Tag: political violence
Political Styles Of The Rich And Clueless

Political Styles Of The Rich And Clueless

As we wait to see what fresh hell awaits us this week, one obvious question is, who put these malevolent clowns in power?

The short answer is ignorant people. But political ignorance takes two different forms.

On one side there are “less-engaged” voters who don’t follow politics closely. And to be fair, ordinary Americans have good excuses for not paying close attention to the news: They have jobs to do, children to raise, lives to live. Unfortunately, many of these voters believed Trump’s fabulist promises. They are only now beginning to understand what they voted for.

There’s now a huge debate among Democrats about how to reach less-engaged voters. But that’s a topic for future posts.

But less-engaged voters weren’t the only people who missed the warning signs and supported Donald Trump. Trump also had a number of ultra-wealthy backers, both on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, who are now shocked, shocked to discover that he is who he always was.

Over the weekend Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire who has been one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, suddenly turned on his champion, declaring on X that

by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.

But Ackman refused to take any responsibility for enabling the destruction:

I don't think this was foreseeable. I assumed economic rationality would be paramount. My bad.

Indeed. Who could have foreseen that the self-proclaimed Tariff Man, who posts crazy stuff on Truth Social every day, would impose destructive tariffs? Who could have imagined that the many economists, myself included, who warned that a Trump victory would be very bad for the economy would turn out to have been right? Or if we were wrong, it was only because we underestimated the damage.

OK, Ackman is a fool, but he wasn’t alone in getting Trump all wrong. Many wealthy people imagined that Trump II would be like Trump I, mostly a standard right-winger with a bit of a protectionist hobby. They thought he would cut their taxes, eliminate financial and environmental regulations and promote crypto, making them even wealthier. They expected him to back off his tariff obsession if the stock market started to fall. If he ripped up the social safety net, well, they don’t depend on food stamps or Medicaid.

And if Trump II really had been like Trump I, America’s oligarchs would be very happy right now.

It's also true that successful businessmen often believe that their financial success makes them experts on economic policy even though they haven’t made any effort to understand the issues.

Even relatively sensible business leaders like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase tend to stumble when they try to play economist. Does anyone remember Dimon proclaiming in 2014 that we couldn’t restore full employment because American workers didn’t have the right skills? Five years later the unemployment rate was below 4 percent.

I was struck over the weekend when Elon Musk (I know, I know), seemingly breaking with Trump, called for zero tariffs between the United States and Europe. I think it’s safe to assume that Musk has no idea that trans-Atlantic tariffs were, in fact, close to zero in 2024: The average European Union tariff on U.S. goods was 1.7%, the average U.S. tariff on EU goods was 1.4%.

Finally, great wealth often enables great pettiness. Some readers may remember Wall Street’s “Obama rage”: Financial titans were furious at the president who bailed them out after the global financial crisis because he dared to hint that they had played some role in causing that crisis. Why, he even called them “fat cats!

The pettiness has been even worse this time around. A few days before the inauguration the Financial Times ran an article titled “Is corporate America going MAGA?” that quoted one “top banker”:

I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.

I wonder how liberated he’s feeling now.

To be honest, I’m actually glad that Trump II is proving to be such a disaster for the economy. If he had exercised some restraint, if he had simply claimed credit for the very good economy Joe Biden left him, many wealthy people would have cheered him on while he destroyed democracy. Now they may turn on him.

But I hope the rest of us have learned a lesson from the oligarchy’s support for Trump, even if it’s now cracking: Extreme wealth inequality has given great power to people who exert a malign influence on our politics.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former professor at MIT and Princeton who now teaches at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. From 2000 to 2024, he wrote a column for The New York Times. Please consider subscribing to his Substack, where he now posts almost every day.


Reprinted with permission from Paul Krugman.

In Idaho, MAGA Party Official Snitches On GOP Legislator For Hiring 'Illegals'

In Idaho, MAGA Party Official Snitches On GOP Legislator For Hiring 'Illegals'

One Republican state representative in Idaho was recently caught off-guard when a far-right political activist had Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents sent to her potato farm.

According to Newsweek, Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen — who is serving her second term in Idaho House District 32A — is now publicly railing against Ada County, Idaho Republican Party vice chairman Ryan Spoon in an op-ed. Mickelsen recalled in a recent essay for the Idaho Statesman that Spoon had ICE agents deployed to her farm, which resulted in them arresting one farm worker roughly a week after Spoon tweeted at President Donald Trump's border czar, Tom Homan. She didn't mention Spoon by name but referred to him as "someone working remotely for an insurance company who thinks he knows Idaho values and the [agriculture] business better than you do."

"Could you please send some illegal immigration raids to the businesses owned by Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelson," Spoon wrote on January 21, misspelling Mickelsen's name. "She has been bragging about how many illegals her businesses employ."

Mickelsen wrote in her op-ed that her farm "complies with all applicable laws regarding employment and immigration," though she would also "welcome improvements to the laws and enforcement." But she didn't spare her critics among the GOP base who criticized her for acknowledging that large and influential sectors of the economy like agriculture are heavily reliant on immigrant labor.

"As a state representative, I’ve experienced this firsthand," Mickelsen wrote in her op-ed. "For honestly discussing real issues relating to immigration policy — recognizing both the need for border security and the reality that critical aspects of our economy depend on foreign workers — I’ve become the target of intimidation tactics designed to silence me."

On his social media channels, Spoon has repeatedly targeted Mickelsen over her comments about the outsized role undocumented labor plays in the American economy. He's also amplified content from an account called "Stop Idaho RINOs" [Republicans In Name Only] including a floor speech in which she cautioned her fellow Republicans against immigration measures that could harm the Gem State's economy. Newsweek also reported that a University of Idaho study found that roughly 35,000 undocumented immigrants work in Idaho's agriculture, hospitality and construction industries.

"If you guys think that you haven't been touched by an illegal immigrants' hands in some way, either your traveling or your food, you are kidding yourselves,' she said earlier this month.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump Pardons January 6 Felons -- Including Thugs Who Brutalized Police

Trump Pardons January 6 Felons -- Including Thugs Who Brutalized Police

During his 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to pardon the January 6 rioters — who he described as "hostages" — if he won the election. And Trump did exactly that after returning to the presidency on Monday, January 20, 2025.

President Trump pardoned more than 1500 defendants who faced charges in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building, including some who were charged with violent crimes. Many Trump critics denounced the pardon as an attack on the rule of law. But according to New York Times reporter Aishvarya Kavi, there was a celebratory mood outside a jail in Washington, D.C.

A combination of "family members, fervent supporters and former detainees" gathered outside that detention center to celebrate the pardons, Kavi reports in an article published by the Timeson January 21. And some of them were dancing to the Village People's 1978 disco hit "YMCA," which has become an unlikely favorite at Trump and MAGA events despite its longtime connection to gay culture.

"The scene outside the jail was a departure from the usual vigil held in the back of the facility, under windows that the detainees can peer out of," Kavi explains. "Men and women who were imprisoned and their families called supporters throughout the night, updating them on the status of their release — but also, to proclaim their innocence, as they ordinarily do."

Kavi continues, "The crowd had been buoyed by Mr. Trump's promise to issue sweeping pardons on Day 1 of his presidency. They were already anticipating the fulfillment of another vow of his, to pursue his rivals by prosecuting them. Mr. Trump told NBC News in December that the entire January 6 Committee 'should go to jail.'"

The Times reporter notes that many supporters of the January 6 rioters "sought to rewrite the violent history of the January 6 attack — a narrative that Mr. Trump himself has endorsed at rallies, in news conferences and on television."

Goshen, Indiana resident and MAGA supporter Scott Tapley, who was outside the jail, told the Times, "I'm so glad to see they’re being released. This is just an unspeakably joyous, happy day."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


MAGA's All-American Gunners And The Political Violence Blame Game

MAGA's All-American Gunners And The Political Violence Blame Game

This week the MAGA Disinformation Industrial Complex is spewing blame on "the left" for the apparent second assassination attempt on Trump. On Sunday, a disturbed man who had racked up dozens of weapons violations but remained armed and free thanks to decades of MAGA-pandering, loose gun laws poked his machine gun through the fence around Trump’s Palm Beach golf course.

Agents nabbed him before he fired a shot, but the incident was another dot on the graph of rising American political violence this year, following the deadly Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt which left shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks and a rallygoer dead — and Trump with a bloodied ear.

Trump immediately went on Fox to accuse his political opponents — as he and his supporters did after Butler. The man with the gun in Palm Beach “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said the day after his security team apprehended Ryan Wesley Routh. “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.”

Apparently, the idea is that Democrats should suspend their campaign against Trump/Vance in the wake of the latest — let’s call it a gun incident since Routh thankfully never got around to firing a shot from his AK-47.

J.D. Vance picked up the refrain, proclaiming at a speech in Atlanta that “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric, and needs to cut this crap out.”

Trump superfan Elon Musk gave his stamp of approval to this horrendous idea (translation: why aren’t people shooting at Kamala Harris???). He posted a perplexed face emoji under an X post repeating that no one has tried to kill Harris or Walz. The Richest Man in the World (tm) had second thoughts - as he often does - and deleted that implicitly threatening post, but not before harvesting tens of thousands of “likes.”

All the gaslighting this week about Democratic rhetoric obscures the fact that Trump himself raised America to this new level of violence from the day in 2015 when he sent his retired NYPD goon Keith Schiller out on 5th Avenue to rough up people protesting his “Mexican rapists” campaign slogan.

Besides vulgarity and shamelessness, the hallmark of the nine and counting MAGA years in American politics is the rising number of violent threats directed at elected officials across the country. This “tidal wave of menacing behavior,” as CNN put it, includes the skyrocketing number of prosecuted threats during Trump’s term in office, peaking in 2021 — with more than 40 percent of cases occurring in the final weeks of Trump's term. Threats are now rising again.

Trump has always urged his rally-goers to beat protestors. He now promises to embark on a “bloody” deportation project while suggesting his supporters will engage in violence if he loses the election. His rhetoric is effective. Even before his last violent insurrection on January 6, in May 2020, NBC found 54 cases in which the charged perpetrators of threats and assaults referenced Trump’s incitement to violence. “Reviewing police reports and court records, ABC News found that in at least 12 cases perpetrators hailed Trump amid the immediate aftermath of physically assaulting innocent victims. In another 18 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant's violent or threatening behavior.”

No one in the MAGAsphere seems to notice or care that their own resistance to reasonable gun control enabled misfit Routh - who has dozens of previous charges - to arm himself in the first place. Routh had been pulled over by police more than 100 times and was considered “a dangerous person,” but still legally stocked high-powered weapons and explosives. In a sane nation, a man convicted on a weapons of mass destruction charge - as Routh was after barricading himself inside his North Carolina roofing business with a machine gun after being pulled over at a traffic stop - would not walk free, let alone get to keep and expand his gun collection.

But Routh was sent home and remained armed.

The barricading incident was just one of the violent confrontations Routh racked up. He has convictions for carrying a concealed weapon, for possession of stolen property, for hit-and-run, misdemeanor convictions for resisting an officer and driving on a suspended license. Routh doesn’t seem to have spent much, if any time in jail. For all the convictions, he received a suspended sentence and parole or probation.

What was such a man doing free, locked, and loaded?

Committing a crime as a white man in Dixie is one answer. But there’s a broader political reason: In much of MAGA America, impunity for bullies and wackos includes the right to stockpile guns and ammo and carry concealed weapons.

For years, the Republican Party has been a shameless subsidiary and propaganda machine for the NRA and the gun industry. The creed is: Let no man’s guns be messed with. Gun worship is a plank of the Republican agenda, and that fact is rule number one in the GOP-controlled House. These are the politicians who invented the family Christmas card with ma, pa, and the kids all holding AR-15s in front of the tree.

Here’s a brief history of their moves, starting with the Sandy Hook school massacre, that hideous event that in hindsight, marked the end of any hope for a disarmed future.

In 2012, in the weeks after a severely troubled boy killed his mother, 20 children, and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, a majority of U.S. senators supported passing legislation requiring expanded background checks for gun purchases. But a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate killed that effort.

(That failure of political will was a moment of utter despair for any American still paying attention. If Republicans in Congress won’t do anything after the murder of a classroom of babies, they never will.)

Ten years and thousands of American gun deaths later, in 2022, a Democrat-led Congress eked out a bill that made incremental progress. It expanded the records used for background checks on gun purchasers under age 21, increased punishments for straw purchases, and closed the so-called boyfriend loophole, expanding the gun ban to people convicted of domestic violence against a dating partner as well as a spouse. But the final Senate-approved bill lacked any of the gun control provisions Democrats had included in the House-passed bills, including expanding background checks and banning assault weapons and bump stocks.

In the first week of the current Congress, in February 2023, Republicans sported cute little silver AR-15 pins on their lapels. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), a fierce opponent of federal regulations on firearms, who owns two gun shops, had handed them out. “They say the pins are symbols of their commitment to the Second Amendment and Americans’ right to bear arms,” reported a Time writer who canvassed the members.

Not that they likely cared, but Rep. Clyde, according to later reporting in the New York Times, didn’t tell his colleagues that his own gun business had fallen afoul of existing federal laws aimed at dealers of guns later used in crimes. One of his two gun stores, Clyde Armory in Athens, sold more than 25 guns later used in crimes, according to the Times.

The ATF had placed Rep. Clyde’s business into a federal monitoring program in 2020 and 2021.

Last year, after a weekend in which the nation racked up the highest death toll from mass shootings, Senate Republicans blocked a national assault weapons ban. Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso objected to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s request for unanimous consent to pass the assault weapons ban, despite the pleas of Democratic senators who took to the Senate floor to recite American gun violence statistics. Republicans also torpedoed another Democrat-led proposal for universal background checks.

“Americans have a constitutional right to own a firearm,” Barrasso said. “Every day, people across Wyoming responsibly use their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms. Democrats are demanding that the American people give up their liberty.”

Barrasso added that Democrats want to ban many semi-automatic firearms “because of the way they look.” (They look pretty bad to Secret Service agents who spot them poking through a fence on a Florida golf course, but OK.)

MAGA tools like Barasso on Capitol Hill are wildly out of step with the rest of America. A 2022 Gallup poll found that 92 percent of Americans favor requiring background checks for all firearm sales.

In pro-gun states, the insanity and hypocrisy defies belief. In Texas, for example, lawmakers loosen gun laws in response to massacres. The legislators passed permitless carry less than two years after 30 people died in mass shootings in just two incidents, in El Paso and Odessa. After 19 children died in Uvalde, neither Texas nor its Congressional delegation did anything besides transmitting thoughts and prayers. “It’s astounding to me,” state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat from San Antonio whose district includes Uvalde, told the Texas Tribune at the time. “We’re supposed to create things. We’re supposed to create legislation to keep people safe. By God, to keep children safe. And here we’ve done exactly the opposite.”

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, author, documentary producer and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible. This post is reprinted with permission from her American FreakshowSubstack. Please consider subscribing.

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