Rob Natelson says Trump Urged ‘Peaceful and Patriotic’ Protests

On KGVO’s Monday Talk Back show, the special guest was Constitutional scholar, author and former UM law Professor Rob Natelson, who added his voice to the controversial happenings over the last week in Washington, D.C.

Natelson referred to President Trump’s speech to the protesters who gathered in Washington.

“The claim that President Trump somehow incited the riot is actually wrong,” said Natelson. “We have the transcript of his actual speech. If you could go on ‘Snopes’, which is you probably know is a left leaning fact checking website, and you can get the actual words, and he specifically tells everybody to approach it peacefully and to go only to the Capitol. He doesn't say anything about going inside the Capitol, just basically saying, ‘Let's go to the Capitol, do it peacefully and patriotically’.

Natelson claimed there were other groups that were not affiliated with the protesters.

“Were there ‘agents provocateur’ involved here?," he asked. “In other words were there leftists who infiltrated the Trump rally and help to instigate the invasion of the capital? Now this sounds conspiratorial, until you keep in mind the experience with the Tea Party rallies within the last decade or so where they were constantly having to deal with enemies that would come into their rallies and then try to discredit them by holding up racist signs or provoking violence.”

KGVO received a written complaint by a listener who called in to the show stating that Natelson was not presenting the facts regarding the riot in Washington, D.C.

‘Dear Sirs,

I wrote last week and am following that up with a second, new objection to your morning call-in show.  This morning your talk-back show had a guest speaker (Rob Natelson) that again put forth allegations that leftwing members of Antifa, and Black Lives Matter were involved in last weeks attack on the Capitol alleging that these were infiltrators hoping to smear Trump's reputation.  His comments were based not on evidence but on opinion pieces written in conservative papers, also without a shred of evidence.  In fact, as of today, over 120 arrests have been made, none of which were of members of these groups and all of which were Trump supporters, QANON members and right-wing militant groups. The FBI has not found any evidence to support anyone other than those groups involved.  In none of the pictures I have seen of the protesters nor criminals in the Capitol building were black people present. 

Again, I believe in free speech but to let his comments go without any challenge from your station or the show hosts serves only to promote unfounded conspiracy theories.  You are promoting division in our country.  By taking a passive stance to falsehoods, you are in fact promoting them and giving tacit approval to hate mongering.  You are doing so on public airwaves which are owned by the public and which you are given permission to broadcast on.  Become responsible.  At present, you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are not.’

The caller said Natelson's comments about possible infiltrators into the protest were 'absurd'.

Again, Natelson addressed the issue.

“You can claim as much as you want, that ‘it was absurd’ (referring to the caller’s comments). But if you look and you read the transcript, the President never once advocates violence in any way. The President talks about fighting really hard, but I mean, that's standard rhetoric in politics. And he explicitly in a phrase in which he says peacefully and patriotically tells them to act peacefully. I mean, those are facts. And I'm sorry that the mainstream media has edited out the word peaceably so that so many people don't know that, but it still remains a fact.”

Natelson also addressed the current effort to impeach the President this week.

“The current impeachment, I think tries to meet the requirements of that research by alleging a crime,” he said. “It alleges, essentially that President Trump tried to incite sedition or insurrection, and there are some real factual problems with that allegation.”

You can hear the entire podcast with Rob Natelson by clicking this link.