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During his re-election campaign in 2020, Donald Trump reflected on his message to Iran. “If you f--- around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before,” the then-president said.
The same quote returned to the fore yesterday — but as HuffPost noted, this time the comments were part of a very different context.
Donald Trump on Thursday reposted a video on his Truth Social platform in which he is heard saying: “If you f--- around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before.” The former president’s threatening words play over a black-and-white image of his face and his 2024 campaign logo.
The context related to Iran, of course, was omitted. Instead, the former president promoted the video as he prepares to get criminally indicted for the third time this year.
What’s unsettling is the frequency with which the Republican dips his toes in these waters.
Last summer, for example, after the FBI executed a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the former president wrote that he didn’t know “how much more our Country will be willing to withstand.” He used similar rhetoric in November. A month later, he added, “THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY AREN’T GOING TO TAKE IT MUCH LONGER.”
Around the same time, conservative host Hugh Hewitt asked about a possible criminal indictment. “I think if it happened, I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” Trump said. “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it. ... I think they’d have big problems, big problems. I just don’t think they’d stand for it.”
Note, Trump didn’t come right out and explicitly say his radicalized followers would commit acts of political violence. That certainly appeared to be the intended subtext, and there was no great mystery about his meaning, but the former president showed at least some rhetorical restraint.
Nevertheless, in February, the Republican took additional steps down the same path, promoting an online message from a supporter who threatened to “physically fight” for Trump. The same missive concluded with a “locked and loaded” warning.
A month later, Trump publicly derided calls for “peace,” while suggesting that his indictment would raise the prospect of “death [and] destruction” that “could be catastrophic for our Country.”
The same week, an NBC News reporter asked the former president whether he believed political violence would be “justifiable.” Trump responded, “Well, I will say this. No, I don’t like violence, and I’m not for violence at all. But a lot of people are upset, and you know, they rigged an election, they stole an election, they spied on my campaign. They did many bad things.”
As a rule, when someone says, “I’m not for violence at all, but...” there’s a rather obvious problem.
This week, Trump kept this going. Asked about the prospect of incarceration as a result of his many alleged felonies, the former president added, “I think it’s a very dangerous thing to even talk about, because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters, much more passion than they had in 2020 and much more passion than they had in 2016. I think it would be very dangerous.”
It was the next day when the Republican promoted a video that quoted him saying, over an image of his face and his campaign logo, “If you f--- around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before."
As part of an analysis of his incendiary rhetoric, a recent Washington Post report added, “There is now no denying that such language, even if you somehow regard Trump’s intentions as innocent, can lead to a very dark place.”
If Trump is concerned about such consequences, he’s hiding his fears well.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.