This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 8th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In the wake of the pro-Trump mob violence at the Capitol that ended in as of now five deaths and that failed attempt to stop

Congress in its job to count electoral votes, a lot of words are being thrown around,

incitement, sedition, and treason.

Cato's Walter Olson says these terms have legal meanings, and while no one questions

that the people who ransacked and vandalized the capital have committed serious crimes,

when we throw around certain words, we should at least know what they mean.

The President of the United States at a rally of his most ardent supporters essentially

urged them to go to Congress, having earlier in the day suggested that it was possible for the

Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes if he deemed them to be illegitimate somehow.

And in his speech urging his supporters to go to Congress, he essentially didn't really create any other options other than some

sort of direct confrontation. That is, he says, we need to be strong, we need to project strong we need to project strength you don't you don't win by being weak

that sort of thing and so I guess the question is

was this incitement?

When you ask whether something is incitement,

you're often dealing with close cases

and with the difference between a legal definition and the way we'd use the word in everyday speech.

And incitement certainly raises a question of motive.

It raises a question of motive, it raises a question of did he know

that his audience was capable of things,

did he expect to go as far as he did.

...