The meme has been liked nearly 9,000 times and shared 2,400 times as of Monday. In reaction to Mr Trump’s repost, journalist Aaron Rupar sarcastically wrote on Twitter: “rubbing my last 2 brain cells together as I try to remember who ran the government on January 6.”
The former president shared the meme despite a House committee that investigated January 6 declaring Mr Trump the “central cause” of the day’s events. “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him,” the House panel wrote in its final report.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
As a fellow fan of syndicated daytime television, I’m sure that Mr. Trump is as familiar as I am with this above quote by Detective Lenny Briscoe, N.Y.P.D. So a re-post from him like this is puzzling to me….
Trump will testify under oath or take the Fifth – he’ll be forced to do one or the other. My guess is that he will “exercise his right against self-incrimination” in all pending and yet-to-be-announced cases against him.
Without any live testimony given by the defendant, prosecutors will be free to present any part of any of Trump’s public statements and social media posts as testimony.
Prosecutors will be free to pick-and-choose whatever public comments they want, to show Trump in whatever light they want to show him in. Trump won’t be able say anything back about it, because he’ll’ve already invoked his constitutional right to not say anything at all.
Public comments (including endorsement by "re-truth"ing like this) are not made under oath, so they’re not legally binding, but they are still things that Trump said out loud and on purpose.
However much they gin up support from his base of voters, they also add to the threat of Trump’s own words being used against him later in a court of law. Used against him in the general election, too, if he somehow manages to make it that far.
Trump is all too familiar with the millions of Americans who love him for what he says, but I don’t think he has any true notion about the millions more American voters who have come to despise him for what he has done. I’m not sure he ever will.
In a trial, the prosecution goes first and presents their full case. Then the defense gets their turn to refute anything presented by the prosecution. Even if he pleads the 5th, his lawyers will do their best to refute any presented earlier by the prosecution.
I agree they’ll do their best, but how? With what? Are they going to try to refute Trump’s crazy tweets with other crazy Trump tweets?
Among the most damning aspects of Trump’s public statements is their lack of consistency – the OP meme we’re discussing is an example. I don’t think this aspect will be refuted by his lawyer demonstrating even more inconsistency.
The only thing Trump has been consistent about on social media is lying about the 2020 election and personally attacking anyone who says anything against him. I don’t see how either of those behaviors are going to help his lawyers refute anything either.
As someone who has served on a jury… for me and everyone else in the room who served with me, legal teams words carried a lot less weight than the words of those who were actually involved in the alleged crime.
And we got all the advice we needed from the judge. There was no compelling reason to listen to the legal nonsense of the two opposing legal teams. We listened go the legal teams of course, but they didn’t have much impact on the verdict.