A Kentucky federal judge has rejected a request from President Donald Trump’s lawyers to dismiss a lawsuit against him, alleging that he incited a crowd to commit violence at one of his campaign rallies. The suit, reportedly brought by a man and two women who say they were shoved around and punched at a Trump rally in Louisville in March 2016, alleges that the then-candidate incited the violence by imploring his supporters to “get ‘em out of here.”
Trump’s lawyers reportedly attempted to get the suit thrown out on free speech grounds, but Judge David Hale rebuked the effort, ruling that it can continue. Specifically, he wrote that it’s “plausible that Trump’s direction to ‘get ’em out of here’ advocated the use of force.”
As far as inflammatory and potentially inciting statements go, “get ‘em out of here” isn’t even the worst of what Trump said throughout his 2016 campaign rally tour, despite that particular comment apparently being the one that’s landed him in court. In other venues, he called for physical violence even more explicitly, once saying he wanted someone to “knock the crap out of” any protesters, and that he’d pay off any resulting legal bills.
He ultimately reneged on that promise when one of his supporters, a 78-year-old white man named John McGraw, sucker-punched a black protester named Rakeem Jones at a rally in North Carolina. Trump insisted to ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that he never said he’d cover his supporters’ legal bills, despite having said so, on video, in a room full of thousands of people.
In other words, the lawsuit against Trump will go forward, with Hale writing in his decision that “Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that Trump’s words amounted to incitement.” It’s not the only legal challenges the president currently faces either, whether relating to his policies or to his alleged personal conduct. He’s been embroiled in a months-long struggle to get his executive order on refugees implemented, despite multiple courts ruling against it. He’s also currently being sued for defamation by Summer Zervos, one of the several women who accused him of sexually predatory behavior in the final weeks of his campaign.
