Williams Raises the Specter of Political Violence
Dave Williams, the current chair of the Republican Party of Colorado, recently openly anticipated civil war if Republicans are not satisfied with election procedures, saying:
If they’re able to successfully remove Donald Trump from the ballot, for example, or they’re successfully able to keep engaging in some of the blatant election fraud type behavior that they’ve done, then pretty soon you’re not going to be able to resolve your differences through the ballot box. It will be done, you know, in a civil war, and we don’t want that. No one wants a civil war.
Let us be blunt here. Williams is warning about physical violence by Trump supporters if they don’t get their way at various points of election proceedings. He is saying this in a way such that he can plausibly deny that he is calling for violence or that he favors violence.
But we do not need to pretend to be stupid.
No, Williams is not explicitly endorsing violence or saying that he would participate in violence, but he is very clearly signalling to his fellow Trumpists that violence might be justified if Trumpists do not get their way during the elections. An obvious aim of his statement is to create fear among those who might oppose Trumpist election claims or maneuvers.
What Williams has not said speaks volumes. He could clearly tell his fellow Trumpists that that should peacefully accept legal rulings pertaining to the relevance of the Fourteenth Amendment to the January 6 Capitol assault. He could clearly tell his fellow Trumpists that they should stop conspiracy mongering about the 2020 presidential election, stop making false allegations about election fraud generally, and pledge to peacefully accept election results in the future.
Williams is the same person who has repeatedly denied the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidential win. The Washington Post summarizes:
Since former president Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, Williams has questioned the results. After an audit showed there were no problems in Colorado’s voting system, Williams was among a group of state Republicans in December 2020 to request an independent investigation of Dominion Voting Systems. (There is no evidence that any voting systems were compromised.) In January 2022, Williams repeated false claims on a Colorado radio station that President Biden wasn’t legitimately elected.
Williams is the same person who invited Kari Lake, who lost the Arizona race for governor, but claimed she was cheated, to a major Republican fundraising dinner.
Williams’s party at this point is fundamentally driven by conspiracy mongering.