In the days after the FBI served a warrant to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, the language of protest crossed into conspiracy theories, as well as veiled and direct threats against federal law enforcement officials.
Threats are not free speech. And rhetoric calculated to incite outrage based on false, incendiary claims and comments aimed at demonizing federal law enforcement is damaging to this country.
Immediately after the search, Trump casually suggested that the FBI might have planted evidence, a baseless claim that some Republican politicians repeated and amplified. We saw elected officials compare the FBI’s legal execution of a search warrant to a Gestapo raid or called for defunding or destroying the FBI. The swill mill of social media promoted calls for a civil war and armed rebellion.
