judges to the 1/6 insurrectionists who followed what they saw as Trump’s “marching orders.”
“This is just the 2023-2024 iteration of that phenomenon,” Silber said. “Articulating these ideas is the first step along the pathway of mobilizing to violence.”
This is one reason why responsible social media platforms should not tolerate calls for violence and the language that supports it.
The Reuters report mentions that these physical threats are woven into a fabric of “larger pool of hundreds identified by Reuters that used hostile, menacing and, in some cases, racist or sexualized language to attack the judges”.
It’s again not a surprise that some people who use racist and sexist language can be radicalized into violence; in fact, “othering” people has long been a way for elites like Donald Trump to get the masses to ignore what he isn’t doing for them, and instead be willing to trash their own lives at times to serve him.
While many lawyers and pundits disagree that the guardrails are not holding, this special report by Reuters furthers the appearance that the U.S. judicial system is biased for wealthy white men. No poor white or Black person could get away with a sustained attack on judges, witnesses, juries, and more. The fact that Donald Trump is still able to incite his followers is dangerous for everyone in America, except apparently the people who tell us how much faith they have in the U.S. judicial system.
The system is failing to hold the Republican ex-president accountable. The law is not being applied fairly or even in a manner remotely suggestive of equality.
Donald Trump operates like a mob boss, using intimidation and threats to achieve his goals. His followers intuitively understand what he’s asking them to do on his behalf and some of them act on it. In politics, we call using violence or threats of violence to achieve a political goal terrorism.
Director Wray labeled 1/6 domestic terrorism.
The MAGA movement can operate at times like a terror cell, and tolerating that is not how we keep a democracy. For every pundit who says the legal system shouldn’t be pursuing Trump because instead he should be defeated at the ballot box: Trump was already defeated at the ballot box in 2020. He then tried to steal the election after the insurrection didn’t work.
The legal system needs to step up to hold Trump accountable for inciting his followers.
