After the arrest – foreseeably the last one that Trump will have to suffer, although it is not ruled out that more accusations could take place – the former president and his followers have designed a strategy based on a double line of action. On the one hand, declaring that he limited himself to exercising his right to freedom of expression by rejecting the validity of the elections; on the other, that if he is convicted and imprisoned there will be a civil war.
Trump himself has played both cards. On Thursday, after being booked in Georgia, he declared at the Atlanta airport that “you should have the right to reject the result of an election. I thought that the elections were fraudulent, that they had been stolen, and I think that I should have the right To do it”. Trump cited Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, who ran with him for the presidency in 2016, and Stacy Abrams, who tried unsuccessfully to run for governor of Georgia that same year, as examples.
Trump was lying. Clinton never questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 election. Quite the contrary. In his first post-election appearance, the day after the election, Clinton said: “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We must welcome him with an open mind and give him a chance to lead us.” Clinton also stated that the previous day “I called Trump and offered to work with him for all Americans. I hope he is a successful president for the good of the American people.”
The threat of civil war was repeated several times by the president himself in the interview he gave to commentator Tucker Carlson and which was broadcast on the X social network, formerly called Twitter. Trump stated that “there’s a degree of passion like I’ve never seen. There’s also a degree of hate like I’ve never seen. Those two things are probably a bad combination.” A more direct message was sent by the former candidate for Republican vice president in 2008 and former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, declaring that “I would like to ask those who want to carry out this falsification of justice [in reference to the processes against Trump] if they want to drive us into civil war, because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to stand for this. We need to revolt.”