Trump has patently been a serial criminal before and during his stint as POTUS. However, he may have sunk to a new low (if that’s even possible) when he tweeted this
LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!
LIBERATE MICHIGAN!
LIBERATE MINNESOTA!
The right wing has long had an affinity for the Alien Registration Act and other similar legislation designed to prosecute Socialists, immigrants and other “undesirables.”
Be careful what you wish for.
The Alien Registration Act, popularly known as the Smith Act, is a United States federal statute that was enacted on June 28, 1940. It set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of any government in the United States, by force or violence and required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the federal government.
The Smith Act set federal criminal penalties that included fines or imprisonment for as long as twenty years and denied all employment by the federal government for five years following a conviction for anyone who:
...with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or...organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof…
For the purposes of this section, the term ''government in the United States'' means the Government of the United States, the government of any State, Territory, or possession of the United States, the government of the District of Columbia, or the government of any political subdivision of any of them.
Liberate, in this sense and according to Merriam-Webster, means to free (a country, city, or people) from enemy occupation.(e.g. "twelve months earlier Paris had been liberated")
In other words, Trump is actively advocating for the overthrow of the rightful government of three separate States. By referencing the Second Amendment, he clearly implies a call to arms to accomplish that purpose, and a state of war is further suggested by the declaration that the State of Virginia is under siege.
So Trump may have run afoul of the very law that Joe McCarthy and his ilk used to prosecute suspected Communists in the 1950’s. The irony, it burns.