Raw Story

The entire panel on MSNBC's "The Weekend" reacted with dismay and disgust after watching a clip of Donald Trump seemingly approving of violence if Judge Juan Merchan sends him to jail as the result of his conviction on 34 felony counts.

In a taped interview with the hosts of Fox & Friends run early Sunday morning, the former president was asked what the impact of his jailing would have throughout the country and he blithely replied, ""I don't know that the public would stand it, you know, I don't. I think I think it would be tough for the public to take, you know at a certain point, there's a breaking point."

That led noted historian Michael Beschloss to bluntly say the embattled former president is encouraging violence among his rabid followers.

ALSO READ: Donald Trump has unclaimed property and abandoned money in at least 16 states

"He goes on to say at a certain point there is a breaking point," co-host Symone Sanders-Townsend prompted. "We have never seen something like this before in the United States from a former U.S. president. Even Richard Nixon did not go this far.."

"Not a bit," Beschloss replied. "Did you see Eisenhower todo something like this? 'Let's have domestic terrorism to resolve who's going to be the next president'? This is a thread that goes through Donald Trump back to the early rallies of late 2015. Remember when he used to say— and this was novel at the time and it has become old hat with him — 'Look at those reporters in the hall.,mainstream press are bad people.' The audience would boo and some were worried that there would be violence by some in the hall against reporters and other journalists who were trying to report on what was going on."

Watch below or at the link.

MSNBC 06 02 2024 08 04 04 youtu.be

Donald Trump's wife and youngest son were apparently hiding out at Trump Tower as his guilty verdicts on 34 counts were read in court.

Neither Melania nor Barron Trump appeared in court for the former president's trial, but sources told Page Six the pair "were smuggled in through the side entrance" at the Manhattan high-rise at some point Thursday and remained there as the jury delivered its verdict.

“Everyone says Melania and the entire family are rallying around the former president," the source added. "But the mood is nonetheless gloomy and gloomier right now. It’s definitely viewed as a downer at Mar-a-Lago.”

The gloomy mood has permeated Trumpworld, according to another insider.

“It’s like a funeral," that source said. "There was hope all day and then none!”

ALSO READ: Trump just endorsed this Virginia congressional candidate whose social media isn’t so MAGA

A source said Trump had spoken to his wife and all five of his children, including Ivanka, but his allies were surprised by the conviction.

“Everyone was hoping for him to get off or at least get a hung jury," a source said. "The fact it happened rather quickly has everyone in a tizzy. But Trump’s friends say it’s not unexpected, and they’re prepared for the next steps, including the appeal.”

Speaking for over 30 minutes live on national television in his first official speech after a jury convicted him on 34 felony counts, Donald Trump late Friday morning spewed numerous lies attempting to spin the details of his five-week trial, including the false claim he could go to prison for "187 years," while vowing to appeal.

Echoing his infamous speech announcing his first run for president in 2015, and even using the phrase, "not good people," Trump began Friday's remarks by claiming "millions and millions of people are flowing in from all parts of the world, not just South America, from Africa, from Asia from the Middle East. And they're coming in from jails and prisons. And they're coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums. They're coming in from all over the world into our country. And we have a president and a group of fascists that don't want to do anything about it."

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, continued his anti-immigrant theme, claiming "people are allowed to pour in from countries unknown, from places unknown. From languages that we don't even that we haven't even heard of. We have people sitting in schools, with languages where very few people have ever even heard of these languages. It's not like Spanish or French, or Russian. Language is unknown. We have people coming from all corners of the globe. And many of them are not good people," he said, while claiming "record levels of terrorism. record levels of terrorists have come into our country, record. They've never seen anything like it."

READ MORE: Johnson on Trump Verdict: SCOTUS Justices ‘Deeply Concerned’ and Will ‘Set This Straight’

The ex-president's remarks quickly devolved further, randomly complaining about crime, and "migrants...taking over luxury hotels" and "destroying our country." He also ranted about his opponents, his impeachments, the January 6 Committee, the story about what happened with his Secret Service agent driving him from his January 6 speech, Venezuela, and "veterans living on the streets like dogs."

"They want to raise your taxes by four times," Trump insisted. "They want to stop you from having cars with their ridiculous mandates that make it impossible for you to get a car."

On Friday Trump admitted on-camera he didn't testify because if he lied he would be charged with perjury.

Trump: I wanted to testify. The theory is, you never testify. As soon as you testify, anybody, if it were George Washington, don't testify, because they will get you on something you said slightly wrong and they sue you for perjury. pic.twitter.com/DeY4W3AyMD
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 31, 2024

Critics blasted Trump, and called him "not coherent."

Trump really needs a teleprompter. He's not coherent. I dare you to try to make sense of this. pic.twitter.com/nlRqYVuC7t
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 31, 2024

Other critics quickly weighed in.

"Polluted stream of consciousness. Dude needs a nap and a team of neurologists," observed foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf, adding, "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."

READ MORE: Chief Justice Refuses to Meet With Senate Judiciary Chairman Over Alito Scandal

"Whoever thought this was a good idea for Trump (and it was for sure only Trump) was deeply wrong. A complete trainwreck," Rothkopf also declared.

"This press conference is not helping Trump," observed constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis. "He’d be better just keeping quiet but he’s begging for incarceration at this point."

"With badly fading hair dye, Trump is currently rambling incoherently about 'confliction' and being 'literally crucified'," said The Bulwark's Tim Miller.

Other critics slammed the news networks.

"Why are cable networks right now airing the full, live speech of a convicted felon, a hardened criminal?" asked SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile.

Media critic Mark Jacob added, "Trump is lying unchallenged on national television right now, with the assistance of the news media."

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Biggest Felony in American History’: Prosecutor’s Closing Argument Against Trump Praised

As supporters of Donald Trump flood right-wing platforms with threats against the jurors and judge following guilty verdicts Thursday in his criminal case regarding hush money payments, fears are growing that the influence the Republican presumptive presidential nominee has over his supporters will soon lead to violence.

"Until and unless he accepts the process, the extremist reaction to his legal troubles will be militant," Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, toldReuters.

The former president gave no sign of accepting the legal process Friday as he held a press conference at Trump Tower, repeating claims that the case had been "rigged."

Shortly after a New York jury announced its verdict in the case regarding documents that were falsified to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniel just before the 2016 election to keep her from publicizing an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump, right-wing websites like Gateway Pundit, Truth Social, and Patriots.Win saw an uptick in violent posts from users.

One commenter called for "someone in NY with nothing to lose" to "take care of" New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, while another on Gateway Pundit directed a threat at any and all opponents of Trump.

"Time to start capping some leftys," said the user. "This cannot be fixed by voting."

The reaction is a direct result, said Ware, of Trump's "insistence that he is being mistreated."

Trump responded to the verdict on Thursday by telling reporters he is "a very innocent man" and calling the trial—one of four criminal cases against him—"a disgrace." He is expected to appeal the verdict. On Friday morning, the Trump campaign announced a $35 million fundraising haul following the guilty verdict.

Some Trump supporters signaled they are waiting for instructions from the former president, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in the November general election and is set to be formally nominated days after his scheduled sentencing in July.

On Patiots.win, one commenter called for 1 million armed Trump supporters to "go to Washington and hang everyone," while another said the former president "should already know he has an army willing to fight and die for him if he says the words...I'll take up arms if he asks."

While Republican lawmakers have not explicitly endorsed a violent reaction to the verdict that found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts, many have joined Trump in making clear that they don't accept the trial's outcome.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has said she would not endorse Trump in the 2024 election, said Manhattan District Attorney charged Trump for politically motivated reasons and falsely claimed that he campaigned on prosecuting the former president.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the "charges never should have been brought in the first place," while House Speaker Mike Johnson accused the Biden administration of the "weaponization of our justice system."

Progressives agreed with Trump on one point Friday, after he pledged that the hush money case is "long from over" and said that "the real verdict is going to be November 5" when U.S. voters go to the polls in the general election.

While celebrating that a jury of "everyday people" held the former president accountable and proved that "despite his worst efforts, Trump is not above the law," People's Action executive director Sulma Arias said Democrats "must beat him at the ballot box" to keep him from further eroding U.S. democracy, climate action, and other progressive values.

Donald Trump's defense lawyer may have committed a ruinous blunder during his closing argument.

Attorney Todd Blanche characterized former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who was a key witness for the prosecution, as dishonest and untrustworthy but portrayed former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker as truthful — and MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said that was essentially a gift to prosecutors.

"Todd Blanche just painted David Pecker as a truth teller in marked contrast to his portrayal of Michael Cohen," Rubin posted on X. "If I am prosecutor Josh Steinglass, I just did a happy dance."

Pecker told the jury that he purchased damaging stories about Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election as part of an agreement with his campaign, which prosecutors say amounted to an illegal in-kind contribution that forms the basis of the felony charged against the former president and corroborated much of Cohen's testimony.

ALSO READ: 'Oh, come on!' Tommy Tuberville dismisses Trump connection to 'unified Reich' video

Trump is accused of falsifying business records to conceal his reimbursements to Cohen, who had paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to remain silent about her sexual relationship a decade earlier with Trump.

Cohen and other witnesses have testified that Trump was particularly concerned about Daniels going public with her claims after the "Access Hollywood" tape surfaced, showing him boasting to TV host Billy Bush that he had groped numerous women's genitals and gotten away with it because he was a celebrity.

The 2005 recording came to light weeks before the 2016 election and caused multiple Republicans to rescind their endorsement of the reality TV-host-turned-presidential candidate, and prosecutors say Trump managed to win despite that due in part to the hush money payments that prevented voters from learning about his extramarital affairs.

Historian and filmmaker Ken Burns used his graduation commencement address at Brandeis University over the weekend to give students a warning about the prospects of reelecting former President Donald Trump.

In his address, Burns said that alarm bells should go off in students' heads whenever they hear Trump-style demagoguery that tries to divide Americans into competing factions of warring tribes.

"If I have learned anything over those years, it's that there's only us," Burns said. "There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there's a them, run away. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment."

Burns then turned his attention to the upcoming November election, which he said he "dreaded" doing due to his longstanding efforts to project neutrality.

"There is no real choice this November," he said. "There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route."

READ MORE: 19 fabulously worthless things Trump will give you for your money

He then explicitly laid out why Trump -- "the other route" -- was exactly the type of candidate he had warned students to avoid.

"The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems," he said.

"When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, 'a bigger delusion,' James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer."

Read the whole speech at this link.