I hate Trump, but I also hate being dishonest. He didn’t threaten her.
“I hate trump, but…”
“I hate elon, but…”
“Look, in the last got to defend trump, but”
These aren’t the statements of people that hate these monsters. These are the beginnings of statements of apologists working to soften the blow.
He threatened her. No integrity in your statement. Even if you needed to classify threats on a spectrum, this registers in several spots on that spectrum, regardless of your attempt to spin here. This was decidedly a threat, even without context of who trump is, but ESPECIALLY with that context.
I’m sorry, but no. He said she would feel differently about war if she were in the shoes of service men and women who have weapons pointed at them.
Do I agree with him? No, but it wasn’t a threat on her life.
Again, in the context of trump, it’s a threat on her life. He’s a chicken shit coward that mostly speaks in dog whistles and always carefully falls on that line of plausible deniability. For many others, you might give them the benefit of the doubt, NOT for trump.
The next day he said if people wanted to shoot him at a rally (where of course, his own supporters try to shoot him), they should shoot through the Press Corps and he’d be okay with that… You want to catch your breath and start defending that one now as well.
I actually agree that he dog whistles quite a bit, but his specific statement this particular time is not that. I think the less honest we are, and the more we just try to make the next sensationalist headline, the less credibility we have. That’s what the other side does. It is not what we should do. He says plenty we can hold him accountable for, we have zero need to make stuff up.
Again. Nobody is being dishonest here. This is brutal honesty about the reality of trump. He wasn’t properly punished for his “Beer Hall Putsch” last time, his follow-up is in a few months - hitler’s follow-up after not being properly punished was… significant. This is worth taking seriously.
IMO (formed in our brief exchange) you’re operating with a pre-trump mindset from, frankly, a position of privilege. Women are literally dying, they are actively planning to round up people that they “feel” “seem” to be “illegals”. Democracy is threatened after 250 years of survival. Respectfully, WAKE THE FUCK UP, FRIEND.
“They go low, we go high” WAS the noble, idealist position of the last election, notice they aren’t saying it now. Walz is now calling musk a “goofy dipshit”, because the other side isn’t listening to professional, courteous decorum - THEY ARE LITERALLY BANNING LITERATURE AND REWRITING HISTORY IN TEXTBOOKS. Again, your position is “nice” but seems fully informed by a privileged position, removed from direct threat from the things that are ACTUALLY happening today.
You’re actively investing energy into laundering his horseshit here. You’re in the bottom right corner of the TV screen translating his accelerating fascist rhetoric into “calm down, everyone”. You should ask yourself why you’re doing those things.
Because you’re not rich and powerful enough to have lawyers and public influence sway the judge to be more lenient to you.
Because Donald Trump is above the law – laws simply don’t apply to him.
(Or at least that is how much of the country is acting, INCLUDING the US Supreme Court.)
In the US, white, rich and influential people don’t get arrested just because they committed a crime!
To give you an actual answer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_threat
The true threat doctrine was established in the 1969 Supreme Court case Watts v. United States.[3] In that case, an eighteen-year-old male was convicted in a Washington, D.C. District Court for violating a statute prohibiting persons from knowingly and willfully making threats to harm or kill the President of the United States.[3]
The conviction was based on a statement made by Watts, in which he said, “[i]f they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”[3] Watts appealed, leading to the Supreme Court finding the statute constitutional on its face, but reversing the conviction of Watts.
In reviewing the lower court’s analysis of the case, the Court noted that “a threat must be distinguished from what is constitutionally protected speech.”[3] The Court recognized that “uninhibited, robust, and wide open” political debate can at times be characterized by “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” In light of the context of Watts’ statement - and the laughter that it received from the crowd - the Court found that it was more “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President” than a “true threat.”[3]
That’s a banger of a quote and a feeling I can totally get behind. Oh, you’re gonna make me kill people? Then let’s start with you.
I love how the statement receiving laughter from the crowd was a point in showing how it was political commentary.
So basically the shit-talker’s easy way out? I’m ashamed of, but not surprised, the fact that the Supreme Court was the one that came up with the coward’s way out to hate speech.
What a simplistic, destructive take.
Nuance exists in this world. In a free society, a distinction needs to be made between real, credible threats and simple hyperbole.
Also, “hate speech” is a real term, and it doesn’t mean ‘saying you hate someone.’
