Until now, Donald Trump has usually maintained just enough ambiguity in his celebrations of violence as a political instrument to claim that he has never endorsed physical attacks on his opponents. That cunning has largely been dispensed with as the former president embraces the martyrology surrounding the January 6 rioters. Trump’s rally over the weekend in Waco, Texas, showed that the former president has made that violent expression of support for his political fortunes into part of his mythos. And in the process, Trump has abandoned the plausible deniability that once served him so well.
In what has to come close to the patriotic equivalent of blasphemy, Trump mocked solemn displays of allegiance to the United States from the stage of his event at Waco’s airport grounds, placing his right hand over his heart amid a multi-media celebration of the January 6 rioters. Over the loudspeakers blared the bizarre single “Justice for All,” a version of the “Star Spangled Banner” sung by incarcerated individuals convicted as a result of their participation in that day’s lawlessness. Behind him, Trump’s campaign team played footage of demonstrators approaching the Capitol Building as it was engulfed by a mob. The message couldn’t have been clearer.
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