A brush with death can change a person. They can choose to become a better person and to count their second chance at life as a blessing, an opportunity to engage in critical self-reflection and a mark of good fortune to be repaid to others. Alternatively, a person can be indifferent to how Fate smiled upon them and to continue living life as they had before. Perhaps the worst outcome is when a person faces their own mortality and sees their luck as a mark of their greatness if not immortality, fueling their egomania and the worst aspects of their personality.
After an attempt on his life several weeks ago in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump chose the third option.
An assassin’s bullet barely missed his head. Trump was supposedly a changed man after such a horrible experience, one who would “unite” the country and “heal” its division and acrimony. Trump, a man who rarely, if ever, attends church, also said that he was blessed by God and protected by an act of divine intervention. “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”
There were members of the news media who, even after nine years of experience with Donald Trump and his lies and demagoguing, uncritically accepted Trump’s declarations that he was now changed for the better. Not surprisingly, some of these public voices also said, at various points during Trump’s first regime, that he was finally “presidential” and was “rising to the demands of the office.” Such public voices have little to no credibility left.
In a Wednesday post on Twitter, Wajahat Ali, who is a columnist at the Daily Beast, directly called out such Trump-enablers in the news media: "Again, every single pundit and reporter who said Trump was a changed man after he survived an assassination please resign. Just leave this profession. Many of you are wealthy or have access to wealth. Go do something else. You're not made for this moment."
Of course, Donald Trump had no intention of becoming a better man. Trump’s charade lasted only a few days before his fascist-religious coronation at the Republican National Convention and his acceptance speech where he reverted to his ugly true form and attacked the Democrats and his other “enemies.”
At a rally in Minnesota last week, Trump reveled in his awfulness like it was a superpower that he had temporarily lost and now has back:
I want to be nice. They all say, ‘I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him. No, I haven’t changed. Maybe I’ve gotten worse. Because I get angry at the incompetence that I witness every single day.
In all, Donald Trump, because of his temperament, personality and mind is unable to act differently. Trump only knows how to attack. He appears incapable of human empathy or concern for others.
When President Biden decided to pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump only became more enraged and horrible in his speech, threats, and other behavior. It is being reported that Trump has been raging in private, as the momentum, at least for now, appears to have shifted to the Democrats in the upcoming election. Trump’s public statements and other behavior strongly suggest that he is experiencing some type of existential crisis at the thought of having to do political battle against a highly intelligent Black South Asian woman who is also a former prosecutor and attorney general.
Trump’s niece Mary Trump, who is a trained mental health professional, made this observation in a recent essay on her site The Good in Us about her uncle’s apparent state of mind and how he is now “terrified”:
Donald hates being laughed at….Donald also hates women (especially strong women) and minorities, so you can see why current Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris terrifies him to the point of incoherence. He says she’s 'crazy.' His childish nickname for her is 'laughing Kamala' because she feels joy, and joy is something he has never experienced and doesn’t understand. Faced with the reality that he is now running against a vibrant, intelligent, experienced woman who is fully two decades younger than he is, Donald spent Sunday and Monday flailing, trying to find an angle of attack that would stick.
Donald Trump is remarkably honest and transparent in his own devious way. To that point, longtime observers of Trump have concluded his behavior appears to be driven almost completely by the id and his other most core and primal instincts. Because of this dynamic, Donald Trump’s fundraising emails and other communications are a powerful lens, literally, into his state of mind and thinking—as well as the collective psyche and emotions of the MAGA people who are devoted to him.
Last Friday, Donald Trump sent out the following email to his MAGA people about his rally the next day in Atlanta. Its language and meaning should frighten any person who cares about the present and future of American democracy and the well-being of the country and its people.
24 HOURS UNTIL WE UNLEASH HELL
At this time tomorrow, Crooked Kamala’s worst nightmares come true.
When I take the rally stage in DEEP BLUE Atlanta to a packed house with THOUSANDS of MAGA Patriots, she won’t be able to hide from the truth any longer:
We’re making a BIG play for every city left behind by her DANGEROUSLY LIBERAL AGENDA!
STAND WITH TRUMP
The silent majority is BACK, and with it comes the END of the tyrannical Biden-Harris regime.
TODAY begins America’s liberation from the sick political class that hates our country.
So before I step on stage, I’m calling on ALL THE FORGOTTEN MEN AND WOMEN of this once great country to rise up and declare: I WILL ALWAYS STAND WITH TRUMP!
STAND WITH TRUMP
Tomorrow I step on stage and deliver Open Border Czar Kamala Harris the WORST defeat of her failed political career.
But right now all I can think about is Friend!
YOUR SUPPORT is the ONLY reason I’m still standing, and your support will be the reason we peacefully TAKE BACK THE WHITE HOUSE TOGETHER!
Please, join with me today.
With you by my side, WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
The elite agenda-setting American news media, again, has not extensively covered this most recent example of Donald Trump’s rapidly escalating threats and incitements to political violence and mayhem.
On Monday, Donald Trump, the supposedly reformed and peaceful leader who only wants “unity” sent out another email to his MAGA people—this time celebrating his slogan-threat-command to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM DONALD TRUMP
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
CLAIM TRUMP FIGHT SHIRT
This is the shirt you’ve all been waiting for. Seriously. All the others are just knockoffs.
I’m releasing a very SPECIAL and very LIMITED run of these while supplies last.
So if you want to get your hands on this ONE-OF-A-KIND shirt, order now and my team will ship these to your home ASAP
CLAIM TRUMP FIGHT SHIRT
Together, we will peacefully take back the White House and Make America Great Again!
Donald Trump’s new “Fight! Fight! Fight!” t-shirt features the now iconic image of him, fist raised in the air in defiance, following the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania. The t-shirt is black. The image of Trump and the American flag is white. In total, the t-shirt is evocative of the fascist MAGA “no quarter shall be given” flag or a version of the skull worn by the comic book vigilante anti-hero now turned villain the Punisher.
Tuesday morning, Kamala Harris announced that she chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice-presidential pick in the 2024 election. Trump responded with more violent and apocalyptic language, sending out a fundraising email stating that Walz would “unleash hell on Earth.”
Later in the day, Trump would continue with his threatening and menacing emails about Harris (and now Walz), telling his MAGA followers that she will “destroy this country” and “is coming for you next”:
KAMALA HARRIS IS COMING FOR YOU NEXT!
Now that Kamala Harris has chosen Tim Walz to be her VP, this ticket is DANGEROUSLY LIBERAL for America.
First, she DECIMATED San Francisco as the ORIGINAL MARXIST PROSECUTOR.
Then, she LAID WASTE to California as the single most DANGEROUSLY LIBERAL Senator.
And as we speak, she’s preparing to finish the job and DESTROY THIS COUNTRY.
Crooked Kamala thinks she’s got us on the ropes, but the MAGA revolution is only just getting started.
In total, Trump’s fundraising emails and other communications, again, reflect how and his agents are master propagandists who have a deep understanding of the fears, anxieties and general emotions (which include hopes and dreams) of their MAGA people. Specifically, Trump and his propagandists are using stochastic terrorism and related techniques to emotionally train and condition the MAGA people and his other followers into committing acts of political violence and destruction in the name of “the movement”. This is the logical end goal of Trump’s repeated use of apocalyptic language such as “unleash hell.” That language also has multiple valences and meanings. Yes, Trump is commanding his followers to commit such actions against their shared “enemies.” But he is also telling his followers the lie that Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the Democrats and “the Left” are going to unleash hell against them. By that logic, Donald Trump is their only protector and savior—which is why he must be made into a dictator to “save” them from the evil forces that are going to hurt them, their families, and (sacred) communities. In keeping with how radicalization into political extremism usually takes place, the resulting violence against the “enemy” is understood to be defensive and a last option—and therefore legitimate and perhaps even honorable and just—in what is an existential struggle for survival.
Donald Trump’s MAGA people and other cultists are listening to his commands very closely. An apparent Trump follower was recently arrested in Virginia for making repeated threats to kill Kamala Harris and other leading Democrats. Political scientists and other experts in national security and law enforcement have compiled data that shows that there are many thousands of Trump-MAGA followers and other right-wing extremists and malign actors who are willing to commit acts of political violence to remove the Democrats from power and to put Trump and his MAGAfied Republicans in control of the country. These people will be the foot soldiers for a Trump dictatorship and permanent state of emergency that will include massive political violence and “revolution” against “the Left” and the other “enemies” of “MAGA” as outlined by Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere.
At last Saturday's rally in Atlanta, Donald Trump made his threats of political violence and destruction against Vice President Harris and the country’s democracy and civil society even more starkly clear. “She was the worst border czar, she was the worst czar in history….Kamala’s radical ideas belong in a San Francisco commune filled with far left freaks, but they do not belong in the White House. They do not belong in the United States of America. This November, Georgia is going to tell Kamala that we will not let her turn America into a communist country.”
What will happen to these “far left freaks”? Will they be deported, put in the Trump regime’s planned concentration camps or will something even worse happen to them? The lack of an answer and specifics by Trump and his propagandists is a signal of the danger.
Trump, echoing his vice-presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who spoke at the same event, went even further in his incendiary threats, basically accusing Harris of being responsible for any crimes—especially murder—committed by an “illegal immigrant” from Latin or South America in this country. Here are Trump’s actual words about the tragic murder of Laken Riley, which took place in Athens, Georgia in February: “Kamala is responsible for the death as though she was standing there watching it herself.”
Donald Trump and his propagandists and other agents are engaging in a highly coordinated messaging campaign to depict Vice President Kamala Harris, like the other leaders of the Democratic Party (and its voters and supporters), as a monster. And what does one usually do with monsters and other horrors? You slay them.
In America, both historically and in the present, such imagery and threats—especially against Black and brown people—all too often are not metaphorical, they are literal.
