Juliette Kayyem: Trump Incites 'Terrorism,' This Time In Michigan

Joe Biden has blamed President Donald Trump for inciting the alleged domestic terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Trump tweeted "liberate Michigan" back in April, and this past Saturday joined in on ‘lock her up’ chants, referring to Whitmer, at a rally in Muskegon.

Homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem spoke with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday about Trump’s behavior.

“It’s not enough to say that Trump incites violence; he incites a particular kind of violence known as terrorism that’s the use or threatened use of violence for political or social purposes,” she said. “He’s been doing this for years, but the Michigan thing made it take off, and we need to call it terrorism.”

Trump incites violence in a particular way, such that he can have plausible deniability, Kayyem noted.

“It’s called stochastic terrorism - you can call it random terrorism - which is simply a way of describing how a leader uses his words and platforms to incite his followers in which it’s vague enough that he can have plausible deniability and say it was just a joke,” she said. “But his listeners hear what he’s saying as a calling card.”

Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.