Legal Expert Warns Trump's Rants Will Get Someone Killed

Donald Trump shared an article this week that may have contained the home address of Letitia James, the New York Attorney General that he has painted as a villain to his millions of followers. Legal expert Jeffrey Toobin, writing in The New York Times, warns that this increasingly dangerous rhetoric, not just against James but against nearly everyone involved in the legal process, is eventually going to lead to someone getting killed. This is more of a warning than a prediction, as Trump's rhetoric alone has led to violence in the past. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Writing in the New York Times this week, author Jeffrey Toin put out an op-ed with the headline simply titled Donald Trump is going to get someone killed. And in this op-Ed Jeffrey Toin of course, points out the fact that Donald Trump is not over, uh, not only using incendiary rhetoric against all of the people who are investigating, prosecuting, or even presiding over his trials, but that's just half the story, right? 'cause Dubin points out something that I've actually pointed out multiple times just this week. And that is the mental state of the people who listen to Donald Trump and how they really only need just a minor push to do something horrific. Here's what Ban has to say about that. Angry people, especially those predisposed towards violence, can be set off by encouragement that falls well short of the legal standard for criminal incitement to see the consequences of such constitutionally protected provocation, one need only looked to the case of Timothy McVey, who set off the bomb at the Alfred p Murra Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people on April 19th, 1995.

McVay, of course, had been following nude Gingrich, you know, watching him in the news. He was listening to Rush Limbaugh and their rhetoric about how evil the government is pushed McVay to commit this horrendous act. That's what we're dealing with with Donald Trump. And the thing is, we don't have to look at, you know, examples from 30 years ago to actually see this in action. We, we saw it on January 6th, 2021. You had a group of thousands of angry people who bought into the big lie about the 2020 election. Donald Trump gave him a little push and that little push pushed them right on into the capitol. Many of them at trial said, this is what Trump wanted us to do. Now, Trump never said storm the capitol. He said, fight like hell take your country back. But he never said storm the capitol. But that's what they did because that is how they interpreted it. And that is what they have told the judges overseeing these trials. They have literally said, Trump told us to do this. So when he goes out there, post the home address of New York Attorney General Letitia James calls her a racist, says that she's engaging in election interference. We've already seen what his base does when they think election interference exists. Tobin continues. Mr. Trump has never respected the norms of political behavior and there's little reason to think gag orders will provide meaningful discipline, either as on January 6th, his supporters shed traditional rules as well.

The day is fast approaching when someone picks up a gun or builds a bomb and then seeks to follow through on Mr. Trump's words. If and when that happens, he will say that he did not specifically direct or cause the violence. And he will probably escape without criminal charges, but the blood will be on his hands. And that's the thing. Donald Trump knows how to use his language and his rhetoric in these situations. He knows he can't tell his supporters to go out there and do these things. So he plants the ideas in their head, right? He talks about these people on the other side as if they are some kind of cartoon villain that needs to be taken out. And he doesn't tell people to take 'em out, but they interpret it as such.