Trump's Supporters Become More Dangerous

As regular readers know, I have long found it impossible for decent, moral individuals to support Donald Trump.  This applies ten fold to those who claim to be "devout Christians" yet support a man who embodies the seven deadly sins and behaves more like Hitler than Christ.  Hillary Clinton - rightly in my view - described Trump's base as "deplorables" and now, through their deplorable behavior and threats to law abiding poll workers and election officials are proving Clinton all too accurate.  Trump's endless lies and falsehoods are somewhat understandable given that he is a malignant narcissist.  What is truly shocking is the behavior of far too many Republican elected officials, especially in Congress, who either parrot Trump's lies or remain silent and refuse to condemn his outrageous behavior in apparent fear of Trump cultists. These individuals who provide profiles in cowardice are complicit in encouraging increasingly dangerous threats of violence by Trumpists, many of whom are armed and dangerously untethered from objective reality.  Someone will be hurt or killed, not that Trump or his devotees will care.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the growing danger.  Here are excerpts: 

With a key deadline passing Tuesday that all but ends his legal challenges to the election, President Trump’s frenzied campaign to overturn the results has reached an inflection point: Certified slates of electors to the Electoral College are now protected by law, and any chance that a state might appoint a different slate that is favorable to Mr. Trump is essentially gone.

Despite his clear loss, Mr. Trump has shown no intention of stopping his sustained assault on the American electoral process. But his baseless conspiracy theories about voting fraud have devolved into an exercise in delegitimizing the election results, and the rhetoric is accelerating among his most fervent allies. This has prompted outrage among Trump loyalists and led to behavior that Democrats and even some Republicans say has become dangerous.

Supporters of the president outraged at his loss, some of them armed, gathered outside the home of the Michigan secretary of state Saturday night. Racist death threats filled the voice mail of Cynthia A. Johnson, a Michigan state representative. Georgia election officials, mostly Republicans, say they have received threats of violence. The Republican Party of Arizona, on Twitter, twice called for supporters to be willing to “die for something” or “give my life for this fight.”

“People on Twitter have posted photographs of my house,” said Ann Jacobs, the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, who alerted her neighbors and the police about the constant threats. She said another message mentioned her children and said, “I’ve heard you’ll have quite a crowd of patriots showing up at your door.”

[A]bsent a single significant victory in his dozens of lawsuits — and with a key defeat delivered by the Supreme Court on Tuesday — [Trump’s] the president’s crusade is now as much a battle against the electoral process itself, as he seeks to cast doubt on free and fair elections and undermine Joseph R. Biden Jr. before he takes the oath of office.

Tuesday’s procedural deadline, known as safe harbor, serves as something of a guarantee that Congress must count the slate of electors certified by the deadline, and acts as an accelerant to resolve any outstanding election disputes. It also likely limits further legal challenges to halt or disrupt the official certification of electoral votes that Mr. Biden needs to claim the presidency.

Many Republican leaders in critical swing states are standing behind [Trump's] the president’s false narrative, unwilling to contradict his claims. Along with the president, their stance is further convincing tens of millions of Americans that the electoral process is too corroded to legitimately deliver the presidency to anyone whose name is not Trump.

Those supporters have started to flood the voice mails, cellphones and inboxes of dozens of elected officials across the country with angry messages and threats, as well as countless officials who handle local elections. The tenor has seemed to grow more menacing as Mr. Trump’s efforts appear even more unlikely to succeed, some officials said.

Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state in Michigan, said she had just finished putting up Christmas decorations with her 4-year-old son when she heard dozens of Trump supporters shouting outside her home. Some chanted “Stop the Steal” and demanded an audit of Michigan’s election results, which showed Mr. Biden winning by roughly 154,000 votes.

“Ever since the president first tweeted at me and every time there is an additional attempt to spread false information, you see an uptick in the threats,” Ms. Benson said in an interview on Tuesday. “And now apparently, they’re in front of my house, in the dark of night, in this very private, quiet residential neighborhood. We are concerned not only for the safety of my family, but my neighbors as well.

Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative from Pennsylvania, said he received dozens of emails every day. “It’s a bit more pronounced when you’re Black and queer like I am, that they go down the rabbit hole of parroting all the nastiness and vitriol that we see from the president all the time,” he said.

Darrin Camilleri, a Democratic state representative in Michigan, said he had received one email that said, “Be prepared to take your last meal,” and another that read, “We’re looking forward to bring back firing squads.”

Mr. Camilleri said his parents were also receiving harassing and threatening calls. “We’ve sent more than 20 death threats to the House sergeants to look into,” he said.

The safe harbor deadline all but ensures Mr. Biden will receive the 270 votes in the Electoral College he needs to win the presidency, and most likely wind up with 306 . . . 

As of Monday, all but one state — Hawaii — had certified their elections.

Though the safe harbor deadline is technically about the relationship between states and Congress, it also largely insulates states that have certified their election results from legal challenges.

But despite more than a century of precedent, allies of [Trump] the president are continuing to file baseless lawsuits seeking to upend the election. On Tuesday, the Texas attorney general filed an audacious lawsuit in the Supreme Court against four other states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — with more claims of election irregularities, and no evidence to support them.

And the Republican legal efforts were dealt yet another loss late Tuesday afternoon, when the Supreme Court rejected a request by Republicans in Pennsylvania to overturn election results in the state. There were no dissenting opinions.

An honest, decent and moral occupant of the White House - something Trump clearly is not - would accept the election results, especially after dozens of losses in court, and call upon his supporters to stand down and stop the treats of violence.  One can only be fearful of what desperate acts Trump and his deplorables may take as his exodus from the White House gets closer.