“Trump and Vance call on critics to tone down ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric.” — September 17, 2024
What was your best memory of irony? Before it was beaten to death by hammers, incinerated, dropped into a wood-chipper, and cast full fathom five into the vasty deep?
Happy Tuesday. There are 48 days until the Election.
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I think we need to start with some dog pictures today
Trump, who calls immigrants “vermin” and “animals,” who “poison the blood of the country,” who warns of a “bloodbath,” and calls his critics “scum,” “traitors,” and “enemies of the people,” is now accusing his opponents of “highly inflammatory language” and blaming Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for a second assassination attempt (he’s also started raising money off it).
“[The gunman, Ryan Routh] believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said without a shred of proof, “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”
This is rich. By which I mean unmitigated bullsh*t. But wait, there was more.
“The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months,” Trump’s running mate JD Vance said. “And two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months.”
Reminding us that we are not only post-irony, but also post-even-a-scrap-of-shame, Vance then declared:
“We cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist…”
He said this, just three days after Trump said of Kamala Harris: 'She's A Marxist, Communist, Fascist, Socialist.”
While Mr. Trump insists his fiery speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, was not responsible for the subsequent ransacking of the Capitol, he resisted pleas from advisers and his own daughter that day to do more to stop the assault. He even suggested that the mob might be right to want to hang his vice president and has since embraced the attackers as patriots whom he may pardon if elected again.
But we don’t really need to go back that far. Here he is just yesterday in FULL ALL CAPS RAGE blaming his political opponents — whom he called the “Communist Left” — for the foiled attack.
Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse! Allowing millions of people, from places unknown, to INVADE and take over our Country, is an unpardonable sin. OUR BORDERS MUST BE CLOSED, AND THE TERRORISTS, CRIMINALS, AND MENTALLY INSANE, IMMEDIATELY REMOVED FROM AMERICAN CITIES AND TOWNS, DEPORTED BACK TO THEIR COUNTIES OF ORIGIN.
The point of all this Trumpian projection is not subtle. He wants to shut down his critics. But as Jonathan Chait reminds us Trump is a threat to democracy — and saying so is not an incitement to violence.
There is no contradiction between these ideas whatsoever. Yet Trump’s supporters have responded to both attempts on his life by muddying the waters, exploiting the near-tragedies with cynical efforts to redefine critiques of Trump’s authoritarian inclinations as violent provocation….
Supporting liberal democracy requires simultaneously affirming the right to engage in legal, peaceful activity while opposing violent and criminal actions. Trump upholds neither side of the equation. He considers all speech or political activity against him to be criminal and any activity on his behalf, whether or not it is illegal or violent, to be legitimate. He believes all these things because he is an authoritarian at heart. The impulse to stop his critics from accurately describing his political project is not a defense of democratic norms but the precise opposite.
The difference: The upsetting things said by Trump and Vance are not true.
The upsetting things said about Trump and Vance are true.
Trump really did mount a violent coup against the Constitution. He and his relatives really did take bribes in office, including from foreign governments.
He really was helped into power by Russian espionage agencies. He really did steal secret documents from the US government after his election defeat.
And Vance really did, and by his own admission, intentionally "create stories" for political advantage that put residents of his state at risk of physical harm.
When a group of right-wing extremists were arrested for plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer during the COVID pandemic, then-President Trump shrugged it off. "Maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn't."
When a Republican candidate for governor of Montana assaulted a reporter who asked a question he didn't like, Trump praised the candidate: ""Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!"…
An ABC News investigation in 2020 found 54 specific instances of violent perpetrators citing loyalty to - or inspiration by - Trump as their motive.
A 2023 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that Republicans were dramatically more likely than Democrats to justify political violence - and the numbers were rising over time.
Frum’s thread apparently triggered JD, who took time out from campaign to xeet: “I'd say the most important difference is that people on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice.”
1. Writes Ukrainian presidential advisor Podolyak that he, Ryan Routh, will personally buy Poland’s MiG-29 fighter jets and then “fly them at night just above ground and hit every place Putin sleeps”
2. Writes Polish Defense Minister Błaszczak that he’s an American business man who wants to meet with the Minister to buy Poland’s MiG-29 fighter jets and transfer them to Ukraine.
3. Writes U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono to ask whether she can help him “borrow some Patriot Missile Defense Systems”
4. Writes Sean Penn with a request that Sean and Ryan buy Poland’s MiG-29 fighter jets together and then go together to borrow some Patriot Missile Defense Systems at the border. “How can they say no to you?”
5. Writes U.S. Senator Brian Schatz that he is flying out to Ukraine in a few days but needs the Senator’s help to borrow some Patriot Missile Defense Systems which he, as a civilian, will then “learn how to operate”
6. Goes to Taiwan to offer them “50,000 Afghan soldiers”
And so on…
7. Writes Seth Rogan to inform him that Seth, James Franco and Ryan himself should go together to North Korea to talk with Kim Jong Un to show him that America and North Korea can be friends.
8. Tries to write to the head of Hong Kong’s local government Carrie Lam hoping that she will make him “her private American advisor at no cost.” He believes that he and Carrie Lam can sit down with the protesting students and “find solutions.”
9. Writes the Belarusian opposition during the street protests in the wake of the falsified presidential election in 2020. Advises them to “buy sniper rifles from Amazon.”
10. Writes Elton John with the hope that they can release a song together to rally more support for Ukraine. Ryan has already prepared the lyrics and music to the song “We Are One.” He believes it would be a good idea to have young kids sing the chorus.
Exit take: It may be worth noting that this twisted nutjob voted for Trump in 2016, and was a convicted felon, among other things.
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Two assassination attempts in about two months is indeed horrifying, but it is not unprecedented: In 1975, President Gerald Ford survived two such attempts in fewer than three weeks. One assailant was a woman from West Virginia named Sara Jane Moore. The other was an acolyte of the murderer Charles Manson, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. Both of them came within feet of killing Ford.
Ford was a decent man and an underrated president, and he certainly had enemies, especially after pardoning Richard Nixon….
But he did not blame his opponents for the attempts on his life. He did not blame America, or the courts, or anyone else. He also did not use the attacks by Moore and Fromme to fundraise: Trump used his attacks to beat the bushes for money within a few hours. Instead, Ford acceded to the Secret Service’s request that he start wearing a trench coat with a zip-in Kevlar vest. (It was very uncomfortable and he disliked wearing it.) He then went back out in public and conducted a presidential campaign, which he lost.
We the people are tired. Tired of Trump, Trumpism and his supporters. Tired of his hateful, shit stirring, violent, racism! It’s time to bury him on 11/5, put the party of MAGA where it belongs, next to Ivanna on whatever hole she’s buried next to with that casket of documents. Granted we may not get all of them out of office but the rest will be disgraced for the rest of their miserable lives (Liz is keeping that list). Now to just ride this out until all the votes are counted. I’ve given up on the courts ever holding him responsible cause I honestly believe he’s Satan on earth, nobody gets that lucky for 78 years. So here’s to karma, third times a charm, that lucky rabbits foot or the cholesterol that’s been slow to block an artery.
Eric Holder said nobody is coming to save us so it’s up to us to save democracy.
First, Eli at 8 weeks is like a hug straight to the heart.
As always, you are spot on with your descriptions and analogy of what has happened to irony. “Cast into the full fathom five of the vasty deep”. That’s pure gold.
I really appreciate this piece. It will help me
When talking with family members who are saying “he’s the only one who has taken a bullet for this country” 🙄
I had the unfortunate experience of driving through Jefferson WI this past weekend where a CHURCH had a trump flag nailed to the front door that said “I’m voting for the convicted felon”. I have never hoped more for the asteroid than in that moment.
We the people are tired. Tired of Trump, Trumpism and his supporters. Tired of his hateful, shit stirring, violent, racism! It’s time to bury him on 11/5, put the party of MAGA where it belongs, next to Ivanna on whatever hole she’s buried next to with that casket of documents. Granted we may not get all of them out of office but the rest will be disgraced for the rest of their miserable lives (Liz is keeping that list). Now to just ride this out until all the votes are counted. I’ve given up on the courts ever holding him responsible cause I honestly believe he’s Satan on earth, nobody gets that lucky for 78 years. So here’s to karma, third times a charm, that lucky rabbits foot or the cholesterol that’s been slow to block an artery.
Eric Holder said nobody is coming to save us so it’s up to us to save democracy.
First, Eli at 8 weeks is like a hug straight to the heart.
As always, you are spot on with your descriptions and analogy of what has happened to irony. “Cast into the full fathom five of the vasty deep”. That’s pure gold.
I really appreciate this piece. It will help me
When talking with family members who are saying “he’s the only one who has taken a bullet for this country” 🙄
I had the unfortunate experience of driving through Jefferson WI this past weekend where a CHURCH had a trump flag nailed to the front door that said “I’m voting for the convicted felon”. I have never hoped more for the asteroid than in that moment.