If You Bump Into Chuck Schumer Or Hakeem Jeffries, Could You Mention That MAGA’s Declared War On Us?
Napping towards Bethlehem
Monday, the sitting vice president, who I fear is JD Vance, hosted his slain friend Charlie Kirk’s podcast from the White House. He blamed the “far left” for Kirk’s murder, before the FBI even had time to “find” the killer’s manifesto. He also blamed the “far left” for most political violence, a blinding level of gaslighting that ignores the assassination of Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband just this summer. The suspect in the Florida State University shooting from April was linked to Kirk’s own Turning Point USA and was kicked out of a college club for his “white supremacist” views. Hell, Vance only has his current job because Donald Trump whipped up a violent mob against his first vice president.
Vance openly lied about Kirk’s more racist remarks about Black women. He threatened to use the power of the state to suppress speech he doesn’t like. (Yes, Vance had previously lectured our European allies about free speech a few months ago.)
The vice president also went full Red Scare with a dash of North Korean totalitarianism. He urged his supporters to inform on their fellow Americans who weren’t suitably respectful of Kirk’s memory online. “Call their employers!” he said, fully embracing the cancel culture he once decried. This isn’t hypocrisy, though. It’s the MAGA philosophy: They demand your respect while disrespecting you. They demand the freedom to keep their boot on your neck and consider any squeals of pain a personal threat.
Trump’s ghoulish henchman Stephen Miller joined Vance to discuss what The Bulwark’s Tim Miller aptly termed a “campaign of retribution and revenge against the left.” While this took place, all horrified Americans might reasonably ask where our Democratic leaders were. Here’s what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted recently on social media:
Trump has conducted extrajudicial executions without authorization from Congress. He’s openly dismissed the freedom of speech that’s in any way critical of himself and his supporters. He’s threatened to persecute the press. This was all this week, and it’s I’m writing on Tuesday. Yet, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are operating as if these were normal times, when Democrats were the opposition party against a normal Republican Party, which wants to hurt poor people as usual but isn’t actively raising lynch mobs against Democrats.
Trump’s wartime consigliere posing as attorney general Pam Bondi has made clear that this administration plans to strip non-MAGA citizens of their First Amendment rights. (She has since suggested that she didn’t actually say the words she’s filmed saying.)
The Trump administration wants to go after the funding of progressive groups that they’ve labeled sponsors of domestic terror. Focus groups and centrist pundits might have advised Democrats to concentrate fully on health care, but Republicans are close to Calvin Balling the next election. On CNN Monday, David Frum discussed how the Trump administration is using Kirk’s murder as a pretext for crushing political dissent and making it impossible for Democrats to win the midterms. Frum isn’t a Democratic leader. He’s not even a Democrat! Our actual Democratic leaders should speak up or at least wake up.
Journalist David Corn posted on social media, “The White House via Stephen Miller says Democrats are an ‘domestic extremist organization’ & JD Vance says he wants to crush the Dems. Trump says Dems are radical leftists and it was radical leftists who killed Kirk. How can you have bipartisan negotiations with people like that.”
Well, Schumer certainly is going to try. He posted a video criticizing Trump for … “ordering Republicans not to even bother talking with Democrats about the budget.”
Republicans have declared war on the “left.” This includes Fox News hosts like Jesse Watters and recent Tonight Show guest Greg Gutfeld, as well as elected officials who serve in the same body as Jeffries and Schumer. Americans are already losing their jobs — not just journalists such as Matthew Dowd and Karen Attiah but teachers and some random guy who works at the Apple Store.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene ranted online about a “national divorce” with the left. She’s expressed similar secessionist fantasies in the past, much like the kid who threatens to run away because their parents just don’t understand, but maybe we should take her seriously. This won’t be an amicable split. MAGA is already sending troops to Democratic-run cities, so they might try to take the house.
Republicans are irresponsibly and quite sadistically promoting “collective guilt,” where anyone to the left of Charlie Kirk is held accountable for the actions of the lone individual who murdered him. That’s why the debates over what the killer actually believed is beside the point. He was not a soldier in some formal “leftist” army. Osama bin Laden personally orchestrated 9/11. It’s not as if the terrorists were only inspired by bin Laden’s inflammatory anti-U.S. podcast. Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump, who’d spent years pushing a racist birther conspiracy against Barack Obama, weren’t somehow directly responsible for a white supremacist murdering Black people in a Charleston church. But Black people don’t really do collective guilt. We’d never get through the week. An unhinged Megyn Kelly might accuse Obama of dividing the nation by “injecting race into everything,” but he sang “Amazing Grace” at the funeral for the Charleston victims. He wasn’t just showing off his impressive pipes. He was stressing the importance of grace — a concept that’s seemingly alien to MAGA.
MAGA has spent week since Kirk’s murder scapegoating innocent people. First, based on internet rumors that the shooter was trans, they immediately blamed the entire trans community. Right-wing bigot Matt Walsh called the “transgender movement” a “death cult.” The day after Kirk’s murder, which was also the anniversary of 9/11, Donald Trump Jr. said, “I can’t name, including probably like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, a group that is more violent per capita than the radical trans moment.” Elon Musk shared posts on his disinformation site that called trans people a “terror cell.”
When the killer was revealed to be yet another white guy from a gun-obsessed MAGA home, they blamed colleges for “indoctrinating” him into “leftist ideology.” He was in college for barely a semester. Actual cults need at least two semesters. MAGA then seized on the possibility that the killer’s roommate is trans, as if prolonged exposure to “trans” made roommate psychotic. This is repulsive bigotry. The killer’s roommate not only the killer but they cooperated fully with the investigation. In return, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media a salacious New York Post headline about their gender identity, as if that’s actually relevant. (The media in general has failed in that regard. Imagine headlines screaming “Killer possibly in relationship with JEWISH/BLACK roommate.”)
Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, have not done the best job standing up for trans people over the past year, but Democratic leaders have shamelessly refused to condemn MAGA’s efforts to smear trans people. Worse, Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and liberal journalist Ezra Klein have praised Kirk, who spent his career maligning marginalized groups, particularly trans people.
Democrats shouldn’t passively let Republicans shape the narrative. They should stand up against censorship and the ongoing demonization of a vulnerable minority. If it doesn’t poll well now, actually articulate a message so that it polls well tomorrow. There is nothing to respect about politicians who want to lead without leading, to govern without risk, who’ll only aggressively defend groups their consultants don’t consider a political liability.
Blue MAGA will argue that we shouldn’t criticize Democrats. They’ll say that Democrats are held to impossible standards. However, if they have any standards, now is the time to demonstrate them.
𝐷𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑒𝑡 𝑅𝑒𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑢𝑝 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑣𝑢𝑙𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦. 𝐼𝑓 𝑖𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑛𝑜𝑤, 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎 𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑠𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑤. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑘, 𝑤ℎ𝑜’𝑙𝑙 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑎 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦.
Well said! I have several questions:
1) If Dem "leaders" weren't such weenies, and pushed back effectively against maga bigotry, would maga be so emboldened to threaten us all?
2) When will the Epstein Files be released?
I feel like maybe Democrats are taking a cue from being punched in the face in 2024. As there is no live federal election right now showing anyone's path is winning against the pricktator and his forces, who even knows? I figure Democrats could at least picket their offices if they want Jeffries and Schumer to post more and better.
After all, the pricktator is emboldened by "official immunity" and the inbuilt deference to the unreconstructed in the political and legal systems. You would never see such proposals to make the Republican Party illegal as even conceivable—I sure can't. But the Democratic Party? Because the Democratic Party is the prime political voice of Black people (not to mention numerous other vulnerable minorities) that is why this is on the table.
But even the Internet faves aren't trying to get rid of Schumer and Jeffries, which is signaling to me that Schumer and Jeffries are ablative armor to soak up anger of people while the faves stay in their safe environments and feel free to post knowing they'll never have to deliver.