If you thought that “It can’t happen here,” you might want to think again. The cult that Donald Trump has amassed is every bit as hostile, deranged, and dangerous as those devoted to messianic maniacs like Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones. It’s a movement that, while small in numbers and IQ, is devoted to the violent pursuit of the totalitarian principles of their Dear Leader.
On Saturday a campaign bus carrying staff and supporters of Joe Biden was attacked on the highway by a caravan of armed Trump Deplorables in pickup trucks. They surrounded the bus like an ISIS convoy and tried to bring it to a stop or run it off the road. The video is a harrowing document of a felonious attempt to intimidate a presidential candidate, frighten voters, and suppress their right to vote.
https://twitter.com/ericcervini/status/1322546782572859395
Trump himself lauded these terrorists on Twitter as well as in one of his campaign stump speeches Saturday evening. “Did anybody see the picture of that crazy bus driving down the highway?” Trump gloated. “They’re surrounded by like, hundreds of cars? They’re all Trump flags all over the place.” Notice that Trump characterizes Biden’s bus as “crazy,” but relishes the perpetrator’s vehicles swaddled in Trump flags.
Not surprisingly, Fox News weighed in on this affair to cast the most positive light on a videotaped crime in progress. On “Judge” Jeanine Pirro’s program she hosted Trump sycophant Newt Gingrich and engaged in this aberrant exchange:
Gingrich:There are these spontaneous parades and boat parades and organized get-togethers. Not done by the campaign, just people who are so energized they got to do something, so they’re out there doing it every single day.
Pirro: Well, it is stunning. And what’s even more stunning is what was just trending and that is there’s a Biden bus and it’s surrounded by pickup trucks on a highway all with Trump signs. I mean, it is ordinary Americans just taking this election into their own hands and getting out there and being real clear on what they stand for.
“It’s ordinary Americans just taking this election into their own hands” — Jeanine Pirro praises Trump fans in Texas who surrounded and harassed a Biden bus as it tried to go down a highway pic.twitter.com/IwLagPvFOd
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2020
REALLY? So Pirro thinks that domestic terrorists threatening the lives of people with whom they have political differences are just “ordinary Americans”? More like ordinary fascists. What’s more, Pirro believes that committing an assault with a deadly weapon against citizens exercising their political rights is justifiable as “taking this election into their own hands” and “being real clear on what they stand for.” That could only be true in a totalitarian regime that practices the sort of brutal oppression that Nazi brownshirts made infamous.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly the sort of regime that Trump is intent on forging here in America. He’s openly applauding these tactics and giving encouragement to others contemplating similar atrocities. He might as well be distributing terrorist handbooks and weapons to the unhinged cretins that worship him. And he’s getting plenty of help in that regard from other ultra-rightists who think terrorizing a political foe is fair game.
The FBI is is currently investigating the bus ambush incident in Texas. If there is any justice in this country, the perpetrators will be apprehended and punished. And right next to them in prison should be those at Fox News who have been acting as their accomplices after the fact.
This is what we’re up against as the presidential election season winds down and Trump becomes more desperate. Expect more of this hostility, as well as lies and disinformation from Trump, Fox News, and the rest of the tyrannical class of crackpot conservatives. Trump has already laid the groundwork to challenge the results of the election. Trump insists that a winner be declared on election night (a demand that may come back to bite him in the ass), rather than wait until all the votes are counted. And he will incite his cult brigades to cause more havoc if he doesn’t get his way.
UPDATE: Later in the day, Trump tweeted his support for the domestic terrorists who attacked the Biden bus. “In my opinion,” Trump said, “these patriots did nothing wrong.” Never mind that the video shows them purposely ramming another car and coming dangerously close to running the bus off the road. In Trump’s “opinion” they’re “patriots.”
However, the true defenders of American values won’t be sitting on their heels, and won’t let Trump get away with his plot to undermine democracy. Hopefully we will vote in such large numbers that any attempt to dispute the results will be in vain. That is our call to duty right now.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
