“Incitement” is a loaded concept, easy to abuse, and easy to weaponize against the freedom of speech.
Incitement has a specific legal meaning, which is narrow. But impeachment is a political process, not a criminal one. Senators will not send Donald Trump to prison. They instead have the power to bar him from ever holding federal office again. (I defer to Ted Cruz on the constitutional issue of whether Congress may convict a former president in impeachment proceedings.)
So the casual, common understanding of incitement is the relevant standard here. We know there was a barbaric and evil riot at the Capitol. It was a violent attempt to seize control of the building away from Congress, in order to block Congress from doing its job, in an effort to overturn an election result. The question is, does Trump bear blame for the abomination of Jan. 6?
Yes, he does, I believe. I was there, covering the protests and riots on Jan. 6. I wasn’t sure how guilty Trump was, though, until I watched the House impeachment managers make their case.
My standard for incitement is this: The inciting actions must themselves be improper or blameworthy; the inciting actions must have demonstrably caused the violence; the violence must have been a foreseeable consequence of the inciting actions.
Sure enough, Trump, through his destructive, self-serving, and dishonest efforts to overturn his election loss, inspired the attack on the Capitol, and such an attack was a foreseeable consequence of Trump’s actions.
The House’s case is sprawling and complex, so it’s probably best to focus on one specific aspect. For me, the clearest case involves Trump’s former vice president.
Trump’s improper, cruel, and reckless attacks on Mike Pence before and during the Capitol riots predictably helped inspire rioters to storm the Capitol, seeking to abduct, harm, or even murder Pence.
Trump spent months before the election repeating the false and destructive claim that he could only lose the election if it were rigged. When he lost, he immediately began crying fraud. As his claims of fraud were dismantled, he never relented. He demanded Republicans on the state and federal level abandon their duties and their principles and instead follow only him. If you chose duty or principle over Trump, he declared to his supporters that you were evil and a failure.
As his supporters stormed the Capitol, armed and violent and assaulting police, Trump was informed, in real time, by Sen. Tommy Tuberville that U.S. Capitol Police were escorting the vice president from the Senate floor to safety because they feared that the attackers would kill or harm Pence.
Consider what a decent person would have done in this situation. Knowing that criminals playing as soldiers were coming after the vice president as part of a “fight for Trump,” a decent president would have immediately and forcefully tried to call the mob off. Mobs are mobs, and so this would not have worked 100%, but it would have helped protect Pence, all the congressmen, and all the senators, not to mention the Capitol Police.
But Trump made it clear he didn’t want the mob to back off.
When he got off the phone with Tuberville, Trump took to Twitter to tell his followers that Pence was now the enemy.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” Trump wrote on Twitter, “giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
The mob reacted as you would expect it to.
Rioters were filmed reading this tweet aloud to other gathered rioters. “Donald Trump just tweeted saying that Mike Pence let us down,” one rioter explained over a bullhorn looking at the tweet. “Mike Pence let us down, people. If you wanna get something done, you gonna have to do it yourself.”
And so, they did.
At least one of the mobs assaulting Capitol Police in its efforts to invade the U.S. Capitol was chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” as it tried to breach the Capitol. At least one invader vamped on camera “we’re comin’ for you.”
Trump’s mob didn’t get Pence, thank God. It did successfully invade the Capitol, assault dozens of Capitol Police, bring about six deaths, and temporarily derail the certification of Joe Biden’s win. How did Trump react?
He tweeted, “These are the things that happen” when Trump doesn’t get his way.
I don’t think Trump wanted Pence killed. I think he wanted Pence and Nancy Pelosi and senators and congressmen hounded and hunted and intimidated through force and the threat of force into helping his effort to overturn the election.
His motives were evil. His words and deeds caused the violence to escalate. Especially when the assault was underway, it was foreseeable that his words and deeds would escalate the violence. He bears blame for the attack on the Capitol and the assault on police officers.
