Over the weekend, Trump held his most recent 2024 campaign rally in Waco, TX — an event that was already steeped in its own controversy, due to the ex-president’s decisions regarding the date and location of the rally. We’ve come to know and expect these rallies to be as unhinged as humanly possible. However, as the disgraced former president faces down the most severe legal peril he’s ever gone up against in his life, it’s safe to say that this particular event was worse than most.
During the beginning moments of the rally, Trump made a disturbing decision to openly and proudly celebrate the individuals who stormed and destroyed the nation’s Capitol building on January 6th, all in the name of keeping Donald Trump in a place of power where he no longer belonged. The rally opened with an anthem-style pro-Trump song by the J6 Prison Choir, titled “Justice For All,” as a montage of images of the infamous insurrection was played across the video screens in the style of a cheesy high school graduation slideshow. It was enough to turn even a Fox News host’s stomach, and one former January 6th House Select Committee investigator broke her silence to warn that Trump’s increasingly violent rhetoric and behavior in recent weeks has been even “more overt and blatant than the events leading up to January 6.”
Now, renowned former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi has weighed in on that disturbing, controversial rally, noting that DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith could and should look to that event as evidence that Donald J. Trump had intent to incite the fateful, deadly January 6th attack on the nation’s Capitol.
Figliuzzi’s remarks came during an appearance on MSNBC with host anchor Nicolle Wallace.
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“I don’t work at the FBI,” Wallace noted. “But if I did, these aren’t dots on some Trump Derangement Syndrome sort of delusion. There is a direct line in black and white. Roger Stone dedicates his book to the Branch Davidians. The Branch Davidians are viewed as martyrs by groups that celebrate them in black and white, in ink, or online, the Three Percenters and the right-wing militias. The right-wing militias proudly organized the participation of their members in the January 6th insurrection. Donald Trump rolls footage of January 6th, puts his hand over his heart and pays tribute to them, redefining patriotism in America with a direct line again, not a conspiracy theory, in black and white, from Stone to the Branch Davidians to the militia groups to the insurrection to the [potential] Republican nominee for president in 2024. What do you think is happening in the FBI to protect us from that direct line?”
“Well, yeah, I have had the same thought myself,” the former high-ranking FBI official responded. “First, let me dispel the notion that anything significantly changed in terms of how the FBI can operate post-January 6th. I think many people, if you can ask them, hey, do you think have gotten better in terms of addressing domestic terrorism after January 6th, do you think people changed the rules? There is no evidence of that whatsoever. We have no domestic terrorism law and I don’t believe, unless there is a secret memo from DOJ, I don’t believe the operational guidelines for the FBI have changed one iota with regard to the domestic terrorism program.”
“Boy, do I hope that special council Jack Smith pressed ‘record’ this weekend, Saturday night, for the Waco rally, because I hope he tries to introduce into evidence — I don’t know if he will succeed, but I hope he tries to introduce into evidence former President Trump playing footage of January 6th at his rally,” Figliuzzi went on to add. “And I hope he gets into evidence statements like ‘death and destruction‘ with regard to the case [in New York]. I hope he gets into evidence the picture of Trump about to swing a baseball bat at [Manhattan District Attorney] Alvin Bragg’s head. I hope all of that goes into evidence for mindset and context, because that’s what Trump is doing.”
“I am pleased that John Heilemann has drawn that line for us, that many people are unaware of what happened at Waco and the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building two years later by a guy named Timothy McVeigh, who was simply there at Waco observing what happened and tried to get retribution when he blew up the federal building with a day care center in it,” Frank said. “With regard to what is the FBI thinking about right now, one question is, who was at Waco Saturday night in the crowd? Who is the next Timothy McVeigh that’s going to act on the rhetoric and the incitement of violence of Donald Trump and do something horrible? Next week? Next year?”
It certainly seems that Donald Trump is digging his own hole past the point of return.
Watch the MSNBC segment here:
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
