Retribution Is What He And His MAGAts Want
Yesterday Ed Kilgore wondered if Biden is risking a backlash with his blank check to Israel that might cost him his reelection— basically from Muslims (and progressives) who might sit 2024 out in key swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida and Ohio. He doesn’t think so. Why? “Aside from Trump’s abundant history of Islamophobia and encouragement of Israel’s most extreme right-wing elements,” wrote Kilgore, “he and his party are going to be seriously constrained from any ‘even-handedness’ by their conservative Evangelical electoral base, in which disempowerment of Palestinian Arabs (along with general hostility to Muslims) is theologically blessed and even mandated. Trump as the Republican nominee could make a crucial difference between a mere lack of enthusiasm for Biden and a decision to vote for a third-party candidate or for no one at all.”
And it isn’t just Muslim-Americans who have something to worry about if the unthinkable happens and Trump gets back into the White House. Once again, at a MAGA rally in Houston, Trump was describing violent J-6 insurrectionists in prison as “hostages.”
Brian Karem went beyond just Trump to the threat the MAGA and Christian nationalism movements represent. “While the world burns, Johnson and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party,” he wrote, “is embracing the darkest verses of the Bible, apparently pushing for apocalypse with an enthusiasm only rivaled by Saul’s slaughter of Christians before he changed his name to Paul… The House of Representatives, now run by Johnson, offers a discount version of the apocalyptic orgasm the holy rollers have dreamed of for years. They’ve renewed the Inquisition and seem determined to convert the U.S. into a theocracy run by people who will thump you with the Bible, but haven’t read much of it… They want an isolationist country surrounded by walls and dedicated to the proposition that the First Amendment guarantees them the right to worship any way they want— while forcing the rest of us to worship the way they choose… Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a constitutional scholar, says there was a solid reason for this much-debated and carefully written clause: ‘The framers taught us that the biggest threat to religious freedom comes from theocrats who try to establish their own sect over everyone else. That’s why we have two religion clauses in the First Amendment.’ None of that matters to the Republicans. They revel in their own chicanery. They despise free thought and independence, and are happy to play games with a government shutdown— the modern equivalent of fiddling while it all burns. Stay tuned. Nov. 17, the next shutdown deadline, is just around the corner.”
Jonathan Karl decided to tackle the question of what the 2024 election is all about for the MAGAts. He noted that “many members of America’s new [far right, paranoid] militias live in a parallel universe, where civil war is already being waged by tyrants within the federal government.”
Shortly after Trump’s 2024 kickoff rally in Waco was announced, Karl asked Steve Bannon why Trump would go to there for his big campaign reboot. “He wasn’t coy. ‘We’re the Trump Davidians,’ he told me with a laugh…. ‘For seven years, you and I have been taking on the corrupt, rotten, and sinister forces trying to destroy America,’ [Trump] told the crowd. ‘They’re not going to do it, but they do get closer and closer with rigged elections.Twenty twenty-four,’ Trump declared, ‘is the final battle.’ This wasn’t a campaign speech in any traditional sense. Trump echoed the themes of paranoia and foreboding that grew out of the Waco massacre. ‘As far as the eye can see, the abuses of power that we’re currently witnessing at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt, and depraved chapters in all of American history,’ he said. ‘They’re not coming after me,’ he told the crowd. ‘They’re coming after you.’ The message seemed to resonate, but its brazenness was staggering. The folks cheering Trump had not taken boxes stuffed with classified documents out of the White House.”
Whatever you think about the investigations, Trump invited the scrutiny. Special Counsel Jack Smith was probing Trump’s role in the January 6 attack and his failure to turn over that classified material. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was investigating his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential-election results in Georgia. And Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was nearing an indictment on charges related to hush‐money payments Trump made weeks before the 2016 election to the porn star Stormy Daniels.
“The DOJ and FBI are destroying the lives of so many Great American Patriots, right before our very eyes,” Trump posted on Truth Social the day after four members of the Proud Boys militia were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in the storming of the Capitol. “GET SMART AMERICA, THEY ARE COMING AFTER YOU!!!”
But “they” weren’t coming after Trump’s law‐abiding supporters— they were coming after Trump. Decades earlier, the presidential candidate Bill Clinton told voters that he felt their pain. Trump was now doing the reverse, trying to persuade his supporters to feel his pain as if it were their own.
…In the days following his prediction of a Tuesday arrest, he attacked Bragg, who is Black, as a “Racist in Reverse” and “degenerate psychopath” who was pursuing him while letting “MURDERERS, RAPISTS, AND DRUG DEALERS WALK FREE.” Trump’s most inflammatory comments were about what would happen to the country if Bragg went through with what he was planning. “What kind of person can charge another person,” Trump wrote on March 24, “when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?”
The implication seemed clear: Drop the case against me, or my supporters will get violent. That same day, an envelope— apparently mailed from Florida— was found in the Manhattan D.A.’s office containing a trace amount of white powder and a letter that read, “ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
For a few days at least, Trump believed that his threats had had their intended effect. Tuesday came and went, and he remained a free man. So did Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. By Saturday, Trump was talking as though he had successfully outmaneuvered Bragg. “I think they’ve already dropped the case,” he told reporters on the plane ride back from his campaign rally in Waco. “It’s a fake case— some fake cases. They have absolutely nothing.”
When multiple news outlets reported on March 29 that the grand jury would be taking a month-long hiatus, Trump was ecstatic. “I HAVE GAINED SUCH RESPECT FOR THIS GRAND JURY, & PERHAPS EVEN THE GRAND JURY SYSTEM AS A WHOLE,” he posted on Truth Social. “THE EVIDENCE IS SO OVERWHELMING IN MY FAVOR, & SO RIDICULOUSLY BAD FOR THE HIGHLY PARTISAN & HATEFUL DISTRICT ATTORNEY, THAT THE GRAND JURY IS SAYING, HOLD ON, WE ARE NOT A RUBBER STAMP.”
The grand jury voted to indict him the next day.
…As soon as the arraignment was over, Trump raced back to Mar-a-Lago, responding to his first indictment with a speech aimed squarely at the prosecutors closing in on him— not just Bragg, but also Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, who is also Black (Trump called her the “local racist Democrat district attorney in Atlanta”), and the special counsel leading the Department of Justice’s investigations into January 6 and his handling of classified documents (a “lunatic special prosecutor named Jack Smith”). More than any potential Republican rival for the party’s presidential nomination— more than Biden, even— these were the people he was now running against.
“REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS SHOULD DEFUND THE DOJ AND FBI UNTIL THEY COME TO THEIR SENSES,” he posted on Truth Social the following day. His campaign was selling T‐shirts (for $36) featuring a fake “mug shot” of Trump made to look as if it were a booking photo. Later in the week, his campaign posted a video advertisement featuring dramatic footage from Trump’s arraignment. Apparently, being indicted for paying off your porn‐star mistress was not something to be ashamed of in a Republican primary. “If they can do it to him they can do it to you,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. Noticeably absent from Trump’s obsession with his own victimization was any real focus on helping Americans who weren’t under criminal investigation, but his advisers were convinced that the ploy would work. “This week, Trump could lock down the nomination if he played his cards right,” Bannon told me as rumors began to swirl of Bragg’s indictment. “‘They’re crucifying me,’ you know, ‘I’m a martyr.’ All that. You get everybody so riled up that they just say, ‘Fuck it. I hate Trump, but we’ve got to stand up against this.’”
…About a month before his first indictment, Trump was about 10 miles south of the White House, addressing attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, in Maryland. CPAC this year looked like a full‐blown Trump convention. Devotees of the former president such as Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene were among the warmest-received by the crowd.
Trump had the keynote time slot on Saturday night. After the public‐address system introduced him as the “next president of the United States,” he ambled onto the stage and spoke for nearly two hours.
“The sinister forces trying to kill America have done everything they can to stop me, to silence you, and to turn this nation into a socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, Marxists, thugs, radicals, and dangerous refugees that no other country wants,” he said. The speech was ominous, but one rhetorical flourish stood out. “In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior; I am your justice,” Trump said. “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” He repeated the last phrase— “I am your retribution”— and promptly the crowd started chanting: “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
When I spoke with Bannon a few days later, he wouldn’t stop touting Trump’s performance, referring to it as his “Come Retribution” speech. What I didn’t realize was that “Come Retribution,” according to some Civil War historians, served as the code words for the Confederate Secret Service’s plot to take hostage— and eventually assassinate— President Abraham Lincoln.
…A couple of days after Special Counsel Jack Smith finally indicted him for his actions leading up to January 6, Trump made his threat explicit: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
That, more than anything else, is the beating heart of Trump’s 2024 campaign: Vote for me, and I will punish the people who have wronged you— by wronging me. I am your retribution.