You may not remember him, but Bill Thomas (R-CA) was a very big deal at one time, and not just in Bakersfield, where he was the congressman for nearly 3 decades before being succeeded by his handpicked protégé. Thomas was the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee at a time when that committee decided what would and what wouldn’t be spent by the government— and in Thomas’ case it was generally “wouldn’t be.” He was all about tax cuts for the rich and helped pass the only really bad part of Medicare, the pharmaceutical industry’s drug plan. And that handpicked protégé, ex-staffer (1987-2002) Kevin McCarthy, hid former district director.
After McCarthy gave Trump a free pass on his attempted coup his mentor called him a “hypocrite” who nurtured the “phony lies” Trump perpetuated. Thomas said “I look at it in terms of what you did, how you did it, and when you did it. What is more important? Ending any kind of continuation of massive lies after the Capitol was torn apart— which [McCarthy] didn’t do…and then finally after months of supporting those outrageous lies of the president, he decides that actually Trump lost and Biden won.”
This morning Jonathan Blitzer, in a piece for the New Yorker, What Kevin McCarthy Will Do To Gain Power wrote about an interview he did with Bill Thomas in October. Thomas, now 81, told him “Kevin basically is whatever you want him to be. He lies. He’ll change the lie if necessary. How can anyone trust his word? At some point, you have to look at where you started and how you got to where you are, and I would ask you, How do you feel about yourself? I know what his answer would be, but it wouldn’t be the truth.” Blitzer asked him what that answer would be. Thomas responded, “It was all worth it.”
In his quest for the speakership— McCarthy’s dream— he ignored, even embraced what Trump was doing to the GOP, even the incitement to violence. Mark Follman looked at the depth of the rot for Mother Jones readers. He began by reminding us that “Just hours after federal agents entered Mar-a-Lago on August 8 to seize highly classified national security documents, Rep. Paul Gosar urged a fight to the finish. ‘The FBI raid on Trump’s home tells us one thing,’ the far-right Arizona congressman tweeted. ‘Failure is not an option. We must destroy the FBI.’ Three days later, an Ohio man named Ricky Shiffer donned tactical gear, armed himself with an AR-15, and went to the FBI field office in Cincinnati. After failing to breach the facility, he fled and later died in a shootout with law enforcement. Shiffer was a frequent user of Trump’s Truth Social site, where the ex-president has kept up steady attacks on political opponents and the Justice Department and FBI. Shiffer had posted about imminent violence, telling fellow Trump supporters to be ready ‘to jump into civil war. People, this is it,” Shiffer wrote shortly after the Mar-a-Lago news broke. A Navy veteran who claimed he was also at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he called for stocking up at gun stores with ‘whatever you need to be ready for combat.’ He also said ‘patriots are heading to Palm Beach’ and should kill any federal agents who try to stop them. Was Shiffer spurred to attack the FBI by the statements from Trump and Gosar? It’s hard to know, and that’s no accident. Shiffer’s actions point to a rhetorical method experts call ‘stochastic terrorism,’ whereby a leader vilifies a person or group in ways likely to instigate random supporters to attack those targets, while the instigator maintains a veneer of plausible deniability. Trump made this form of incitement a hallmark of his presidency, galvanizing extremists by railing against and dehumanizing his ‘enemies.’ The country saw the devastating consequences when his supporters stormed Congress to obstruct certification of the presidential election. And now a growing number of Republicans are emulating Trump’s technique.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is mimicking Trump’s playbook as he eyes a White House run. In a late-August speech, DeSantis evoked violence against a figure despised by the right: Anthony Fauci. “I’m just sick of seeing him,” DeSantis told a roaring crowd. “Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac.”
Beyond merely stoking political anger, DeSantis and various Republican agitators have adopted an alarming feature of Trump’s tirades: insults that appeal to visceral contempt and revulsion. Trump routinely demonized adversaries as “sick,” “creepy,” “nasty,” and “disgusting.” GOP lawmakers, including Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz, have followed suit. That’s especially concerning— research led by psychologist David Matsumoto shows that anger combined with contempt and disgust produces a potent hatred that increases the likelihood of violence.
Trump has ratcheted up the incitement in pace with his growing legal predicaments. “Never in our Country’s history has there been a time where law enforcement has been so viciously and violently involved in the life and times of politics,” he posted on Truth Social after the Mar-a-Lago search. “They are destroying our Country!”
He floated baseless claims that the FBI “planted” evidence and he targeted the federal judge who approved the search warrant: “Judge Bruce Reinhart should NEVER have allowed the Break-In of my home,” he wrote, adding that Reinhart— who was already facing violent threats— was driven by “animosity and hatred.” Trump also shared extremist posts, including an image showing Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris with their faces covered over by the words “Your enemy is not in Russia.”
At a rally in Pennsylvania on September 3, Trump escalated even further, calling the FBI and Justice Department “vicious monsters” and President Biden an “enemy of the state.” That outburst came after Biden had begun speaking more explicitly about the dangers posed by Trump. “History tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy,” Biden said in a primetime speech, openly rebuking Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” whom he framed as a minority of the GOP.
But barely any Republican leaders have called out the threat, and so long as Trump remains a political force and voters stay hunkered in partisan media silos, risk will loom for further bloodshed at the hands of extremists. Mass shooters in Pittsburgh in 2018 and El Paso, Texas, in 2019 espoused racist claims about an immigrant “invasion” that echoed rhetoric Trump frequently used. In the run-up to the January 6 attack, the far-right Proud Boys were emboldened by Trump’s infamous directive to “stand back and stand by”; leaders of the group instigated street brawls in the nation’s capital and played a major role in the insurrection. Recent polling suggests that some Republican voters may now see political violence as acceptable. And Trump keeps floating the possibility of pardoning and apologizing to January 6 rioters, many of whom have since pleaded guilty or been convicted of crimes that included brutal assaults on police officers.
National security expert Juliette Kayyem— who for years has warned of Trump’s role as the de facto leader of a domestic terrorism movement— sees the work of the House January 6 committee as helpful. “I am not looking for a single ‘blow’ to end MAGA incitement,” she remarked recently. “Violent movements either grow or weaken. There are significant metrics suggesting that post-January 6 efforts have taken their toll.” She sees a telling sign of weakness in Trump’s escalating rhetoric. Yet in the short term that may make him even more dangerous.
In [forensic psychiatrist Philip] Saragoza’s view, leaders in both parties face a moral imperative to confront incitement more honestly. “Our elected officials know by now that this is a serious problem,” he says. He and other experts have seen how anti-violence messaging can be effective, yet few public figures are trying to change the discourse. “More of them should be looking at the situation and be able to say, ‘This has really gotten out of hand.’”
Oh, and by the by, this morning, The Atlantic published a review by Gal Beckerman of Lion Feuchtwanger’s recently re-published 1933 novel about the lead up to the Holocaust and the subjection to Germany by Naziism, The Oppermanns. She wrote that the takeaway that we need to keep in mind today is basically, “when the social and political barometric pressure begins to drop, when you can feel that tingling: Leave… It’s hard to know how much to relate a book like The Oppermanns to our present reality. The same retrospective knowledge that can produce needed foresight and activism can also lead to overreaction, panic, and distraction. Has it ever really been that useful to compare Trump to Hitler? Sometimes yes, but oftentimes no. Feuchtwanger himself doesn’t seem to be offering a template for how democracy dies. If anything, in his novel, templates shatter easily and quickly. For all the lessons he is trying to impart in 1933, there is no clearer answer about when exactly it’s time to go, when holding on to dignity becomes self-indulgent and dangerous. What remains instead is a deep sense of that rumbling ‘elemental force,’ and the impossible choices should you find yourself stuck in its path.”