U.S. Capitol insurrection, inspired by Trump
Donald Trump complains that comedian Jimmy Kimmel is a threat to America. After Kimmel joked on April 23 that Melania Trump had a “glow like an expectant widow”, and after Melania raised public objections, Trump characterized Kimmel’s joke as a “despicable call to violence” and demanded that Disney and ABC immediately fire Kimmel. The Federal Communications Commission , led by Trump’s hand-picked Chairman Brendan Carr, then ordered Disney’s ABC to seek early broadcast license renewal, even though those licenses were not due for years, with the threat that “[w]e want to review your license now and decide if you’re in the public interest.” U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren called this threat a case of the FCC pulling out “a sword to hang over every single news organization in America.”
Kimmel noted that his joke was obviously about the couple’s age difference — Donald is 79, Melania is 56. Even Republicans including Senators Rafael “Ted” Cruz and Rand Paul, and Rep. James Comer, spoke in support of Kimmel’s First Amendment rights. But Kimmel’s sharpest moment came when he flipped the script on Melania:
I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.
That conversation would be lengthy. For instance:
–In 2016, Trump stated that if Hillary Clinton becomes president and
gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people – maybe there is.
–In 2017, Trump told Suffolk County, NY police officers:
And when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough — I said, please don’t be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?
–According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Trump asked military advisors “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” about peaceful protesters outside the White House.
–In 2020, Trump tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” during George Floyd protests — a phrase with a racist history going back to the 1960s.
–At the first 2020 presidential debate, Trump told the far-right Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
–On January 6, 2021, Trump told supporters:
[Y]ou’ll never take back your country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong…. You will have an illegitimate president. That’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.
After hearing this speech, Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
–In 2023, Trump joked about the violent 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
–Also in 2023, Trump suggested that his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, be executed for alleged disloyalty.
–This year, Trump celebrated the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller, saying “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”
CNN‘s analysis is direct: Trump “long ago ceded the moral high ground,” and his complaints about Kimmel represent “a remarkable exercise in selective outrage.” A review by ABC News found forty-one criminal cases in which violent acts or threats were linked by the perpetrators themselves to Trump’s statements. And that is in addition to Trump being found liable in court for committing violence — a sexual assault that the judge in the case found tantamount to “rape” — against E. Jean Carroll.
In short, Donald Trump has made violent language his trademark for years. Demanding that a late-night comedian be fired for an age joke — while using the FCC as a weapon against press freedom — is not a defense of civility. It is the behavior of a man who helped create the culture of political violence he now claims to oppose.
Photo by Mike Licht, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/NjkWWc
