So this happened in the heartland last night:
Donald Trump has praised Greg Gianforte, the Congress member from Montana, for violently attacking a Guardian reporter, saying that someone who performs a body slam is “my guy”.
Trump described in glowing terms the physical assault that occurred on 24 May 2017 when Ben Jacobs, the Guardian’s political correspondent, asked Gianforte a question about healthcare policy in the course of a special congressional election in Montana. The US president incited cheers and chants from a crowd of about 8,000 supporters on Thursday night when he said: “Greg is smart. And by the way, never wrestle him. You understand. Never.”
Trump’s comments mark the first time the president has openly and directly praised a violent act against a journalist on American soil. It comes as the White House is under intense domestic and international pressure over Trump’s refusal to condemn Saudi Arabia despite growing evidence that its leader, the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the decapitation and dismemberment of the journalist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi.
Let’s be clear about all those *fellow Americans* that compose the rank and file of the GOP:
“We endorsed Greg very early. But I heard that he body-slammed a reporter. This was the day of the election or just before, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is terrible! He’s going to lose the election.’”
Trump continued: “And then I said, ‘Wait a minute, I know Montana pretty well, I think it might help him.’ And it did.”
The line prompted another massive cheer from the Montana crowd. (emphasis added)
Oh the wit and joviality of your GOP voting friend, family member, neighbor.
There is a historical parallel, of course, and we need to attend closely to it:
When Hitler’s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 – about a year and a half before seizing dictatorial power – many American press outlets judged that he would either be outplayed by more traditional politicians or that he would have to become more moderate. Sure, he had a following, but his followers were “impressionable voters” duped by “radical doctrines and quack remedies,” claimed The Washington Post. Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the “sober” politicians would “submerge” this movement, according to The New York Times and Christian Science Monitor. A “keen sense of dramatic instinct” was not enough. When it came to time to govern, his lack of “gravity” and “profundity of thought” would be exposed.
Sound familiar? The ‘mainstream’ press not taking the fascist autocrat and his violent supporters seriously? His followers were ‘duped’, not avid disciples of the dogma of hate? Why would authoritative publications downplay the seriousness of what was obvious right in front of them? Hmm…
Journalists were aware that they could only criticize the German regime so much and maintain their access. When a CBS broadcaster’s son was beaten up by brownshirts for not saluting the Führer, he didn’t report it. When the Chicago Daily News’ Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was becoming “an insane asylum” in 1933, the Germans pressured the State Department to rein in American reporters. Allen Dulles, who eventually became director of the CIA, told Mowrer he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” Mowrer’s publisher then transferred him out of Germany in fear of his life. (emphasis added)
If anyone here thinks the safety of anyone who opposes the regime is assured, they are making a disastrous mistake.