Donald Trump has been openly inciting violence, not even three years after an insurrection tried to overthrow the government, and a political scientist warned those threats remain underreported.
The former president suggested the nation's top general, Mark Milley, deserved execution for reassuring China after Jan. 6 that the U.S. remained stable, but global politics professor Brian Klaas argued in The Atlantic that the reaction to that stunning statement was more muted than it should have been.
"Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous, not just because it is the exact sort that incites violence against public officials but also because it shows just how numb the country has grown toward threats more typical of broken, authoritarian regimes," Klaas wrote.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
"The United States is not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed."
As his longtime fixer Michael Cohen told Congress, the ex-president does not give direct orders but instead speaks in a "code" like a "mobster," and Klaas said Trump's threat against Milley was clear enough that Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) sent out a taxpayer-funded newsletter agreeing that “in a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.”
"Heading toward one of the most consequential, divisive elections in American history, every ingredient in the deadly recipe for political violence is already in the mix: high-stakes, winner-take-all politics; widespread conspiratorial delusions that detach followers from objective realities; a suggestion that one’s political opponents aren’t 'real Americans'; a large supply of violent extremists with easy access to deadly weaponry; and a movement whose leader takes every opportunity to praise those who have already participated in a deadly attack on the government," Klaas wrote.
The nation has somehow managed to avoid high-profile political assassinations, but Klaas chalked that up to luck, and he said that had lulled the media and many voters into complacency about the threat Trump poses.
ALSO READ: Two golf carts and a MAGA mystery: How much did Cindy Chafian know on Jan. 6?
"The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power," Klaas wrote. "That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing."
