Trump needs to spend his final days in prison—just like anyone else who attempts a coup

This is how we deter future coups

Donald Trump appointed federal Judge Timothy Kelly did the right thing earlier this week when he sentenced Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio to 22 years in prison for his central role in the Jan 6 terrorist attack.  Kelly powerfully stated when sentencing Tarrio for his various felony convictions including seditious conspiracy, “It is kind of hard to put into words how important the peaceful transfer of power is.” The judge added, “Our country was founded as an experiment in self-government by the people, but it cannot long endure if the way we elect our leaders is threatened with force and violence.”

But what Kelly got wrong was his remark that, “Mr. Tarrio was the ultimate leader” of the Jan 6 attack. In reality that person was the same one who during a 2020 presidential debate declared, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” That person is Donald J. Trump.

It’s this simple: If Trump simply accepted his loss of the 2020 election, there would not have been a Jan 6 terrorist attack.

But Trump did not. Instead, after the 2020 election—and even before—he engaged in a concerted campaign of lies to delegitimize the results of the election.  Trump had seen the same polling we did in the run up to the 2020 election that showed him losing badly to Biden—including a Fox News poll a week before the election showing Biden up by 8 points over Trump. (Why the media didn’t undermine Trump’s election fraud claims after the 2020 election by repeatedly citing the polls conducted in the final weeks of campaign showing Trump losing to Biden on average by 7 points is beyond me?!)

Trump soon moved to the attempted coup portion of his plan with his fraudulent elector scheme, pressuring Mike Pence, DOJ and others to illegally stop the Jan 6 certification. Indeed, the federal indictment against Trump for his attempted coup tells us as much. The third line of the charging document reads bluntly: “Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power.”  From there, as detailed in the indictment, Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”

When it comes to Jan 6 attack itself, we know from the evidence presented under oath at the Jan 6 House committee hearings that Trump planned this as his final back up plan if his coup attempt failed. As a reminder, on December 18, 2020, Trump conveyed a meeting in the Oval Office with his top administration lawyers versus lawyers like Sydney Powell and Rudy Giuliani to explore if there was any final, legal related means to stop the Jan 6 certification that was just two weeks away.

That six-hour meeting made Trump aware that he needed another option to stay in power. That is why shortly after that meeting concluded, he sent his infamous tweet at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19, 2020, again repeating the election was stolen and then calling his supporters to Washington, DC writing, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th," adding, “Be there, will be wild!"

As we learned from  Jan 6 hearings, that tweet “would galvanize his followers” and was cited by federal prosecutors as being a key reason why some like The Oath Keepers began to plan a violent attack on Jan 6 in Trump’s name.

And on Jan 6, with thousands of Trump supporters angrily chanting “Fight for Trump,” Trump pushed the crowd to take action with lines like, “We're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years,” adding, “We're just not going to let that happen.” And other such as: “They want to come in again and rip off our country. We can’t let it happen.”

There was no peaceful option on Jan 6 at 12:30PMET when Trump barked out those words to “not let it happen”—with the “it” being the certification of Biden’s victory by Congress a short distance away.  Trump knew that. Indeed, the civil lawsuit filed last week in Colorado--with the help of CREW--to disqualify Trump from the ballot by way of Section 3 of the 14^Th Amendment for engaging in an insurrection perfectly summed it up as follows: "President Trump was the mob's leader, and the mob was his weapon."

That complaint- which is scaring Trump and MAGA as we can see from their anger to it-- continued on to rightly note: "Without his false claims of election fraud, coercive tactics, inflammatory rhetoric, mob mobilization, promotion of political violence, instructions to march on the Capitol, and decision to pour fuel on the fire rather than tell the mob to disperse, the attack on the Capitol would not have happened."

This is all backed up the Jan 6 House committee’s final report that wrote, “The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”

This is why Donald Trump—not The Proud Boys—was the actual leader of the Jan 6 attack designed to keep Trump in power despite losing the election. This is also why Trump must be sentenced to prison for even longer than any of the Proud Boys.

In fact, as I’ve said in the past: Trump must spend his last days in a prison cell.  I repeated this remark on my SiriusXM show Friday which caused Fox News to write an article slamming me for “demanding” Trump must die in prison. 

Let me be clear: If a Democratic President did what Trump did—attempting a coup and inciting a terrorist attack on our Capitol to remain in power—I would 100 percent be demanding the same fate for that President. This is not about partisanship, it’s about patriotism. It’s about standing up for our democratic Republic against all enemies- be they domestic or foreign.

Donald Trump must die in prison. I don’t say that to be cruel. I say that because that is how we send a loud and powerful message to all Americans regardless of political party that if you ever attempt what Trump did, you will be met with the same fate. Anything less puts the future of our Republic in peril.

---