To balance things out, consider also that 20 minutes into his speech, Trump said "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." I think it's important to take a charitable interpretation of what your opponents say, and to not assume malice. It's also worth keeping Hanlon's Razor in mind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor).
> While baselessly claiming that Democrats won elections because of fraud, Mr Giuliani bellowed to the crowd: “Who hides evidence? Criminals hide evidence, not honest people!”
> He continued: “Over the next ten days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we're wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we're right, a lot of them will go to jail.”
> Mr Giuliani then suddenly yelled: "Let's have trial by combat!" to lacklustre cheers from the crowd.
To me this does not sound like a call to violence. It sounds like a bad joke or poorly-worded bluster or an attempt at hyperbole. Giuliani was quick to condemn the riot at the capitol, for what it's worth (https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1347149858000556032).
This happens a lot with Trump. He implies contradictory things at the same time and then says he doesn’t mean it that way when confronted. Meanwhile, everyone who was primed to hear the horrible/terrible/deplorable version of the message heard exactly what they wanted to hear.
He also does this with Tweets. Oh that retweet of that white supremecist, just a re-tweet. Doesn’t mean anything. Except there are good people on both sides.
But it does mean something when you are the President and you have a large number of followers.
People have been getting death threats for weeks about the stolen election. The only thing this President has done is continue to amp up the lies and demands of his followers to do something, anything.
The world isn’t a programming language, there’s no state machine and no precise instruction set. It is full of hints and innuendo.
I think you can assess his intent and his state of mind from his contemporaneous statements during the occupation of the capital.
He asked the rioters to “remain peaceful”. As in, by all means, the thing you did to break into the building, that’s OK, but be peaceful. And by the way, the election was stolen from me and I love you.
It was only later, after sustained pressure that Trump told the rioters to leave.
This is like the police after being called to an in-progress home invasion telling the invaders to not break anything while in the house, and by the way we really like you.
Regarding the "trial by combat" line - an article on Giulani's speech (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...) describes it like this:
> While baselessly claiming that Democrats won elections because of fraud, Mr Giuliani bellowed to the crowd: “Who hides evidence? Criminals hide evidence, not honest people!”
> He continued: “Over the next ten days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we're wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we're right, a lot of them will go to jail.”
> Mr Giuliani then suddenly yelled: "Let's have trial by combat!" to lacklustre cheers from the crowd.
To me this does not sound like a call to violence. It sounds like a bad joke or poorly-worded bluster or an attempt at hyperbole. Giuliani was quick to condemn the riot at the capitol, for what it's worth (https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1347149858000556032).