Trump threatened Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler. He said that she better back up his Electoral College challenge or he’d “do a number on her.”

According to Politico, the threat was made last Monday night on Air Force One, winging their way to Georgia for a rally, the night before the Georgia elections. The inference was that if Loeffler didn’t do as instructed, Trump would take to the stage and light her up in front of the crowd. As to what he might have said, the presumption is “vote for someone else.”

But we want to analyze this further before setting out the tweet and article. It might well be true that Trump was referring to his speech and telling the crowd to vote against her. But is that all he meant? We are forced to reinterpret things much differently after last week. Even if the threat was limited to the speech, we have no reason to think the threat would stop with “don’t vote for her.” It could have gone right into something like “She dates strange people …” (She is married.)

The point is that Trump is now – and perhaps always was – so unpredictable that everything has to be reviewed in light of “what he’s capable of” and that extends beyond that which most of us accepted just a week ago. It was Michael Cohen who said that Trump speaks in code and that Cohen knows the code. “Do a number” sounds intentionally very vage.

We are only saying that while he may have been threatening to disown her during his speech, it doesn’t necessarily end there. Trump was desperate.

Scoop in @playbookplus, guest-written today by @elianayjohnson:

Trump “told Kelly Loeffler before he landed in Georgia for a final rally on Monday that if she didn’t back the Electoral College challenges, he would ‘do a number on her,’ from the stage.”https://t.co/qdxrdmRB1N

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) January 10, 2021

We need to think more expansively about this man and appreciate the danger he represents.

****
Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak