As last week came to a close, the speculation about the Manhattan district attorney’s office charging Donald Trump reached a new level. NBC News reported that local, state and federal law enforcement, in addition to the Secret Service, had begun preparing for the possibility of the former president’s indictment. Bloomberg News and Fox News ran related reports soon after.
It was the next morning when the Republican advanced the story in highly provocative ways. NBC News reported:
Former President Donald Trump said Saturday that “illegal leaks” had indicated that he would be arrested Tuesday and called on supporters to protest. Trump, in posts on his social media platform Truth Social, referred to reports that he could soon face possible criminal charges in New York relating to a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
As is often the case, what made the former president’s missives notable wasn’t just what he said, but also how. At 6:55 a.m. ET, Trump published a pair of messages, each in all capital letters, describing the United States as a “dying’ and “third-world” nation, where “the American dream is dead!”
He added some familiar lies — the 2020 election was “stolen,” our borders are “open,” and “patriots” are being “held in captivity like animals” — before saying he’d be “arrested on Tuesday.”
Trump concluded, “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
A few hours later, in case this was too subtle, the former president returned to his social media platform with another message, which began, “IT’S TIME!!!” After assorted whines — he suggested President Joe Biden “doesn’t even know he’s alive,” while claiming White House officials are “evil” people who “hate” the United States — Trump added, “WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”
While the Republican’s hysterics were, to be sure, a bit overwhelming, let’s pause for a moment to take stock of where things stand as of this morning.
Right off the bat, it’s worth emphasizing that while Trump asserted that he’d be arrested on Tuesday, he routinely asserts all sorts of things that have no basis in fact, and there’s no reason to assume that his prediction was accurate.
In fact, a spokesperson for the former president clarified over the weekend that there “has been no notification” about a possible indictment, despite what Trump wrote on Saturday morning.
What’s more, while it’s certainly possible that there will be an indictment on Tuesday, with the grand jury in New York scheduled to hear from another witness on Monday, the odds appear to be against Trump’s prediction coming true. But more important than the schedule was Trump — who famously told an extremist group to “stand back and stand by” shortly before the 2020 elections — taking the opportunity to call for his supporters to “protest” in response to his possible prosecution. When it comes to the Jan. 6 attack, his lawyers and allies frequently note that Trump briefly told his radicalized followers to go to the Capitol “peacefully“ before they rioted, overlooking the larger context of his remarks. Over the weekend, amidst a flurry of needlessly frantic rhetoric about what he characterized as the demise of the United States, the former president never bothered to use the word “peacefully” at all, even as he pleaded with his followers to “PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!” in order to “SAVE AMERICA.” As Rachel Maddow explained on the air on Saturday morning, Trump is “playing with a fire that he doesn’t know how to contain.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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