Attorneys attempting to remove Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado are painting him as an insurrectionist who signaled to extremist groups who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Attorney Eric Olson, representing the plaintiffs, called in an alleged extremism expert to ask him if Donald Trump should be disqualified based on the 14th Amendment.
Chapman University professor Pete Simi argued that Trump cultivated a far-right following for years and created a relationship he took advantage of to overturn his 2020 election loss. He was confident, he said, that Trump led the events of January 6 through signals.
This amounts to a thought crime. This man is making this up, claiming dog whistles.
Simi claimed Donald Trump sent signals and courted the far right. As an example, he used the birtherism conspiracy theory. He didn’t bother to mention that Hillary Clinton’s aide came up with that one. He claimed that Trump used inflammatory rhetoric about the Mexican people when Mr. Trump only meant some Mexicans coming illegally weren’t their best. And then he repeated the Charlottesville lie that Donald Trump said there were good people on both sides without explaining that Donald Trump didn’t mean neo-Nazis were good people. That’s been debunked over and over again.
Simi bashed him for a somewhat supportive comment he made of the Proud Boys when he declined to denounce them and said they “Stand Back and Stand By.”
Then Simi used Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric of telling patriots to fight like your lives depend on it. He discounted the fact that Donald Trump told them to march peacefully and patriotically.
This isn’t evidence. Professor Simi is trying to read Donald Trump’s mind.
Simi, a Democrat, claims that for extremists, when Trump said fight, that’s what they heard, not peaceful, and Donald Trump knew that that would be the case.
In conclusion, he said, “I could say he expressed a consistent pattern of messages over time that encouraged violence. He expressed messages over time that endorsed violence. And that’s very, I think, in clear terms, part of this pattern,” he said.
He sounds like a political operative.
Similar cases to remove Donald Trump from the ballot are being pursued in Minnesota and Michigan.
Even more disturbing is the judge who is overseeing the case. Judge Sarah Wallis would not recuse herself from this case. She donated to a PAC called the Colorado Turnout Project. It was a PAC forum aimed at ousting Republicans who refused to condemn January 6. Now, she’s on this January 6 case. These people have no ethics whatsoever. The only goal is to take out the leading GOP contender for the presidency, and justice be damned.
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