IGNORING TRUMP WILL BE FATAL

HE CANNOT BE IGNORED

A week ago tonight, Donald Trump gave a chillingly dark speech which few Americans know about.

He pledged to get tough on crime by executing people for petty crimes like shoplifting. “Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. The word that they shoot you will get out within minutes, and our nation, in one day, will be an entirely different place. There must be retribution for theft and destruction and the ruination of our country.”

He joked about Paul Pelosi, the elderly husband of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who was nearly beaten to death by a MAGA conspiracist who bludgeoned Pelosi’s skull with a hammer.

He went on to reveal, though no one asked, his preference for dying from electrocution than by shark attack.

Then, showing his intellectual acumen and flashing his firm grip on reality, Trump told the crowd his ingenious plan for fighting forest fires which involved… watering the forests so that the ground would be damp.

The crowd of Orangatang County orangatangs, er, I mean the crowd of delegates to the California Republican Party convention, stomped and cheered each “joke” like Romans in the Colisseum exercising their bloodlust after the Emperor turned thumbs down on granting mercy to a defeated gladiator.

The laughter of the crowd was as disturbing as the speaker, from whom we expect nothing less.

These bizarre comments came shortly after Trump floated the idea, on his social media network Truth Anti-Social, of executing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

Trump’s advocacy of extrajudicial killings was widely covered by newspapers and TV stations in California, but generally ignored by the national press. No mainstream TV network carried his speech live or excerpted it later that night. CNN and MSNBC mentioned it during panel discussions over the next few days. The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR and PBS didn’t report it at all. The New York Times wrote about it four days later, playing the story on Page 14 of its print edition.

The Anaheim speech was only the most recent display of a pattern of increasingly aggressive rhetoric by Trump, followed by a muted response by the mainstream news media to his repeated exhortations to violence.

Trump’s revelation of intended violence receive less press coverage because they have become so routine. One can call this “the banality of crazy”: when the news media ignores or downplays statements once considered shocking but which now, due to repetition, are taken for granted.

Trump’s obscene statements are dangerous, not just because they are what incites violence against public officials but also because the failure to report them accurately shows how numb the public has grown toward threats more typical of broken, authoritarian regimes.

How is it possible that it’s not front page news or the lead item on a news broadcast when a man who soon may return to power calls for law enforcement to kill people for minor crimes?

Why do so few people question Trump’s mental state rather than Biden’s, when Trump proposes delusional, unhinged plans for forest management?

Or warns his supporters that Biden is going to lead us into World War II?

Or claims that he defeated Barack Obama in 2016?

Admittedly, Trump didn’t have far to go to begin with in terms of mental decline, but this is a 77-year old man who - were he just some old guy standing on a street corner shouting these things - people would cross the street to avoid.

Since he left the White House, Trump has put forth a number of proposals that exceed both federal authority or the Constitution itself.

He has advocated using the military to fight street crime and deport undocumented people.

He has proposed forcibly removing homeless people from cities and sending them to camps run by the federal government.

He has stated that once in office he will take action to shut down major news networks and publications.

In recent weeks, Trump has made it plain that his plans for a second term are vengeful and unhinged. We should listen.

These are campaign promises. For the past 40 years, Trump has hidden in plain sight, making no effort to hide his bigotries, his lawlessness, his will to authoritarian power. He has advertised it at every opportunity.

And, most disturbing of all, what he has said and done in all that time only deepens his appeal to 40% of the country.

There is no question that Trump has so normalized calls to violence as a political act that his words have inflamed countless people to perverse action.

Trump has delighted in the way he could arouse a crowd with implicit or explicit calls to vengeance, from his admonition to “Lock her up!” to his smirking at a protester at one of his rallies, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”

Trump was the inspiration for Charlottesville.

The January 6th insurrection and assault on the government of which he was the leader, was a direct response to his call to his supporters: “Be there, will be wild!”

During the protests following the murder of George Floyd, Trump asked his advisers, according to the former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

According to a recent report in the New York Times, since the legal search of Mar-A-Lago last year and confiscation of confidential documents, after which Trump raged against federal authorities, threats against F.B.I. personnel and facilities have skyrocketed more than 300%.

Trump has decided to make his legal jeopardy a virtue, portraying himself as the persecuted Everyman standing up to a prosecutorial system riddled with hypocrisy. One day after Judge Chutkan, the judge in Trump’s 2020 election-interference case in Washington warned him not to threaten or intimidate witnesses, he post this on his Truth Anti-Social: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

In New York, Judge Arthur Engoron, had to issue a gag order after Trump branded the judge’s clerk as “Schumer’s girlfriend” and added, “How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!” Unfortunately, even after he ordered Trump to take down the post, the damage was done: the word was out, the clerk’s name and personal information had been made public to “a million supporters” as the Judge noted. She could now expect endless harassment online and worse from the MAGAts.

These are not mere anecdotes, “colorful” moments of unscripted temper from a familiar source. Trump reveals his troubled mind even in his casual asides. These moments are the essence of Trump and his campaign. Over the next 13 months, you will never hear discussion of policy from Trump. You will hear expressions of rage and impulse.

Many on the left say we should ignore Trump’s insane statements and dismiss them as inconsequential, repetitious, corrosive. Some argue the media should ignore them entirely, to avoid elevating them.

But ignoring them will not make them go away. They are the center of a candidacy that is polling very highly and that threatens so much of what is decent or promising about our politics. Trump’s rage is the inspiration for everything from the Proud Boys to the mailing of pipe bombs to political targets, to the deranged behavior of the Republican House Caucus.

At the same time, attention needs to be paid to a contrasting temperament and set of values. This past week, Joe Biden delivered a stark and important speech in Arizona that focused on the threat to democratic ideals and institutions posed by Trump and his followers. He stat ed directly that Trump derived inspiration not from the Constitution or human decency but from “vengeance and vindictiveness.” No less worrying to Biden was the reaction—or lack of it—to Trump’s incessant threats. The general silence following Trump’s comments about Milley, he said, was “deafening.”

“We should all remember: democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle,” Biden said. “They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up.”

Biden may say these things in a less-than-booming voice. Age has taken a toll on his delivery. But the stakes he is describing demand amplification.

So much—the rule of law, global and national security, the fate of the environment—depends on whether Americans reject Trump’s rage or endorse it and transform this country beyond all recognition.

Things are getting more terrible by the day: a mob on Staten Island bombarding residents of a temporary shelter for refugees with noise and lights. The right-wingers mocking the murders of liberals like Philadelphia journalist Josh Kruger or New York’s Ryan Carson. The MAGA gunman in New Mexico who smirked after shooting a Native American during a vigil opposing re-erecting a statue of a Spanish conquistador.

The chaos at the bottom of the political food chain is coming from the same instincts expressed at the top by Donald Trump: a desire to blow it all up.

Polituical scientist Daniel Ziblatt recently wrote: “What precedes a democratic breakdown is political stalemate and extreme dysfunction where there’s a sense that nothing can get done. When governments can’t respond in genuine crises, it has a delegitimizing effect, and it reinforces the sense among citizens that we have to resort to other means.”

The “Don’t Amplify Him” argument is a recipe for political disaster. We need to amplify Trump’s vile rhetoric, because it will turn the persuadable voters off to his cruel message.

Maybe it would be better for all of us if they knew about all the insane, dangerous things he spews on a daily basis.

Maybe it would be better if voters couldn’t claim ignorance of Trump’s cruelty.

With the mainstream media breathlessly covering every minor gaffe by Biden while ignoring unhinged incitements to violence by Trump, voters aren’t shown the Trump that should most worry them.

The press has an obligation to convey magnitude, not just novelty. In a political environment in which an authoritarian contender for the presidency is floating the idea of executing shoplifters and killing generals, maybe it’s not worth the space or time to discuss a brief stumble or a dog bite?

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