Stunning. Unacceptable. Wrong.
MAGA’s Immoral Attack on All of Us
Note, I’m writing from Red, rural Minnesota as the state assesses this assault on its values. Minnesotans pride themselves on championing peaceful, informed, debate.
The initial response from Right, Left and Middle was predictable.
“Awful. So sad. We can’t let this happen in America. How can we help?” Surprisingly Vice President J.D. Vance reached out directly to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, though the two had shown a profound dislike for each other after a bruising campaign. Briefly, it felt both sincere and normal.
Turns out these were empty words…
…lasting less than 24 hours after Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s Speaker of the House emeritus, and her husband Mark were murdered by Vance Luther Boelter. It seems the MAGA Archangels of Misinformation see an opening to exploit Minnesota’s shock and grief.
They’ve launched their own assassination attempt. In the cross hairs: Governor Tim Walz. His sin, apparently, is he’s governor of a socialist-leaning state who had the audacity to seek the Vice Presidency.
Note as you read the following, I will not platform these wing nuts by showing screen grabs of their ravings.
White Christian Nationalist Charlie Kirk blamed Walz’s plans to speak at a No Kings event for radicalizing assassin Vance Luther Boelter.
Elon Musk lobbed a similar baseless firebomb charging “the far left” is more prone to political violence than the far right. Apparently Musk feels a need to filter Boelter’s right wing awfulness through some sort of new math.
Male Supremacist Mike Cernovich conjured up a story with real potential to feed endless QAnon-style conspiracies. He alleged Walz recruited Boelter to kill Speaker Hortman. The reason? In last week’s budget compromise, Hortman sorrowfully voted with Republicans to remove undocumented immigrants from a healthcare program favored by “sanctuary state” Walz.
Finally, MAGA Performer Benny Johnson noted, incorrectly, the killer is a “left-wing Tim Walz appointee.”
There’s ZERO evidence to support any of this sewage. Specifically referencing Johnson’s swill, The Minnesota Star Tribune reports Boelter was appointed to a state workforce commission by former Republican Governor Mark Dayton. Boelter’s friends say he was a strong Trump supporter. Walz’s office pointed out that the governor, who did renew Boelter’s appointment as an SOP, doesn’t know him.
The Poison Starts At The Top
Seems the buzzards of MAGA misinformation see an opportunity and are taking their cues from the top.
“I think he’s a terrible governor,” President Trump told ABC News, “I think he’s grossly incompetent.”
It’s a disgusting response to a simple, normal question. Will you call Governor Walz? America’s presidents, no matter their party, are expected to make those phone calls, expected to offer support and condolences, expected to calm a grieving nation. That nation and those calls no longer exist. In no universe is this morally correct, responsible, and normal. But, we don’t live in normal anymore.
My guess is by the time you read this, the MAGA cruelty will have hit an 11. As many have said about their nastiness, “cruelty is the point.”
Dictator 101
Every bit as reflexive as the MAGA attacks on Walz, are the authoritarian actions setting the tone for Right on Left violence. Last week, we crossed an immensely significant marker on the Mad King’s march toward full dictatorship enabled with slavish support of a traitorous Republican congress and stunning ineptitude by clueless, negligent Democrats.
We know this moment has arrived, because after months of corrupt and illegal use of federal law enforcement, Trump and his stooges finally pulled two powerful levers. They fully unleashed federal secret police to snatch their unfortunate targets off the street. Then, without a request from California Governor Gavin Newsom, ordered the U.S. Army and the Marines to “liberate” Los Angeles. “Liberate” is code for suppressing a highly diverse, Blue city, blocking Americans from practicing their First Amendment right to assemble and protest.
Using the military to crush dissent is Dictator 101. Once the dictator – his name is Donald J. Trump – can gin up a sense that the streets are chaotic and threatening to everyday life, people concede their rights. It doesn’t feel as if we’re far away from the Mad King declaring a state of emergency, suspending elections, disbanding what’s left of congress and the courts, and handing full control to himself.
America’s Secret Police
Triggering the military crackdown in Los Angeles were the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE ). ICE is America’s secret police – think Gestapo, KGB, Stasi. They’re the point of the spear in the promised “largest mass deportation in history.”
For months, its “agents” have been seizing brown and black people outside of courtrooms, at high school graduations, from street vendors’ carts, labor pools, and in farm fields and factories. Lately, they’ve taken to using sealed search warrants alleging money laundering and drug trafficking in an attempt to legitimize their jack-booted thuggery. Since the warrants are sealed, we can’t determine ICE’s true motive. But increasingly we see masked, militarized police roll up and overwhelm people and places by force.
ICE’s victims, many trying to become legal citizens, are “disappeared.” They’re taken to secret prisons in and out of the U.S. They’re cut off from family, cut off from their attorneys, denied the rights specifically guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution. Legal challenges to end this practice, upheld by multiple federal courts and the Supreme Court, are ignored by the White House. And, Trump’s human drones are turning up the heat on anyone who dare question its actions.
Last Thursday, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla of California questioned ICE Princess (and noted dog killer) Kristi Noem’s invasion at a media briefing. Agents forced Padilla – a Senator duly elected by the people of California who also happens to be Hispanic – face down on the floor and restrained him with handcuffs. Senator Padilla was doing his job. He represents the people of Los Angeles who are facing a military occupation. Secret police attacked him because he dared speak up.
Also Thursday on Capitol Hill, Democratic governors Tim Walz (MN), J.B. Pritzker (IL), and Kathy Hochul (NY) were subjected to extreme verbal abuse by the GOP thugs on the House Oversight Committee. The crime allegedly committed by these three governors is opting to maintain the Constitutional rights of people in their states no matter their immigration status. The governors chose to speak out against Lord Trump. They were belittled, demeaned, and all but spat upon by the MAGA committee members. The tone and message of the Committee signals to the Luther Vance Boelter’s of the world that all systems are go for political violence. Not to mention, practitioners of Trump’s political violence are frequently pardoned.
To call these collective actions – openly encouraged by Donald J. Trump – anything other than a brazen, immoral, and illegal seizure of power is simply inaccurate and highly insulting to anyone with any understanding of how our republic is supposed to function.
Then came Friday night in Minnesota followed by the barrage of misinformation and the not-so-coded calls for political violence by the Right against the Left coming as thousands of Americans hit the streets for No Kings Day marches.
Know Your News Sources, Hold Them Accountable
Amidst this rapid fire chaos, as we labor to process the speed and intensity of the MAGA assault, it’s critically important for us all to choose sources of news and information that practice strong editing and fact checking before they publish or broadcast.
Those include The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Minnesota Post, The Minnesota Reformer, The St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), the Minneapolis network affiliated TV stations, though not the FOX affiliated station. On the national level it’s CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio (NPR), PBS, the broadcast networks sans FOX, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.
Avoid Influencers, Tik Tokkers, extremists on the Left and Right, FOX News, One American Network (OAN), Newsmax, NewsNation, MSNBC, and the legions of podcasters who will be spewing garbage to fire up political bases and undermine fact and truth.
When someone tells you “I heard” or “my own research” turned up MAGA talking points, question them HARD! What was their/your source? Do you know their/your source’s political alignment? Do you know you cannot trust FOX News?
Question Trump’s Fixer Cabinet
Also, we should truly question “facts” sourced to Kash Patel’s FBI, Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice, Kriti Noem’s Department of Homeland Security, Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense, and Steven Cheung’s White House Communications office. These cabinet level mis-informants, if they submit to King Trump’s demands for loyalty, will likely spin this attack.
Why?
Foundational to assassin Vance Luther Boelter’s writings and his hit list is one of four causes that intensely radicalize the MAGA Right: anti-abortion. (The other three - not in his manifesto - are erasing transgender persons, ending illegal immigration, and dismantling “woke” DEI). The Mad King routinely refers to those who question the MAGA view of these causes as “scum” and “animals.” This language, directly tied to the most powerful person in the world, also radicalizes and animates.
When the toxic combo of hot issues and unhinged Trump rhetoric finds unstable supporters, we get Vance Luther Boelter. We get a murdered Democratic legislator. So, I expect Mission One for Patel, Bondi, Noem, Hegseth and Cheung will be to wall off MAGA and the president from any responsibility for this crime.
If they follow their standard operating procedure, they’ll create a scenario shifting responsibility to Governor Walz, Antifa, communists, socialists, Democrats, “The Biden Crime Family,” Muslims, dark-skinned immigrants, “woke” universities, and DEI.
They’ll feed this slop to an eager and highly disciplined MAGA disinformation system trading largely on its collaboration with FOX News and the misinformation merchants mentioned elsewhere in this piece. They’ll endlessly blast these inaccurate talking points and shift responsibility away from Trump. Fact-based news sources who question them will be ridiculed as “fake news” and harassed by lawsuits and threats.
If you doubt this can happen, l refer you to MAGA’s incessant and still ongoing fantasy, believed by a majority of Trump supporters, that the 2020 election was “stolen,” and the January 6th coup attempt was an “act of love.” Put a Trump/MAGA lie on endless repeat and it somehow becomes truth to the brainwashed.
This is not a hopeful time…
Respectfully, especially to the thousands of you who committed to PEACEFUL protest on No Kings Day, it feels like we’re not going to find hope or peace anytime soon. I’ll point to Bloomberg analyst Ron Brownstein’s take as broadcast on CNN this past Saturday while the search for assassin Vance Luther Boelter was ongoing:
I think if you look at all of the events of today, like all of the events really of the last few years, it just tells you at what a historical precipice we are at as a country. I mean, we are looking at, I think, the greatest level of internal division we have faced since the Civil War.
The unifying theme, I think, of the Trump coalition and the coalition that is opposed to Trump is that they view a victory for the other side as an existential threat to America as they understand it. I mean, I was out today at one of the. The rallies in Los Angeles. Elsewhere on the west side, there's another one in the Valley.
John, we're talking about millions, probably millions of people across the U.S. out protesting today, because almost universally, they view Trump as someone who is fundamentally undermining the character and rules of American democracy. And much of his coalition believes that he is standing between them and some kind of, you know, woke transformation of America into something they don't recognize.
I believe that most Americans do not want to live this way. I think they recognize the depth of their ideal, of the ideological disagreement that we are living through as a country. But they also understand that they find ways to get along with people they disagree with all the time in other aspects of their life. Their neighbors, co- workers, their family members. And I do think most Americans want to climb down from this battlement.
But today was just a reminder of how deep the divides are and how vividly and in some cases violently they are now being expressed.
Finally, take a closer look at Vance Luther Boelter
First, let’s look at who he is not:
He’s not Mexican. Not Venezuelan. Not Honduran. Not Panamanian. Not African. Not Muslim. Not Haitian. Not Somali. Not Puerto Rican. Not Dominican. Not a Chinese student. Not Canadian. Not a “woke” Ivy League professor. Not a “DEI hire.” Not a leftist. Not a communist. Not a person of color. Not a domestic worker in a hotel or resort. Not from a “shit hole” country. Not a “coastal elite.” Not a woman. Not transgender. Not a Biden-Harris-Walz-Obama voter. Not directly related to Joe Biden.
Now, let’s look at who he is and what we’ve learned about him through very strong reporting by credible, fact-checked news sources:
He’s White. He’s male. His surname has German origins. He’s clean cut. He’s anti-abortion. He’s anti-LGBTQ. He’s evangelical Christian. He claims to be an ordained minister. He wore a “Yellowstone” style cowboy hat. He pretended to be a police officer. He shot at police officers. He lives in a rural community in the American Midwest. He carried guns, including AK47’s. He murdered one prominent Democratic politician nearly killed a second.
And…he supports Donald Trump.