It has become drearily predictable. Whatever happens, however objectively bad it may be, serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) will say it is good for his election campaign, and the process is playing out once again in the aftermath of the 34 felony convictions that he just received from a jury.
Let’s be clear. It strains credulity to argue that being convicted of a single felony, let alone 34, is good for you and SSACFT and his acolytes must know it. Sure, it might make your supporters angry and fired up but it is unlikely to win over anyone who is not already strongly committed to you. And yet they are pretending that this is the best news ever. What would they have said if he had been acquitted?
It is clear that the outrage machine had been prepared in advance of the verdict. The ratcheting up of calls for violence has produced increasingly violent rhetoric, including calls for ‘war’.
Ever since the trial began, pro-Trump commentators—and Trump himself—have been priming MAGA online ecosystems to claim foul play if the jury found him guilty. The response to his felony conviction was predictably swift, with many characterizing it as a declaration of “war” from the “deep state.” Incendiary rhetoric about how the guilty verdict was a sign of America’s collapse reverberated from the mainstream right all the way to the fringes.
“As of today, with this fake guilty verdict against Trump, America is no longer the United States,” wrote Joey Marianno, a pro-Trump political commentator, to his 466,000 followers on X. “We are a third-world shithole heading for a Civil War. I have no desire to see this country to unify. There’s no country to unite. We are long past that.”
…Ali Alexander, a far-right conspiracy theorist, did not mince words either. “Today is Jan. 6th for the entire nation,” he wrote on Telegram to his 12,000 subscribers. “This is worse than the Civil War. Respectfully.”
That kind of rhetoric even made it to the airwaves. “We have been calling it lawfare,” said Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro.“I think lawfare is far too soft, it’s far too benign. This is warfare.”
That all this is bogus can be seen in the sheer anger that is being shown by the MAGA world. If they genuinely thought this was good for their dear leader, they would not react with the fury that is on display.
Throughout Washington, Trump’s allies – some of them jockeying to be his running mate – responded Friday with a series of escalating calls for retribution on his behalf.
…Trump’s campaign is already making clear it intends to call out Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal in this moment.
When Larry Hogan, a former Maryland governor and Republican Senate candidate, called for Americans to “respect the verdict and the legal process,” Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita responded on social media: “You just ended your campaign.”
LaCivita also called out the College Republicans National Committee for posting on social media: “The outcome of this trial should be respected.”
“Opinions are like a**holes,” LaCivita wrote. “Everyone has one.”
Some are calling for retaliatory prosecutions by Republican state officials against Democrats.
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh was thinking on a similar track: “Donald Trump should make and publish a list of ten high ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office. First on the list should be Joe Biden. Second should be Joe’s crackhead son.”
Or here was lawyer Mike Davis, a pro-Trump attack dog whom Donald Trump Jr. has floated as a possible pick for attorney general in a second Trump term: “Dear Republicans: If your response to Biden’s Republic-ending lawfare against Trump is: 1. We must respect the process and/or 2. We are too principled to retaliate, please do two things: 1. Fuck off 2. Leave the party. You are too weak, stupid, and dangerous to keep around.”
“Import the Third World, become the Third World,” tweeted Tucker Carlson. “That’s what we just saw. This won’t stop Trump. He’ll win the election if he’s not killed first. But it does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world. Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.”
The rhetoric is truly unhinged.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump, enraged by his conviction on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution.
After Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, his supporters responded with dozens of violent online posts, according to a Reuters review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.
Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.
“Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” wrote one commentator on Patriots.Win. “Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete,” the post said in reference to illegal immigrants.
On Gateway Pundit, one poster suggested shooting liberals after the verdict. “Time to start capping some leftys,” said the post. “This cannot be fixed by voting.”
Part of the fury may be because, however loudly they shout otherwise, they realize that this is not good news.
Throughout Donald Trump’s political career, there have been a handful of scandalous moments where there was a very real risk that he could lose the support of his party: the Access Hollywood tape, his impeachments, his indictments, the FBI raid on his home – the list goes on.
For now, he seems to have avoided losing the most prominent politicians within his party. But the same might not be true for voters.
Earlier this month, an ABC News/IPSOS poll found that one fifth of Donald Trump’s supporters said they would either reconsider or withdraw their support for him if he were convicted of a felony.
All this fury has an air of impotence, the raging of people who fear that things are not going well for their hero.
From day one it was always “alternative facts”, and this is especially ironic given that he used the word “Truth” to name his social media--like everything that i post or speak is the real source of the true facts. It’s George Orwell, 1984 all the time with this loser.
https://i.imgur.com/aJJsISCm.png
I agree with what I take to be Mano’s main point: the current outcry comes from knowing that the conviction is bad for Trump; but I still worry whether that’s something that “we know that ain’t so.”
Look at the huge boost Jeffrey Epstein got!! They didn’t even try him for his crimes!
i shouldn’t’ve read the quotes. those fucking creeps are scary. not that i think, statistically, i’ll ever be attacked by one, but be because they certainly will be attacking somebody, and horrifically. we’re two minutes away from some magahead going full ed gein.
This is good news for Bitcoin!
What amazes me is the Orwellian double-think employed where the cultists simultaneously whine about anti-SSAT prejudice while swallowing every absurd claim by SSAT himself -- as if he was not prejudiced in his own favor.
I am at a loss as to what to say to the online MAGA defenders. Other than asking: do you think he is not guilty? If so, please give us an evidence-based scenario that demonstrates his innocence, and more professionally than his lawyers. Is it even possible to argue with obvious nonsense like this?
I am among the many who are stumped by this phenomenon.
The arbiter of what’s good for Trump is not what his ranks supporters think, nor the sort of complacent “well now he’s definitely finished” rhetoric common on the left (e.g. right here). It’s the polls, and specifically the one in November.
But RIGHT NOW, the best information we have is polls… And post-verdict, they almost all have Biden leading… By no more than 2%. What a country. I mean it’s an improvement over a few weeks ago, but still.
These are the ones that really baffled me:
““Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,””
Yeah. Not me, obviously, I’m not that much of a loser, but someone else, someone with nothing to lose, THEY need to
hang a bell round the cat’s neckfind and shoot a judge who hasn’t done anything to them personally. Genius. So glad we have this guy’s clear thought processes available to us as a species, such value, such perspicacity.““Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete,” the post said in reference to illegal immigrants”
Ah yes, illegals -- they’re all rabidly pro-Trump, right? They’re all on board with “build the wall” and “send them back”, so they’ll be furious about this. I don’t know about anyone else, but if I’d illegally immigrated to the US I’d be more inclined to find Merchan and buy him a drink -- wouldn’t you?
As for ‘losing support of his party’… that’s no longer an issue. Anybody on the fence either decided to ride the tiger of the MAGA base to get votes or got primaried out of their own seat. Trump months ago essentially staged a coup of the RNC and installed his own supporters in charge to the point where denial of the 2020 election results is literally a membership requirement. The number of major politicians in the Republican party who don’t support Trump is practically zero, because anybody who didn’t either support him or pretend well enough has long since been driven out.
He’s not going to lose the Republican party, which means that the U.S.A. absolutely needs to lose the Republicans as they currently exist. And given that they’re already primed to get Trump supporters show up as election officials and vote counters, that’s going to take work.
It’s interesting that Nigel Farage (the UK’s pound-shop* Trump) who was over in the USA slobbering over Trump’s feet, has returned to the UK and announced himself as a candidate in the general election that up to that point, he seemed to have little interest in, being content to leave it to his sidekick Richard Tice to lead his “party”, Reform UK Party Ltd.**. On his return to the UK he replaced Tice as party leader (no nonsense about elections, consultation, or anything else suggesting Reform UK Party Ltd.’s supporters have any say), and appropriated the only constituency which ever returned a UKIP MP -- UKIP being of course the precursor-but-one of Reform UK Party Ltd and producing a definite poll uptick for Reform UK Party Ltd.. He will probably win the seat, but more important, seems to have an outside chance of getting more votes (although not seats) than the Tories at the election. That would make their forthcoming defeat not just disastrous, but existential.
*Not sure what the equivalent American expression to “pound-shop” is: “two-bit”, or is that outdated?
**Yes, this “party” is registered as a business, in which Farage is the majority shareholder -- although it’s Tice who actually provides the money.
[“Dollar store”, KG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_store#Dollar_stores ]