"No honest accounting of America’s fetid climate can ignore the fact that the former president himself is the country’s most influential exponent of political violence. He described those who stormed Capitol Hill with knives and nooses on January 6 2021 as “unbelievable patriots”. He mocked an attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of former Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, after one of his own supporters smashed his head with a hammer.” – Edward Luce, ‘America is staring into an Abyss’, The Financial Times
“Unfortunately, as
heinous as the shooting was, the Republican spin doctors are joyously taking
advantage of this huge opportunity to fabricate blame and feed paranoia.
They're dancing and chanting around the fire, wearing MAGA masks.” – Washington Post comment
“The
central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an
authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” J.D. Vance wrote. “That
rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination
Nope. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped by VOTING against him, not “at all costs”. Trump is the one who has spewed violent rhetoric and instigated a violent insurrection. Let’s also not forget trump’s comments after Paul Pelosi was violently attacked. -– Washington Post comment
Trump is often most comfortable — and most effective — when playing
both martyr and victim, and Saturday’s shooting naturally thrusts him back into
that role.
"Tearing apart the country? That’s easy to fix: the former president must
end his campaign, and submit himself to the courts for all his criminal
prosecutions. He must stop his attempt to stop justice by arrogating the levers
of power—whether through election or coup—and thereby stop all the criminal and
civil cases against him."- NY Times comment
“The split-screen effect is of one man tripping on public stages versus another man of approximately the same age who’s defiant in the face of a shooting. That type of contrast is not survivable for a presidential candidate.” - Steve Schmidt, a former top political aide to the late Republican Sen. John McCain
The assassination attempt on Dotard Trump Saturday left a stunned nation in its wake. But in many ways it was totally predictable. For months Trump at his rallies, as well as his MAGA acolytes, have been spewing violent rhetoric. Trump had already been recorded as averring months ago that Gen. Mark Milley ought to be 'executed for treason" and demanded more recently Liz Cheney also face trial for treason - given her central role on the January 6th committee.
Lest readers forget, this orange reprobate urged supporters to beat up protesters at rallies in 2016, cheered a Republican congressman for body-slamming a reporter, and called for looters and shoplifters to be shot. He has also - the past year - called his political enemies ‘vermin,’ described some undocumented migrants as 'animals’ and warned of a ‘bloodbath’ if he fails to win in November.
And now his GOOPr acolytes are screaming
about the Dems’ and Biden’s rhetoric? Give me a break, do.
Meanwhile, he's vowed retribution on all those who properly brought legal cases - including Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg whose team brought the recent hush money case which saw 34 felony charges. What most unnerved me was seeing the following headline in The Financial Times Saturday night:
Trump shooting live: VP hopeful JD Vance blames Biden ‘rhetoric’ for shooting
Biden's rhetoric? That is horse manure. Including coming from the piece of snot Jonathan Turley (The Hill) which also recycled this codswallop:
President Biden has stoked this rage rhetoric. In 2022, Biden held his controversial speech before Independence Hall where he denounced Trump supporters as enemies of the people. Biden recently referenced the speech and has embraced the claims that this could be our last democratic election.
All of which is TRUE you fucking moron! The MAGAs are the ones that want to rip this nation to shreds, spread violence. They've even intimidated thousands of election workers across the country to opt out this cycle for fear of attacks on them. Not to mention judges- or prosecutors like Alvin Bragg - who himself was targeted by Trump last April, e.g. posting images of himself with a baseball bat aimed at Bragg's head e.g.
As noted in The Guardian from April 23, 2023:
Trump had already signaled that he would go after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, weeks before the grand jury handed up an indictment against him on Thursday, saying in pugilistic posts on Truth Social that the prosecution was purely political and accusing Bragg of being a psychopath.
But the latest charged language reflects Trump’s determination to double down on those attacks as he returns to his time-tested playbook of brawling with prosecutors, especially when faced with legal trouble that he knows he cannot avoid, people close to him said.
So now the MAGAs are in an uproar and seek to blame the incident on Biden and the Dems? But Janice predicted as much as soon as we saw the news feed roll in on MSNBC around 6:00 MDT. She said, "Watch. These scum will use it to try to make Trump a martyr and turn it on Biden and the Dems." And within five minutes of her saying that, another Trump piece of shit - son Donald Jr. - was there bellowing "The radical left will not bring us down".
Sadly, that's where we're at. A scumball traitor who will likely use the assassination attempt to ratchet up more indignation and violent rhetoric when that originally set the match. And who himself wants to set our democracy on fire and line up with autocrats like Viktor Orban. As Janice so aptly put it and with whose sentiments I fully agree:
I have no
sympathy for Trump, because he is the instigator of the political violence. I
am sorry for the innocent people killed or wounded. All I am seeing right now
is that he will garner sympathy for this, and if the shooter is from the left,
it will hurt the Democrats in the upcoming election, which is critical to
either keeping our democracy or sliding into an autocracy from which
there may be no return. I may sound cynical, but that's the way it is.
She is totally correct and only a blind fool or purblind media outfit - which heaves to the "both sides" horse shit - would not believe Trump and his MAGA cult will not use Saturday's violence to foment more hate rhetoric and violence. Oh, and spread more vile "election theft" brain rot.
But lo and behold within hours the MAGA cult was spreading conspiracy ideations that "accused Biden of ordering a hit on a political rival." (Washington Post:
The havoc and chaos unleashed thus far, we may be sure, are but a minor portent of what's to come. But given the Trump fascists are all about a power grab, even vowing (before the incident) that they plan to contest any election result before even called, gives a hint of the megabytes of disreputable bunkum still to come. Just bear in mind that Adolf Hitler used a similar ruse, in the wake of the Reichstag fire, to consolidate his own power before terminating Weimar democracy via the Enabling Act. Hitler's power also increased exponentially after the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt plotted by a clique of Wehrmacht officers, including Claus von Stauffenberg and Erwin Rommel. As one WaPo commenter put it:
"Let's not sugar-coat the black heart of a fascist just because a bullet grazed his ear."
The Trump fist pump delivered as his sorry ass was escorted off the Butler Farm rally site:
Says it all. And ought to be a warning that this roach of an insurrectionist isn't anywhere close to becoming a changeling. He may babble some twaddle in about "unifying America" but it doesn't mean squat.
And no, I will not cease calling Trump a threat to democracy because that is damned well what he is. His cult and he himself would love nothing better than for critics to back off in the wake of the incident. Especially an already hobbled Biden after his calamitous June 27th debate. If Biden douses his criticisms of Trump and his threat to democracy what's left? Nothing. Biden will go down in the biggest electoral disaster since Reagan cremated Jimmy Carter in 1980. Then the MAGAs and Trump can cakewalk into unearned power without a smidgeon of opposition, like Hitler and the Nazis did 81 years earlier.
In the meantime, look for the MAGA cult gathered in Milwaukee this week to make 'the Rage of the Radical Left' the centerpiece of their 4-day Trump glorification. This will, of course, be the trope used to justify a future insurrection should Biden (or Harris) by some faint chance get elected on Nov. 5th. And look for Trump to play the victim card for all it's worth - promising to be the avatar of all the grievance- filled MAGA minions assembled for adoration of this misfit in Beer City.
See Also:
Shooting at Trump rally in Pennsylvania upends presidential campaign - The Washington Post
And:
by Joan McCarter | July 16, 2024 - 7:05am | permalink
In an interview Sunday with the Washington Examiner, Donald Trump said he is rewriting his upcoming acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention because of Saturday’s assassination attempt. He’ll be going for unity this time, he promised.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” he said.
Before that, it “was going to be a humdinger” and “one of the most incredible speeches” against Biden and his policies ever. “Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”
Sure, Donald. Here he is reacting to the dismissal of the classified documents case by district Judge Aileen Cannon.
And:
by Jeffrey C. Isaac | July 15, 2024 - 5:27am | permalink
It is now known that the man who shot Donald Trump on Saturday was a 20-year old registered Republican named Thomas Matthew Crooks. Whatever his motives, the rounds Crooks fired exploded into an already incendiary political situation, furnishing Trump and his MAGA supporters with further ammunition to attack the Democratic party and, by posing as innocent victims of nefarious enemies, liberal democracy itself.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), in the running for Trump's vice presidential pick, immediately took to X todeclare: "Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination." Rep. Mike Collins (R-Georgia) went further: "The Republican District Attorney in Butler County, PA, should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination," hewrote. And Republican Senator Mike Lee, has declaring that "we've got to take the political temperature down," has called on President Biden and the governors of Georgia and New York to immediately drop all criminal charges against Trump," reiterating the MAGA claim that such charges represent a "weaponization of justice" against Republicans. (Republicans Against Trumpresponded on X by posting that "Senator who last week promoted a tweet that called his legislative opponents traitors punishable by death now asks "to take the political temperature down.")
And:
by Thom Hartmann | July 16, 2024 - 6:47am | permalink
Historian Douglas Brinkley told the story on CNN Sunday morning about how after President Ronald Reagan was shot, when he woke up in the hospital, he told a friend nearby that the experience had transformed him, that he was now going to dedicate his life to peace.
Not only did he not once blame the shooting on Democrats; Reagan instead largely followed through on that promise, Brinkley said, spending the rest of his presidency trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He later worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev trying — successfully — to deescalate tensions between the US and the USSR.
“Perhaps having come so close to death made me feel I should do whatever I could in the years God had given me to reduce the threat of nuclear war,” Reagan later told a confidant.
A few days after he left the hospital, Reagan wrote a personal note to then-Soviet leader Brezhnev saying he’d like to reach out and work together for “a meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joint obligation to find lasting peace.”
And:
GOP Vows To "Get Retribution" On Democrats & Biden.
And:
And:
by Pierre Tristam | July 15, 2024 - 5:52am | permalink
After segregationist George Wallace’s 1972 presidential campaign was cut down by Arthur Bremer’s four bullets, our own Shirley Chisholm, who was running the first presidential campaign by a woman, visited her rival at his bedside.
“What are your people going to say?” she recalled him asking her as Blacks in her community “crucified” her (her word). “I said, ‘I know what they’re going to say. But I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.’ He cried and cried and cried.”
It was a moving moment in itself, and more so in the context of American history, whose occasional redemptions sometimes counterpoint the hate. It also helped seal Wallace’s move away from segregation. (In his last run for office in 1982, he won 90 percent of the Black vote.)
Any kind of encounter like that between our current presidential contenders–even if, fortunately, Trump is not in a hospital bed–seems beyond reach. The campaigns, content with the obligatory statements punched out by third-rung speech-writers, are busy figuring out how to leverage the moment to maximum advantage.
And:
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