Because you’re not rich and powerful enough to have lawyers and public influence sway the judge to be more lenient to you.
Nominating judges that will throw out your cases on fictional grounds helps too!
Because Donald Trump is above the law – laws simply don’t apply to him.
(Or at least that is how much of the country is acting, INCLUDING the US Supreme Court.)
To give you an actual answer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_threat
The true threat doctrine was established in the 1969 Supreme Court case Watts v. United States.[3] In that case, an eighteen-year-old male was convicted in a Washington, D.C. District Court for violating a statute prohibiting persons from knowingly and willfully making threats to harm or kill the President of the United States.[3]
The conviction was based on a statement made by Watts, in which he said, “[i]f they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”[3] Watts appealed, leading to the Supreme Court finding the statute constitutional on its face, but reversing the conviction of Watts.
In reviewing the lower court’s analysis of the case, the Court noted that “a threat must be distinguished from what is constitutionally protected speech.”[3] The Court recognized that “uninhibited, robust, and wide open” political debate can at times be characterized by “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” In light of the context of Watts’ statement - and the laughter that it received from the crowd - the Court found that it was more “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President” than a “true threat.”[3]
That’s a banger of a quote and a feeling I can totally get behind. Oh, you’re gonna make me kill people? Then let’s start with you.
I love how the statement receiving laughter from the crowd was a point in showing how it was political commentary.
So basically the shit-talker’s easy way out? I’m ashamed of, but not surprised, the fact that the Supreme Court was the one that came up with the coward’s way out to hate speech.
What a simplistic, destructive take.
Nuance exists in this world. In a free society, a distinction needs to be made between real, credible threats and simple hyperbole.
Also, “hate speech” is a real term, and it doesn’t mean ‘saying you hate someone.’
One time long ago, a guy on the train (whether tweaking or mental issues, I don’t know) sat down across from me, which was probably the most spacious spot in a fairly busy train. I didn’t register any unusual behaviour, nor was I - white male teen, at the time - particularly concerned.
He suddenly leaned in and asked me what I’d do if he killed me. Die, obviously. He then followed up telling me he could punch me in the face. He did neither of these things, eventually got off the train, and I never saw him again. The incident obviously left an impression, but I wouldn’t say I am or was traumatised by it.
I think this exemplifies that difficult grey zone. I don’t think it was motivated by hate, given I’m a fairly “safe” demographic. I also didn’t take him for the type of bully that does it for the power fantasy, or the type of macho needing to establish superiority.
Was it a threat or just a rather unhinged musing on social restraints? Was there actual intent to hurt me, kept in check by some lucky circumstances, or was it just a brief outburst of intrusive thoughts? I did feel threatened and intimidated, but is what I felt enough to judge his actions?
Regardless of the legal question, he probably needed help - medical or social - rather than punishment. I’m not qualified to assess that, but that question has bounced around my head ever since. What led to this outburst? What could be done to prevent that? What could be done to help him?
It’s not strictly relevant to the legal question - his actions are his own to account for, though his mental state may be a mitigating factor - but I figured I’d add it as context because I think it’s worth considering.
Because you’re not rich. The repressive part of the US “justice” system is only for poor people.
And they don’t want to start a precedent of prosecuting politicians for threatening to or actually killing people. That would be bad for defense contractors.
Trump has Musk and Murdoch money behind him. Vance’s life up until this point has veen thoroughly sponsored by Peter Thiel… They all have Epstein connections… A whole lot of people should be in jail.
There is a club… and you aint in it, peasant.
Simple, because he didn’t make a direct threat, didn’t direct anyone else either. Hell, he didn’t even call for her death. Trump’s using the mob boss language he learned in NYC.
“I think OP should have 9 guns pointed in his face for posting this.”
See how that works? All I said was that you should be threatened. Didn’t threaten action myself nor direct anyone else to action.
Speech like this is clearly stochastic terrorism, but the US really doesn’t have laws around it. I would hope there’s an incitement angle to this, IANAL, but our strong 1A rights make it sticky.
I heard the word “LZ should be executed” from “media report”.
I hate Trump, but I also hate being dishonest. He didn’t threaten her.
“I hate trump, but…”
“I hate elon, but…”
“Look, in the last got to defend trump, but”
These aren’t the statements of people that hate these monsters. These are the beginnings of statements of apologists working to soften the blow.
He threatened her. No integrity in your statement. Even if you needed to classify threats on a spectrum, this registers in several spots on that spectrum, regardless of your attempt to spin here. This was decidedly a threat, even without context of who trump is, but ESPECIALLY with that context.
I’m sorry, but no. He said she would feel differently about war if she were in the shoes of service men and women who have weapons pointed at them.
Do I agree with him? No, but it wasn’t a threat on her life.
Again, in the context of trump, it’s a threat on her life. He’s a chicken shit coward that mostly speaks in dog whistles and always carefully falls on that line of plausible deniability. For many others, you might give them the benefit of the doubt, NOT for trump.
The next day he said if people wanted to shoot him at a rally (where of course, his own supporters try to shoot him), they should shoot through the Press Corps and he’d be okay with that… You want to catch your breath and start defending that one now as well.
I actually agree that he dog whistles quite a bit, but his specific statement this particular time is not that. I think the less honest we are, and the more we just try to make the next sensationalist headline, the less credibility we have. That’s what the other side does. It is not what we should do. He says plenty we can hold him accountable for, we have zero need to make stuff up.
Again. Nobody is being dishonest here. This is brutal honesty about the reality of trump. He wasn’t properly punished for his “Beer Hall Putsch” last time, his follow-up is in a few months - hitler’s follow-up after not being properly punished was… significant. This is worth taking seriously.
IMO (formed in our brief exchange) you’re operating with a pre-trump mindset from, frankly, a position of privilege. Women are literally dying, they are actively planning to round up people that they “feel” “seem” to be “illegals”. Democracy is threatened after 250 years of survival. Respectfully, WAKE THE FUCK UP, FRIEND.
“They go low, we go high” WAS the noble, idealist position of the last election, notice they aren’t saying it now. Walz is now calling musk a “goofy dipshit”, because the other side isn’t listening to professional, courteous decorum - THEY ARE LITERALLY BANNING LITERATURE AND REWRITING HISTORY IN TEXTBOOKS. Again, your position is “nice” but seems fully informed by a privileged position, removed from direct threat from the things that are ACTUALLY happening today.
You’re actively investing energy into laundering his horseshit here. You’re in the bottom right corner of the TV screen translating his accelerating fascist rhetoric into “calm down, everyone”. You should ask yourself why you’re doing those things.
Thank you for posting this! I immediately thought of this public announcement of sorts when I read the question.
He didn’t threaten anything; he made a (surprisingly, for Trump) valid comment against a dedicated war hawk.
You could make a case that based on his other comments and stochastic terrorist language that what he said was dangerous, but those claiming that this specific instance was a threat either didn’t listen closely to what he said (you don’t give someone facing a firing squad a rifle of their own), or just listen to those media reports who are purposefully spreading disinformation.
He has made plenty of statements that are prosecutable, people don’t need to grasp at straws.
To answer the question, yeah if you said the same thing Trump did about Cheney, you’d be fine. It wasn’t a threat. He said give her a rifle and put her on the front lines if she’s so eager to have a war, see how she feels then.
That’s said, Vote. Vote for Harris. While Trump didn’t advocate for putting Cheney in front of a firing squad here, he has asked his military personnel to kill citizens and next time he won’t have someone that will stop him.
In the US, white, rich and influential people don’t get arrested just because they committed a crime!
I know it’s different from a call to arms which is illegal. Maybe it’s assault? Like another user said, money and power makes a difference in what you can get away with.
Look guys, the law is not code. It is not if(strcmp(speech, “kill”) then return guilty();. There’s this whole concept of mens rea which means a required element of the crime is whether or not he meant it as a threat to her, which you will note requires human judgement (by a jury!) to evaluate. It is highly unlikely that anyone would take this rhetoric, violent and gross as it may be, as a plausible threat against Liz Cheney by Trump.
Would you be arrested? Probably not, but you’re more likely to be than Trump. See, committing a crime isn’t the only factor that influences whether or not you get slapped with the punishment for that crime, even if it’s plainly obvious to everyone you committed it. Another major factor is whether or not someone is going to go through the effort of ensuring you get punished - if nobody does, or if they try, but can’t get to that finish line of getting a judge to declare you to be guilty in court, then you walk away scot-free.
So, the thing that’s keeping you from being arrested is your relative insignificance. You’re just some person, so it’s unlikely that anyone will go through the trouble of ensuring you receive the punishment for the crime you committed, even if it’s a relatively easy thing to do. Now, if you were to go on TV and say it, that would significantly increase your risk, since now more people are seeing you and someone who gives a shit might decide to go after you. That would be damning for you, since it would require very little effort to punish you - you clearly committed the crime, and you have no way to influence the court to make you harder to punish.
For Trump, his protection isn’t insignificance - there are plenty of people who would like to ensure he’s properly punished; instead, his protection comes from making it really difficult for someone who wants to punish him to be successful in that endeavor. He has a lot of money and influence, so he can hire good lawyers that can drag out the expensive legal process - something he can afford, but a lot of people who might try to go after him can’t. His lawyers are also good enough to find loopholes in the law to avoid punishment, so even if you can afford a cheap lawyer for a long time, he’ll likely still walk away unscathed. He’s also shown that he has the ability to influence what judge gets put on trials he’s a part of, which is another factor that influences whether or not he might get punished for the crime.
Ultimately, you’d have to have a rock-solid case presented by a team of very good lawyers working non-stop for months to years in order to bring Trump to justice, and the only people who reasonably have that power are almost exclusively on his side to begin with. Trump has knowingly committed multiple major crimes, and has shown that he has the ability to prevent them from hurting him, so he knows that he has virtually no chance to be punished for minor crimes, and commits them openly all the time.
