The Villages Still Loves Trump
Plus, how the Oath Keeper Sedition Charges Demolish a Right-Wing Talking Point.
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WILLIAM W. STEINER writes about The Villages, the huge Florida retirement community that still can’t get enough of Trump.
As a physician, I have always been fascinated by the psychology of my patients. The interplay of physical and mental realms of health have such an enormous effect on a person’s well-being. Here in The Villages, I am struck by two psychological phenomena that stand out—one that manifests itself on an individual basis, the other within the community as a whole.
There are multiple examples of individuals who simply will not, or possibly cannot, accept the reality that Donald Trump lost the election. We all see and hear plenty of politicians and pundits who espouse that same fantasy, but in most cases they are doing so for selfish reasons; to pander to their base, to bring in more campaign contributions, to gain more TV viewers. These persons are presumably intelligent enough to understand the math, to review the court cases, to brush aside the meanderings of fools, and they should know the truth. It’s just that they are too cynical to care.
But here, within the confines of a quiet, retirement neighborhood, residents have nothing to gain by promoting the lie that Trump won. They truly believe it. And they are not afraid to show it, sometimes in angry and disturbingly uncivil ways.
The crisis of democracy is in the counting, not the casting, of votes. The Dispatch's David French joins Charlie Sykes on today's podcast.
TNB🔐: Tim Miller, Mona, Bill and Ben discuss the sedition indictment, Kyrsten Sinema’s filibuster stance, and what Biden can (or has to) do before the midterms.
AMANDA CARPENTER observes: Sedition Charges Demolish a Right-Wing Talking Point
While some members of the Oath Keepers were among the 700-plus individuals previously charged with crimes connected to Jan. 6th, the new indictment is the first against the group’s founder and leader, Stewart Rhodes. He has long been considered a high-level target of the investigation, and his group has been linked with Trump ally Roger Stone.
Rhodes started planning early.
Two days after the election, on November 5, 2020, he urged his conspirators in an encrypted group chat to ready themselves for a fight: “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war. Too late for that. Prepare your mind, body, spirit.”
In case that wasn’t clear, he sent another message on December 11, 2020: “It will be a bloody and desperate fight. We are going to have a fight. That can’t be avoided.”
And, on December 22, 2020, Rhodes said in an interview with an Oath Keepers regional leader, “We will have to do a bloody, massively bloody revolution against them. That’s what’s going to have to happen.”
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Happy Friday! We have snow on the way, and it’ll be interesting to see if the D.C. region is better prepared this time. Hopefully nobody gets stuck on I-95 for hours.
Take a trip back in time and meet… Woke J.D. Vance?
How COVID caught an accused rapist who faked his death… And fled to Scotland.
Ken Paxton is in trouble… He has been for years, but could violating public disclosure laws re: January 6 be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
The Lincoln-Douglass debates? A Virginia anti-CRT legislator who thinks Trump won also suggested mandating that the “the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass” be taught in schools. Seriously.
See what train burglaries in LA look like… It’s horrifying.
The shortage of real sugar Pepsi… It’s real, uh huh.
There’s a new Cast Iron museum… And it will have the world’s largest skillet.
What it’s like… Being a QAnon influencer in 2021. A depressing Vice documentary.
Conservative Approaches to Tackling Climate Change… Take a listen to former Rep. Bob Inglis discuss this on the Utterly Moderate podcast.
That’s it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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