“Now, if I don’t get elected,” he continued, “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” Donald Trump, Dayton, Ohio rally, March 2024

Trump warned last March of “potential death & destruction” if he were charged by the Manhattan district attorney. He also mocked those who urged his supporters to stay peaceful, saying, “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!”

Trump warned in August, after the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, that “terrible things are going to happen.” He later promoted a comment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that there would be “riots in the streets” if Trump were charged.

At a 2020 presidential debate, Trump was asked to repudiate violence by white supremacists and the Proud Boys, a far-right group. Trump responded by telling the Proud Boys not to “stand down,” as had been suggested, but to “stand back and stand by.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said explicitly in April 2016 that Trump, even at that point, had “a consistent pattern of inciting violence.”

Trump has mulled shooting illegal border crossers in the legs and offered to pay the legal fees of people who roughed up protesters that disrupted his 2016 campaign rallies.

On Tuesday, a New York judge overseeing the former president’s civil fraud trial issued a gag order barring Trump from talking about his staff, after the former president posted a picture of the judge’s clerk on his social media network, Truth Social.

Last month, federal prosecutor Jack Smith asked for a gag order in his criminal case against Trump over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, citing Trump’s stream of inflammatory remarks about prosecutors, the judge in that case, and even his recent suggestion that Mark Milley, the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had committed treason and should be executed.