The Republican Party, descending deeper into violence
From Kevin McCarthy's sucker-punch to Trump's invocation of "vermin"...
Today was not a banner day for comity in the legislative branch. But it is emblematic of a deepening trend towards violence, of a descent from democratic principles towards base, instinctual drives. To wit — former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy allegedly sucker-punched Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett (with, to be precise, an elbow to the back of the kidneys) as his detail walked past the Congressman this afternoon. What is the meaning of this Republican-on-Republican violence? That it was done in such a brazen way as to be captured on camera is more than a little unnerving, especially considering that McCarthy was until very recently, second in line to be leader of the free world. The second piece of evidence: Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a Republican, attempted — also, today — to initiate a physical altercation with the President of the Teamsters Union during a hearing. Senator Bernie Sanders, the HELP Committee Chair, struggled to maintain order.
The Republican Party — in the image of its Master — is descending deeper into violent, instinctual drives.
Donald J. Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he employed the term “vermin” on Saturday night. It was the latest, most provocative incendiary device recklessly tossed about in the heat of battle against his political opposition. Trump’s boiling rage at having to participate in humiliating civil trials questioning his business acumen is seeping into his language. It is perhaps ultimately not a surprise that the party of resentment, of retribution and of Second Amendment absolutism would descend into one of violence. We cannot fail to note that this is not a good look to woo suburban women voters.
The former President of the United States conjured Adolph Hitler as well as the darker aspects of 20th century isolationist fascist rhetoric during — of all occasions — Veteran’s Day weekend. “It does not echo Mein Kampf,” historian Jason Stanley told Mehdi Hasan, “this is textbook ‘Mein Kampf.'" And how could it be otherwise? Trump’s right-wing authoritarianism always had an element of inciting white working class violence.
Trump— ancestral surname Drumpf — has more than a passing familiarity with Hitler’s 1925 autobiographical manifesto. Although the graduate of the Wharton Business School is not much of a reader, he takes time to carefully read his Master. “It’s worse than you can imagine,” Michael Wolff quotes economic adviser Gary Cohn writing in an email. “Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing.” Go Wharton! Yet Trump, despite his severe allergies to the written word, took the time to read about Hitler’s epistemological journey to anti-Semitism. How novel!
And if that is not bad enough, Trump became rather furious when journalist Marie Brenner shared his “reading habits” to the overclass in her profile of him for Vanity Fair. Steph Eckhardt wrote in WMagazine:
“She was sitting demurely in her black dinner suit at the Parks Commissioner Betsy Gotbaum’s table when she felt something cold and wet running down her back,” (Tina) Brown writes of the journalist Marie Brenner, who not so coincidentally had written a less than flattering profile of Trump and his then-wife Ivana in Vanity Fair the year before—which included mention of the fact that, according to Ivana, Donald kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, in a cabinet by his bed, which he would read “from time to time.”
Brenner confronted Trump about the book, and transcribed their conversation about it in the story, which includes Trump attempting to clear things up by saying that “actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” Davis then clarified to Brenner in the story that he gave Trump My New Order, not Mein Kampf, because he thought Trump would find it interesting, and that he is not in fact Jewish. (And earlier in the piece, Brenner shares another tidbit from Ivana—that Trump’s cousin John Walter would click his heels and say “Heil Hitler” when he greeted Trump in his office, “possibly as a family joke.”)
Charmed, I’m sure. (Averted Gaze) But then again — no surprise — if Trump reads anything, it is probably hateful. Aside from the obvious bigotry, Trump has a childish, almost grotesque penchant for encouraging physical violence. Among his minions, of course; a draft-dodger like Trump would never fight his own battles, only incite it. Katie Tur, who was at the center of the violent impulses that Trump stirred up in crowds during his 2016 run, did not have the Capital riot on her dance card. However, she did see this:
I did think that there was going to be something violent after he lost the election, and I’ll tell you why. It’s been a slow burn since the very beginning. He came out swinging at immigrants in 2015. At the rallies, he would encourage his supporters to beat up protesters. He told some that he would pay their legal bills for punching protesters. He used very inflammatory language. Some folks would say not to take him literally, that we should just take him seriously. That’s a bunch of baloney. His supporters took him literally. And we saw it at the rallies. We saw the anger in the crowds. It’s been building because he has painted himself the victim now for five years, saying, “Everybody is out to get me. And they are out to get you.” He fueled the anger and this desire to fight back. And it was going to culminate into something. Donald Trump was telling his supporters that the only way he can lose is if he’s cheated. And if you truly believe that your democracy has been stolen from you, if you truly believe it, there are people out there who are willing to fight for that.
“Slow burn” indeed. Rwanda, which suffered an horrific genocide nearly 30 years ago, could tell the United States much about the power of dehumanizing language used by reckless individuals in authority. When the radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the Rwandan government, started inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, calling them inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes,” the violence came so fast and so hard that in its wake over 800,000 people died in 100 days. This is not to say that Trump is advocating for a genocide. And America is not the Great Lakes region of Africa. But his language — all gasoline and turpentine on top of the partisan conflagrations — is escalating the possibility for another big violence moment in American history. Perhaps for if Trump wins the nomination but again fails to win the Presidential contest.
How has the media been covering this? Is this line of defense preparing the people for the possibility of another round of anti-government violence? Dan Froomkin, who is doing press coverage of the ‘24 campaign for Press Watchers, had some criticism for the Washington Post and the Times:
“Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction” was the initial headline over the story by Michael Gold.
Gold acknowledged in his second paragraph that Trump’s language was “incendiary and dehumanizing.” But that, of course, should have been the lede – and should have been in the headline.
The Times soon changed its headline to “In Veterans Day Speech, Trump Promises to ‘Root Out’ the Left,” but that wasn’t much better.
A social-media furor quickly erupted. (Twitter, the platform now called X by some, is still good for something.)
Meanwhile, the Washington Post made no mention of the speech at all.
Until Sunday night, that is.
We are getting a stronger sense of what a second Trump term theoretically might look like. And it is not pretty. “In September, Trump told a rally in Iowa the deportation operation would be along the lines of the ‘Eisenhower model,’ the Times said,” Reuters reported. “That was a 1954 campaign named after an ethnic slur - Operation Wetback - to detain and expel Mexican immigrants.” Ideological screenings on immigration are also, apparently, not off the table. Also, should Trump have another shot at the Justice Department — Lord help us — it will probably involve investigations of his political enemies. Which might explain, at least partially, why Hillary Clinton is increasingly vocal in warning voters about the consequences of Trump, 2.0.
It is a sign of the debased state of American politics that, at one point in time at least, Trump’s teasing of violence seemed novel — even amusing — to a large percentage of the electorate. That time, however, has passed; the threats are no longer vague or for comedic value. The quiet part of Trump’s implied threats are now being said out loud, in the language of some of the worst fascists of our time. And I cannot help but wonder if Mitch McConnell had not allowed Republican Senators to vote to impeach we would not be rid of the Trump problem. But that’s an academic question now. He will probably be the Republican nominee for ‘24. And it is getting harder and harder to feel compassion for the Americans that vote to restore Trump, no matter how disengaged they are from this system of vast inequalities, to the Presidency.
“In a speech Saturday in Claremont, New Hampshire, and then in his Veterans Day greeting yesterday on social media, former president Trump echoed German Nazis. ‘In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day [sic] we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream…. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.’ The use of language referring to enemies as bugs or rodents has a long history in genocide because it dehumanizes opponents, making it easier to kill them. In the U.S. this concept is most commonly associated with Hitler and the Nazis, who often spoke of Jews as ‘vermin’ and vowed to exterminate them.” (Heather Cox Richardson)
“In July, four months before the reelection, I called him and said, ‘Well, things are pretty bad, aren’t they?’ And he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I said, ‘The virus.’ And he said, ‘It’s under control.’ At that point, 140,000 people had died in our country, in his country. He knew that he could have issued a warning. And I just kept asking, ‘What’s the plan?’ And he said no one would remember. And I said, ‘Come on, this is bad. You haven’t done the job of the president, which is to protect the people.’ And he said, “Well, I have a plan.’ Which he didn’t.” (Bob Woodward/OldGoats)
“Instead of using his power to transform Uganda as he had promised in 1986, politics transformed him into loving power as an end in itself. As a result, he will leave office largely as a failed state-builder, a failed nation-builder, and a failed developmentalist president. The Ugandan state is still scarce in much of the country, while his governance style still relies on ethnicity as the dominant mode of organizing mass politics. He also failed to transform the economy. In 1986 Uganda’s per capita income was 71% of Kenya’s. As of 2022 Uganda’s per capita income had shrunk to just 46% of Kenya’s, having essentially stagnated since 2009. The political instability that will follow his departure from office will likely erode current levels of state capacity, social cohesion, and economic development. That, too, will be part of his legacy.” (An Africanist Perspective/Ken Opalo)
“Racism had been an asymmetric burden during John (Amos) and Noni’s marriage. ‘She didn’t really see the world in black-and-white; she was very naive,’ Shannon says. For John, who spoke privately as well as publicly about his frustrations with the characterization of African American life on Good Times (he was written off the show after its third season), it was a constant torment, whether at a gas station or in renting an apartment or on a family road trip or — long after becoming a TV icon — in meetings with Hollywood decision-makers. ‘He would be told that he was too Black, he was too ugly, his nose was too big,’ says Shannon. ‘They’d talk about him like he was an animal. Even though he’d been in, like, 70 projects, he’d still be asked to read. He’d be so upset. His white peers would just be called in at that point.’ John discouraged his kids from following in his acting footsteps. When they persisted in showing interest in the business, he guided them behind the scenes, where he believed they could attain and wield real power.” (Gary Baum/THR)
“(Joe) Manchin announced today that he will not be running to keep his West Virginia Senate seat next year, but he certainly has given his donors a return on their investment. Since his first run for the Senate in 2010, he’s accepted $1.4 million worth of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. In 2021, an ExxonMobil lobbyist bragged that he spoke to Manchin every week. He earned three times more money from his family’s fossil fuel business that year than he made as U.S. senator. Manchin spent the first half of the Biden administration shaving down the climate spending in the bill that became the Inflation Reduction Act. He axed everything from power plant pollution penalties to a bonus for electric cars made with union labor. At one point he said he would not even vote for the package at all. Then he decided he would. In between all that, he found time to block Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to become the Federal Reserve’s top banking cop—largely, it seemed, because she supported factoring climate risk into banking rules.” (Kate Aronoff/TNR)