Mr. Trump’s violent talk
Facing multiple investigations and pushback in Congress, even from his fellow Republicans, President Donald Trump crossed a Rubicon last week — warning of violence from his supporters among police, the military and even bikers if his political opponents get too hard on him.
Mr. Trump delivered this chilling threat in an Oval Office interview with Breitbart News, a right-wing website. Here is Breitbart’s account of his response to a question about how the left is fighting hard:
“You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. OK? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress … with all this invest(igations) — that’s all they want to do is — you know, they do things that are nasty. Republicans never played this.”
The rambling response delivered a clear message: That the investigations by House Democrats into Mr. Trump are somehow beyond the pale, that they run the risk of going too far, and that at “a certain point,” his supporters will do “very bad” things.
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Steve Cortes offered the convoluted and not at all reassuring spin that the president didn’t mean he would use the military or police “in an official capacity,” but that his supporters in those groups, “as individuals, if they need to they will defend themselves.”
That’s not what he said. The president drew a clear line from congressional investigations to a threat of violence.
This is a leap even beyond Mr. Trump’s threat that he will use his power to investigate Democrats if they investigate his financial affairs, or his musing at campaign rallies about roughing up demonstrators and offering to pay the legal costs of anyone who did. This was the president, in the White House, justifying and fomenting political violence.
We have great faith that the vast majority of people in law enforcement and the military would never turn on their fellow citizens as Mr. Trump may like to think they would. But the president goes down a dangerous road in validating the violent impulses of unbalanced, fanatical people one can find in any group.
And the threat by a president of violence against members of Congress should alarm every House and Senate member, whether it’s a Democrat like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer or a Republican like upstate New York’s Rep. Elise Stefanik. It’s not just Democrats getting tough on Mr. Trump. House Republicans joined Democrats last week in unanimously calling for the FBI to make public the upcoming report by special counsel Robert Mueller. And 12 Senate Republicans joined Democrats in a vote to nullify Mr. Trump’s fabricated emergency on the southern border and his effort to go around Congress to spend billions on his absurd border wall. When will Mr. Trump decide members of his party, too, have gotten too tough on him, and suggest attacking them?
Congress cannot shrug this off. It must send a message to the president that he’s the one who has gone too far, and that a threat to any of its members is a threat to them all, and to the United States. It’s more than very bad. It’s dangerous, and intolerable.