Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee ® on Wednesday said 2024 will be the last election “decided by ballots rather than bullets” if former President Trump doesn’t win the presidential race because of his various legal battles.
In the latest episode of his show on TBN, Huckabee argued the legal woes now facing Trump are part of a politically motivated scheme from the Biden administration, an argument touted by many in the former president’s orbit.
“If these tactics end up working to keep Trump from winning or even running in 2024, it is going to be the last American election that will be decided by ballots rather than bullets,” Huckabee warned in his opening monologue.
Huckabee accused President Biden and his team of trying “to make sure that Donald Trump is not his opponent in 2024″ and “to destroy Trump in the courthouse rather than at the ballot box.” He also alleged the Justice Department, the IRS and the FBI are “conspiring to hide the Biden family crimes, while all the time being obsessed with charging Donald Trump with crimes.”
Y’know, this sort of rhetoric seems less about making a prediction (there will be violence) than it is about cueing his audience to prepare to be violent, or at least to accept that there will be violence.
Yeah, it looks like an innocent prediction from the guy that can see the writing on the wall, and that’s why this kind of talk takes this form and not the form of explicitly calling for political violence from particular people- this way it’s all deniable and stochastic enough that nobody’s (hint, hint) actually breaking the law out in the open.