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Tag: supporters
Trump Never Stops Insulting His Cult Followers

Trump Never Stops Insulting His Cult Followers

Supporters of Donald Trump often complain about the "liberal elites" who have disrespected them. It is a feeling of cultural grievance that their idol constantly exploits, both to enrich himself with their donations and to defend himself against his critics.

Whenever Trump finds himself under pressure — in a courtroom, an impeachment or an election — he tells those credulous followers that it is not he but they who are the true targets of the Democrats, the "deep state," the media, the Republicans in Name Only, the Biden White House or whomever. That was how he responded to the first impeachment brought against him in 2019 and that is how he answered the huge $83 million jury verdict delivered against him this week in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

Trump makes this demagogic argument in full confidence that the MAGA cult will believe him — and with certainty that they will never realize how deeply he is insulting them.

"In reality they're not after me, they're after you. I'm just in the way," he tweeted when Congress first voted to impeach him. But did that make any sense? It wasn't the MAGA voters who attempted to extort the president of Ukraine, attempting to trade American weaponry for his own political gain (and to frame a political opponent with a phony prosecution).

Surely most of Trump's fans would never consider such a brazen blackmail scheme. Unlike him, they don't have to worry about being impeached or prosecuted; they have neither the motive nor the opportunity to perpetrate the offenses that Trump repeatedly commits.

In the wake of the Carroll jury award, the former president's most devoted associates have adopted the same argument, adding their own frantic spin. Steve Bannon, the convicted fraudster pardoned by Trump in order to keep his mouth shut, and Matt Schlapp, the right-wing activist repeatedly accused of homosexual assault, declared that the verdict foreshadows "the end of America."

On the "War Room" online broadcast hosed by Bannon, Schlapp echoed Trump's baseless insistence that the Carroll lawsuit is a "very coordinated thing" and the product of a "weaponized government" — when in fact it is simply a civil lawsuit brought by an aggrieved citizen. But Schlapp went still further, warning the MAGA audience that the judgment against Trump in favor of the woman he assaulted would portend their own ruin.

What the verdict proves, according to Schlapp and Bannon, is that the government "doesn't just intend to destroy your career and cancel you on social media, they mean to impoverish you and destroy any opportunity you have in the future. ... If these things continue to stand, all of this unconstitutional illegal activity, we've got nothing left, Steve. I mean it's run to the mountains, run to the catacombs time. ... This $83 million — this is just the beginning. All of us will be paraded down this gangplank. We won't have our resources, we won't have our homes, we won't have our livelihood."

Schlapp's panic is perhaps understandable, as he faces pressure to resign the chairmanship of the Conservative Political Action Committee -- a juicy grift -- because of sexual assault accusations that resemble Trump's offenses. And Bannon no doubt feels a twinge of sympathy as he faces continued prosecution by New York state authorities for the "border wall" scam that led to his federal pardon. (Three others involved in that racket went to prison, including a disabled veteran.)

But why would a normal person put any credence in such hysterical rants? There was nothing "illegal" or "unconstitutional" in Carroll's courageous effort to hold Trump accountable for assault, which resulted in a flood of personal abuse against her that included hundreds of death threats. More to the point, only an infinitesimal fraction of Americans has any reason to worry about being held responsible for an aggravated sexual assault - because unlike Trump, few have ever been accused of rape or assault, let alone by dozens of women.

It is remarkable indeed how many of our fellow citizens are willing to be implicated in the sociopathic conduct of the former president, who tells them every day that they are just like him.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Reverence For Life Can Still Trump a Need For Death

And they raised a cheer for death.

It was a chilling moment, but also a clarifying one in that it validated the grimmest suspicions about at least some of those who support capital punishment. That support, after all, is often framed in terms of high morality, the argument being that only in taking an offender’s life can a society truly express its revulsion over certain heinous crimes.

But when the audience at a recent GOP presidential debate cheered the observation that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has overseen a record 234 executions, that fig leaf was swept away. You knew this was not about some profound question for philosophers and august men. No, this was downturned thumbs in a Roman arena, vengeance putting on airs of justice, the need to see someone die.

People dress that need up in rags of righteousness and ethicality, but occasionally, the disguise slips and it shows itself for what it is: the atavistic impulse of those for whom justice is synonymous with blood. If people really meant the arguments of high morality, you’d expect them to regard the death penalty with reverent sobriety. You would not expect them to cheer.

But that need to see death — the inability to imagine how justice can be had without it — is compelling. Indeed, there can be little doubt that is what is driving Troy Davis toward execution. He’ll die on the 21st, barring clemency from the state of Georgia.

No conclusive forensic evidence ties him to the crime of which he was convicted, the 1989 killing of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. Of the nine witnesses who said they saw Davis shoot MacPhail, seven have since recanted, some saying police coerced them into lying. Of the two who have not recanted, one is a man identified by some witnesses as the real killer.

Yet on that dubious basis, Davis is scheduled to die.

It speaks to the power of that need, which was expressed with brutal candor by the dead officer’s mother, Anneliese, in 2008 when Davis received a stay from the Supreme Court. “I’m furious, disgusted and disappointed,” she said. “I want this over with.” She said justice for her son requires death for Davis.

And that makes the letter recently sent by the family of another murder victim all the more remarkable.

James Anderson was killed in June near Jackson, Miss. He was a black man who was beaten and then run over with a pickup truck, allegedly by a group of white teenagers who, according to prosecutors, decided they wanted to go “eff with some N-words.”

The killing was the definition of horrific. Yet in its letter, Anderson’s family asks prosecutors not to seek the death penalty. It is against their faith, they wrote, adding that executing Anderson’s killers will not “balance the scales,” while sparing them may “spark a dialogue” that could help end capital punishment.

“Our loss will not be lessened by the state taking the life of another,” they said.

That the family was able to find such charity of spirit in the depth of their own despair speaks well of them, yes. But it also proves there is nothing foreordained, nothing destined, about this equation of justice with blood. People can grow beyond that. A reverence for life can still trump a need for death.

Consider this column a lonely cheer for that.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

(c) 2011 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

In Zeal For Compromise, Obama Supporters Crash House Communications

Late on Monday evening, when Barack Obama urged citizens who agree with his “balanced approach” on deficits and debt to “let your Member of Congress know” and “send that message,” most observers surely expected a mild reaction with some of the president’s staunch supporters calling in to support their man.

What Washington got instead was electronic mayhem, as phone lines jammed, House websites crashed, and the vaunted Obama grassroots network that made so much noise in 2008 — and so little since – suddenly roared to life:

The Chief Administrative Officer of the Capitol alerted the House in an email Tuesday morning that House telephone circuits were near capacity due to a high volume of external calls. Congressional offices were advised to give their staff outside of the capitol and other key contacts an alternate number to call.

Multiple congressional websites crashed or slowed down last night after they were inundated with visitors.

Meanwhile, Obama’s pleas for compromise – and his endorsement of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s $2.7 trillion, no-revenue, debt-increase bill – were bolstered by a report that the nation’s AAA credit rating cannot be preserved with any other legislation at this point. Making her CNN debut, business correspondent Erin Burnett told viewers that Reid’s plan probably would prevent an immediate downgrade of US Treasury bonds (and an explosion of higher interest rates), while the proposal floated by House Speaker John Boehner “probably wouldn’t hit the hurdle to prevent a downgrade.” Burnett — a former star at CNBC, the business network where the Tea Party movement was born in 2009 with an outburst from Rick Santelli — quoted a source who recently met with officials at Standard & Poor’s, the nation’s largest rating agency.

As citizen pressure mounted for a debt limit increase today, activists sought to prevent a technological logjam from stopping voters from reaching their representatives. Americans United For Change, a group focused on defending Social Security and Medicare, introduced an online tool that allows constituents to enter notes and have them faxed directly to a congressman’s office. Lauren Weiner, its communications director, said on Tuesday afternoon that her group had sent over 10,000 faxes.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), an Internet-based grassroots group, urged its members to physically appear at their lawmakers’ offices, Twitter be damned.

“Given the fact that the switchboards are melting down, [we’re encouraging members to] stop by their local congressional office. [Rep.] Paul Ryan’s office in Kenosha had 40 or 50 people show up to protest proposed cuts in Medicare and Social Security benefits,” Neil Sroka, press secretary for PCCC, said Tuesday afternoon.

Of course, with scores of conservative Republicans indicating they won’t support their own Speaker’s proposal, the path forward to a debt-limit increase remains unclear. The Democrats — and Republicans who fear default’s economic and political consequences – will somehow need to muster 218 votes, the margin needed to pass a bill through a House of Representatives that still seems dominated by the ideology of the Tea Party.