WaPo Gets All Hand-Wringy Because People Are Suggesting Trump Needs To Be Assassinated

from the humor-is-legal-again? dept

Let’s make one thing clear before I start digging into the Washington Post firing up its teapot-based Tempest Generator: I do not support the assassination of Donald Trump. I am understandably impatient with the “let nature take its course” progression we’ve observed so far, but I would not encourage anyone to expedite this process in bullet form.

That being said, what the fuck is the Washington Post even doing here?

Peyton Vanest was fuming about President Donald Trump when he grabbed his phone and hit record. “Somebody should,” he declared, pausing for dramatic effect. “Somebody should, you know?”

“If somebody knew what needed to be done, that person should probably just do it …” the 27-year-old progressive influencer continued, conspicuously not defining “it.”

[…]

Vanest’s vague plea — posted 18 days before the third apparent attempt on Trump’s life in less than two years — is part of a social media trend that has twisted the idea of a presidential assassination into a morbid joke. 

The “vague plea” that opens this (is it an op-ed or what is it exactly?) article by the Washington Post gathered “3.2 million views.” The way these paragraphs flow together invite an inference that cannot plausibly be made: that people fucking around on the internet somehow led to the shooting (mostly of the shooter) at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

So does this paragraph, which does little more than perform a bit of bias confirmation:

Know Your Meme found that interest in the “Somebody should do it” trend spiked after an armed man’s thwarted attack last month at the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington, where Trump was scheduled to speak.

Was it actually a “trend?” Or did it start looking like a trend because interest “spiked” following this attempted attack? The article really wants the cart to proceed the horse but the data says the cart is just where it should be: a trailing interest indicator obviously provoked by the actions of “somebody” who may or may not have intended to “do it.”

Having reached a conclusion, WaPo writers Danielle Paquette and Joseph Woodrow Cox apparently went in search of evidence to support it. There’s no shortage of “experts” willing to state that the internet (or video games or music or phone use or processed sugars) causes violence, even when they’re doing nothing more than observing correlations.

Researchers who study how violence multiplies told The Washington Post they are concerned about the posts’ reach and impact.

The article then goes on to quote a single researcher — Tim Weninger of Notre Dame — who says he’s “never seen” anything quite like this. It follows that up with comments from six internet randos, all but one of which said they don’t seriously want anyone to kill Trump, even if they did post something akin to “someone should do it.” (Several paragraphs later, it adds another researcher, who only expresses a broader concern about the public’s embrace of Luigi Mangione and some “celebrations” of Charlie Kirk’s murder.)

As ridiculous as this whole article is, it’s nothing compared to wet-brained word salad delivered by a Trump administration spokesperson:

“Anyone who engages in or endorses political violence or assassination culture must be condemned in the harshest terms possible,” said White House spokesman Davis Ingle. “They should also immediately seek psychiatric help to treat their severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has warped their brains and made them sick in the head.”

A. The party engaging in the most political violence is the Trump administration. Trump uses a lot of violent rhetoric. So do his political appointees. And let’s not forget that Trump supporters are, to date, the only people to express their disagreement with presidential election results by violently invading the US Capitol building for the sole purpose of preventing the election results from being certified. During this insurrection attempt, law enforcement officers were assaulted and people were killed. That’s reality. What’s happening on the internet is nothing compared to this violent assault on the very concept of democracy.

B. GTFO with this “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Psychiatrists can’t help people work their way through a stupid phrase the GOP has been using for the past few years because they can’t actually produce a coherent counterargument.

C. So what. We’re looking at a few viral posts made by people whose online reach far exceeds their ability to make anything happen. Compare that with actual politicians with an enormous amount of power and an army of MAGA faithful at their disposal:

U.S. elected officials have waded as well into the digital muck. Then–Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Arizona) was censured for posting an animated video in November 2021 that depicted him appearing to kill Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and swinging two swords at Joe Biden. (“Everyone needs to relax,” Gosar’s then-digital director, Jessica Lycos, said at the time in a statement defending the post.) Trump shared a video in March 2024 that featured an illustration of then-President Joe Biden with his hands and feet tied. (“That picture was on the back of a pickup truck that was traveling down the highway,” Steven Cheung, now a White House spokesman, told The Post back then, adding that Democrats and “crazed lunatics” have called for “despicable violence” against Trump.)

Fuck off with that “as well” shit. Officials never need to “wade into the muck.” These Republicans do it because they want to. And they do it to provoke exactly the reactions they get when they do it. Yeah, they’re also doing it for the clicks, but they have the force and power of the government behind them, which makes these a bit less easy to laugh off as just some off-target meme-making by people who aren’t quite the digital natives they imagine themselves to be.

At the end of it all, here’s what this “someone should do it” posting actually represents: the feeling that nothing works the way it’s supposed to because this administration has chosen to destroy pretty much everything that actually makes America great.

“Are you advocating that someone should take a gun and shoot this person in the head? ‘No’ is the answer to that question,” Mark said. “But at the same time, we’re going to joke about this, and we’re going to say this stuff, because we’re all feeling the most desperate and desolate that we ever have.”

That’s the ugly truth. This nation is being run by thugs and bullies. Violence is the only language they know. To get through to them, sometimes you have to speak their language. Not many people are capable of doing that. Sooner or later, though, “someone” will.

Filed Under: cowardice, free speech, trump administration, whataboutism