Trump is creating high tensions in the political climate, promising to pardon his supporters who stormed the Capitol, threatening his former vice president and calling for mass protests if he is formally charged by prosecutors.
(New York – United States – Agencies) – Donald Trump and his political allies have openly declared they are willing to promote a coup to seize power, with the former president promising that if he returns to rule in 2024. Trump has offered to pardon the hundreds arrested who tried to storm the Capitol just over a year ago and confessed that his goal was to “invalidate” the election.
Republican politicians are urging their base to “pull the plug” on the election machinery and arrive armed and ready to fire at the next polls, and prosecutors investigating attempts to subvert the previous election by Trump have requested FBI protection after the former president has incited his fanatics to attack them.
Investigations of Trump, his family members, and close allies are proceeding before the Select Committee on Jan. 6 in the House of Representatives, with new witnesses revealing new details about the dimensions and coordination of the assault on the Capitol, and some lawmakers and analysts concluding that that action was the culmination of part of a weeks-long effort to overturn the election and prolong the Trump administration with emergency measures; in other words, a coup d’état.
On Saturday, near Houston, Trump repeated what his critics have dubbed “the big lie” that he won the presidential election and that challenger Joe Biden “stole” it through fraud. It was there that the former president declared for the first time that if re-elected in 2024, he would pardon the hundreds of people arrested (more than 725) for the assault on the Capitol. In that same rally, he denounced the investigations against him in Congress and others by prosecutors.
In an obvious reference to the latter, he urged his supporters to hold large demonstrations against these efforts led by “radical prosecutors…vile…and racist…horrible people…they are mentally ill,” mentioning three places: Georgia, Washington, and New York. It is in those entities that prosecutors are proceeding with investigations against the former president.
Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis asked the FBI to conduct a risk assessment of the courthouse in Atlanta, where she has her offices, and requested protective resources, including intelligence and federal agents, in the wake of “alarming” statements by Trump at a political rally on Saturday, where he denounced several investigations against him, including hers, by accusing everyone of misconduct,” AP and Axios reported.
Some wondered why Trump used the word “racist.” Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted that it was a word aimed at white supremacists since three of the prosecutors investigating Trump, Willis in Atlanta, Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, and New York state Attorney General Letitia James, as well as Select Committee Chairman Benny Thompson, are all African-American.
In a statement sent on Sunday, Trump denounced efforts to strengthen the electoral process, and in that context recalled that his vice president, Mike Pence, had the right to change the final outcome of the election and that “unfortunately he did not exercise that power. He could have invalidated the election!”
Many analysts and politicians commented that once again, Trump was confessing that he wanted a coup of sorts by disrupting the electoral process and overturning its results. “He said aloud the silent part. Trump here admits and even praised what he wished Mike Pence would do,” noted conservative commentator Bill Kristol.
U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republican members of the Select Committee investigating the Capitol assault, commenting on Trump’s statement, charged that the former president “uses the language he knows caused the violence on Jan. 6, suggests he will pardon detainees, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy, threatens prosecutors and admits he was trying to invalidate the election. He would do it all over again if presented with the opportunity.”
Meanwhile, Trump-allied politicians continue to threaten to disrupt electoral processes. Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan D. Kelley asked his staffers who will monitor polling places to “pull the plug” on vote tabulation machines if they suspect fraud in the 2022 election; “if they see something they don’t like.” One state Senate hopeful, Mike Detmer, a friend of Kelley’s, went so far as to say, “we need to be prepared” to “charge and fire”… “come armed.”
All of this is creating high tensions in the political climate, with a former president promising to pardon his supporters who stormed the Capitol, once again threatening his former vice president, his call for mass protests if he is formally charged by prosecutors. Trump has now openly and effectively admitted to seeking to reverse the 2020 election and has persisted in his call to disrupt electoral processes and threaten the federal government of armed violence by his political allies.
TYT Newsroom
