As Ted Cruz spoke during the 2-day Trumpapalooza (aka Republican Midterm Convention) in Dallas, each time he mentioned a Democrat politician, a voice from the sparse crowd yelled, “He should be shot!” Cruz’s reaction? Nothing, he just “cruzed” along, with no attempt to denounce or even acknowledge the outbursts. Three times. No pushback. Republican reaction in general has been muted. Neither Dave McCormick, John Fetterman nor Brian Fitzpatrick has responded in any way to these calls for violence against political opponents. First it was “Lock her up!” against Hilary Clinton. Now it has escalated to “He should be shot!” against Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico and Zohran Mamdani. The anemic-to-non-existent Republican push-back to these calls for violence smacks of condonation and quiet, passive encouragement. Is any opposing Democrat now fair game?
In addition, in complete disregard for the Constitution, Trump begged the attendees to pledge an oath to him, “the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way - I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to cheat like hell like they do.”
Cheat like hell. They should be shot. How did we get here?
This is a president and a conservative machine that knows they are on the ropes. They are determined to undermine our democracy and our elections, to dismantle our Constitution (to which all of these politicians swore an oath), all to stay in power. They are using any means they can to make voting harder; gerrymandering, eliminating polling places, threatening to place ICE agents at the polls, sending threatening letters to state election officials. And violence is not off the table. They are desperate, and that desperation is making Trump and his rabid Republican allies truly dangerous. The threat is real, and has been building for months. As others have said, Trump wouldn’t be working so hard to suppress our votes if our votes didn’t matter. The Dallas mid-term convention is just the latest alarum bell tolling loudly and clearly, telling us in no uncertain terms that this November our vote matters more than ever.