Newly installed RNC co-chair Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump, is campaigning for the presumptive GOP nominee as he attends his criminal trial in Manhattan, where he faces 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business documents related to payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
As seen in the video below, Lara Trump tells a MAGA audience that when her father-in-law was president, “he showed us a whole lot that we didn’t know was going on, within the media, within Washington, D.C. He exposed a lot of people so they have to do everything they can to keep him out of the White House because they know [if] Donald Trump gets into the White House for four more years, the jig is up for them.”
[Donald Trump often talks about seeking revenge on his political enemies. At the CPAC he told the crowd: “I am your warrior, I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”]
Lara Trump: “It’s four years of scorched earth when Donald Trump retakes the White House.”
Is that a threat?
pic.twitter.com/XSWG1AUOlU
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) April 19, 2024
Encouraged by applause from the crowd, Lara Trump raises her voice and yells, “The gloves are off,” and adds, “It’s four years of scorched earth when Donald Trump retakes the White House.”
A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy of “destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to be able to fight a war, including the deprivation and destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and infrastructure.”
Note: Russia has been accused of employing scorched-earth tactics in its invasion of Ukraine. During the battle for the city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian commander Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky said: “The enemy has switched to so-called Syrian scorched-earth tactics.”
(Syrsky’s Syrian adjective refers to Vladimir Putin sending Russian troops and aircraft into Syria in 2015, “destroying towns and cities” in an offensive that “turned the tide of the Syrian civil war in the Assad regime’s favor,” according to the New York Times.)
The RNC leader’s rhetoric is severe: The scorched-earth strategy of destroying the supply of food and water to the civilian population in an area of conflict has been banned under Article 54 of Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Conventions.