You said what you said.
"I will offer an opinion here: Donald Trump did not intend his words to result in the murderous violence at the Capitol. He did not “literally” mean that his supporters should take weapons and use them against police.
But here I return to the case I made 10 years ago: We should all be held responsible for our literal language. But we must also be held accountable for our figurative language, metaphors, similes, analogies and more. And you should be held most accountable if you hold the highest office in the land.
Here is my own figurative language: That crowd of Trump supporters was a keg of dynamite. The president’s words lit the fuse. In one of the most famous statements on First Amendment freedoms and responsibilities, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in a dissenting opinion in the 1919 case of Abrams v. U.S., wrote: The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
Whether he meant his words in a literal or figurative sense, Trump spoke, and supporters who loved him and wanted him to remain president acted in hatred and violence. He bears responsibility for that, whether he is convicted or not. I mean that literally."
Speakers and writers should be held responsible for their public words whether their language is literal or figurative.
www.poynter.org