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I really don't like the various outlets' coverage of this story or how quick people are to interpret this as a violent threat. I am VERY skeptical that he meant physically hitting Michelle Obama, and I think the only way to make it sound that way is to clip the quote. When he says, "She hit me the other day" and "She said that about me, I can’t hit back?" he's obviously not talking physically and you wouldn't think that if it was Harris saying it.
TONS of legitimate exist reasons to hate Trump and tear him apart (Huffpost: "This just in, user GrymEdm threatens to 'tear Trump apart'. Is he advocating assault?"). We don't need to grasp at straws when there are rock-solid criticisms of Trump. If it's not right for the other side to take things out of context and spin them, then it's not ok for us. How about we stay focused on Trump being a democracy-destroying, racist, lying convicted felon/sex offender (with ample proof) and not try to force this quote into something it probably isn't.
Edit: People comparing the J6 coup/maintaining deniability need to look up how serious and extended the lead up to J6 was. It was many days worth of violent rhetoric capped by a long speech where he said "peaceful" once and called for variations of "fighting" 20 times. His J6 incitement is the basis of a very serious and (according to experts in the linked article) indefensible lawsuit. No one is taking him to court because of the quotes in OP's article. Lemmy, you don't need to push this to make reasons to justifiably despise him.
Taking these ridiculous comments of Trump’s without the context behind them, singling them out and reading them strictly in the ‘neutral’ voice you’re advocating for… entirely strips it of the dog whistling that it is.
With a mindset like that you’d also say that ‘Trump didn’t literally tell his supporters to storm Congress on J6’ or ‘Trump isn’t actively exciting violence against democrats and immigrants’, and sure on the face value of most of what he says he isn’t exactly doing that. But, he knows what he’s saying, he has seen plenty of examples of this dog whistling of his getting the violent results he wants.
Each statement like this points his violent supporters in the direction of his preferred targets.
But there are plenty of things Trump has literally said that you don't need to reach. He has literally said he wants to be a dictator. He has literally said he wants to use the military against US citizens...
But, even those literal statements can be said to be hyperbole. So, the words themselves don’t really matter, outside of the fact that taken as a whole, including everything together, he is inciting violence against his political enemies and minorities with dog whistling. So, yes… he is threatening them.
Edit: it’s like those ‘let’s fight! Fight like hell!’ montages made of both parties during the last 10 years. For the vast majority of them the Dems clearly meant peaceful but coordinate protest, marching* and voting. Now, the Republicans may have wanted us to infer that it’s the same thing as Dems, but they continued to lay on the hate, attacks, and violent rhetoric without condemning the actual and literal violent behavior. The attempts to kidnap that democratic governor. Taking over that state capital building with threat of violence. Storming the US capital which led to the deaths of multiple officers and a violent insurrectionist.
Republicans are playing in bad faith and are both refusing to condemn violent actors (‘good people on both sides’, ‘standby and stand up’ or whatever that one was) are absolutely apologizing and watering down, enabling that and further behavior.
His appeal to his followers is that he "says it like it is". He wants you to believe he is being literal, so there is no reason to think those statements were hyperbolic. It would be pretty easy to attack his lack of internal consistency if he tried to claim that. Come to think of it, that probably should have been their line of attack the whole time.
Downvote if you want, they aren't the same. There are big differences between this brief statement and the lead-up to J6, and takes like this only fuel the conservative assertion that "woke Liberals" will blow anything out of proportion. You can believe what you want, but I'm not going to resort to unfounded "but he could be" claims given how many valid criticisms are available. I'll stick to the things he's actually said about women's rights, the environment, locking up opponents, wanting to be a dictator...
The long J6 speech was held right in front of the Capitol where he said some version of "we need to fight" so many times that legal experts say it's obvious, in an evidence-applicable-to-court way, that he was inciting. It was preceded by many day's worth of rhetoric, and he was telling others to do his dirty work. It's the basis for an incredibly serious lawsuit.
The "hit back" conversation was like two lines in one anecdote about verbal sparring, and in context clearly wasn't him asking if it was his turn to punch Michelle Obama. He also never spent days calling for anything along the lines of "You folks need to hit Michelle Obama" the way he called for them to fight at the Capitol. No one is going to make a lawsuit about those quotes.
Media is just as guilty as anybody else for their willful enabling of people like Trump. He knew what he was doing (or at least his handlers did).
I wouldn't, because she doesn't have years of violent rhetoric that would suggest she's talking literally. He's long lost the benefit of the doubt on what he "really" means, and any suggestion that his speech is innocent is either naive or complicit.
Trump's whole shtick is plausible deniability. He'll say just a little bit to cover himself but whenever I hear the original the message is clear.