Criminal defendant Trump makes statements that cause violence

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has asked Judge Tanya Chutken to issue a LIMITED gag order in the criminal case she must oversee with criminal defendant Donald Trump.

In an interview with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC on September 15, 2016, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) defined a particular problem.

THE problem, which MSNBC sadly edited out of recordings posted to its website, is that Donald Trump makes statements that cause violence.

However, nobody is trying to keep Trump quiet. EVERYBODY knows that would be an impossible task anyway. In the clip below, O'Donnell reads excerpts from Jack Smith's motion to clarify that point.

Criminal defendant Trump, yet running for re-election after having already once lost massively, will STILL be allowed to declare HIS INNOCENCE of the charges (in any/all of the 91 charges currently pending against him) in four different jurisdictions, even in the face of such a gag order. 

But should he be allowed to yell "FIRE" in a crowded auditorium? Or able to freely propagate what some characterize as the Trump Contagion?

I'm confident criminal defendant Trump has neither read, nor taken to heart, the Power Principles in Dacher Keltner's book/on Power Paradox, such as : The experience of power [not only corrupts, but also] destroys the skills that gained us power in the first place. Keltner, Dacher. The Power Paradox (p. 100). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. .

I'm also confident criminal defendant Trump is massively off his rocker. That's the technically accurate medical terminology, right?

Nevertheless, I also have ample confidence that when it's all said and done, our Republic will remain.

Why? Because of the steadfast exercise of our citizenship responsibilities and, that just like in 2020 and 2022, our institutions will hold firm. And they WILL hold firm as we resist Trump and PERSIST in resolutely steadfast defiance of his Fascism.

It has now been more than two and a half years since the fateful day of infamy which criminal defendant Trump instigated January 6, 2021. Did not many of us worry over what appeared to be Attorney General Merrick Garland's inaction on the matter. Yet, Garland, in due time, appointed Jack Smith to head the investigation/prosecution. Related matters have subsequently proceeded apace and with all due diligence.

I am hopeful. I am confident. We are in this together and we'll get through it together. 

Keeping Trump off the ballot

 

Noah Bookbinder, president of CREW, on CNN

MSNBC's Ali Velshi interviews Harvard Law Professor emeritus Laurence Tribe on September 10, 2023

American legal scholar Laurence Tribe joins Ali Velshi to discuss the unique strength of a new lawsuit in Colorado seeking to ban Trump from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment, 

why the case is destined to end up at the Supreme Court, 

and how the self-executing component of the article works. 

“This is more controversial because it isn’t as mechanical,” Tribe explains about the lawsuit. 

“Clearly we’re going to have to explore in this trial the meaning of insurrection, what it means to be engaged in it… 

and I think it’s clear to most people that if Trump doesn’t qualify [for that], nobody would.” 

On what's at stake in the 14th Amendment clause, Tribe says, “This was a major protective provision put in there because [the founders] realized that those who take an oath to uphold the constitution and then turncoat against it might not end up being prosecuted for anything,” he explains. 

“It’s important for the survival of the republic that someone who has shown him or herself to be an insurrectionist against the Constitution not get another chance to try.”

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold interviewed by Ali Velshi

"Trump is a liar with no respect for the Constitution. To say that a section of the 14th Amendment is election interference in considering how to uphold the Constitution is election interference is UNAMERICAN. -- Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State

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World History already has demonstrated the unique salience and urgency of this current question in the courts of the State of Colorado.

The most stark examples of Fascistic chaos, ironically initiated from benign forms of government, rather than armed revolt, from the last hundred years are Mussolini and Hitler. 

Both of them promised economic prosperity but are remembered by history for death and destruction.

On 31 October 1922, following the March on Rome (28–30 October), Mussolini was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III, becoming the youngest individual to hold the office up to that time. After removing all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labour strikes,[10] Mussolini and his followers consolidated power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years, Mussolini had established dictatorial authority by both legal and illegal means and aspired to create a totalitarian state.

By November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the Reichstag but did not have a majority. None of the political parties were able to form a majority coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. Former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative leaders persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933. Shortly after, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933 which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died and Hitler succeeded him as the head of state and government. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France.

If the United States allows Trump to regain the power of the presidency, there can be no doubt our history will be likewise tainted. He has already articulated his contempt for the US Constitution. 

When they tell you who they are, believe them.

Common Sense for the 21st Century

 

III. Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs (Common Sense) Lyrics or, paraphrasing an excerpt of Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776)

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other expectation with the reader, than that s/he will divest her/himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer reason and feelings to determine for themselves; that s/he will put ON, or rather that s/he will not put OFF the true character of a person, and generously enlarge one's views beyond the present day.

Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between the MAGA inclined as opposed to everyday Americans. Women and Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from different motives, and with various designs; but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate must be closed. The appeal was the choice of a would be king, and the continent hath accepted the challenge for steadfast nonviolent confrontation.

Save for the American Revolution in the 1770s, the sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a county, a province, a kingdom (or even a constitutional democratic republic), but of a continent; yea of the balance of terrible hegemonic ferocity between the common good of the people or the even more terrible potentially hegemonic ferocity of a single, deranged, malignant narcissist who has mimicked the skills of a not long ago pathological maniac whose hate wrought death and destruction untold, never before having been imagined.

'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an even a century; history and posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. 

Now is the seed-time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.

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Yea, the Fascist faction may advocate the matter from argument to arms. Yet, a new era for politics is struck; a new method of thinking has arisen. 

We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality. -- Vaclav Havel

At the direction of leaders such a Havel and engaged citizens not subject to a demagogue, steadfast nonviolent resistance has proven victorious before and will again, including in the United States. 

The history of the 20th century is full of examples which demonstrate that violent resistance against unjust power systems, dictators or external occupation is likely to generate further violence (as seen, for example, in the Russian and Chinese revolutions or decolonization wars in Africa and Asia). But it has also been characterized by many powerful nonviolent struggles. Some of these are widely known (e.g. Gandhi’s struggles in India and South Africa, Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights campaign in the US), while many others are still largely ignored by the wider public and research community. Although the power of nonviolent resistance does [may] seem weak and inefficient in the face of acute power asymmetries, it has proven to be a very strategic and powerful tool in the hand of marginalized communities to redress structural imbalance and claim rights to justice or self-determination.