It has become drearily predictable. Whatever happens, however objectively bad it may be, serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) will say it is good for his election campaign, and the process is playing out once again in the aftermath of the 34 felony convictions that he just received from a jury.
Let’s be clear. It strains credulity to argue that being convicted of a single felony, let alone 34, is good for you and SSACFT and his acolytes must know it. Sure, it might make your supporters angry and fired up but it is unlikely to win over anyone who is not already strongly committed to you. And yet they are pretending that this is the best news ever. What would they have said if he had been acquitted?
It is clear that the outrage machine had been prepared in advance of the verdict. The ratcheting up of calls for violence has produced increasingly violent rhetoric, including calls for ‘war’.
Ever since the trial began, pro-Trump commentators—and Trump himself—have been priming MAGA online ecosystems to claim foul play if the jury found him guilty. The response to his felony conviction was predictably swift, with many characterizing it as a declaration of “war” from the “deep state.” Incendiary rhetoric about how the guilty verdict was a sign of America’s collapse reverberated from the mainstream right all the way to the fringes.
“As of today, with this fake guilty verdict against Trump, America is no longer the United States,” wrote Joey Marianno, a pro-Trump political commentator, to his 466,000 followers on X. “We are a third-world shithole heading for a Civil War. I have no desire to see this country to unify. There’s no country to unite. We are long past that.”
…Ali Alexander, a far-right conspiracy theorist, did not mince words either. “Today is Jan. 6th for the entire nation,” he wrote on Telegram to his 12,000 subscribers. “This is worse than the Civil War. Respectfully.”
That kind of rhetoric even made it to the airwaves. “We have been calling it lawfare,” said Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro.“I think lawfare is far too soft, it’s far too benign. This is warfare.”