It’s starting to feel a lot like Jan. 5, 2021. Donald Trump doesn’t like the situation he’s in. He’s urging his fans to protest—not just for him, he says, but for the future of the country. And on the Trump fansites like The Donald, users are talking about taking on the government, potentially violently.
Back then, Trump didn’t like that he had lost the election and Congress was about to certify his loss. Now he doesn’t like that he might be indicted for his hush money payments to prevent voters from learning about his (brief) affair with Stormy Daniels. But the rhetoric is the same.
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“PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late last week. On Jan. 6, 2021, speaking to the crowd at the Ellipse, he said, “Our country has had enough,” and called on them to give congressional Republicans “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
He’s getting the response he’s looking for. The Daily Beast reported on posts at The Donald:
“Surround Mar-a-Lago or wherever he currently is and prevent ‘law enforcement’ from entering,” one commenter wrote, receiving hundreds of positive votes.
Another user responded, “What if they use choppers to circumvent the Patriot moat?”
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Stop the Steal leader Ali Alexander wants “100,000 patriots” to “shut down all routes to Mar-a-Lago.”
They’re not shying away from full-on civil war language: “Accelerating the civil war to this week. Hold the fuckin line guys. Don[‘]t be afraid to use your constitutional rights. Remember 2a is there incase 1a fails,” Rolling Stone reports another Trump supporter wrote.
It would be easy to dismiss this as posturing if the runup to Jan. 6 hadn’t seen the exact same type of language on right-wing social media. In late 2020 and early 2021, sites like The Donald were seeing posts proposing to “Storm the Capitol.” On a far-right livestream on the eve of Jan. 6, someone said ”Tomorrow—I don’t even like to say it because I’ll be arrested—I’ll say it. Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol.” It shouldn’t have been dismissed then. It can’t be dismissed now.
Steel barricades have arrived outside Manhattan Criminal Court—but they’re the kind of barriers we saw battered down and ultimately used as weapons against police at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent his staff a memo assuring them that his office is working with law enforcement to investigate “any specific or credible threats against the office.” That can’t just be reassuring language. They need to be taking this very seriously. Deadly seriously.
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