> Of course he didn't explicitly say "Go there and break the windows, beat some cops up and threaten our lawmakers with violence", but geez, he basically said "let's intimidate them".
Yes, if you view everything he says with the benefit of hindsight and the most uncharitable context possible, which has pretty much been the strategy from day one, you can interpret it that way. And whatever happened to the BLM riot days, where a minority of the protestors caused violence but oh no, we can't paint everyone with the same brush. You may be shocked to realize this but only a minority of the protesters actually went in to the capitol. Apparently the vast majority of the protesters weren't able to decipher Trump's coded language like seemingly everyone else can. That's really strange.
> There's a difference between encouraging joining a peaceful protest
But here's the problem: when there are repeated instances of peaceful protests devolving into looting and rioting, isn't there some point at which you should know that encouraging yet another BLM protest makes you responsible for what it turns in to?
And you kinda sidestepped the question about CHAZ. When the mayor rejects the president's offer of the National Guard to control the, ya know, illegal occupation of several city blocks and lets CHAZ continue after repeated acts of crime in the area that culminated in two deaths... why aren't they held responsible? Why is THAT considered some unforeseen consequence of protesting but Trump's is an open-and-shut case of "he knew it would happen and wanted it to"?
The mayor of Portland also rejecting Trump's NG offer and allowed rioting to continue for two months. At what point -- maybe day 35 of 60? -- does the mayor become responsible for what happened by rejecting the initial NG support?
I'm hoping you understand what I'm getting at, it's that certain people get very charitable interpretations of their actions while certain others don't.