On and On and On It Goes - Trump thread #148

[Spandauer]

It's been 9 horrible months and I find myself looking back on those "eating the cats and dogs" days with nostalgia.

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5392716-grotesque-greedy-gullible-graceless-gaslighting-gormless-god-forsaken-grifter-trump-thread-147

It does feel like some sort of Civil War is being touted; especially with Trump using the military over the police, lines being crossed repeatedly and frequently to sully the discussion and complicate it.

Thought this was on the button as an article. Summed up how confused I was that he immediately jumped on the "political" reasoning for the shooting https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/did-trump-just-declare-war-on-the-american-left A mardedly different response to the Democrat politicians killed by right winger guns in the last few months - no half mast flags there and a lot of "had it coming" comments.

Considering we know shooters are more likely to be right wing, they've leapt on this incident as a reason to escalate division. It could so easily have been used to increase gun protections and unite. Typical of Trump but sad nonetheless.

What’s the “action”, I wonder? And again, CK was a podcaster and activist, not a member of the US government. SMH

Perhaps. Like the North Korean stories taught in schools about how when Kim Jong Il was born, the rain and cloudy skies cleared up to beautiful sunshine.

But that will just be in the US schools—the rest of us will know the truth. To keep a lid on the truth, they’ll have to censor/shut down the internet/VPNs in the US.

It reminds me of the 1960s…civil rights unrest, Vietnam War unrest, student protesters gunned down/killed by the National Guard at their uni, JFK killed in a car, and MLK and RFK killed in hotels.

I have a very dark feeling these days. China and Russia, largely viewed as dictatorships, are ascending, and democracy in the world feels like it is fading. The right wing media here (i.e. most of the media here) are already acting like Reform will win next time, and they seem to be the same sort of group as MAGA.

I feel the same. Like all the progress of the past century is being wiped out.

Absolutely. Only concentration of wealth is worse now than in late Victorian times, and the wealthy no longer appear to feel it's their duty to do anything to support or help the masses.

1968

I’m a firm believer that it’s darkest before dawn. I work in an area where I get lots of exposure to people fighting the good fight. They’re out there and they’re plentiful, they just don’t shout as much as the other side.

Rather than continuing to rely on @placemats' kind links, I'm going to post on the thread that screenshot of Donald Trump Junior 's Xweet. It's about Nancy Pelosi's 82-year-old husband having his skull fractured by a man who attacked him with a hammer having broken into his house to attempt to attack Nancy.

Apologies for posting something offensive, but I think given the current moment it needs enshrined for posterity. Not least because Junior deleted it.

This was more of the rightwing response in 2022 to the attack on Paul Pelosi.

Jokes about Paul Pelosi aren’t just in bad taste. They normalize political violence
Rightwingers are laughing about an attack that left an 82-year-old in hospital. It’s a watershed moment in politics
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/02/paul-pelosi-attack-donald-trump-jr-memes

This was Kirk's response

And this is from Trump's statement in response to Kirk's death:

https://time.com/7316299/charlie-kirk-shot-death-donald-trump-speech-transcript-political-violence/

This is a dark moment for America. Charlie Kirk traveled the nation, joyfully engaging with everyone interested in good-faith debate. His mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever, to share his love of country and to spread the simple words of common sense. On campuses nationwide, he championed his ideas with courage, logic, humor, and grace. It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.

My Administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.

You'll note there's no mention at all of Democrats who have been attacked. Not of Pelosi, not of the Hortmans, not of the Hoffmans. All much more recent than the attack on Scalise. (The "three others" refers to some of those wounded at the same time as Scalise.)

And of course nothing, no comment at all, about Trump's own behaviour. His intense demonization of anyone he deems an enemy – usually an enemy of him personally for having wounded his ego.

The rest of us have been saying for years that:
"It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible"
and
"This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now."

So it's nice that Trump is finally saying this... but it seems only because he's now found a way to use it to demonize people.🤦‍♀️ He could so easily have spoken against "those who believe in violence", but no. He makes only and all the "radical left" his target.

Horrible, but worth saving. Some things should never be forgotten.

Totally agree. I'm old so it's really not going to affect me, but my poor DCs, they really are worried and almost depressed about what's going on in the 🌎

Oh, and yes, to our media and I put a lot of blame at the BBCs door. The letters stand for British Broadcasting Corporation. What a joke. They have given Farage and Reform a platform. Look at Question Time... He's a regular on there, it's a dangerous embrace by BBC

One of Trump's financial backers over here in UK, showing us how the future looks https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5jg9vy1n0o

There is also the military funeral honors for the pro-Trump rioter killed on January 6

Obscene

Trump claiming that a suspect is in custody over Charlie Kirk’s murder.

Naturally he’s announced it on Fox & Friends rather than allowing local law enforcement or the FBI to give the updates.

You can’t make this stuff up:

Republican Nancy Mace is proposing a vote on allowing Charlie Kirk’s body to “lie in honour” in the Capitol Rotunda so that the public can visit it.

FML

They're ushering in The Unenlightenment, a New Age of Ignorance. Benjamin Franklin must be spinning. If he had foreseen this nation of ignorance, chucking knowledge and facts out of the window, relying on the words of soothsayers and spellbinders instead of science and replaying the 1930s as a desirable aim, he'd have emigrated.

As predicted ...

There are extremely disturbing parallels with Horst Wessel @SerendipityJane I have a very bad feeling about where things are heading.

Trump has said he hopes that Kirk's killer will receive the death penalty.
Have we reached the point where Nick Abbott gets to tick 'pay per view execution' on his trump bingo card?