Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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As we enter 2024, a simple question confronts the nation: When will Republican voters reject the culture of political violence that has become a dominant feature of their party?
Just under three years ago, armed insurrectionists broke through police barricades, smashed windows and invaded the U.S. Capitol. The ensuing chaos led to gunshots being fired inside the building as the mob, hunting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and chanting about killing Vice President Mike Pence, tried to breach secure areas protecting lawmakers.
Weeks before the event, President Donald Trump summoned his followers to the capital promising a “wild” time. He then poured gasoline on the fire of the insurrectionists’ anger at a rally the morning of the attack. As the day proceeded, Trump did nothing to calm the situation or stop the violence. Instead, he aimed the wrath of the mob at his own vice president and Congress.
It was the realization of his vision for a violent America in which laws and rights are irrelevant in the face of an army of weak-minded thugs who neither understand what makes America great, nor care about anything but tearing down the nation.
While the soldiers of law and order eventually won the battle for the Capitol, the war for America’s soul has continued. Just a few months after the Jan. 6 attack, a young man at a conservative political rally in Idaho declared that he was ready to use his guns to kill Democrats. The MAGA crowd erupted in cheers.
In 2022, 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, husband of Nancy Pelosi, had his skull bashed in by a conservative conspiracy theorist wielding a hammer. Rather than condemning the vicious politically motivated home invasion, Republicans at every level of the GOP establishment, from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins to Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president, treated the attack as a joke for their amusement.
Since then, violent rhetoric has only increased.
After the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, a man who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection attacked the FBI field office in Cincinnati.
Earlier this year, following Trump’s indictment on four felony counts related to the insurrection, the judge overseeing the case received threatening voicemails describing her, a Black woman, as a “stupid slave (n-word).” It went on to proclaim that “if Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.”
Days later, at a Trump campaign rally in Iowa, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., declared that “only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C.”
Similar threats were posted online following Trump’s indictment by a grand jury in Georgia, with some of the posts even including photos of the grand jury members — everyday Americans fulfilling their civic duty now placed at risk because of mob tactics.
And this week, following a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that bars Trump from that state’s ballot for his role in the 2021 insurrection, justices of the court were inundated with threats of violence and death.
Social media posts include statements such as:
“This ends when we kill these (expletive)” and “Kill judges. Behead judges. Roundhouse kick a judge into the concrete, slam dunk a judge’s baby into the trashcan.”
These are not isolated incidents. Violence is not a fringe part of the MAGA movement. Trump and his supporters within the GOP are not innocent bystanders, they are the cause and the instigators.
Since Trump took office in 2017, threats against federal judges and prosecutors have spiked 400%, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, yet the GOP has done little to condemn the threats. Their silence speaks volumes.
By not denouncing these threats, Trump and the GOP effectively encourage these shocking acts of menacing intimidation.
They want the threats to continue. Contemplate that. They are feeding a climate of political violence.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Rudy Giuliani and Trump turned the mob against two faithful Georgia election workers who have been forced into hiding as a result of threats. They recently won a massive damages award after Giuliani admitted under oath that he lied about them. Meanwhile, during the Trump impeachment proceedings, Republican members of the House and Senate admitted openly that they would have voted to impeach and convict Trump, but they feared for their families’ safety. They feared MAGA extremists. Mob rule is not the American way.
In several instances, MAGAs even committed acts of murder. An investigation by Reuters identified at least 39 people who have lost their lives to political violence since the Jan. 6 insurrection. Twenty-four of those died in mass killings that threaten anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, no matter what their political beliefs or ideology.
But still, the GOP is silent.
With every day, the mountain of evidence grows that the GOP now endorses the use of violence as a tool of political action. At some point, good-hearted, freedom-loving Americans who ally themselves with the GOP are complicit in the violence threatening our communities.
Leaders on both sides of the political aisle need to speak out against the violence, but so too do everyday Americans who believe in democracy and the peaceful transfer of power.
Trump is a mob boss, nothing more, nothing less. The Republican Party is the organizational front for his violent syndicate. Failing to rebuke them is an endorsement of political violence and a threat to our communities.
For all truly patriotic Republicans, the time has long past arrived to rise up and cast out the violent thugs in their midst. Anything less constitutes a betrayal of America. The responsibility for this rests with the rank-and-file Republicans because their cowardly leaders have bent their knees to the extremists in their midst. So it’s time, everyday Republicans, to be brave enough to cry out “enough” and demand reasonable leaders take over the party.
