> First, what Trump actually told the protestors on the 6th was to go peacefully. His plain language has been analyzed by qualified legal scholars and they conclude it does not meet the very high threshold of “fighting words”. [1]
1. Language doesn't have to be illegal for it to break Twitter's TOS.
2. Language requires context. When Michael Corleone says "I don't want anything to happen to him while my mother's alive" everyone listening to those words understand exactly what they mean - that his brother's a few weeks away from ending up with a bullet in his head.
The context in this case has been weeks of crying from the rooftops about how the deep state is stealing the election from you, and that your boys should go to Capitol and do something about it. Meanwhile, your lawyer is shouting about how it's time for 'Trial by combat.'
I think it’s totally clear that in the court of public opinion Trump is guilty of inciting the riot.
In the context of a court of law, if we’re speaking about the actual limits of free speech in America, I think Trump’s speech does not meet the threshold.
So I’m not trying to make a political point, but I think there’s an interesting legal discussion to really understand that just because violence happens after a speech, or in this case concomitant to a speech, there’s still a very high bar - very direct language that has to be used for that person to be guilty of incitement in a court of law.
I completely agree it’s totally up to Twitter to decide to ban Trump from their platform. They likely don’t even have to give you a specific reason under their ToS. I wasn’t speaking about the Twitter ban in this case.
Lastly, I’d agree completely that context matters. Interestingly, the context of Giuliani’s “trial by combat” statement was discussing some hypothetical investigation that was supposed to happen over the next 10 days that they were going to “stake their reputation” on;
1. Language doesn't have to be illegal for it to break Twitter's TOS.
2. Language requires context. When Michael Corleone says "I don't want anything to happen to him while my mother's alive" everyone listening to those words understand exactly what they mean - that his brother's a few weeks away from ending up with a bullet in his head.
The context in this case has been weeks of crying from the rooftops about how the deep state is stealing the election from you, and that your boys should go to Capitol and do something about it. Meanwhile, your lawyer is shouting about how it's time for 'Trial by combat.'