America has married a gaslighting, victim-blaming abuser

Donald Trump, currently arguing on appeal that the 1st Amendment protected his right to incite the J6 mob, simultaneously claims the 1st Amendment does not protect a comedian’s right to insult him.

Two days after a man tried to enter the Correspondents Dinner armed with weapons, Trump took to Truth Social to blame Jimmy Kimmel. In his post, Trump relayed a Kimmel joke about Melania glowing “like an expectant widow,” then leapt to causation, claiming, “A day (after Kimmel’s joke aired), a lunatic tried entering (the Dinner) loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives… so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence... Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC...”

The next day, Trump’s FCC ordered ABC to file early license renewals for all eight ABC-owned and operated TV stations. It was an unprecedented move, served under the pretext of ‘investigating diversity programs,’ but no one is fooled. Mimicking Nixon’s threats to TV licenses during Watergate, Trump is threatening broadcast licenses over political speech he doesn’t like, an obvious mob-boss challenge to longstanding First Amendment law.

Pot, meet kettle

In gaslighting lost only on the deliberately obtuse, Trump keeps blaming adversaries for the rise in political violence he has spent years orchestrating. A sore loser who launched a violent coup then teased a “bloodbath” if he lost four years later, a man who joked about a brutal hammer attack, who called for shooting protestors then justified the deed, who equivocates when Democrats are shot or firebombed, who posts snuff videos of murders on the high seas, a felon who has so frequently, so routinely encouraged political violence it’s the subject of online tallies and predictive markets, reflexively blames the victim. America, it seems, has married an abuser.

Since every accusation with Trump is a confession, his attempt to silence critics compels a closer look at the First Amendment butchery he keeps foisting on federal judges, who aren’t having it. Under two federal rulings, Trump now stands financially exposed for damages he caused on J6, despite his claimed First Amendment protection, for incitement. Under long standing Supreme Court precedent, incitement is speech “directed [at] producing imminent lawless action, and likely to do so.” That has been the legal definition, separating incitement from First Amendment protection, for over fifty years.

In a landmark 2022 ruling, the D.C. federal district considered Trump’s January 6 Ellipse speech in its entirety and context, and concluded that his statements were plausibly words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment. Instead, those words were implicitly “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and [were] likely to produce such action.” In the most recent J6 civil ruling, Trump again claimed his words were not incitement, because he didn’t specifically intend what came next. The judge disagreed. (Lee v. Trump, p. 62).

Trump incites political violence then hides from it

Trump claims that the one time he used the word “peaceful” during his fiery speech on the Ellipse outweighed the multiple times he exhorted followers to “fight.” After spending weeks fraudulently convincing supporters that the 2020 election was “stolen” from them, he told the gathered mob on J6, “We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He uttered these words immediately before telling them to “march to the Capitol,” where 7 people died from the resulting violence.

Trump’s legal team insists that it can’t be proved that Trump “intended” to produce imminent lawlessness on J6, so the incitement exception to the First Amendment isn’t met. Even if that were somehow creditable, what he said during the violence confirmed his approval.

Trump’s first tweet while the capital was under attack was aimed at the Vice President. At 2:24 p.m., Trump tweeted while rioters brandished a noose with Pence’s name on it that, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution…” And that was it. Instead of stopping what he started, Trump spent the next three hours fully secure, safely enjoying the melee on TV in the White House dining room, where his silence also spoke volumes. Trump’s last tweet expressed solidarity, telling the rioters, “We love you, you’re very special…I know how you feel...”

Ordering the removal of magnetometers confirms violent intent

This month’s J6 ruling also discussed how Cassidy Hutchinson, then-assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was with Trump immediately before the Ellipse Speech. In her closed door testimony before Congress, she said she heard Trump complain about the Secret Service’s magnetometers (‘mags’) that blocked people with guns from the rally. Trump said, ‘You know, I don’t F’ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the F’ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.” When told the magnetometers could not be removed, Trump said, ‘F-- the Secret Service. I’m the President.”

In short, Trump’s intent to incite political violence on J6 was corroborated by a first-hand account of his state of mind, moments before addressing the crowd. It may not amount to a criminal confession, but it proves that Trump’s J6 speech was incitement deserving of no First Amendment shield.

Escalating with ABC, Trump and Carr have armed their assault on free speech. They may be able to gaslight a public stupefied by Fox News, but the rest of us, including Kimmel’s six million fans, aren’t fooled. Now that federal courts have twice taught Trump what the First Amendment isn’t, maybe Kimmel will soon teach him what it is.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.

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