From Maggie Habberman coming off the Trump CPAC speech he gave recently…..
The speech is all the more reason for the prosecutors to make sure they have ‘air thight’ criminal and civil cases involving the ex-President…If he beats them?…He WILL be looking to put those very same people behind bars you can bet as he tried to do with a couple of FBI bosses….
While Mr. Trump has long walked up to a transgressive line, he has often managed to avoid unambiguously crossing it, leaving his intentions just uncertain enough to allow his supporters to say he is being mistreated or misinterpreted.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the speech was “a call to political action to defeat the Democrats who have put their collective boot on the throats of Americans,” adding, “Anyone who thinks otherwise is either being disingenuous or is outright lying because they know President Trump continues to be a threat to the political establishment.”
But John Bolton, a national security adviser under Mr. Trump who later broke publicly with him, had little doubt what the former president meant on Saturday. “I think he’s talking about retribution he would exact on people who would cross him,” said Mr. Bolton, who also served as ambassador to the United Nations. The reference was not about Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. Bolton said, but about Mr. Trump himself….
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Facing investigations in two states and in two cases overseen by the Justice Department, Mr. Trump repeatedly insisted that the judicial system should not be trusted, holding himself and his supporters up as the true arbiters of justice. Mr. Trump said the same day that he would not exit the presidential race if he were indicted.
Mr. Bolton pointed to another part of Mr. Trump’s speech: “This is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.”….
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“I think that’s also a signal that he’s not going to accept a second defeat, the same way he didn’t accept the first defeat,” Mr. Bolton said of Mr. Trump’s election lies. Mr. Bolton suggested Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power were not a well-oiled plan, but a series of day-to-day impulses he was acting on. But what Mr. Trump is saying now, Mr. Bolton said, is different.
In essence, Mr. Bolton said, the former president is “pretty much calling for something close to civil insurrection.”
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Planning is already underway for 2025 should Mr. Trump win the White House again. Advisers have discussed reimposing a Trump-era executive order, known as Schedule F, that would give the president vast power to replace what have traditionally been civil service workers embedded across the federal bureaucracy.
Mr. Trump alluded to those efforts on Saturday.
“I will totally obliterate the deep state,” he said, “I will fire …” he went on, before being interrupted by applause and “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” chants. “I will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system like it has never been weaponized before.”…
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Jason Stanley, a Yale professor who wrote the book “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,” said the danger in undermining trust in the rule of law was that it left little alternative to overthrowing or overturning the system itself.
“This is the final battle,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday. “They know it, I know it, you know it, everybody knows it.”
Dr. Stanley said that such language was all the more notable given the context of Jan. 6. “He’s saying it’s a war,” he said. “There is not law versus chaos, there is just him versus his enemies, yourenemies.”
He added bluntly, “Trump engages in fascist rhetoric.”
Last month, Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host, asked Mr. Trump directly if he would “use the powers of the presidency to punish people who punished you.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that,” Mr. Trump said, before indulging the topic further. “I would be entitled to a revenge tour, if you want to know the truth,” he said, “but I wouldn’t do that.”
Demanding unconditional loyalty — and promising retaliation if he doesn’t get it — has been so much a fixture of his career that former employees at his company often say the public still doesn’t fully understand what he is capable of….
BTW?
Ron Desantis isn’t about revenge….
But he’s out to duplicate the same thing as Trumpin what he has in Florida….
‘His Way’…..
Sounds a LOT like “Trump engages in fascist rhetoric.”