I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.' 'If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously,' he said to cheers. In 2016 at a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump told the crowd he had been warned there may be someone throwing tomatoes. The former president used the language of violence during his successful 2016 campaign. 6 attack on Congress, to "stand back and stand by."' 'Trump made the relationship explicit when he told the Proud Boys, an armed group that later took part in the Jan. 'If we see a full-blown insurgency - something that becomes more likely if Trump runs and loses again in 2024 - it would bear roughly the same symbiotic relationship to the GOP that the IRA had to the Sinn Fein party: It would be the armed wing of a larger right-wing movement. Indeed, the scattered terrorist attacks we have seen in recent years might be the early stages of such an uprising,' wrote Boot, who has been a leading critic of Trump on the right.Ĭonservative columnist Max Boot (r) condemned violent rhetoric used by Republicans, saying: 'Trump made the relationship explicit when he told the Proud Boys, an armed group that later took part in the Jan. 'We are at the greatest peril since the early 1970s - when the threat emanated from the left - of a violent insurgency in America. Paul Gosar was censured and stripped of his committee assignments by the House for posting an edited anime video that showed him attacking Democrats - but he escaped the wrath of his own party and only two Republicans supported the motion.īoot said Republicans had made no attempt to tone down the rhetoric of some members and were 'hostage to the extremists in their ranks.' faces rising incidents of political violence after the Jan. His Washington Post column will be dismissed as the work of a Never Trump Republican by some but it reflects growing alarm that the U.S. He said he feared that an armed faction of Trump fanatics would 'bear roughly the same symbiotic relationship to the GOP that the IRA had to the Sinn Fein party.' The growing frequency of political violence raises the specter of a Republican insurgency if former President Trump runs and loses in 2024, warned conservative columnist Max Boot on Tuesday.