Donald Trump is a man of firsts. The first former president to ever be indicted for a felony (not to mention 34 in Manhattan and now 37 in Miami — oh, wait, let’s not forget about the 17 felonies his company in New York was found liable for — and two more indictments to come, folks) but he may go down in history as the first former president to incite a Holy War. Seriously.
He just posted on Truth Social and this is anticipated to get the QAnons cooking. And since they’re supposedly headed to Miami anyhow, this could be an alarming development.
Here’s an explanation from a religion reporter.
Trump is also carrying on about China spying from Cuba and guess what? That happened on his watch.
It did happen under the Trump administration, you mango monstrosity.
But let’s focus on the possibly impending religious war. Trump is taking to the airwaves in Miami tonight, before his arraignment tomorrow. And here’s what he’s been saying for the past few days. The Bulwark:
As our partners at Lawfare noted:
Pause a minute over that caption. The United States of America is seeking justice against Donald Trump. The executive branch of the government of the country is accusing its most recent former leader of crimes that put our national security at risk.
That is a very big deal.
Don’t take our word for it. Listen to Trump’s own former AG, Bill Barr: “If even half of it is true, he is toast,” Barr said. “I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning.”
“This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here or a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous,” Barr said. “Yes, he’s been a victim in the past. His adversaries have obsessively pursued him with phony claims. And I’ve been at his side defending against them when he is a victim. But this is much different. He’s not a victim here. He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has. They have to be in the custody of the archivist. He had no right to maintain them and retain them.”
Trump reacted about as you’d expect, lashing out at Barr as a “gutless pig”.
But that just highlighted how badly it stings Trump to have his former loyalist — someone who shamelessly covered up, prevaricated, and lied for him — break with him now in his moment of legal peril.
Could Trump be planning January 6 redux? I don’t know. But what is known, is that there is increasingly violent rhetoric.
In Georgia, at the Republican state convention, Kari Lake, who refused to concede the Arizona election for governor in 2022 and who is an ardent defender of Mr. Trump, emphasized that many of Mr. Trump’s supporters owned guns.
“I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one is for you,” Ms. Lake said. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”
Clay Higgins, another Republican congressman from Louisiana, gave militaristic instructions to his followers. “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this,” he tweeted, using an abbreviation to refer to Trump as the real president.
Higgins added: “Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all,” he added, using an apparent reference to military-scale maps. (Two days later Higgins tweeted: “Let Trump handle Trump, he’s got this. We use the Constitution as our only weapon. Peace. Hold.”)
In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.
The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him…
There’s nothing ambiguous here, via Vice News:
“We need to start killing these traitorous fuckstains,” wrote one Trump supporter on The Donald, a rabidly pro-Trump message board that played a key role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Another user added: “It’s not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore and they’ll come for us next. Some of us, they already have.”
Keyboard warriors or tomorrow’s criminals? You call it. I can’t believe that the MAGAs are crazy enough to redo January 6, after they’ve watched the people involved in that debacle get stiff prison sentences. But maybe this new spectre of this being a religious war will cause them to reconsider.
The only good news is that we won’t have long to wait.
Just to put things in the proper perspective, since the foundation of The Republic, 71 federal indictments have been served against Presidents or Ex-Presidents.
And only 71 of them have been served against Donald Trump.
These pampered talking heads have ZERO experience with REAL violence. Not only did I grow up with it, but have faced it in other situations where the threat was potentially lethal. Put a loaded 45 against their head and then see how ‘brave’ or how willing they are to die. It’s all performance with NO REAL threat to them personally. The rhetoric obviously is dangerous and designed for OTHERS to do the dirty work, while their limousine ferries them to their five star hotel. Easy to talk surrounded by security. Posers and pissants. True warriors are rare in a fat country full of fat people. No sane person wants to die at the hands of another, and no MORAL person would want to carry the guilt of killing someone, even if it were justified. I’ve worked with combat vets on the verge of suicide because they couldn’t live with the things THEY HAD TO DO TO SAVE THEMSELVES OR THEIR BUDDY. Some used their weapon on themselves. Others took the torturous route of addiction, another form of suicide. One had me trapped in a cabin in Boone for a weekend with continued threats to shoot me. I guess my childhood had trained me to deal with it and I was eventually able to de-escalate the situation. I did have to accept it could have been my last days on earth. John wasn’t an evil person. He lost his platoon in Nam in a firefight and he was the only survivor. The police were scared of him, and rightly so. I often wonder if he eventually killed himself or someone else. To see these rich, trust fund slimeballs talk about lethal violence as if it’s a game sickens me. As I type, someone got blown away in America. Pure phucking evil. Pure evil.
They’re wannabes. Wannabe gangstas. Wannabe bad asses. Wannabe men…They’re worthless pieces of sh*t wanting to be something other than worthless pieces of sh*t but they just can’t man up enough to get there.
You’re absolutely right about all the armchair warriors and would-be rabble rousers, Scott. The purest essence of it was exemplified by the self-proclaimed “manly” Josh Hawley on 6 January. He fist-pumped support of Trump’s MAGAmob on the way into the Capitol, then ran for his scummy life when that same mob actually broke in and came looking for victims. After his worthless hide was saved by heroic Capitol police, ol’ badass Josh reverted right back to his pre-flight pseudo-macho bullsh*t. A craven coward, too chickensh*t to face up to danger he helped incite.
The idiot is stoking up the religious loonies by misquoting the book of revelations (he probably thinks it was written by two guys from Corinth) with himself being the ‘trump(et)’ and the ‘seal’ being the presidential one
I hate to sound prosaic, but at the time the indictment was announced (I believe it was Thursday the eighth of June) it was sealed; it was unsealed the following day.
You are not being prosaic, everyone else is being stupid. TFG obviously meant to reference the indictment that Jack Smith had just “unsealed.”
Two men are responsible for the orange scum still torturing us and fomenting civil war. They are Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr. They both were in a position and had the grounds to prosecute and/or remove him from office and instead, they carried his golf bags. Haven’t heard from McConnell but Barr is a f-ing hypocrite and everyone knows it. I don’t think anyone respects his opinions, even when they’re finally correct.
This may be the longest parade of idiots that I have ever seen.