The Party Of Donald Trump Is A Party Of Thugs

Let’s just say it: the MAGA/QAnon personality cult Party of Donald Trump is a party of thugs.

They are threatening and intimidating poll workers, school boards, and public health officials – literally anyone who does not share their quasi-religious political cult beliefs – with violence and death threats.

They are using threats, intimidation and violence to replace poll workers and school board members with like-minded cult members, in order to take control of these institutions.

This is creeping fascism: “With displaying authoritarian contempt for the rule of law and democratic norms, spreading conspiratorial lies, and inciting violence, Trump and his enablers are responsible for an unprecedented attack on American democracy.”

Vice News reports, Death Threats Are Creating a Mass Exodus of Election Officials:

“Hey, Rick,” the voicemail said. “Two hundred and thirty four years ago, the founding caucasian fathers of America gave us the Second Amendment. Time’s running out, Richard. We’re coming after you and every motherfucker that stole this election with our Second Amendment, subpoenas be damned, you’re going to be served lead, you fucking enemy enemy communist cocksucker. You will be served lead.”

This was just one of the nearly 150 voicemails that were left for Richard Barron, elections director of Georgia’s Fulton County, an area that includes Atlanta, during the week from Christmas to New Year’s Day 2021.

On December 5, former President Donald Trump singled Barron out at a rally in Valdosta, Georgia. He showed a video of Barron to the hundreds of attendees, and voiced conspiracies about voter fraud in Georgia. “So, if you just take the crime of what those Democratic workers were doing,” said Trump, “that’s ten times more than I need to win the state.” When Barron appears on the screen, the audience begins to boo.

That’s when the voicemails started coming. Many of them were graphic and specifically called for his death. “Hey, Rick,” another said. “Watching this video of you on YouTube. I can’t believe you can’t count votes in Fulton County. It’s absolutely incredible. How deceivious? How deceitful you are? You need to get your act together or people like me really may go after people like you.”

And again: “If you have a hand in this, you deserve to go to prison, you actually deserve to hang by your goddamn skinny-ass soyboy neck.”

Barron had been working in elections around the country for more than 20 years, but he’d never seen anything like this before. It wasn’t just Barron—his entire election staff became a target. “We started receiving lots of disturbing phone calls,” Barron told VICE News. “My staff is almost exclusively African American, and they started receiving calls laced with racial slurs.”

Physical threats began as well. “We also began to see people just across the street from the warehouse where we are now,” Barron added. “They started to do surveillance on my staff, taking pictures of all of the individuals that would come in and go in and out of the warehouse, they would take pictures of their license plates.”

Months after the election, Barron continued to receive threats. His situation, unfortunately, is not unique.

VICE News spoke with over a dozen election officials who had experienced death threats and felt endangered during the 2020 election period. Officials across the United States experienced physical stalking, explicitly violent phone calls, racial slurs, home surveillance, bomb scares, and threats of mass shootings. For some officials in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the threats have continued for nearly a year. And now, many of these officials want to quit.

The stories of these officials represent a small proportion of the number of threats made in this election cycle, though the total number is unknown because many of the threats went unrecorded and unanswered by law enforcement, Reuters reported. However, in a survey published in June by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, one-third of election workers report feeling unsafe.

In election hotspots like Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, many of these threats came directly after Trump mentioned election workers (like Barron) at events and in tweets.

In Pennsylvania, City Commissioner Al Schmidt was forced to leave his home and lived under 24-hour police protection after a slew of threats targeted his children by name and included photos of his home.

Like Barron, Schmidt had also been called out by President Trump in a tweet that accused Schmidt, a Republican, as being a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only.” At that point, votes in Philadelphia were still being counted. Trump also stated that Schmidt “refused to look at corruption & dishonesty.”

“Not long after the former president tweeted at me, I received the first specific threat to my phone, to my personal number on my phone,” Schmidt told VICE News. The details included in the voicemail were terrifying: “You lied, you’re a traitor. Perhaps cuts and bullets will soon arrive.” The voicemail named members of his family, gave his address, called him a “RINO,” and said he stole the election.

Schmidt’s wife also started receiving threats in her work email, some describing physical harm to their two young kids and including a photo of their home.

“The first email that my wife received with the subject line, ‘Albert RINO Schmidt, committed treason,’ Schmidt said. It continued: “‘Your husband should tell the truth, or your three kids … will be fatally shot.” The email went on to mention their children’s ages and their address, and said that the cops couldn’t help them. The email was also signed “Q,” in likely reference to QAnon. Then, the email included a link to a picture of their home.

The Schmidt family had 24-hour-a day police protection and were forced to leave their home for several weeks. Months after returning home, the impact of the threats still lingers.

“It certainly changed the way I look at this job,” said Schmidt. “I won’t be running for reelection again a couple of years from now. I had made that decision before any of this. But having gone through it, I think it’s confirmed that it’s the right decision.”

Outside of Atlanta and Philadelphia, officials were also receiving threats. An administrator in Scott County, Iowa, received a phone call where the speaker threatened to burn down the elections building. In Paulding County, Georgia, the director of elections received an email that said, “We’ll make the Boston bombings look like child’s play at the poll sites in this county …. Detonations will occur at every polling site set up in this county. No one at these places will be spared.”

And it’s not just physical intimidation. Election workers across the country are facing a new kind of threat: state laws that criminalize election officials if they make a mistake on the job.

In Iowa, Senate File 413, passed in February, limits the autonomy of election officials to run elections in their counties. It also adds new felony punishments for infringement of the new law and imposes a fine of up to $10,000 for “technical infractions.”

Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Alabama have followed Iowa’s lead and also passed laws that impose harsh penalties on election workers. In Florida, an election worker can be fined up to $25,000 for failing to monitor a drop box. Republican state legislatures have introduced a similar bill in Michigan, and other states are expected to do the same.

Laws like Iowa’s can have a chilling effect on election officials. Roxanna Moritz, who has worked as an elections auditor in Scott County, Iowa for 14 years, said the passage of this law pushed her into early retirement.

“When I heard about Senate File 413, it was the determining factor that I was going to retire from my position or resign from my position,” said Moritz.

“I’m capable of taking quite a bit. But 2020 was a little too much for me and my office,” she added. “And the criminalization of what might be a mistake just really cemented it for me.”

Aside from the loss of institutional knowledge, election officials are concerned about who takes their jobs once they leave. A third of Pennsylvania’s county elections have left in the last year and a half, the AP reported. In Wisconsin, more than two-dozen clerks have retired since the presidential election and more retirements are expected at the end of this year.

“I think we’re at a dangerous spot, not only because so many election administrators will likely be leaving after this last presidential election, but who could potentially be filling their places? said Schmidt. “You can probably name them, the half a dozen or dozen or two dozen people across the country who, if they hadn’t done their jobs, this whole thing of ours, this whole system of government, could have fallen apart.”

In September, the National School Boards Association asked the federal government for protection from MAGA/QAnon cult members. School board group asks US for help policing threats:

A group representing school board members around the country asked President Joe Biden on Thursday for federal assistance to investigate and stop threats made over policies including mask mandates, likening the vitriol to a form of domestic terrorism.

NSBA Letter to President Biden (excerpt):

America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat. The National School Boards Association (NSBA) respectfully asks for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation. Local school board members want to hear from their communities on important issues and that must be at the forefront of good school board governance and promotion of free speech. However, there also must be safeguards in place to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders as they do their jobs.

NSBA believes immediate assistance is required to protect our students, school board members, and educators who are susceptible to acts of violence affecting interstate commerce because of threats to their districts, families, and personal safety. As our school boards continue coronavirus recovery operations within their respective districts, they are also persevering against other challenges that could impede this progress in a number of communities. Coupled with attacks against school board members and educators for approving policies for masks to protect the health and safety of students and school employees, many public school officials are also facing physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula. This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class.

The request by the National School Boards Association demonstrates the level of unruliness that has engulfed local education meetings across the country during the pandemic, with board members regularly confronted and threatened by angry protesters.

School board members are largely unpaid volunteers, parents and former educators who step forward to shape school policy, choose a superintendent and review the budget, but they have been frightened at how their jobs have suddenly become a culture war battleground. The climate has led a growing number to resign or decide against seeking reelection.

“Whatever you feel about masks, it should not reach this level of rhetoric,” NSBA Interim Executive Director Chip Slaven told The Associated Press by phone.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said responsibility for protecting school boards falls largely to local law enforcement but “we’re continuing to explore if more can be done from across the administration.”

“Obviously these threats to school board members is horrible. They’re doing their jobs,” she said during a press briefing.

The association asked for the federal government to get involved to investigate cases where threats or violence could be handled as violations of federal laws protecting civil rights. It also asked for the Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security and Secret Service to help monitor threat levels and assess risks to students, educators, board members and school buildings.

“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the association wrote.

The letter documents more than 20 instances of threats, harassment, disruption, and acts of intimidation in California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and other states. It cites the September arrest of an Illinois man for aggravated battery and disorderly conduct for allegedly striking a school official at a meeting. In Michigan, a meeting was disrupted when a man performed a Nazi salute to protest masking.

“We are coming after you,” a letter mailed to an Ohio school board member said, according to the group. “You are forcing them to wear mask—for no reason in this world other than control. And for that you will pay dearly.”

It called the member “a filthy traitor.”

Last week, a crowd of up to 200 protesters who banged on doors and shouted at police shut down a school board meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where members planned to consider a temporary COVID-19 mask mandate.

At a U.S. Senate committee hearing on Thursday, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona decried the hostility against school board members and praised their “unwavering support” to reopen schools safely. He said the lack of civility in some meetings is disappointing and, in some places, it has been “very dangerous.”

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post writes, The party of thugs:

In 2020, Joe Biden repeatedly insisted that once Donald Trump departed office the Republican Party would become more reasonable. Instead, it has become even more of a party of thugs, where basic norms of polite behavior are held in contempt.

Biden can see it for himself as he drives down the road, as The Post reports:

The ubiquity of Trump signs, especially in rural stretches of the country, has long been striking, and possibly unprecedented for a losing candidate — especially nearly a year after the election. But now, in towns like Boise — in states both red and blue, and almost all across the country — anti-Biden signs are cropping up as well, frequently with angry and profane insults.

Some of the signs are scrawled by hand. Others are bought on Amazon. Still others are professionally procured. The crude signs are held by people lined up along Biden’s motorcade routes and clustered near his events. Protesters shout obscenities from outside his appearances.

Then there are the chants. In early October, a “F— Joe Biden!” cry broke out among the crowd at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway. Kelli Stavast, an NBC Sports reporter, was interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown live on air at the time, and she quipped, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon!’ ”

Conservatives have now turned “Let’s go Brandon” into a meme, something they can repeat with a giggle in contexts where swearing is still considered inappropriate (one congressman even ended a speech on the floor of the House with it). It’s sort of like when a newspaper writes “f—” — the meaning has been communicated, but the paper can say it didn’t actually swear.

Anyone active on social media has noticed a recent acceleration of anger directed at Biden himself, which is striking because it has taken some time to develop.

Recall that Biden became the choice of Democratic primary voters in 2020 precisely because they believed he would be the least offensive candidate to independent and even a few Republican voters.

So ask yourself this: If Republicans across the country are reacting to the simple fact of having a president from the other party by scrawling their simian grunts of rage on cardboard and placing them in their front yards, can you imagine what they’d be doing if the president was Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris?

Biden hasn’t been easy to hate. So much of the right’s anger comes from conservatives’ belief that they are being displaced, that society’s proper hierarchies are being undermined, but Biden himself can’t be a symbol of that displacement. He’s friendly, old Uncle Joe. He isn’t up with the latest lingo on race and gender, and like 44 of his 45 predecessors, he’s a White man.

Which is why the conservative propaganda apparatus has struggled to define their attacks on Biden; the best they can come up with is that he’s incapacitated and senile, leaving other sinister forces to pull the strings. [The Blog’s Troll Boy recently posted this Trumpian propaganda slur in a comment.]

So while people may be painting signs and leading chants of “F— Joe Biden” (or “Let’s go Brandon”), Biden himself is almost incidental. This is a means for conservatives to communicate with one another, and what’s being communicated more than anything else is “I take pleasure in flouting norms of polite behavior.”

Adam Serwer explained this in 2018, The Cruelty Is the Point:

Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.

This is now considered by many to be the way you establish your conservative bona fides. Your commitment to low taxes or light regulations is not nearly enough; you have to show that you’re willing to be rude and crude. Can you give offense, can you make people cringe, can you do your part to make our politics as mean and unpleasant as possible? That’s what will get you attention and praise. As one Republican official texted to CNN’s Jake Tapper, “being a horrible person is now actually a job requirement in this party.” [Troll Boy has got this act down cold.]

The problem isn’t just that a few individual thugs have been so enthusiastically making their nastiness known. It’s that their thuggishness becomes part of a feedback loop running back and forth between the mass and the elite.

Republican members of Congress monitor conservative media to see what their constituents are seeing and saying, then they echo it back to them. That in turn validates thuggishness as an approach to politics, encouraging the rank and file to go even further.

And in many cases, those conservative elites actively work to create and encourage thuggery. They create a phony “issue” such as critical race theory, work to get people as enraged as possible, then when that rage erupts in threats and intimidation of school personnel and board members, they defend it and celebrate its potential to yield them political benefits.

This isn’t new; the election of a Black man in 2008 made Republicans vibrate with fury for eight years. The difference today is that after four years of Trump, almost no one in the GOP acts as though there’s value in conducting political debates like adults.

That was, after all, the heart of Trump’s appeal: He told Republicans that being polite was for suckers and losers, liberating them to let their worst selves come out loud and proud. Every bigot, bully, sexual harasser and lunkheaded goon seemed to gravitate to his cause, recognizing a kindred spirit.

And while there are still polite and courtly Republican officeholders out there, everyone knows where the party’s heart is today. If you want to express your kinship with Republican voters, you insult the weak, you defend the indefensible, you celebrate violence, you give offense for its own sake.

That these impulses are still so powerful even with the relatively inoffensive Biden leading the country and Trump on the sidelines should make us frightened for what is to come. What if, for instance, Biden decides not to run for a second term (he’ll turn 82 not long after the 2024 election), the Democrats nominate Harris or someone else who isn’t a White man, and Trump runs and loses to them?

The degree of rage that outcome would produce on the right is almost unimaginable. And vulgar signs in people’s front yards will be just the beginning.