Trump ramps up violent rhetoric after guilty verdict – and GOP just keep ignoring it
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – Donald Trump is in a raging fury about a decision that didn’t go his way.
So Trump casts himself as the victim of a rigged system while rallying Republican leaders to literally rig the system after the fact, to derail the decision, to appease his acrimony. Along the way, Trump ramps up violent rhetoric. But the Republicans remain in lockstep behind him, even as serious strife looms ahead.
Sounds like the 2020 election result and the Capitol riot that followed, right?
But now it’s Trump’s 2024 criminal conviction in New York, where a jury of his peers last week found him guilty of 34 felonies.
Trump has only one playbook. We’ve seen the calamity that he created after he lost in 2020. We saw Republicans denounce him for the violence and mayhem of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection before they came crawling back to him.
And now Trump and his Republican allies are running the same plays. The latest U.S. House speaker, who tried to disenfranchise millions of voters in an attempt to help Trump overturn the 2020 election, now wants a valid jury verdict thrown out. And Trump is priming his supporters for future violence.
Republicans are working against the justice system out in the open
Consider House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who denounced the Capitol attack in 2021 as "shameful violence" in a statement that curiously no longer appears on his congressional website.
Johnson, nearly eight months into his speakership, clings to power with a bare-bones majority mostly thanks to support from Trump.
Maybe that's why the speaker showed up on Fox News on Friday to call on the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately step in and quash the unanimous verdict a New York jury delivered the day before, convicting Trump for using false business reporting to conceal a $130,000 payment he made in 2016 to an adult film star to keep her quiet about an affair that could have derailed his first run for president.
“I do believe the Supreme Court should step in," Johnson said. "I think that the justices on the court – I know many of them personally – I think they're deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they'll set this straight.”
Trump is unhinged: As Trump's guilty verdict sinks in, why are Republicans still supporting a convicted felon?
Can you hear the political flip-er-roo? Trump and his allies like Johnson spent weeks claiming that the New York case was somehow driven politically by President Joe Biden without ever offering a wisp of evidence. And now they plan to counter that bogus claim of politicization of the courts with ... an open and obvious attempt at politicization of the courts.
Johnson said he's chummy with the Supremes. He knows what they're thinking. He's telling them on television to ignore our entire legal system and jump to a rigged end for Trump.
Trump is trying to call in a favor from Supreme Court justices
Trump must have liked Johnson's plan to have the Supreme Court demolish this country's system of law and order by obliterating a jury verdict, even before an appeal is filed by the convicted felon who was once president.
Trump took to his social media website Truth Social on Sunday to wail about the verdict before declaring, "The United States Supreme Court MUST DECIDE!"
This is an easy read on Trump. He sees everything as a transaction. He doesn't care about the legality or ethics of any of it. He just thinks people probably owe him. And he put three of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court, so he is certain to see them as in his debt.
Trump also ramped up his violent rhetoric Sunday, telling Fox News that he expects his supporters to revolt if he is sentenced to prison or even house arrest for his New York conviction.
“I don’t know that the public would stand it," Trump said. "At a certain point, there’s a breaking point."
This, too, is a standard Trump tactic – issuing what he can later claim was only a warning when we know, given his history, it is really a call to violence.
Trump keeps trying to kill Obamacare. The problem? Voters love health care.
Trump loves to hint at 'violence' if he doesn't get his way
Trump, on the day before the 2020 presidential election, railed against the Supreme Court for a ruling that said Pennsylvania could count properly postmarked mail ballots, even if the count went beyond Election Day.
Trump at the time, on the website formerly known as Twitter, called that "VERY dangerous," adding, "It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!"
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Imagine being that worked up about counting legitimate ballots postmarked in time for the election just because the counting happens a day or two later.
Republican members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, by the way, have repeatedly resisted allowing election officials to start counting mail ballots before Election Day.
Trump in April told Time magazine he expects to win in November when asked about the potential for political violence around the election.
"And if we don't win," Trump warned, "you know, it depends."
Republicans have made rewriting history part of their strategy
Trump, after he lost the 2020 election, set the stage for violence after his rally on Jan. 6, 2021, that sparked the insurrection.
"Be there, will be wild," he predicted on social media, 18 days before the rally and insurrection.
And on Jan. 6, he issued marching orders to his supporters, urging them to head to the Capitol.
"Because you'll never take back our country with weakness," Trump said. "You have to show strength and you have to be strong."
Trump and Johnson and plenty of other Republicans have tried to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, downplaying the violence against police officers, the destruction in the Capitol, and criminal charges against more than 1,400 people accused of engaging in all that.
Trump will always call for institutions to bend or break the rules and norms if that helps him. He will incite violence if it serves his ambition. He wants more of that mayhem, either as a warning to voters thinking about rejecting him again or as a punishment if they again send him packing as a loser.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's verdict put him on his heels. So he's threatening violence
