A national security expert said Thursday that Donald Trump’s promotion of protests when he’s expected to turn himself into Fulton County authorities Thursday night could inspire violence.
Former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi during an appearance on MSNBC told host Chris Jansing that the former president is aware of the heightened tensions and is trying to use the precarious moment the country finds itself in to his advantage.
Figliuzzi's comments followed Jansing noting an exchange between Trump and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a video that aired during Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate in which the former president suggests the possibility of violence exists.
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“So do you think it's possible that there's open conflict?” Carlson asks Trump.
The former president replies: “I don’t know…I can say this, there's a level of passion that I've never seen, there's a level of hatred, that I've never seen that it's probably a bad combination.”
Jansing then says to Figliuzzi: “So he talks about this combination of passion and hatred, a level of hatred, being a bad combination. Do you agree with Donald Trump?”
“It’s a rare occasion where I actually do agree with him,” Figliuzzi said.
“He's actually laying out the threat assessment, isn't he? We are at an unprecedented level of threat and hatred. You can see it in the racist, blatant, brazen, racist tone of what we're seeing in extremists’ sites generated by him.”
Figliuzzi suggested that Trump’s attacks in particular on Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the federal Jan. 6 election conspiracy case, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, both of whom are Black, which he described as racially charged.
“So things are ugly. He's right,” Figliuzzi said. “What he's not saying is he's helping generate that.”
“But do you think we're at a point where and we always talk about the lone actor or somebody who wants to really make trouble, even if a lot of people don't turn out at any of these places, does that lower the tension level significantly?" Jansing asks.
Figliuzzi replied:
“Law enforcement’s really interested in how many numbers he can produce? He's called for people to turn out tonight. Let's see if people turn out for him, number one. Number two, turn out or not, nothing changes the risk posed by that guy you can't find, that guy you don't know about. That's what worries people the most.”
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