President Semi-Sentient Rotting Carrot has once again done something that a crazed authoritarian dictator would do. Something that, when done in the past by a foreign despot, often resulted in an American media full of people grimly intoning how problematic and dangerous it was.
Trump yesterday threatened to execute his political enemies. The all-too common dismissal of his dangerous madness, “it’s just Trump being Trump,” is rarely, if ever, a legitimate response. Like saying after a serial killer murders his 14th victim “Well, that’s just how he is, always does that.” But in this case, yeah, hard no. You have likely heard by now that Trump declared that Democratic Congresspersons who were in a video on Tuesday, telling military and intelligence officers to refuse illegal orders, had committed sedition and should be put to death. It goes without saying that this is far from normal and right in the ballpark of horrifying.
His first batch of vomit on Truth Social that they should be put on trial, his second post said they should be locked up, and his third post went to a place where no president should ever go, that his political enemies need to be executed. He then proceeded to repost other Truth Social cretins who called for them to be hanged.
I know that there’s this weird level of pride among many in the DC media about maintaining a stiff upper lip and resisting “overreaction,” but it gets to the point where you become a principal telling their students, “Now now, we don’t run in the halls” during a school shooting. They can’t even work up enough of a spine to have their female colleague’s back when Trump calls her a “piggy,” see Cassandra’s piece earlier this week about that incident. But this? It’s sheer madness.
So today, Trump put the nation in a very dark place. The targeted Democrats were quick to condemn this action. It goes without saying that no elected official should be threatened with death, but the Congresspersons Trump declared should be executed were all veterans. They are alarmed by Trump ordering military personnel to police American civilians. Their point is legitimate; military officers and soldiers should not be forced to obey unconstitutional and illegal orders, such as the Trump administration’s attacks on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean.
Republicans, on the other hand, demonstrated that their value is ranked somewhere between a moldy crust of bread and the stuff found at the bottom of a dumpster in July. History’s Worst Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, even blamed the Democrats, because of course he did. Other Republicans either did something similar or deflected.
Trump is declining mentally. Despite the hysteria over Biden’s age, there is relatively little discussion of that among the DC opinion slingers. His malignant narcissism is under assault from all sides, from the Epstein files to former supporters like Marjorie Taylor Greene now attacking him, to his losing court cases, to his declining popularity, to this month’s GOP election rout.
An aging narcissist who is losing his mental faculties tends to lose emotional control. Not that Trump ever was the epitome of emotional intelligence, but he is getting worse. We have just over three years to go. Trump hit this point in under a year.
I cannot see how this can continue. Trump today made a death threat against political enemies. Many of his supporters espouse violence as a solution, and some of them are potential ticking time bombs that can be set off by something like this. That Trump once again forced elected officials to bring in extra security is not sustainable.
Thirty-eight months is a long way to go, and it’s going to be very difficult for America to avoid a deeply serious Trump-induced constitutional crisis and/or horrible political violence. On the bright side, we now have a Democratic party that’s showing more fight (despite the recent shutdown cave), and that’s something we desperately needed. But God help us all.
The last word goes to the late Ozzy Osbourne.