The trickle-down kookery of the Trump era.
The trickle-down kookery of the Trump era
S peaking to a cheering throng in Arizona on Saturday, former U.S. president Donald J. Trump said: “Whatever happened to cows? Remember they were going to get rid of all the cows? They stopped that. People didn’t like that. Remember? You know why they were going to get rid of all the cows?”
The audience waits with bated breath.
“People will be next.”
It all makes sense.
Fox News regular and American Greatness crackpot Julie Kelly took to social media Tuesday to claim that D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, who was assaulted during the Capitol riot, is a “crisis actor,” i.e. a professional performer hired to stage a fake emergency.
Elsewhere in the world of American Greatness, one of Kelly’s colleagues, Adam Mill, suggested Monday that the kidnapping plot directed at Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer was an FBI scheme to influence the election, while another, Debra Heine, painted an episode in which a guy in a hardware store yelled at Tucker Carlson as — and this is presented in all seriousness — a CIA operation.
Remember they were going to get rid of all the cows?
Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon shaman” facing charges for his role in the Capitol riot, is reportedly negotiating a plea bargain after jail psychologists diagnosed him with a whole salad of mental illnesses.
Former general Mike Flynn was presented with a semiautomatic rifle painted in a camouflage pattern at an event at the Church of Glad Tidings in Yuba, Calif. Flynn was able to accept the rifle only because the felony charges to which he pleaded guilty were erased by a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. Holding the rifle and beaming, Flynn fantasized out loud: “Maybe I’ll find somebody in Washington, D.C. . . .” The congregation cheered. Earlier in the summer, Flynn attended a QAnon convention in Dallas, where he was asked if the coup in Myanmar was something that could happen in the United States. “It should happen here,” Flynn answered.
You know why they were going to get rid of all the cows?
“This ni**** voted for Joe Biden!” Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn told the panel a rioter had screamed at him, prompting a crowd to turn on him and scream, “Boo! Fu**ing ni****!”
On Monday, Donald Trump endorsed incumbent Ken Paxton in the Texas attorney general’s race. Paxton’s lawyers recently won a change of venue for his upcoming trial on felony securities-fraud charges.
Whatever happened to cows?
Former vice president Mike Pence said in a recent speech: “I will always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years.” And the whole attempted coup d’état thing? “I will not allow Democrats or their allies in the media to use one tragic day to discredit the aspirations of millions of Americans,” he said, conceding that he and the former president may not “see eye-to-eye.”
Well, there’s that. But whatever happened to the cows, Mr. Vice President? Can you answer that? No? I didn’t think so.
Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal quotes one of the Capitol rioters: “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”
Forbes estimates that Sean Hannity is among the 100 highest-paid celebrities in the world. He invests in commercial real estate with HUD-backed mortgages when not denouncing “overpaid” media elites from his private jet. He says the January 6 riot was possibly the work of “groups like antifa, other radical groups, I don’t know the names of all of them . . . there to cause trouble.”
Remember they were going to get rid of all the cows?
“I was among the vastly outnumbered group of law-enforcement officers protecting the Capitol and the people inside it,” says Officer Michael Fanone, covert thespian by the reckoning of the best minds on Fox News. “I was grabbed, beaten, tased — all while being called a traitor to my country. I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm as I heard chants of, ‘Kill him with his own gun!’ I can still hear those words in my head today.”
People will be next.