It may seem superfluous to say this, but it needs saying: He means it. Donald Trump meant it when he called his mob to Washington in December of 2020 by telling them, “Be there, will be wild!” and he means it right now when he tells the mobs at his rallies that the members of the January 6 Committee belong in jail, and if he is elected in November, he will have his Department of Justice “go after” President Biden and his family.
Donald Trump is dangerously escalating the rhetoric he is using to rile up his followers at his rallies. On Saturday in Dayton, Ohio, he saluted those convicted of violently attacking police officers and doing damage to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He called them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” And he executed a military-style salute as a loudspeaker played a version of the National Anthem sung into a telephone in a federal prison by felons convicted of crimes at the Capitol.
Let’s stop right there and discuss what it means for Donald Trump to salute people convicted of committing crimes on Jan. 6. A report on ABC News way back in September of 2021, just eight months after the assault on the Capitol, said that a comprehensive review of police body-cam footage taken on Jan. 6 found that about 1,000 individual assaults had been committed against police officers. That doesn’t mean that 1,000 people had assaulted police officers. Instead, it means that an indeterminate number of people had committed 1,000 assaults on police officers – individual strikes with weapons, hits with fists, sprays with chemicals, pushing officers off their feet, dragging them by their feet, even in one case, dragging an officer down steps in front of the Capitol so that his head bounced as it fell from step to step.
Hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump have been convicted of violent offenses at this point. Some of them are facing years in prison for the assaults they committed. Remember the guy who beat a police officer with a flagpole? His name is Peter Stager, and he struck the officer as one of his compatriots, Logan Barnhart, was dragging the officer down the Capitol steps. In January, Stager was sentenced to 52 months in federal prison. Last April, Barnhart was sentenced to 36 months.
Those are just two of the “unbelievable patriots” Donald Trump saluted on Saturday in Ohio. Trump stood at attention with his right arm bent at the elbow and hand extended touching his right eyebrow. This is the position soldiers assume every day on an army post as the flag is lowered and the bugle call “Retreat” is played. It is the position soldiers assume when one of their compatriots is buried and a trio of riflemen fire their weapons seven times in quick succession just before “Taps” is played. Soldiers salute each other as they pass, the junior between them saluting the senior, and the senior officer returning the salute. It’s a sign of mutual respect that also honors the rank of the more senior officer. Soldiers stand at attention and salute as the flag passes in review at a parade, or when it is marched to the middle of a playing field before a football game as the National Anthem is sung.
Soldiers do not stand at attention and salute criminals convicted of assaulting police officers or invading the Capitol building. Soldiers do not salute felons convicted of interfering with the certification of an election by the United States Senate and House of Representatives. A salute is a form of honor.
Donald Trump has no honor to bestow on anyone. He doesn’t know what honor is. His supporters understand this. They don’t support him because he is an honorable man, but because he isn’t. They get that his salute is not a sign of respect but one of defiance. His salute signifies his belief that the laws that his supporters broke are illegitimate. Trump doesn’t believe in those laws, so his supporters don’t, either. What Trump is saying with his salute to his supporters is that he, and they, stand apart from the laws of this nation. They are a law unto themselves. When he promises that he will pardon the “hostages,” as he calls them, he is saying that they did not break the law because they were following his orders.
That was the defense of the Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg trials, and it has been used again and again by defendants facing charges for their actions on Jan. 6. They went to the Capitol because Donald Trump told them to. Donald Trump is acknowledging his role in what they did, in the crimes they committed, by promising to pardon them.
But he’s doing more than that. He is signaling to the people at his rallies that if they follow him and obey his orders and somehow end up getting arrested, he will stand up for them and give them pardons, too.
He is turning them loose, and they know it. They come to his rallies so they can hear it directly from Trump himself and then go home and get ready to take his next set of orders as they did before Jan. 6, when he told them it was okay to “be wild” at the Capitol. If you can be wild at the Capitol and attack police officers with weapons like batons and flag poles and bear spray, you can be wild anywhere, and you can do anything.
What is Donald Trump really saying when he tells his crowds that he will protect their “sacred” Second Amendment? He is escalating his movement to the next level. He’s telling them that guns will be okay next time. Don’t leave them at home. Take them and use them.
Trump has begun his escalation. He has threatened a “bloodbath” if he is defeated in November. We watched the bloodbath on Jan. 6 at the Capitol. We get it. Here are the questions that remain: How far will it go this time? How many will die?
