Read on Twitter
Team Trump is hitting hard on the fact that @KamalaHarris as well as some @JoeBiden staffers backed bail funds for arrested protesters. A legitimate issue? Not going to try to resolve that here, but.... /1 https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1300429829855158273
It's bound to remind voters of Donald Trump's long history of promising, or talking up, legal fees for supporters who engage in outright physical violence against protesters at rallies. For instance... /2
Early 2016 Iowa rally: "if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? ... I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise." https://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-tells-crowd-to-knock-the-crap-out-of-protesters-offers-to-pay-legal-fees/ /3
Weeks later, Trump said he wanted to pay legal fees for a supporter who sucker-punched a protester being led out of his North Carolina rally: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/10/trump-once-said-he-would-pay-legal-fees-for-people-who-beat-up-protesters-now-that-its-happened-can-he/ /4
This after Trump had said, at the same rally: "See, in the good old days this didn’t use to happen, because they used to treat them very rough,” he said. “We’ve become very weak.” /5 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/donald-trump-fayetteville/473169/
Now, maybe all these offers to pay legal fees or bail are OK because everyone deserves the chance to mount a full legal defense, and lack of immediate cash should not spell the difference between jail and freedom pending trial. That might be a legitimate viewpoint! /6
Or maybe both sides should think harder about whether blanket offers of legal help might sometimes seem to encourage or condone bad behavior. That's not a crazy point of view either. /7
Or maybe there's some distinction to be made based on the nature of individual charges, whether it be physical assault, trespassing, failure to disperse, vandalism, assault on a law enforcement officer, or arson. To me, those seem very different in seriousness. /8
I'm just having trouble seeing why Team Trump thinks it can open up this line of attack without seeing it turned right around on them. /9, efn
