With Liberty for One

and justice for the lesser vandals

Quick: identify a single Trump rally in the last 5 years where Trump has NOT encouraged the crowd to attack someone. Media, protesters, Dems, Hillary, antifa, someone. Surely there must be ONE? Hullo? I’d like to think there was one or more but encouraging abuse and violence sure has seemed like a regular rally feature.

He also pardoned the racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio who ran what Arpaio himself called a ‘concentration camp’ housing jail inmates in a tent city while temperatures soared into the triple digits, who targeted county commissioners and judges who ruled against him and illegally arrested two journalists who wrote articles about him. He cost Maricopa County tens of millions of dollars due to all the lawsuits he lost for his numerous criminal actions.

After losing his 2016 re-election bid, even Republican voters turned against him dealing him primary losses in 2018 and 2020. He was found guilty of the worst racial profiling court case in US history and was awaiting sentencing after he was convicted for contempt of court when Trump pardoned him in 2017 before Racist Criminal Joe’s subsequent primary losses. Trump also pardoned two Border Patrol agents convicted of assault in the shooting of a marijuana trafficking suspect.

He pardoned four Blackwater contractors convicted in the slaying of 14 Iraqi citizens, including women and children. Blackwater was headed by Erik Prince, brother of Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos. Both were major financial supporters of Trump’s two runs for office.

He also pardoned two ranchers convicted of arson, which had provoked the Bundy militia takeover of the Malheur Wilderness Refuge that ended 5 years ago yesterday.

Anyone have an idea what the Bundy ringleader is up to lately? If you guessed he’s been building a massive national militia movement to terrorize health professionals, government officials - and their families - and promote further anti-cop actions due to covid restrictions such as mandated mask wearing at public meetings and in hospitals, you’d be right.

”In October, the Seattle-based organization and the Montana Human Rights Network published an investigation that found that Bundy had rapidly expanded People’s Rights by fusing his core of far-right paramilitary supporters with “a mass base of new activists radicalized in protest” of coronavirus restrictions.

Group leaders envision a form of “neighborhood nationalism,” in which the “righteous” stand against the “wicked,” the report said.

Investigators found that the network had 20,000 members in 16 states. In an interview with The Times late last month near his home in Idaho, Bundy claimed it had grown to almost 50,000 people in 35 states.”

And . . .

“But People’s Rights continued to expand, establishing hundreds of chapters that Bundy organized with the aim of being able to dispatch 10 protesters to a scene in 10 minutes, 100 in 100 minutes and 1,000 in 1,000 minutes. He instructed each chapter to launch teams to train in secret for paramilitary operations to defend members from criminals or government agents.”

(San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan 29, 2021)

Last November, 30 members of Ammon’s new militia gathered outside of the Boise Idaho mayor’s home carrying tiki torches. Yikes.

Trump’s support for violence-prone privileged white nationalist groups goes back to long before the deadly Charlottesville march in August 2017, where he indicated it was bad, but on both sides, in a 3 day series of responses that culminated with:

"I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides," Trump said during his remarks on Aug. 15.

"You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides," he added.

And then there was the photo op on June 1st last year where Trump ordered the National Guard to clear 300 entirely peaceful protesters near the White House utilizing their tear gas and batons. This is a man who encourages and orders violence against anyone who stands up and speaks out against him.

Earlier that day, in a call to the nation’s governors, he told them they need to “dominate” the streets with the National Guard and accused them of being “weak” in their response to the first week of countrywide demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd.

He held up a Bible and told the nation:

“Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled,” he said. “If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the U.S. military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

It was not immediately clear under what authority Trump could deploy U.S. troops to patrol states without governors requesting them. A senior Defense Department official said Trump had not enacted the Insurrection Act, which gives the president the power to deploy active military troops on U.S. soil. It was last used in 1992 to respond to riots following the acquittal of police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

(The Hill, June 1 2020)

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By July, he’d ordered the deployment of National Guard to several cities as well as a quasi-military force drawn from numerous agencies with little or no training in effective crowd control that got sent to Portland, Oregon. In a handful of cities led by Democratic mayors - like Portland, Seattle, Oakland and NYC - they engaged in questionable and illegal tactics that aggravated situations instead of calming them.

In Portland, journalists were assaulted and arrested, and people several blocks away from protests were kidnapped off the streets with some reporting they were taken to the federal building, questioned and released. That caused two vets - Marine and Navy - to come to their first protest a day later where they approached the federal forces and explained that they were obligated to obey the Constitution. Both were teargassed and the Marine was beaten. His hand was broken, requiring reconstructive surgery.

When a voluntary Wall of Moms created a line to protect the protesters from the assaults of the federal forces, they were attacked. A Wall of Dads showed up the next night, followed by a Wall of military veterans. Trump denounced them all with multiple insults, egging on the troops to continue attacking them. State and the DC attorney generals have filed lawsuits against these assaults and it took more than a month to get Trump to back off. In Portland, which saw peaceful demonstrations and marches with crowds exceeding 10,000 at times, the federal forces managed to make well under 100 arrests over a 6 week period, averaging just 2 per day.

He never invoked the Insurrection Act to give his federal force legitimacy and he didn’t invoke it in his final two weeks after he provoked an actual insurgency. After clearing out peaceful protesters around the White House in a few minutes back in June, it took several hours for federal forces to arrive when the US Capitol was under siege 5 weeks ago.

His minions, like Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani, were physically associating with some of the most violent groups involved in that attack.

And it’s worth noting that had those groups succeeded in their efforts to kill the Vice President and Nancy Pelosi, Trump could have invoked martial law with Chuck Grassley and Mike Pompeo as the next two in the line of succession. And in the end, he turned his back and betrayed the men in blue, as well, subjecting them to a violent assault that left more of them wounded and dead than were hurt in a summer of protests with more than 15 million Americans taking part in more than 2000 cities.

Yesterday, the Department of Justice filed a memorandum that stated the Oath Keepers’ Jessica Watkins was reluctant two months ago to go to DC or plan their assault on the Capitol Building till she could be sure Trump supported it.

“I am concerned this is an elaborate trap,” she texted on November 9, 2020. “Unless the POTUS himself activates us, it’s not legit. The POTUS has the right to activate units too. If Trump asks me to come, I will. Otherwise, I can’t trust it.”

Like every bully and every sexual abuser before him, Trump is a maestro of violence and cowardice, indifferent to any dead and wounded he leaves in his wake. And the never gonna be Grand again Old Dying Party in the Senate - and across the country - will let him get away with it, betting our country and our Constitution will be safe now from another comeback by the violent monster they refuse to leash.
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But people who assault property? Why, they’ll still pay for their crimes. It’s the Republican way.

These war criminals Trump pardoned (shown below) along with the Blackwater crew, the DeVos family, Joe Arpaio, Roger Stone, Stephen Bannon, Rebekah Mercer, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the KKK, Ammon Bundy’s growing People’s Rights militia, and other violent supporters eagerly await their next orders too.

40% of 475,000 is 190,000 Americans Trump can safely ignore again too. Because to him and 70% of his party, America doesn’t matter.

”I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”