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I saw the following exchange between Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, and it made me angry. So instead of getting over it and going and doing normal things like a well adjusted adult, I decided to complain about it on the internet.
First of all, I'm at least glad to see that reality is starting to set in. Trump is going to get his nonsense "absolute immunity" claim promptly rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court. He's going to go on trial on March 4, he's going to get convicted, and he's going to go to prison. This has all been obvious for some time, and people do need to come to grips with it instead of telling themselves "it can't happen, so it won't".
But there is a stark mismatch here between the acceptance on one hand that the jury will convict Trump but the insistence on the other hand that "the charges aren't real". DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges. But of course, the charges are not nearly so baseless as Carlson suggests.
No, the reason that Kelly and Carlson know that Trump is going down is not because they think there is not one honest soul to be found in DC. They can have confidence Trump will lose this case because both his conduct and the law have little mystery about them. On the facts, there's little if any dispute about the actions that Trump took. On the law we have seen similar charges applied to many January 6 defendants, and it has not gone well for them. If Trump is to get similar treatment for similar conduct, he must be convicted.
Carlson and Kelly know that he's guilty and yet they pretend otherwise. Carlson rants about how outrageous it is to render people's votes meaningless, and yet when Trump is charged for conspiring to do exactly that he flatly states it's "not even a real crime". I emphasize that his contention here isn't even that Trump didn't do the awful thing he's accused of - he's saying that the things he's accused of aren't awful. This lays bare how empty and fake Carlson's feigned defence of democracy is. You can believe that it's outrageous to deprive people of their democratic rights or you can believe that conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights isn't a "real crime", but it's incoherent to claim both.
But worst of all is the "warning" of violence. Carlson tells us that the man who incited a riot must not be punished or else we'll get more riots. This is the logic of terrorism. Give us what we want or there will be blood. Sure, he phrases it as a prediction rather than a threat and says he detests violence... but he knows full well that many of the people who might actually commit it could well be listening to him, and he knows he is fanning the flames of their resentment and putting the thought of violence in their heads. This would be irresponsible even if Carlson were sincere, but the fact that he's obviously being cynical makes it worse. This is a man who passionately hates Trump and couldn't wait for him to get kicked out of the White House - and yet here he is inventing excuses for him, pre-emptively trying to discredit the verdict he knows is coming, sanewashing Trump's "rigged election" claims, stoking anger, and telling people that violence is the inevitable response if Trump gets locked up. All, one presumes, so he can maintain his position in the GOP media ecosystem. What a worm.
Smith and Chuktan will obviously not allow themselves to be swayed by threats of violence, so we will unfortunately get to see if the dark talk turns into action. I for one hope Trump's most volatile supporters will at least recognize the truth that Carlson acknowledges - it will go extremely badly for anyone who takes it upon themselves to shed blood.
Trump did not incite a riot in any way, shape, or form. There is simply no reasonable line you can draw between Trump's statements (which, among other things, were not made at the site of the riot) and the riot. Not by the Brandenburg standard, and not by any standard which has been applied to any politician since Brandenburg.
I realize you're not American and may not be familiar with American freedom of speech traditions and jurisprudence, but there simply isn't a serious question here, and anyone who IS familiar with such traditions and jurisprudence knows it. You simply cannot take take the fact of a riot, and anodyne political statements made as part of a political demonstration ("I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."), and infer from the latter an attempt to incite the former. Nor can you do things like "Trump claimed the election was stolen; if the election was stolen violence would be justified; therefore Trump called for violence". That's just not valid. The test is that the speech must be intended to cause imminent lawless action, and it must be likely to cause it. Ex ante likely, that is, though that doesn't much matter because it fails the "intent" test. Telling a group to march to the Capital to make their voices heard is unquestionably protected speech of the sort even Robert Bork would accept.
So you are probably right that Trump will not get his immunity. And given a DC jury, chances are pretty good that he'd be convicted; contrary your claims, I think a D.C. jury would convict Trump of anything up to and including murder without evidence of a victim. And he may indeed go to prison. And if that causes widespread violence, everyone involved in his imprisonment absolutely deserves it. I doubt it will, though; the part of Trump's base capable of widespread violence is wholly infiltrated by the FBI and/or cowed by the Jan 6 response, and the rest is all bark and no bite.
The line from Trump's speech to the riot is that Trump's speech is a but-for cause of the riot. If Trump doesn't assemble the mob and tell them to go to the Capitol, they don't go to the Capitol. No mob, no riot.
The questions "Did Donald Trump incite a riot?" and "Can Donald Trump be criminally prosecuted for inciting a riot, given the 1st amendment?" are not the same question - "incite" has an ordinary English meaning, and on the ordinary English meaning of "incite", Trump so did. The 1st amendment is, for the obvious good reasons, over-protective of political speech - it isn't surprising that it is possible to incite a riot while (just) staying within the boundary of protected speech. Trump shouldn't be prosecuted for inciting a riot, and he isn't being prosecuted for inciting a riot (both the Federal and Georgia indictments focus on his various attempts to overturn the election before Jan 6th). That doesn't mean he didn't incite a riot.
Growing up in the UK, our pro-free speech tradition has tended to rely on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty for the moral (not legal) limits of free speech in contexts that look like incitement.
Trump assembled an excited mob at the Ellipse, told them that the politicians in the Capitol were stealing an election, and then told them to go to the Capitol and "fight". On the John Stuart Mill test, he has (just) exceeded the bounds of protected free speech. Under the Brandenberg test, he (just) stayed inside it. On this point, the law is on Donald Trump's side, so I am going to pound the facts. Donald Trump did, in fact, incite a riot on January 6th.
There's direct video evidence of one of the people who enabled entrance into the Capitol talking about how they're going to have to go and break into the Capitol building the night before the actual riot. This same person actually skipped Trump's speech so they could help get people into the Capitol and start a riot - so you're just flat out wrong here. How can Trump's speech incite a riot when at least one of the people involved in that riot spoke loudly about their plans the night previously, and then missed the speech entirely so they could facilitate people getting into the Capitol building? This breaks the "but-for" already - if Trump just said "Welp, looks like I lost, everyone can go home" there's at least one rioter who would have already been in the process of breaking in!
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Can you have it both ways, that people were convicted of planning the root and also Trump spontaneously incited it among people who otherwise would not have rioted?
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Has there ever been an example of a professional sports organization being held liable for the riot after a team won or lost a game, and the fans damaged parts of the city?
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I have a different opinion on “he incited a riot”. I view the riot as justified. I loved Jan 6. The 2020 election was illegitimate in my opinion. Far too many Democratic norms were violated. I also think elites deserved a riot on their land as they spent 2020 inciting riots across the US. The anger that caused the riot on Jan 6 was caused by the left not Trump.
By the standard you are using for Trump isn’t Kamala guilty for Jan 6? She was a primary leader of all the justified grievances that blew up on Jan 6. Sure Trump gathered people there on Jan 6 and led a protest but all the anger that really incited the riot I believe came from Kamela’s words and actions.
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Hosting a protest is protected political activity.
Trump should not have held this rally. He is in fact an idiot who should not have done half the things he did. But he should not be criminally liable for hosting this rally.
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Sit down. You lot are literally siccing police on people for saying men aren't women on Twitter.
You can take issue with current UK free speech norms without being antagonistic and personal because someone happens to be disagreeing with you.
(@the_nybbler's post, for example, was fine.)
Oh dear, looks like I'll be the one taking a seat. Sorry, I guess I was trying too hard to be funny.
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Even if (arguendo) I accept that as true, it does not matter. It is not sufficient for President's Trump's speech to have caused a lawful action that was a necessary precursor to the riot. His speech must have been directed towards causing the riot.
And that's true in the sense of ordinary meaning as well as the law.
In the UK, your pro-free speech tradition ranges from absent to extinct, and that is itself a cause of the United States's pro-free speech tradition.
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