By Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Donald Trump threatening violence against the country and even average citizens has become commonplace in America's political landscape. From “bedlam” to “bloodbath” to attacking the daughter of the judge presiding over his hush-money case, Trump's penchant for putting American citizens at risk has continued unabated since he stoked the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
But after suffering few if any real consequences for endangering the safety of others, Trump went a step further last Friday—sharing a video on his social media platform that included an image of President Joe Biden bound and gagged.
The response from prosecutors and national security experts was immediate.
"I know from experience how the Secret Service interacts with people who make threats against POTUS, even ones they can't carry out," Joyce Vance, a law professor and former federal prosecutor, tweeted Friday. "This, from a former President, is totally out of bounds. It's time to stop letting Trump break the rules. Long past time."
Former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi replied to Vance, writing, "If you or I did this, we’d have a knock on the door." Figliuzzi also tagged the Secret Service on his tweet—in case the outfit thinks no one was paying attention to their response, or lack thereof.
The Trump campaign shrugged off the controversy.
"That picture was on the back of a pick up truck that was traveling down the highway," spokesperson Steven Cheung said.
Which apparently means it's perfectly fine that Trump circulated the graphic imagery to his cult followers as widely as possible.
Cheung also offered an eye-for-an-eye defense, saying that Democrats are "actually weaponizing the justice system against him."
Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said the tweet was just one more example of Trump stoking violence.
"This image from Donald Trump is the type of crap you post when you’re calling for a bloodbath or when you tell the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by,'" Tyler said in a statement. "Trump is regularly inciting political violence and it’s time people take him seriously — just ask the Capitol Police officers who were attacked protecting our democracy on January 6."
Voters can count Trump threatening the sitting president of the United States as yet another instance in which he's getting a special pass on behavior that would have warranted a Secret Service visit for virtually any other American. Surely, Trump would have complained quite loudly and publicly if such a visit had occurred.
As Vance noted, Trump is currently out on bond awaiting trial in four separate criminal cases.
"It’s time for the people with authority to do so to deal with him," she wrote in her Substack, Civil Discourse, over the weekend. "Trump is totally, and uniquely among our former presidents, out of bounds. It's time to stop letting him break the rules. We’re entitled to more, not less, accountability from our presidents than from average citizens."
Trump is playing with fire, and he doesn’t seem to care. And since authorities don’t have the backbone to hold him to account, someone besides him could suffer the consequences of his actions.
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