19 October 2018 — 1444 mdt
President Trump praises Rep. Gianforte’s bodyslamming skills
Donald Trump descended to a new low yesterday when, speaking at a Republican rally in Missoula, he praised Greg Gianforte for grabbing Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs by the neck, slamming him to the floor, and punching him, on the eve of Montana’s special congressional election in 2014.
Gianforte pleaded guilty to assault, but won the election.
It’s nothing to be proud of — but Trump told the the audience of MAGA-hatted Montanans that the violent crime made Gianforte his kind of guy.
I think he would have pardoned Gianforte on the spot had Gianforte’s crime been a federal offense. Instead, he granted Gianforte political absolution.
That was bad enough. What was worse was the crowd’s cheering Gianforte’s crime and Trump’s blessing it.
There’s a name for a crowd like that: mob. And for a President like that: demagogue.
Silhouetted against a flaming autumn sunset, our President eschewed a thoughtful discussion of our enlightened self-interest. Instead of seeking to bring us together, he inflamed prejudices and grievances with incendiary rhetoric designed to divide, conquer, and humiliate.
Writing at the Washington Post’s Plum Line, Paul Waldman observed:
Trump is in many ways an ignoramus and a fool, but he has one extraordinary political talent. Like a migratory bird perceiving the Earth’s magnetic field, Trump has an uncanny sense for where to find the worst in people, particularly people on the right: their fears, their resentments, their hatreds, the things that will move them to a venomous and gleeful rage. Time and again when many in his party worried that something he (or someone else) said or did would be politically disastrous, Trump would be able say to them, “Don’t worry. The base is going to love this.”
He proved it in 2016 when every other Republican presidential candidate was dancing around the immigration issue and he busted in saying Mexican immigrants are rapists, build a wall, and ban the Muslims, which turned out to be exactly what the base wanted. And he keeps proving it. He knew the Republican base far better than the party’s leaders did, because he understood how twisted their hearts really were.
When you see Trump praising a violent assault committed by a Republican congressman to laughter and cheers, and at the very same rally pretending to be horrified that “The Democrats have truly turned into an angry mob,” you might wonder whether the assembled crowd notices their own hypocrisy. But they just don’t care. Trump has instructed them that worrying about stuff like that is for wimps. Those who criticize him or even point out inconvenient facts — Democrats, journalists — are not just wrong, they’re enemies.
Against enemies no tactic is out of bounds. You can lie about them, you can stir up the most vile hatred against them, you can encourage violence against them, you can even assault them, and none of it matters so long as you win. These are the principles that every fascist and authoritarian operates by, and they have become core principles of today’s Republican Party.
This assault on democracy will not abate anytime soon. Unless Trump resigns (highly unlikely), is impeached and convicted (impeachment is unlikely, conviction impossible), or dies in office, we’re condemned to at least two more years of Trump’s demagoguery. And if the Democrats nominate another identity politics candidate, and I think that’s what will happen, Trump will retire as President in late January, 2025.