Member Newsletter
TPM Reader DB pressed me yesterday to connect the dots. Because of JD Vance’s racist incitements to violence, now joined by Donald Trump, immigrants from Haiti in Springfield, Ohio, are cowering in their homes, holding their children back from school. Bomb threats have forced evacuations of the town municipal buildings and schools. We can only hope that it doesn’t escalate from here to assaults and murders. But there’s no question this is a community under siege. Vance says full speed ahead, tweeting to his supporters to “keep the cat memes flowing” or, in other words, keep pushing the story.
It’s a clarifying contrast with the JD “couch” razzing a few weeks ago and the different ways the country’s two major political factions deal with “fake news.” The couch stuff may have been mean. For some it was nasty and unlovely. Different strokes for different folks. But there weren’t any Dem influencers or “independent journalists” trying to track down proof for the story. No one pretended it was real. It was just a cudgel, a way to razz Vance and make him into a caricature. Most importantly, no couches were going to get hurt. No one was going to assault or break into and vandalize a La-Z-Boy showroom.
But whatever utility this incitement might hold in a national electoral context, it affects real people. People get submitted to the full force of being terrorized by violent MAGA extremists. Hopefully it won’t escalate to the point of someone getting seriously injured or killed. But clearly a whole community is already being terrorized.
And what is the effect?
When Donald Trump broke all the rules and held a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery, the story broke down when the cemetery employee who tried to prevent the rule-breaking and who was physically assaulted declined to press charges. But of course she did. She knows Trump World rules. She’d be deluged with death threats, have unstable Trump extremists showing up at her home. It’s a given that when a civilian becomes part of a big national story, their life gets at least somewhat turned upside down. But until recently it wasn’t a given that their lives would be endangered or that they’d be menaced in their homes. Those are the rules in Trump World.
We were working on another story about a very aggrieved person tied to the larger Arlington story. We tried. But it was clear they didn’t want to come forward. And who can blame them? Maybe you want to see Trumpian behavior exposed. But how much physical safety and sense that you are safe in your own home would you give up to make that happen? Probably not a lot.
Finally, Greg Sargant, of TNR and formerly of TPM, had a good piece earlier this week about how the Pentagon is stonewalling efforts to get documents on the incidents to Capitol Hill investigators. Why? A range of potential reasons. But the real one is they don’t want trouble either. It hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. But there’s been an ongoing story in the military affairs world of careers getting tarnished or even wrecked after people in uniform didn’t genuflect sufficiently to Trump (post defeat) or other Trump influencers. They don’t want trouble.
You can say that’s personal and institutional cowardice. And you’d be right. But that’s not the full story. Trump World makes the rules clear: get in our way and we’ll hurt you, often literally. That, after all, is what happened to that woman at Arlington. We know our supporters have a strong capacity for violence and an eagerness to use it. And if you cause problems for us, we will sic them on you. We already have cases of mass murder, killings, attacks, bomb threats, actual bomb making, harassment and assault from pro-Trump extremists incited either by Trump himself or his army of influencers. Of course we have the actual attempt to overthrow the government of the United States, which Trump orchestrated.
We come back to the simple point: Trump’s movement is filled with violent extremists and radicals. They have a demonstrated willingness and eagerness to commit acts of violence against their perceived partisan enemies (mostly Democrats, but also any obstacles to Trump’s will). “Stand back and stand by.” Trump is not simply incautious in his remarks about this fact. He actually mobilizes that propensity for violence as a political tool. It’s already distorting and degenerating American civic life. And he’s not even back in power yet.