“I’d rather my house not get firebombed.” (#109)
President Trump has figured out how to send his MAGA fans after people who disagree with him—including Republican elected officials. It’s been happening for a long time, it’s bad for our democracy, and we shouldn’t normalize this dynamic. Plus links to other stories I’m following.
Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.
“It might be helpful for you to know that you are not alone. And that in the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead of us, there is the possibility of hope.” “The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.
So much about the political dynamics of the Trump era can be summed up in what an anonymous Indiana state lawmaker told a reporter about trying to deal with the president’s redistricting demands. As The Atlantic’s Russell Berman writes:
The lawmaker I spoke with asked that I not publish his name. He isn’t worried about Trump’s political wrath; he doesn’t plan to run for reelection. His fear of speaking out is much more personal: “I’d rather my house not get firebombed,” he told me by phone.
I mean, yeah, a fire bombing can ruin a person’s day. Receiving death threats should not be part of an elected official’s job description. But they sure can help an aspiring autocrat keep people in line.
Trump is not shy about using his platform to attack people. And like a mob boss, he knows he does not have to be explicit in his directions to have his MAGA supporters respond to posts expressing his displeasure with targeted threats of violence.
At least 11 Indiana legislators have shared that they have received a threat of some kind since Trump started pressuring them, as NBC News’ Megan Lebowitz and Raquel Coronell Urbie report:
At least 11 elected Republicans in Indiana have been the targets of swatting attacks and other threats in the weeks since President Donald Trump publicly pressured state lawmakers to approve a new congressional map that would benefit Republicans.
In a lengthy social media tirade on Nov. 16, Trump blasted Indiana state Senate Republicans for not supporting the effort, naming two state senators and Gov. Mike Braun. The next day, Trump said he would “strongly” endorse against anyone who opposes the push.
Of course, threatening to endorse an opponent is well within the norms of how an electoral system is supposed to work. But Trump does not stop there—and he hasn’t for some time.
The Guardian’s Robert Tait reported on these dynamics in February:
Eric Swalwell, a Democratic representative from California, said his Republican colleagues were “terrified” of crossing Trump not only because of the negative impact on their political careers, but also from anxiety that it might provoke physical threats that could cause personal upheaval and require them to hire round-the-clock security as protection.
Tait explained even then that this was not a new situation. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Former Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) have both publicly discussed the fears expressed by their colleagues.
Cheney told CNN that some of her Republican colleagues had voted against impeaching Trump because “they were afraid for their own security – afraid, in some instances, for their lives”.
Her comments were backed up by Mitt Romney, the former Republican senator and presidential candidate, who told his biographer, McKay Coppins, of a senior Senate colleague who intended to vote for Trump’s conviction at his Senate trial only to change course when a colleague told him: “Think of your personal safety. Think of your children.”
Not everyone, after all, is a centimillionaire like Romney, who told Coppins that he started spending $5,000 a day on personal security after the January 6, 2021, insurrection. These fears are why so few Republicans joined Romney in voting to convict Trump after his second impeachment trial—even though that was the perfect time to put a stop to his madness.
We just saw another example of how this works after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) insisted on supporting the release of the Epstein Files. As Politico’s Cheyanne M. Daniels writes:
Trump on Friday called Greene a “ranting lunatic” and said he was withdrawing his support for her. On Saturday, he called her a traitor.
Greene on Sunday vehemently denied being a traitor and called Trump’s comments “hurtful.”
“Those are the types of words that can radicalize people against me and put my life in danger,” Greene said.
Greene revealed on social media that she had been contacted by multiple private security firms after “a hot bed of threats” were made against her and egged on by “the most powerful man in the world.”
Trump did not tell his supporters to make personal violent threats against Greene. They understood what the president wanted. And while Greene stood firm in supporting the release of the Epstein Files, she is retiring from Congress early.
Shame Greene didn’t realize how harmful these threats were until she was experiencing them. But, as we have learned, Republicans rarely express empathy until they are directly impacted.
No one should be surprised that a person who would watch a rioting crowd try to assassinate his Vice President would continue to resort to political violence. But most Republicans are afraid to raise the issue, Democrats have failed to make it an issue, and the mainstream media has normalized Trump’s violent rhetoric.
As Julie Roginsky explains in this post, the failure of elected officials and the media to hold Trump accountable for his violent rhetoric has created this dangerous state of affairs. She writes:
One of the most insidious aspects of Trump’s rhetoric is how quickly it becomes background noise. When he suggested Milley deserved death, most major outlets barely covered it. Now he is talking about death for elected lawmakers, and you can already hear the familiar chorus from Beltway media: “He’s just venting; he doesn’t mean it literally; it’s just Trump being Trump.”
This story will be off the front page by the weekend.
This is exactly how democracies slide into something darker: repeated threats that are never fully repudiated, a public slowly numbed to the idea that “traitors” deserve hanging, a leader who learns that there is no line he cannot cross.
The point is not only whether Trump literally signs an execution order. The point is that he keeps telling the most radicalized parts of his base who the “traitors” are — and what “in times gone by” happened to them. Those times, in his mind, was when America was great. And what does he tell his supporters to do if not make America great again?
These are not challenging dots to connect.
“I’d rather my house not get firebombed,” says so much about why Republicans have failed to hold Trump accountable and have facilitated so many of the president’s anti-Constitutional power grabs. No one, not even the most right-wing elected official, should feel that way.
I support increased funding for the security of elected officials and their staff. We don’t have to normalize the situation just because the media and too many elected officials don’t want to cover Trump’s outbursts. This environment discourages dissent, erodes accountability, and risks democratic norms.
We must call out these dynamics and urge more reporters and politicians to start giving this story the attention it deserves.
Tabs I Closed
- The Fear Taking Hold Among Indiana Republicans (Russell Berman, The Atlantic, Link to Article)
- At least 11 Indiana Republicans were targeted with threats or swatting attacks amid redistricting pressure from Trump (Megan Lebowitz and Raquel Coronell Uribe, NBC News, Link to Article)
- Republican whose child has Down syndrome opposes redistricting after Trump’s ableist slur (Ramon Antonio Vargas and Rachel Leingang, The Guardian, Link to Article)
- Republicans terrified of crossing Trump due to physical threats, Democrat says (Robert Tait, The Guardian, Link to Article)
- Trump Foments Violence Against Real American Patriots (Julie Roginsky, Salty Politics, Link to Article)
Other Stories I’m Following
- Bay Area teacher wrongly ID’d as convict, pulled from class due to last name ‘Smith’ (Stephanie Sierra and Renee Koury, ABC-7 News, Link to Article)
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) is but the latest agency that should put in place a more robust appeals system—especially for people with common last names. There should also be a way for people to receive monetary compensation when a government agency makes a mistake that results in salary loss and expenses. The statements of the CTC and the Department of Justice are simply unacceptable. If we want voters to support government services, we need our agencies to be willing to admit mistakes and take action more quickly to fix problems. - Larry Bushart: The Man Who Spent 37 Days in Jail for a Single Trump Meme (Jim Vorel, Jezebel with Splinter, Link to Article)
Speaking of the need for government officials and agencies to be held accountable and provide restitution for their mistakes—let me present the story of a local sheriff who was so upset about a meme that accurately quoted President Donald Trump on the day of the Charlie Kirk assassination that he imprisoned a retired police officer for more than a month. The national media largely ignored this First Amendment violation. But Vorel explains why we should care: “The case of Larry Bushart is a canary in the coal mine, particularly when it comes to people living in rural communities, stories that are perhaps more likely to get overlooked via media giants. It evokes the frightening possibilities of zealous, politically motivated policing in this kind of community, in police departments headed up by individuals who feel emboldened by the Trump administration’s increasingly authoritarian crackdowns. How many small town sheriffs out there are giddily embracing the dawn of American fascism because they can’t wait to use their offices to punish their perceived political enemies on a local scale? How many of those sheriffs will be relying on the never-ending, flood-the-zone pace of political news coverage in America to obscure these kinds of arrests and absurd charges, to ensure that they don’t get the kind of public response that forces them to stay their hand? How many other cases like Larry Bushart (that don’t feature a white, senior citizen former police officer) are we in the media missing?” - The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands (Film by Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong, Text by Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, Link to Article)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk must be held accountable for how they destroyed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the first weeks of the second Trump regime. Estimates are that 600,000 people (two-thirds of them children) have already died because they decided to gut these vital aid programs. This atrocity cannot be pushed under a political rug and overlooked because we want to look forward and not backward. - Seven Lawsuits Allege OpenAI Encouraged Suicide and Harmful Delusions (Julie Jargon and Sam Schechner, The Wall Street Journal, Link to Article)
This is the kind of tragedy that can happen when products are released to the public without proper vetting and safeguards. The AI companies are rushing to release new versions of their programs to justify their ridiculous (and likely bubble-driven) valuations. We should hold all of their leaders accountable for the damage they are creating—including the likely economic damage to come. - California invests big in battery energy storage — and leaves rolling blackouts behind (Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times, Link to Article)
The California Independent System Operator has not had to issue a Flex Alert since 2022—and hasn’t had to enforce rolling blackouts since 2020. A significant factor behind this transformation is the 3,000 percent increase in battery storage since 2020. We’ve come a long way since Enron created energy shortages that forced rolling blackouts in California and set the stage for Governor Gray Davis’ recall. - American Voters Are Finally Booting Conservative Weirdos off School Boards (Charlie Pierce, Esquire, Link to Article)
We should pause a moment and be thankful for this development. “Folks just want their school boards to be boring again,” said Lesley Guilmart, one of the newly elected members in Cypress-Fairbanks. “They want normalcy. Once the board was taken over by a super partisan extremist majority, folks across the political spectrum were dismayed.” Students will benefit from having school board members working to put together an excellent education for them, rather than Fox News hits for themselves. - A Computer Science Professor Invented the Emoticon After a Joke Went Wrong (Benj Edwards, Ars Technica via Wired, Link to Article)
Shame we haven’t been able to figure out how to reduce online misunderstandings after all this time.
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“And even if none of it is true, we’re still dealing with a president of the United States whose best friend for 15 years was a serial child rapist. Let that sink in. Again, why the Democrats couldn’t make this an issue last year—aarrgh. I know. I’m sure they have all kinds of reasons. But you know what? If Donald Trump were running against someone whose best friend for 15 years was a serial child rapist, he’d have made sure America knew.”—Michael Tomasky, The New Republic.
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On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government. Here’s a video from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that one can review if their memory fades.
People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.
It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.
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