The week just ended will go down in history and in the annals of failed good intentions. It was the moment when the Resistance — the self-declared defenders of the good, true, and holy against the assaults of the Trump interregnum — became in some ways still more unhinged than the regime they were protesting.
“This is a president who seems to want these things to happen,” said Mika Brzezinski of the Morning Joe program, days after the sickening bloodshed in El Paso, Texas. She was suggesting not only that the president relishes the sight of his own people dying, but that his backers are equally bloodthirsty and vile.
Cue Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, brother and campaign manager to his twin brother, presidential candidate Julián Castro. Joaquin published a list of the top 44 local donors to Trump in his own congressional district, along with the names of their employers and their addresses at work.
“Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump…Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate.”
Republican Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, who in 2017 just barely survived a shooter’s large-scale assassination attempt against multiple Republican congressmen, compared this to the hate that had fueled his own shooting.
“I don’t want to put these people’s names in my feed. because this is dangerous,” said the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman.
Americans should be able to vote and to give as they wished without incurring a penalty, or at least, that’s what most of us believe. Others evinced a very different belief, that voting for or giving to Trump should be illegal and that the Castros were doing their duty by making it even more difficult.
On MSNBC, two interviewers on a panel of three supported the ad and its makers, on the grounds that information about campaign donations is in the public domain. Castro didn’t tell people anything new, he just “rearranged” things, said Mika Brzezinski. But he rearranged them so as it make convenient and easy for anyone looking to annoy or to hurt Trump’s supporters, which of course, Castro will tell you, wasn’t the intent at all.
But under normal circumstances, information about political donations is available in FEC files, where very few crazy, violent people are going to go looking for it.
A new take on all this was given to us by one Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI and frequent guest panelist. He informed the nation last week that Trump had revealed one piece of the puzzle when he said after the shootings that flags would stay at half staff for those killed until Aug. 8.
“The numbers 8-8 are very significant in neo-Nazi and white supremacy movements,” he told Brian Williams. “The letter ‘H’ is the eighth letter of the alphabet and to them the numbers 8-8 together stand for ‘Heil Hitler.’ So we’re going to be trailing the flag back up at dusk on 8/8.”
You got that? Trump is in league with a cohort of Nazis, to whom he sends signals that he is still with them in such subtle codes. Flags today, the number of cars in the motorcade tomorrow, and God knows what comes after that.
The takeaway is that the Resistance has become far more insane that what it was resisting. No good can come of that.
