NEW: Donald Trump said there could be political violence if he loses in November.
Time:
“Donald Trump Says Political Violence ‘Depends’ on ‘Fairness’ of 2024 Election”
Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN:
“Many people have lost American presidential elections over the last 230 years – Trump is the only one to say about violence if he loses ‘it depends.’”
Shane Goldmacher, New York Times:
“Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. ‘If we don’t win, you know, it depends,’ he tells TIME. ‘It always depends on the fairness of the election.’”
Trump also continued to praise and promise pardons for violent January 6 rioters – who he calls “hostages” and “patriots.”
Time:
“Trump also tells TIME he might pardon the more than 800 men and women charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, most of whom have pleaded guilty. The assault left more than 140 law enforcement officers injured and sent lawmakers into hiding. More than 120 people have been accused of using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer, and members of extremist groups were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
“Trump has sought to recast the insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. ‘I call them the J-6 patriots,’ Trump tells TIME. When asked whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says: ‘Yes, absolutely.’”
Washington Post: “Former president Donald Trump on Thursday praised and embraced a woman convicted of defying police orders on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. …
Trump has steadily escalated his advocacy for people charged in the Capitol riot, including by pledging to pardon them if he returns to the White House, praising them as patriots, participating in a recording with Jan. 6 prisoners singing the national anthem, and playing it at his first rally of the 2024 campaign last month.”
The Hill:
“Trump describes imprisoned Jan. 6 rioters as ‘hostages’”
Washington Post:
“Trump vows pardons, government apology to Capitol rioters if elected”
NBC News: “Former President Donald Trump promised Wednesday night that if he is elected he will pardon a ‘large portion’ of the people convicted of federal offenses for their participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
Trump: “January 6, it was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to. And they were there proud, they were there with love in their heart. That was an unbelievable — and
it was a beautiful day.”
Business Insider:
“Then-President Donald Trump didn’t want to specifically call for the Justice Department to prosecute January 6 rioters or forcefully condemn those who stormed the Capitol as unrepresentative of the MAGA movement.”
NBC News: “Trump spoke at a fundraiser for Jan. 6 defendants”
Trump is only ramping up his extreme and dangerous rhetoric – he has already promised a “bloodbath” if he loses this election and vowed to be a “dictator on day one” if he wins.
NBC News:
“Trump says there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses the election”
Rolling Stone:
“Trump Says There Will Be a ‘Bloodbath’ and Elections Will End if He Isn’t Reelected”
New York Times: “Trump Defends His Warning of a ‘Blood Bath for the Country’”
The Atlantic:
“Trump Says He’ll Be a Dictator on ‘Day One’”
Associated Press: “Trump declines to rule out abusing power to seek retribution if he returns to the White House”
Washington Post:
“Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini”
The Guardian:
“Donald Trump says he will lock up his political enemies if he is president again.”
Forbes: “Trump said of his relationships with dictators, ‘the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them,’ which he insisted is ‘not a bad thing.’
“‘The easy ones,’ Trump said, referring to America’s allies, ‘I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.’”
The Atlantic: “Late Friday night, the former president of the United States—and a leading candidate to be the next president—insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death. That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy. But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley’s phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was ‘an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.’”
