The Trump Exception to the Constitution

It’s been almost eight years since I sued then-candidate Donald Trump for inciting violence against protesters at a presidential campaign rally in Louisville, Kentucky. Kashiya Nwanguma, a 21-year-old Black college student, attended that rally. As Trump began speaking, Nwanguma quietly made her way to the front of the crowd and held up a poster depicting Trump’s head on the body of a pig. When Trump spotted Nwanguma, he ordered the crowd to eject her. That was just one of five times Trump stopped his half-hour speech to point out protesters and to command his crowd of supporters to “get ’em out of here.” Upon Trump’s orders, the crowd descended on three people who would later become my clients: Nwanguma; Henry Brousseau, a 17-year-old white high school student; and Molly Shah, a 36-year-old white mother and special education teacher. The crowd did, in fact, get them out of there.

The crowd punched and shoved Brousseau and Shah, but Nwanguma received the worst of the crowd’s wrath. As my clients were being manhandled, Trump stated: “Don’t hurt ’em. If I say ‘go get ‘em,’ I get in trouble with the press, the most dishonest human beings in the world.” By then, they were already hurt. Trump went on to say: “In the old days, which isn’t so long ago, when we were less politically correct, that kinda stuff wouldn’t have happened. Today we have to be so nice, so nice.” Then Trump went into a discussion about how waterboarding is “absolutely fine.”