Of course he did. From a prominent national leader with many belligerent heavily armed followers, who recently incited a mob to try to overthrow the government, no reasonable person would read a statement that he deserves death any other way.
Yeah, I don’t see how you can interpret a claim that a witness committed “an act so egregious” that in earlier times “the punishment would have been death” as equivalent to merely “talking about a witness dying”.
Whether or not the tweet was trying to deliberately incite the murder of Milley, it is clearly promulgating the idea that Milley deserves death because of what he did. That’s very different from a more general description of “talking about him dying”.
C’mon, have more respect for us than this, PG.
“Will no one rid me of this troublesome general”
Clearly this is just expressing an abstract wish for the metaphysical absence of the individual. Nothing actionable or untoward about that at all. Nosirree.
Remember also that Trump always says to all that we must make America great again.
Years of looking at what he likes to see in America, shows that he wants to see those old times back… when lynchings (also against some whites that opposed the old ways) where a thing.
The punishment for treason now is still death.
It was aspirational.
And consider SDMB moderation on insults. If someone says “that is the kind of comment that might, in times gone by, have motivated someone to call you a poopyhead”, we all know that’s not exactly calling them a poopyhead, right?
Isn’t it normally the case that people who exactly call for the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be murdered, even outside the own-case witness context, are taken into custody as soon as they are located?
If I’m correct that the answer is yes, there are two possibilities. One is that Trump is getting special treatment. The other is that he played around with words in a way that you and I could also get away with.
I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. I could put it to the test, but prefer not to be banned from SDMB (or to risk jail should I be wrong).
For a credible death threat, you and I don’t have a horde of belligerent nutcases hanging on our every word.
But I gave you an analogy, similar wording to Trump.
This was a post so egregious that, in times gone by, the poster would have been called a poopyhead!
Do you think the mods would allow that, because you are not exactly calling the poster a poopyhead?
( I can’t believe I’m really bothering to try to convince you of this. )
General Milley has had death threats against his family. I sincerely believe that Trump is going to try very hard to incite violence to keep his ass out of prison and there are way too many lunatics out there who know exactly what Trump is telling them to do.
The man is a god damn menace.
I think there also has to be an aspect of common sense when thinking about Trump’s threat-or-non-threat to Gen. Milley. Mainly, who talks like that? Who in government or running for office goes around talking about putting serving (or soon-to-retire) US Military personnel to death? I don’t think people who have committed actual treason ever had to face rhetoric like this (except for if Trump ran his mouth on the subject). Did anyone go on TV and say Edward Snowden should be put to death? How about Chelsea Manning? How about Osama Bin Laden? I’m pretty sure that even in those angry days post-9/11 the rhetoric aimed at Osama was more along the lines of “getting justice”. Nobody just up and says “EXECUTE HIM!” There’s no call for it. No one that I can think of has even been executed for what Milley supposedly did. I guess there are leaders out there who will execute their generals for perceived treason but I somehow doubt this is an improvement the United States needs to make. There is no reason for Trump to be talking like this. I hope the judge smacks him down hard.
IMHO, it is extremely difficult to imagine the circumstances under which Donald J. Trump would have legitimately earned the benefit of the doubt from any reasonable and objective person.
Did he use weasel words? Of course he did – as he has for a couple of generations, by now.
ETA: Stochastic terrorism: the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.
I recall GWB talking about wanting bin Laden “dead or alive”. But in a way that reinforces your point - the expression was notable to me as an infantile echo of wild west movies, for its lack of dignity. True or not, that isn’t the way a president should talk, let alone the stuff Trump says. The ship has long since sailed on the dignity of office.
Your reasoning is bizarre, at best.
It is fallacious reasoning to attempt to determine if something occurred based on whether it is legally punished. You do not determine the meaning of a statement by looking to the legal system. You determine this by looking at the words and the apparent intent of the person saying them. You are using effect to establish cause, which is backwards.
But, yes, of course Trump is getting special treatment. Everything about this trial and every other trial shows this. This is a delicate situation where they’re being extra careful to avoid creating problems. If they don’t have to do it, they don’t. A normal person would be in jail without bail for any one of these offenses, if not worse.
Heck, use your own logic. What would happen politically if Trump were to just suddenly be thrown in jail? Would that actually help to get his tentative supporters to give up on him? No, that would play into the martyr complex.
But let’s say it’s not special treatment. Let’s say that I could get away with the same wording. All that would say is that I found a way to imply it that wouldn’t be a slam dunk to prosecute. It wouldn’t say anything about my intent, or how my intended audience would interpret it.
And that’s what’s relevant when determining the meaning of his statement. What did he intend, and how did his intended audience interpret it? The mafia boss who say “Won’t someone take care of this meddlesome priest” may not legally have called for murder. But his cronies would still know he ordered a hit.
Hell, it’s a common tactic of harassers online. They don’t say “go out and harass this person,” which could get them into legal trouble. They just get their audience so angry and then make a few implications. Their intent is still clear.
And Trump uses this all the time, including at J6, where his favorable response to them marching on the capitol shows that was his intent, even though it would be hard to prosecute.
With Trump of all people, arguing that a lack of punishment means he didn’t do it is ridiculous.
Another thing about Gen. Milley occurs to me and obviously hasn’t occurred to Trump: these supposedly execution-worthy actions happened on Trump’s watch and Trump didn’t do anything about it. If you can execute someone for a crime, you can also certainly arrest them for it. But the thing you don’t do is leave them in their job so that they can go on and retire during the next administration.
So does that mean Trump didn’t know? The leader of Trump’s military was committing treason right under his nose and he only just figured it out? Or did Trump choose to leave a traitor in charge of the military? Trump being generally immune to gotcha questions would probably get us a response here about the Deep State but it would be interesting to see what kind of twisted logic he could offer for why he choose to keep Milley around if he knew Milley should actually be up against a wall somewhere.
Trump does a lot of negative-attention-getting but comes close to sounding normal when it suits. So he could say this:
If the judge asks him what he meant by the DEATH! threat, he’ll probably go into normal mode there as well.
This is entirely correct.
Obama: “We will kill Bin Laden.”