So I’ve said before I don’t want to talk so much about politics on here (which is partly why I never said anything about the frankly grim Biden/Trump debate of a few weeks ago), but that’s kind of hard to avoid after today’s events… going to stick this behind a cut cos it’s a long one.
Donald Trump was shot in the ear during a campaign rally on Saturday after a major security lapse, an attack that will likely reshape this year’s presidential race and fuel long-standing fears that the campaign could descend into political violence.
In the moments after the shooting, Trump was swarmed and covered up by his security agents. He quickly emerged, his face streaked with blood, and pumped his fist in the air, mouthing the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The Trump campaign later said he was “doing well.”
The FBI identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the “subject involved” in what it termed an attempted assassination in a statement early on Sunday. He was a registered Republican, according to state voter records.
Earlier the Secret Service said in a statement that the shooter was dead, one attendee at the rally was killed and two other spectators were injured. Law enforcement officials told reporters they not yet identified a motive for the attack. […]
Some of Trump’s Republican allies said they believed the attack was politically motivated.
“For weeks Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” said U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, who survived a politically motivated shooting in 2017.
“Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”
As the article also noted, though, Scalise’s own rhetoric here is kind of complicated by the fact that the shooter was apparently on his side…
Quite a day, eh? I’m actually far less surprised by it than some people seem to be; after the initial shock that it had in fact happened, I realised the more surprising thing was that it had taken so long for it to do so. In a country as psychotic about guns as America, it astounds me that this is the first time since Reagan in 1981 that anyone’s had a go at assassinating a president or candidate for same, and that it’s taken so long in this campaign for someone to try and take out the incumbent options. And that someone went for Trump first.
I can’t bring myself to joke about the affair (except maybe to query how this will or won’t affect the GOP’s stance on guns now that it’s affected them) as some people are doing, cos I’m not actually big on political violence anyway and this is actually the last thing the world needs right now; the Republicans have such a hard-on for whining about Democrats persecuting them in general and Trump in particular, that making a martyr out of the orange cunt like this is EXACTLY what they’d want. Bad enough that he’s still alive, but if he’d actually been killed that would’ve been even worse. Either way I feel we’re going to see a whole lot more of this happening against the left now…
But what was that Scalise said about “violent rhetoric”?
Remember Mark Robinson? Yeah, he’s kind of escalated from just not wanting women to vote to, frankly, wanting people dead. I mean, he uses the example of fighting in WW2 after Pearl Harbour—you know, before which America was perfectly fine with Germany running roughshod all over Europe until Japan made it personal—but that’s not who he wants dead now. And this isn’t WW2.
Then there’s Kevin Roberts from the Heritage Foundation/Project 2025:
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts made the comments Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, adding that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back.”
Democrats are “apoplectic right now” because the right is winning, Roberts told former U.S. Rep. Dave Brat, one of the podcast’s guest hosts as Bannon is serving a four-month prison term. “And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Which I would take a sign that the “revolution” is perfectly ready and willing to shed as much blood as it feels necessary. Further:
In an emailed statement on Wednesday, Roberts reiterated his comments from the podcast, saying Americans “are in the process of carrying out the Second American Revolution to take power back from the elites and despotic bureaucrats.”
“These patriots are committed to peaceful revolution at the ballot box,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s the Left that has a long history of violence, so it’s up to them to allow a peaceful transfer of power.”
Fairly sure the Left weren’t the ones calling for the execution of Mike Pence on January 6 2021, Kev. That was YOUR side. YOUR side was the one trying to get in the way of the electoral collge vote count on that day which would’ve permitted the peaceful transfer of power you claim the Left didn’t want. And now it’s someone on YOUR side (though your side will downplay or deny it) who’s had a potshot at Drumpf.
Speaking of whom…
A man arrested last week with weapons in former President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC, neighborhood began live-streaming in the area shortly after resharing a social media post from Donald Trump in which the former president posted what he claimed was Obama’s address, according to federal prosecutors. […]
Taranto, who had an open warrant for his arrest related to the riot charges, was arrested last week in Obama’s neighborhood with firearms after claiming on an internet livestream the day before that he had a detonator.
On June 28, according to prosecutors, Taranto made “ominous comments” on video referencing McCarthy, saying: “Coming at you McCarthy. Can’t stop what’s coming. Nothing can stop what’s coming.”
After seeing those “threatening comments,” law enforcement tried to locate Taranto but weren’t successful, prosecutors said.
The following day, on June 29, “former President Donald Trump posted what he claimed was the address of Former President Barack Obama on the social media platform Truth Social,” prosecutors wrote in their memo. “Taranto used his own Truth Social account to re-post the address. On Telegram, Taranto then stated, ‘We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.’”
This fine fellow was also a January 6 participant awaiting trial over the latter. I never saw Trump’s post but I don’t suppose he actively called for something like this to happen, he wouldn’t have directly said “some guy with a lot of weaponry should use this information to take out my predecessor”… he wouldn’t have used “violent rhetoric”. He wouldn’t have needed to. He just needed to post that address. He KNEW someone would take it as a hint.
I will say this much, though: having invoked January 6, I will confess to having been wrong since then about it being just the start of another civil war. I’m surprised that it wasn’t, obviously, but thus far I have been wrong about it merely being the first in a series of right-wing uprisings. I’m kind of hoping I’m also going to be proven wrong about this being the start of something too. Wish I could convince myself that it won’t be, though.
