Trump, Vance and the Bidening

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Today, I wrote about the assassination, the VP pick, the leaked phone conversation between RFK Jr and Trump, the Bidening. And then I wrote what I am doing about it all.

The Shooting

On Saturday, a gunman tried to kill Donald Trump. I’ve listened to the audio of the shooting. The shots popped. The crowd sounded confused. There were shouts. A few screams. It was a moment, maybe two. And then Trump stood up, pumped his fist into the air. And then the confusion was replaced by a roar of cheers, and chants of USA USA USA USA USA. Trump was alive, but a husband and father had been killed. Two others were injured. 

Matthew Crooks, a 20 year old from a nearby town, fired the shots. What were his motives? Investigators say they still don’t know. That’s not as odd as it may seem. In the 20th century, assassinations of western leaders were often carried out by disaffected men who just wanted to take down something bigger than themselves. 

In January 2021, when Crooks was 17, he donated to “Progressive Turnout Project PAC.” Ryan Grim reports it’s “one of those spammy PACs that carpet bombs your inbox, delivering emails with splashy colors and wild fonts and using every trick in the book to convince people to give small amounts of money.” Crooks turned 18 later that year. He registered as a Republican. He’d recently googled both Trump and Biden, along with “major depressive disorder.” Some neighbors say there were MAGA signs in his yard. But I don’t know if that’s true. Neighbors say a lot of things. 

A lot of commentators blame the shooting on the heated rhetoric, inept policing, the growing discontent among young men. But heated rhetoric, inept policing and disaffected young men exist in every western country. Ours is the only one with routine shootings in public. The attempted assasination occurred because we have a gun rights problem. 

The gun he fired was an “AR-15 style rifle,” the same kind of gun school shooters use to destroy elementary school kids. The kind of gun that was once banned. It is now a sacrament of the Republican Party.

An overwhelming majority of Americans want common sense gun safety laws. Republican leaders have deconstructed existing gun safety laws and obstructed the passage of new gun safety laws. In their America, we do not have the right to life. We have the right to be killed. It’s a right they want to expand. 

Related Reading

100 years from now, there will be a section in U.S. textbooks about The School Shooter Era. The horror, the dead children, the bullet proof backpacks and active shooter drills will be explained in a couple paragraphs. It will be easy enough for a fifth grader to understand. Here is what it will say....read the rest here.

The shooting took place a month after the conservative majority in the Supreme Court overturned the bump stock ban. Bump stocks are “conversion devices” that make semi-automatic AR-style guns fire like automatic guns. A machine gun is an automatic gun. EveryTown has a great explainer right here. Mass shooters will be able to kill more people in a shorter amount of time with legally acquired, easily accessible bump stocks. That is a right American Conservativism believes is worth defending. 

Children in classrooms have the right to be killed. But so do people at Trump rallies. I can’t stop thinkng about the sound of the crowd cheering. They didn’t know that a man had been killed, that his blood was soaking the ground as they roared. They didn’t know. But now they do. 

Trump picked JD Vance as his VP

In an August 2016 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, the radio home for the forgotten man, Vance made a comment about Trump’s impact on this group, almost as an aside. The implications of it echo today.

But I think that I'm going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.

A very dark place.

In Vance’s own telling, he believes that Trump was taking his people, the ones with whom he grew up, somewhere dark. - The Bulwark

Once Vance realized he could become powerful in that very dark place, he became a rabid Trumpist. This guy has the venality of a second rate comic book villian. His mercenary nature will eventually destroy him, but not before he inflicts as much damage as he can. He's getting some help.

Pundits, and the New York Times, are laundering words to make Vance seem moderate. That is not correct. He is an extremist. Biden recently called Vance a Trump “clone.” This is also wrong! Vance is much, much worse. 

Vance supports a federal abortion ban, without exceptions. He would like to make it illegal for women to travel from one state to another to get an abortion. If a woman was denied care in an anti-abortion state like Texas, she could not travel to get an abortion somewhere else. This is not a hypothetical. People are already having to travel outside of Texas to get abortions, even ones their doctors deem medically necessary. 

He is against no-fault divorce, for “even violent” marriages! No-fault divorce has been a crucial right for women. ESPECIALLY women who need to flee abusive marriages. Do you know how hard it is to “prove” abuse in this country? No-fault divorce means that nothing has to be proved for a person to get a divorce. They can just get a divorce! This man does not think women should have the right to leave violent marriages. Please sit with that for second. 

He is pro-Putin. This man thinks Ukraine should just cede itself to Russia! Um! Ukrainian resistance is the buffer between Europe and Russia’s imperialist designs. He claims he’s really just concerned about the “blank checks” America is writing to support Ukraine.

One, there are no blank checks. Two, if there were then Vance would be the first to figure out how to get cut in on the action. Really, he like authoritarians because he wants to be one.

Right after the assasination attempt, Vance tweeted, 

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Of course, this was a ridiculous thing to tweet even before we found out the shooter had Republican ties. Democrats have consistently tried to outlaw the gun the shooter carried. And people who attended the rally, including the wife of the man killed, said the violence wasn’t Biden’s fault. Instead, many blamed systemic issues. And like, yeah! Let's dig into that!

Still, it’s worth considering Vance’s tweet within the context of his own rise to power. It’s pretty clear that Vance doesn’t have a problem with fascist authoritarians. But he probably does have a problem with people stopping them! The great thing about America, at least for right now, is that we don’t need violence to stop authoritarians. We just need to vote. But Vance and his ilk would like to change that. 

In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance wrote about his violence and rage, 

The sad fact is that I couldn’t do it without Usha,” he continued. “Even at my best, I’m a delayed explosion — I can be defused, but only with skill and precision. It’s not just that I’ve learned to control myself but that Usha has learned how to manage me. Put two of me in the same home and you have a positively radioactive situation.”

I read this book years ago, but Soraya McDonald reminded me of this quote yesterday. It made my stomach drop.

A lot of women, especially women who were raised in traditionally conservative religions, have been taught that they exist to defuse men. So when they read this quote, they might not pull away in disgust. They might think Vance is acknowledging their value.

But there is something else. 

Despite his Trumpism, I was a little surprised that Vance accepted VP nomination. Trump has a documented history of being in favor of hanging his VP. And Vance has always valued his own neck above anything else.

I assume he’s received assurances about his safety. From who? The people who’ve always planned to take over the party when Trump is gone. The architects of Project 2025.  Christian Nationalists, like Speaker Mike Johnson. These people believe they need one more Trump term, one more justice on the court, to transform our country into a theocracy, where only white men are ordained to rule.

Have you heard of safety fuse? They are used a lot in mining and the military to create a time-delay between lighting the fuse and ignition of the explosive. The safety fuse is a hollow cord filled with a flammable powder that will burn at a predictable, slow rate. One end of the fuse is lit, and the other end - generally some great distance away - is inserted into a blasting cap embedded in the larger explosive, like blocks of C-4. It’s basically a chain reaction - light the fuse, the fuse ignites the blasting cap, the blasting cap ignites the very big explosive.

Trump is the fuse. Vance is the blasting cap. And the Christian Nationalists are blocks of reactive substance waiting for ignition.

Related Reading

My piece on Christian Nationalism.

And this from TNR:

Speaker Mike Johnson is the Christian Nationalist We Should Have Seen Coming. Those who track the Christian Right told people to worry about this guy. Why didn’t we listen? 

The Leaked Call

RFK Jr is running for president as an independent. He won’t win the race, but he can greatly impact the outcome of the race. 

According to a U.S. News-Generation Lab poll, the poll finds that Biden, currently the presumptive Democratic nominee, beats Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, 59% to 41% among young adults across seven key states. But in a matchup with Kennedy added to the mix, Biden earns 37% of the vote, Trump earns 25% and Kennedy earns 27%, with the final 12% selecting “other.” Though Kennedy bests Trump in that scenario, Biden’s backing drops by a greater amount. - US News

A video of a phone call between RFK Jr and Trump leaked this week. Although, is “leaked” the word we use when the video was shared by RFK Jr’s own son? I don’t know! I do know I am grateful to his son!

Anyways, the call took place on Sunday, right before the Republican National Convetion.  Misinformation about childhood vaccines is a key part of RFK’s platform. In the call, Trump told Kennedy that he too is vaccine skeptical. And then he told RFK that he’d really appreciate his support, 

“I would love you to do something,” Trump can be heard saying in the clip. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re going to win.” Mr Kennedy then says: "Yeah." - BBC

So who does RFK Jr apologize to when a leak shows he’s spoiling to be a spoiler? Trump! Like, anyone who really running for President would apologize to the people who’ve put their trust in him! The voters! The American people! Instead, RFK Jr apologized to the person he feels accountable to - Trump. 

God, can you imagine craving the illusion of relevance that much? Couldn't be me!

The Bidening

Meanwhile, Biden’s poll numbers continue to struggle. He is deeply unpopular as a candidate because of the genocide in Gaza, his halting debate performance, and his rigidity in the face of concerns about his ability to beat Trump while also delivering a Democratic majority in Congress. 

When I published this Biden had still not bowed out of the race. There are rumors he may step aside today. We will see. Even if he does, the Democratic Party is in need of plenty of reform itself! But for now I just want to concentrate on what Biden said when asked how he’d feel if he lost to Trump. He said he’d be at peace, “as long as I gave it my all.”

Do you see, my dear friends, how that statement and Trump’s fist pump over a dead body are very, very, very forking similar? Only the bodies Biden is standing serenely are my daughters’ bodies, your bodies. 

The Plan

These men - these power-corrupted non-visionaries in Brooks Brothers suits - truly think this is about them. They think it is about their will, their beliefs. This is reinforced by a lot of media coverage! Unserious reporting more concerned with persona than policy. They must know that each nominee is just the figurehead for political machines. But there are simply fewer clicks for sober reporting on ideology and agenda.

The presidential election is not about the nominees. It is not about what clowns in a Cybertruck want. It is about you and me. So that’s what I am going to write about. You and me.

I am not writing about what any of these fuckers say for the rest of the election.
I don’t care. I don’t care about gaffes, I don’t care about rousing speeches, I don’t care about interviews or press conferences. I don’t care what anonymous insiders claim. I don’t care about the op ed by the movie star. I don’t care about these people. I care about what these people mean.

And I care about you.

From now until November, in addition to my regular essay, I will be writing at least once a week about what these people mean to do for us and to us. I am going to be amplifying the work of people who are doing the same. And I am going to be sharing resources for how you can get involved in this thing that is very much about us, every single week.

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