Any time Donald Trump’s rhetoric and his most extremist supporters overlap, there’s a possibility of chaos.
Trump, after all, held a Washington rally on Jan. 6 where he repeated false claims about election fraud and encouraged his supporters to “walk down to the Capitol” and “show strength” – which many of them promptly did, raiding the Capitol in an insurrection that turned deadly.
Later, when the Justice Department pursued its investigation of Trump and the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home for the classified documents that are now the core of the federal charges against him, Trump called the effort a “hoax.” When he faced an earlier indictment in New York, he called on supporters to “PROTEST PROTEST PROTEST.”
In both cases, widespread protests were scant. But after the initial raid, individual extremists posted plans on social media to attack the FBI, and one died in a shootout with police after attempting to follow through on those threats.
Now, the former president is set to surrender himself to federal authorities in Miami on Tuesday on new charges that he mishandled classified documents. The moment will be historic: No American president has faced federal charges.
Despite the occasion, the consensus as of Monday was that widespread protests and civil disobedience are unlikely. But security experts remain worried about individual people or small “cells” of extremists, or simply the possibility of an armed dustup among passionate demonstrators.
What are the chances of violence as Trump is again indicted?
Online, in pro-Trump forums and on far-right social media, a few loud voices have called for protests, violence and even civil war.
But experts who monitor extremism again are not predicting wide-scale protests and violence tomorrow, for a variety of reasons, although the threat of a small-scale or individual terrorist attack remains a possibility.
Are experts predicting large, violent protests in Miami tomorrow?
No, they’re not.
“We have not encountered online chatter that leads us to believe that violence is inevitable at protests tomorrow,” said Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Holt estimates that “a couple hundred” people will show up to protest, but said he has seen no indications of a “big swell of folks.”
“Based on our observations, I feel we may see larger crowds in Miami than we saw in New York after Trump’s prior indictment. But certainly not a crowd on the scale of the Capitol riot,” Holt continued. “The analysis doesn’t support that notion.”
Daryle Lamont Jenkins, an anti-fascist researcher and founder of One People’s Project, a group that monitors and exposes far-right extremists, concurred.
Jenkins, who travels regularly around the country to attend protests and gatherings of far-right extremists, said he’s not flying to Florida for tomorrow’s event.
“You might see the same sort of activity you saw in New York. It might be a bit increased because that’s where (Florida) Trump hangs his hat now,” Jenkins said. “There’s just going to be a lot of fanfare, but there’s not going to be another Jan. 6th at his indictment.”
Special reportAfter Jan. 6 riot, hundreds of identifiable people remain free
Why not? Aren’t Trump supporters really angry?
There’s little doubt that Trump supporters are seething at the new indictment.
Pro-Trump forum “the Donald” has been full of posts supporting Trump and decrying the charges since they were announced last week. A typical thread compared Trump’s prosecution to a white prosecutor in the South in the ’50s only prosecuting Black people.
But there are several reasons why that anger isn’t jelling into a Jan. 6-style confrontation with the federal government:
- Organized extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have taken a serious battering since the insurrection. More than 1,000 people have been charged with Jan. 6-related crimes, and the Oath Keepers, particularly, have largely disappeared.
- Since President Joe Biden took office, the White House has also turned 180 degrees on far-right extremism — from largely ignoring it under Trump to making fighting it a top stated priority under Biden. That means federal law enforcement is paying attention to domestic extremists — and the extremists know it.
- The “false flag” argument: Spend enough time on far-right online message boards and you’ll see a similar refrain: Don’t protest, it’s a trap! This phenomenon — which USA TODAY wrote about here — is still the case with the Florida indictment, and people are still using the threat of a “false flag” to warn each other not to protest.
- A lot of extremists no longer support Trump: He has fallen out of favor with a lot of extremist groups, for several reasons including his embrace of the COVID vaccine and the perceived lack of support he gave to suspects imprisoned for their role on Jan. 6. “We’re just seeing some Trump fatigue,” said Alex Friedfeld, associate director of investigative research at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “People have moved on, and the far-right seems much more animated about other issues right now.”
Database:See who’s been charged nationwide in Jan. 6 Capitol riots
A different worry: Isolated cases of violence
“The only thing in that direction that I conceive happening is some lone idiot doing something,” Jenkins said.
That’s the same warning experts have been sounding for months now — ever since the United States entered uncharted waters when the FBI searched Trump’s Florida home and club, Mar-a-Lago.
That search set off a wave of angry and violent rhetoric online. But it also led to at least two incidents of extremist violence or threats, each by individual actors.
Truly dangerous extremists may have their own breaking points, and that might be the federal indictment of a president they support. So, the risk of an individual or “small cell” attack remains a distinct possibility, Friedfeld said.
“That’s really the main worry,” he said.
Clashes among protesters, instead of against the government
The other possibility is that pro-Trump demonstrators could clash with anti-Trump protesters. Jenkins cautioned that if enough people show up on each side, there’s a possibility of violent confrontations in the street.
That phenomenon led to violence in street demonstrations in the days after Jan. 6, including a California march of the Proud Boys extremist group and a counter-protest that has become a legal test case for the movement known as antifa.
Those concerns could be even more acute if people are carrying guns. Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. two months ago signed a bill allowing anyone who legally owns a gun to carry it concealed, without a license. Though that law doesn’t take effect until July, other laws, such as Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which has been at the center of high-profile shooting cases, further raise the stakes of a possible armed confrontation.
“We have seen some isolated chatter that suggests a few people may carry weapons and that some Proud Boys may attend,” Holt said.
Political rhetoric escalating around guns
Whatever happens on the streets, angry rhetoric has continued from Trump-aligned politicians.
“We have now reached a war phase,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., tweeted on Friday. “Eye for an eye.”
Kari Lake, the former Arizona gubernatorial candidate, said over the weekend that if prosecutors “want to get to President Trump” they are ”going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.”
Contibuting: Marina Pitovsky
