MAGA’s Most Powerful Weapons: Threats and Intimidation

 

"I am your warrior, I am your justice… For those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution."

Donald Trump in a 90-minute campaign speech on March 25th

As prosecutors, judges, grand and petite jurors as well as actual and potential witnesses in the various civil and criminal cases against Trump, have discovered and as we witnessed from Trump’s December 19, 2020, invitational tweet to his base to come to Washington, D.C. on January 6th (“It will be wild!”), an often standard reaction to Trump’s vituperative statements and calls for “justice,” is his MAGA followers’ frequent response of threats, intimidation and even violence… often believing that Trump has effectively asked them to do so. Since the 2020 election “stop the steal” campaign and beyond, this pattern is a standard and expected reaction to Trump’s angry cries against anyone who opposes him. States with “open carry” laws often find Trump followers parading with their assault weapons in and around state capitol buildings, and even near election polling stations.

This almost automatic connection between Trump’s negative pronouncements and intimidation and violence has led to requests from his criminal prosecutors and civil plaintiff’s attorneys for gag orders against Trump to protect the identities of many of those listed above and to stop his vituperative attacks against judges and prosecutors. Hiding behind the First Amendment and claiming as a candidate for the presidency, no judge can limit his speech, Trump seems unable to contain his highly focused wrath. Gag orders have and will be issued, but whether they can be meaningfully enforced remains to be seen. Purported billionaire Trump also seems to be financially immune to fines; his followers are content to fund his legal frolic as he requests.

Trump’s mantra that there are two systems of justice (allegedly to his detriment) is clearly correct, but not as he charges. He has been treated with kid gloves in his flaunting restrictions imposed on him in his criminal trials, words which would have resulted in an immediate revocation of bail or “own recognizance” release for virtually any other criminal defendant (read: sit in jail).

And then there are the new election rules. Red state legislators continue to compete to redistrict to eliminate or marginalize voters likely to lean Democratic. The Supreme Court itself seems to waffle back and forth on the legitimacy of such efforts; it’s clear that these legislators are well servicing Trump’s quest for autocracy under his leadership.

While most voters rejected election deniers in 2022, there was enough “success” in this grouping of deniers (see above statistic) to be troublesome. The toxic legacy of angry cries for retribution has also made life living hell for election workers, particularly individuals named by MAGA extremists fomenting dramatically false conspiracy theories… resulting in defamation actions. Yet with the vast majority of Republican voters believing that our elections are untrustworthy, as anti-democratic voting restrictions poured out of red states, and with very real threats applied to election officials in swing and red states, our future elections may be untrustworthy by reason of these voting restrictions and threats against election workers. The result: election workers are resigning in droves.

Writing for the October 12th Los Angeles Times, columnist Mark Barabak addresses this issue: “[L]iars like Kari Lake, who lost a bid for Arizona governor by parroting former President Trump’s falsehoods and now hopes to flimflam her way to a Senate seat , are only the most visible threat to our system of democracy.

“New research by a political reform group, Issue One, has given us something else to worry about: a troubling exodus of local election officials — those on the front lines fighting for truth, justice and the American way… In 11 Western states, including California, roughly 40% of the chief local elections officials are new to the job since 2020, the study found… In four states — Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah — the turnover exceeds 50%.

“Why does that matter?... ‘It takes a long time to learn how to do what we do,’ said Ryan Ronco, the elections chief in Placer County and head of the California Assn. of Clerks and Election Officials. Ronco has spent 30 years in the county clerk’s office; 10 of his 15 staffers are new… Running a safe and aboveboard election is not simply a matter of turning on the lights at polling places, or sliding a letter opener through an envelope when mail-in ballots arrive.

“It requires, among myriad responsibilities, learning how to operate specialized voting machines, combating cybersecurity threats and, increasingly, venturing out in public — to town hall meetings, election seminars and other venues — to explain how election operations work. ‘Ensuring elections are accessible, secure and accurate requires trained, dedicated, knowledgeable people,’ the Issue One report stated. ‘When local election officials leave these critical positions, the costs to institutional knowledge and running elections are real. Losing experienced people costs us in countless ways.’” Too many in the governmental election world have faced death threats, doxing and other forms of intimidation… just doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

Barabak continues: “If preserving and protecting the integrity of our election system doesn’t move you, then consider the departure of experienced election professionals from a coldly calculated dollars-and-cents perspective. There’s a price to pay for all that turnover, which requires training a new staffer each time a more experienced election worker departs.

“Earlier reports had warned of an exodus of election officials as the menace from election conspiracy-mongers grew. The latest study suggests it’s now happening — particularly in battleground states where election officials have been targeted by harassment and death threats... It’s not hard to imagine a downward spiral where less experienced workers goof up an election, causing further doubts about the results and leading to even more threats of violence, which causes yet another mass exit of election workers.”

We’ll get through all this, and if MAGA does not sweep the 2024 election and place Trump back into the presidency, I suspect that much of this will be corrected and hopefully fade away. If legislation and dedicated law enforcement can make these forms of intimidation dangerous and filled with criminal sanctions to perpetrators, these is hope. But if these perpetrators win enough in the next election, if Trump’s retribution pledge becomes our new reality, all bets are off.

I’m Peter Dekom, and still there are not enough voters who realize that the 2024 election is not a truly issue oriented vote, that this coming election is really about democracy vs autocracy, pure and simple.