Despite seeing his claim that President Joe Biden authorized his assassination by the FBI ridiculed and demolished on all fronts except the MAGAs on Foxaganda and elsewhere, Donald J. Trump has doubled down and sent another letter seeking to raise funds off the assertion. Of course, he has. No matter what else is going on in Trumpworld, the grift remains paramount, the politics tangential.
In case you missed it, Trump and his allies—like Rep. Marjory Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon—asserted after new court documents were unsealed that Biden had specifically given the FBI the go-head to use “deadly force” if necessary in carrying out its search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents the former White House occupant took and refused to return to the government as the law requires.
In fact, the Department of Justice’s Justice Manual states “Law enforcement officers and correctional officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.” But Trump’s lawyers didn’t just disingenuously leave out the “only” in a legal motion to the court, they ignored the fact that this is longstanding standard procedure for FBI arrests.
But, hey, money from a lie is just as valuable as money from the truth. So the Trump team immediately alerted its email list of the gullible, the fanatic, and the malicious to send more cash. Then, Sunday night, they did it again. The Guardian reports:
The revival of the claim came late Sunday came in the form of an email to supporters headlined:“This is an Alert from Donald Trump.” “DEADLY FORCE? Biden authorized it. They brought guns to the raid on Mar-a-Lago!” it read.
“I’m sick and tired of the Radical Left destroying this country and trying to destroy me,” it continued, before detailing raids, indictments and arrests Trump claims he has been subjected to for political purposes.
“Here’s the bottom line: I WILL NEVER SURRENDER. AND NEITHER WILL YOU!’ It concluded with a request for donations of up to $500 and a demand to “drop all charges” against him.
New sales life, apparently, for the overstocked inventory of “I will never surrender” tee-shirts printed after Trump surrendered to Fulton County police for his mugshot last August. Trump has made an art out of combining crimes with lies to generate $$$. Of course, as many critics, expert and amateur, have pointed out, this claim that Biden ordered him assassinated is the sort of lie that not only raises money from the MAGA many but also can rouse the notion among a MAGA few that the proper response is to take out Biden first. Stochastic violence is no fantasy.
At this stage of what is an authentic, real-life reality TV show in which the script from “The Apprentice” has been discarded for a special American brand of 21st Century fascism, I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired and bored of the whole thing. I just want to change the damn channel.
We said “you’re fired” to Donald Trump in 2020. I don’t want to see that glowering mug staring out at me from the television, a newspaper or magazine, or a website, including this one. I want him out of our lives for good. Preferably in a cellblock where his only book is one of those $60 Christian nationalist Bibles he’s been hawking and the TV permanently loops President Obama’s 2011 Correspondents Dinner roast of Trump.
I want him gone because the focus on the former White House occupant is an obstacle to doing the serious and difficult work facing us as Americans and Earthlings if we as a society are to survive the multiple crises bearing down on us.
Unfortunately, while Trump is an infuriating distraction, he’s also the main attraction, consuming gobs of journalistic and social media energy, and diverting political activism as he makes history overworking “unprecedented” with his extraordinary behavior inside and outside the court room. It’s sickening and fatiguing that he gets away with this ultra-privileged nose-thumbing of ethics and the law, has always gotten away with this, and so far looks to have at least a 50-50 chance of continuing to get away with it.
Previously, he was just a semi-talented, daddy-enriched, poorly educated con man and womanizer, a vulgar mobster wannabe without the family loyalty of a good mafioso, witness Mary Trump.
Which is why, much as I would like to and I’m sure many others feel the same because they say so often, we can’t turn away. I can’t devote full attention as I would like to on climate-related activism for whatever time I have left on Mother Gaia while this guy has a ghost of a chance of throwing condiments against the Oval Office wall again. And whatever flavor of Democrat we are, whatever we think of this or that elected member of our party, we, most of us anyway, know better than to turn away from confronting fascism.
However, Trump is scarcely the only danger. He’s just the hood ornament. Christian Nationalist Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House who briefly disarmed a few Democrats with his belated but welcome support for aid to Ukraine, has an agenda that itself smacks of that “f” word. The Christo-fascist wing of the anti-abortion movement has an acolyte on the Supreme Court. No doubt Trump himself couldn’t define fascism if you gave him a cheat sheet. But that doesn’t mean he will stop acting like one. It won’t be the fascism of Hitler, or Mussolini, or Franco, or Pinochet, or even of Fred Waterford of The Handmaid’s Tale. Rather a special American brand but with plenty of horrors pioneered by earlier regimes. There’s still an ongoing argument about whether Trump really is a fascist. That’s a rabbit hole without an exit. Your mileage may vary.
As we all know, whatever label is applied, beating Trump in November is essential. But that alone won’t stop efforts to destroy voting and reproductive rights. It won’t stop continuing moves to cut Food Stamps simultaneously with more cuts on the tax “burden” of the wealthiest. It won’t make life easier for immigrants or LGBTQ+ people. It won’t confront the climate crisis. It won’t by itself stop a Supreme Court majority that is determined to drag us back decades while one of its worst members cites 13th century jurists in modern rulings and raises flags of insurrection against the government whose constitutional survival rests in his hands and those of his allies on the high court. Even Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller probably wouldn’t push for adoption of the Führerprinzip, but who can be sure about Samuel Alito?
And beating Trump won’t by itself beat the Heritage Foundation’s dreadful Project 2025. Much has been said since the project was publicly revealed 13 months ago. Dartagnan’s efforts here and Bill Berkowitz’s here are valuable analyses. But while several of its many chapters were written by former Trump officials, the document really is just the culmination of nearly a half-century of backward-thinking studies and proposals. The vulgar, ignorant Trump was and could once again be a great tool for these authoritarians eager to remake America into a pre-FDR but more regimented world in which the 14th Amendment is made as judicially irrelevant as the first clause of the Second Amendment has been. But he’s not necessary to their success. Even without the Trump tool, their disastrous agenda is at best delayed not deterred.
Stopping them all is an enormous task that will necessarily spread across many years on many fronts, electoral and other. But while beating Trump is only part of that mission, should he lose decisively in November, it will be a relief. No more seeing that face staring out at us everydamnday, no more dark pronouncements or gibberish tangents, no more cringey interactions, no more dominating the news. Obviously, Trump will look for how to use the lack of media attention as a conspiracy to keep his Truth silent. So send money! Whether he’s fascist, fascist-adjacent or just thuggishly narcissistic, Trump isn’t who scares me most in America, it’s the people who keep sending that money.