Many people abstain from voting in mid-term elections.
They see them as irrelevant.
Well, if you, or someone you know, is considering staying away from the polls until 2020, you might be interested in knowing that Monday, in a private meeting with Christian ministers, Donald Trump warned of “violence” if Republicans do not maintain their hold on Congress.
That’s right–violence.
At a state dinner for evangelical ministers, Trump urged attendees to use their authority to make sure “all of your people vote.”
Trump reportedly warned:
“You’re one election away from losing everything you’ve got.”
He added if Democrats win back Congress:
“They will end everything immediately. They will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently. And violently. There’s violence. When you look at antifa, and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people.”
In true Trump fashion, there is no indication who “they” are.
When pressed about if Trump was referring to congressional Democrats, a White House spokesperson did not initially respond.
Trump’s rhetoric is similar to a National Rifle Association’s (NRA) video advertisement from June calling on its members to “save America” through engaging in violence against liberals.
In the ad, spokesperson Dana Loesch says:
“They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse ‘the resistance.’
“All to make them march. Make them protest. Make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.
“And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.
“I’m the National Rifle Association of America. And I’m freedom’s safest place.”
One critic published his interpretation in The Washington Post as “a whisper shy of a call for full civil war.”
This doesn’t sound like liberals are the violent ones.
After all, liberals and progressives marched against neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Va. last August where white supremacists attacked black residents, protesting local ministers, and anti-fascist protesters.
Don’t forget, Trump repeatedly condemned “both sides” for the violence.
Many groups “Antifa”–anti-fascist–demonstrators protest against are admitted fascists.
“Antifa” has become a favorite Republican red herring to project white supremacist extremists’ activities on counterprotesters.
Following the Charlottesville incident that resulted in the death of civil rights worker Heather Heyer, Rev. Seth Wispelwaya, a local minister from Charlottesville, told Slate:
“Antifa saved my life twice on Saturday.”
Anyone engaging in violence is wrong. Period. It doesn’t matter if that violence comes from the right or the left.
But we must not twist facts to suit our own political biases.
Have people on the so-called “left” engaged in violence?
Yes.
And they should be and have been condemned.
But facts are facts.
It is not liberals and progressives calling for violence against fellow Americans.
Those would be anarchists.
Trump is obviously very concerned about the mid-term election–so concerned he is ginning up aggression among his base, trying to put it on high alert so it can claim “self-defense” against those scary Democrats embracing diversity, democracy, adherence to the rule of law, integration, equality, and objectivity.
Image credit: Crooks and Liars
