What Trump’s 'utterly bonkers' turn of phrase reveals: analysis

Defending his administration's $1.7 billion "anti-weaponization fund" during a conversation with a reporter at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, President Donald Trump's described the federal prosecutions of the Joe Biden era as "the most violent thing I've ever seen in politics." And MS NOW's Steve Benen is citing that comment as an example of how badly Trump distorts the word "violent."

The prosecutions and indictments that Trump was referring to followed the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building and inauguration of Biden as president 14 days later. The Trump Administration is creating the "anti-weaponization fund" to support Americans who faced federal indictments and prosecutions during Biden's presidency under then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Trump and his MAGA allies, including Vice President JD Vance, are arguing that Biden and Garland "weaponized" the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — and that the fund is needed to help Americans who, Trump officials claim, were unfairly targeted. But Democrats are attacking the fund as a "slush fund" and countering that MAGA Republicans who violently attacked the Capitol in the hope of preventing Congress from certifying Biden victory in the 2020 election deserved to be prosecuted.

Trump said of the Biden-era DOJ prosecutions, "People were destroyed…. We're reimbursing those people for their legal fees, and for their costs, and for anybody involved. But they destroyed people.… It was the most violent thing I've ever seen in politics, what they did."

But Benen, in a Thursday column, criticizes Trump's use of the "word" violent as absurd.

"Just so we're all clear about the context and relevant details, when the incumbent president identified 'the most violent thing' he has ever seen in politics, he wasn’t talking about the insurrectionists who violently attacked the Capitol in his name while violently clashing with police officers as part of an unprecedented attack on American democracy," Benen writes in MS NOW. "Rather, Trump was instead talking about efforts to hold them and their allies accountable."

The "Rachel Maddow Show" producer adds, "That's utterly bonkers, though it was also a timely reminder that when Trump uses the word 'violence,' he often means it as a synonym for stuff he doesn't like."

Trump, Benen emphasizes, has a history of dismissing or downplaying actual violence while describing nonviolent activities and violent.

"Last summer, for example, the president spoke at a White House event and said, 'What we found out is horrible that (former President Barack) Obama and a group of thugs cheated on the elections. They cheated violently, viciously on the elections. They're violent people.' Trump was, of course, brazenly lying about what he and his team have 'found out,' but the idea that anyone 'cheated violently' added a bizarre twisted to his nonsensical conspiracy theories. It wasn't a one-off, however."

Benen continues, "During an appearance on NBC News' 'Meet the Press' last year, he argued that Joe Biden 'went after' the cryptocurrency industry 'violently.' If the president wants to take seriously the scourge of political violence, that would be a welcome change. But what Trump seems far more eager to do is redefine the word 'violence' in ways that he thinks suit his partisan purposes."

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