It Wasn't Just Jan. 6th - Trump Is Still Inciting His Followers

Any honest person looking at the insurrection on January 6th knows that Donald Trump incited his supporters on that day and directed them to attack our Capitol Building. But it didn't stop then. Since that date, Trump has continued to incite his followers -- repeating the same lie, and convincing them that the election was stolen from them. He has convinced many of them that he will be reinstated to the presidency by August. What's going to happen when they realize he won't be reinstated? Will it result in more violence and insurrection? That's a real possibility among the militias and some other right-wing extremists.

The following is part of an article at MSNBC.com by Dean Obeidallah:

In the lead-up to the sixth-month anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, former President Donald Trump has resumed his campaign rallies, where he has peddled his "Big Lie" and defended the people who stormed the Capitol. 

In Sarasota, Florida, on Saturday, Trump told the crowdthat if Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot during the storming of the Capitol, had been "on the other side," the officer who shot her would "be strung up and hung."

A person in the crowd yelled out: "Hang him!"

Then Trump demanded to know why "so many people are still in jail" over the event.

Before Jan. 6, we could've rolled our eyes at this spectacle. But after Jan. 6, we do so at the peril of our republic.

A supporter at the June 26 rally in Ohio said that if Trump is not reinstated by August, "we're going to be in a civil war, because the militia will be taking over."

He doesn't appear to be alone in the view among some Trump supporters that violence to help Trump gain power is acceptable. A poll by Yahoo and YouGov in late May found that only 57 percent of Republicans now think the Jan. 6 attack was "unjustified" — down by 14 points since January.

It's terrifying that as we get further from Jan. 6, a growing number of Republicans don't see the attack as unjustified. Equally terrifying is that Trump's rhetoric hasn't changed since before Jan. 6, when his own words helped incite the onslaught of "domestic terrorism," as the FBI has defined it.

I desperately wish we could ignore the disgraced former president. But we can't, because, as we saw specifically from his recent Ohio rally, he's repeating the identical lies about "election fraud" that radicalized his supporters in the first place. . . .

Trump's tour is especially alarming given the recent warning by the Department of Homeland Security about the growing threat of domestic violence this summer by "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists" and those "inspired by disinformation, conspiracy theories, and false narratives."

There's simply no way to know how many Trump supporters at his rallies would engage in another Jan. 6-type attack.

We need to learn from the Jan. 6 attack to prevent it from happening again. Law enforcement agencies must view Trump as they would any other person who has incited people to commit an act of domestic terrorism. Authorities must monitor him carefully. And they must investigate any Trump supporter who speaks of violence in support of Trump. Otherwise, Jan. 6 will simply be a preview of what we can expect to see more of.