“If You Are a Psycho and You Want to Make Headlines”
JD Vance has gotten a lot of deserved criticism for the offhand way he dismissed the Apalachee School shooting.
If you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools.
[snip]
I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like you’ve got to have additional security. But that is increasingly the reality we live in.
[snip]
We don’t have to like the reality that we live in. But it is the reality that we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.
Trump, of course, famously told the families grieving after a shooting in Perry, Iowa, “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it, we have to move forward.”
It’s not just that JD’s proposed solution is to box everyone up in aquariums like the Secret Service has done to Trump, but the way in which both men want to pray (or feign prayer, in Trump’s case) and move on.
Compare that to how Trump’s own people are treating his own shooting.
Vance, of course, didn’t blame some “psycho who wanted to make headlines” for Trump’s shooting. Instead, he blamed Joe Biden.
And Trump’s top propagandist, Stephen Miller, won’t shut up about Trump’s shooting.
Trump’s people want people to obsess about his own shooting, a month ago, even while minimizing the impact of a shooting that killed four, including two kids. That’s true, even though all the evidence to date suggests that Thomas Crooks shares many similarities with school shooters like accused Georgia shooter Colt Gray, including a fascination with previous school (and in Crooks’ case, presidential) shooters.
Even given all of the Secret Service’s failures, Donald Trump was not a soft target, like schools are. But ultimately he, too, was vulnerable to an assault rifle in the hands of a disturbed young man hoping for notoriety.
Trump and Stephen Miller and JD Vance don’t want to get over that shooting attempt, and the murder of Corey Comperatore. They need Trump to be more special than all the kids gunned down in their schools. They need Trump’s shooting to have a meaning they won’t ascribe to the murder of children in their classrooms.
And yet Trump is no more special a victim than the teenagers killed in Georgia.
VANCE: We don’t have to like the reality that we live in.
But it is the reality that we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.
But they DO “like the reality that we live in”.
If they did not like that reality, they would fvcking DO something about it.
They don’t even get out of the fvcking way when others want to DO something about it.
They STAND in the FVCKING way when others want to DO something about it.
QED: TRUMP and the GOP DO “like the reality that we live in”.
Why some reporter hasn’t asked Vance pointedly if he ever experienced an active shooter drill while attending school is beyond me.
Vance has no experience with that reality.
Posted on Mastodon:
In his aquarium. Bottom feeding and loving it.
I am envisioning several dozen people sitting a footfall field length in front of him, trying to make out what he’s saying over crappy speakers aimed in their direction.
It’s a lie that mass shootings are a fact of life. They’re rare to nonexistent in most other countries. The US has chosen to encourage and allow them. This is especially true of right wing politicians like Vance and their supporters.
Preaching to the choir, I know.
I suggest that the reality that “we” live in is not the reality they live in – they simply do not care about our reality one way or the other. They have the money and connections to make sure they never have to worry about their kids getting shot. They don’t have to run into us at airports, stand next to us on the subway, or run into us at the grocery store. Their lives are designed to avoid anything that might harm them, inconvenience them, or delay them.
I once flew on a private jet (not mine). A town car picks you up in town, you drive to Teterboro, the driver flashes a card, and you pull up next to the plane. The pilot puts your luggage in the belly, you get on, and you take off.
The people who live that way would probably crumble if they had to live like the rest of us. But JD and his kids will never be shot, and his kids have already gotten into Yale Law. That family (and so many others) have no worries. Their reality is vastly different, and they have the power to keep it that way.
“Shooter is neutralized. Ok Mr. Trump, all clear. You can act tough for Fox cameras now.”
Colt’s daddy bought him an AR for his birthday; shades of Adam Lanza.
It seems to me that the Democrats should propose that those 21 and under can only possess a .22 bolt action rifle unless they are under adult supervision. The law should also allow for the prosecution of the registered gun owner/parent if any other gun is used by a person under 21 to commit crimes. This proposal would nullify Trump’s claim of being special.
“Colt’s daddy…”
I’m gonna guess the poor kid was screwed from the moment he took his first breath. After all, who names their kid after a young horse? I mean, he CAN’T have been named after a 150 year old gun manufacturer, right?
Waylon Jennings’ son with Jessi Colter is known as Shooter. AFAIK, he hasn’t shot up a school yet.
“Colt” likely has more to do with the pistol or an aspiring quarterback than a horse. It’s not uncommon here in Georgia.
Daddy is now being criminally charged, as well he should. It turns out that last year, when law enforcement visited the Gray home after Colt posted threats online to do a school shooting, but didn’t have positive proof it was him, Collin assured them the Kid didn’t have unsupervised access to his guns. He didn’t want the kid to enter the mental health system because then they’d come after his guns. Apparently, he then gifted the kid an AR15. I hope he is convicted and locked up for a long time.
Ethan Crumley’s parents (Michigan school shooter) bought him an “early Christmas present” too – Sig Sauer handgun.
Everything they do, and say, is to scam you. Here’s another example. Per a news report, former Congressman George Santos on Thursday sat in the gallery during the plea hearing of a Texan who had tried to scam Santos by falsely claiming he could get Santos’ criminal case tossed, or upcoming sentence reduced, in exchange for cash.
The lying, the half truths, the fraud – it begets more liars, and more fraudsters. Incredible. But that’s Trump — lie, lie, lie, and eventually the suckers will begin to believe you, and sympathize with you. Poor, poor, baby Donald—always the victim.
Nobody in the GOP mentioned Kamala Harris’ close encounter with a pipe bomb on J6 to my knowledge, either. And she has subsequently been flagged as someone who will enslave us all to communism if she is not stopped.
There are many things that ought to be done to reduce the incidence of psychos getting automatic weapons and carrying out mass shootings. A “soft target” might be to reintroduce the federal assault weapons ban. By that I mean a simple thing, not easy to legislate in today’s political climate.
They think God protected Trump when the bullet missed him and killed a couple of unimportant supporters instead. They never think that maybe God was sending them a message…Do something about the guns! Their God can make the bullet miss but he can’t stop the kid with the gun before he shoots it. It’s like they figure out the conclusion and then work backward to justify that conclusion, in other words…Religion
So I guess God had it out for the people who were killed when Trump was grazed by broken glass ? I always find it interesting that people think that God picks and chooses winners and losers in life and football games.
Vance’s comments make me spitting mad.
Sure JD, lets build walls with razor wire around our schools and have the kids attend full time, surrounded by armed guards, year round (no free lunches though, that’s Socialism).
“Walz’s For Trump”
–Grammatically incorrect T shirts worn by Walz’s second cousins. Gee, what a surprise.
https://apnews.com/article/walz-family-nebraska-trump-elelction-2f2e29586b0e9ebe094ff2cf546e1ae4
OT – Dr. Wheeler, the history podcaster you took to task (Darrell Cooper) is the subject of a Michelle Goldberg opinion and apparently a Tucker Carlson interview. I could post a gift article if desired?
The insensitivity is endemic in the GOP, since they have purged out all rational voices via primaries and RWNM attacks. It’s manifested in their ‘telling like it is’ tropes and arrogance like was seen in Arlington last week. In the latter example, the two (!) pushers were named: Michael Picard and Justin Caporale (he was the ‘project manager’ at the Ellipse on J6).
It’s also apparent that each outrage has to be more disgusting than prior ones, like ‘reality shows’ have to ratchet up conflicts to keep interest.
However, if Convict-1 really was coherent, he wouldn’t have run the ‘Dems setup a made-up story’ line on Tuesday while also releasing the unedited video that Steven Cheung said the campaign had. IMHO, I think Convict-1 is testing the waters to see just how outrageous he can be before the courtier press calls him out for his actions.
A decade into his serial manipulation of the press and at this apparent stage of his cognitive decline, I find it hard to believe he perceives any risk of negative blowback from his statements.
The media still hasn’t realized they are his narcissistic supply.
All news which mentions Trump is good news because it’s his psychological oxygen, proof of his continued existence.
If they starved him and covered issues instead he would completely decompensate.
i was pleased that CNN didn’t bother to carry his “Press conference” today. they discussed it fayer, AMD had a clip, but no live coverage.
GOP lacks emotional intelligence.
A lecture on “humanity” from Stephen Miller? On behalf of Donald Trump? Not worth wrapping my ahead around, even if I could.
Psst! JD—you’re running with a psycho who wants to make headlines…
/s
Child sacrifice — not just for Phoenecians
Judge Juan Merchan delays Trump’s sentencing in NY state criminal fraud trial until November 26th, weeks after the election.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/sep/06/trump-harris-us-election
This is asinine. Trump was already found guilty, how could sentencing have an effect on the election?
Further, why the fuck is Merchan assessing the immunity ruling? Candidates for president don’t have presidential immunity.
Agree with you on the ludicrousness of delaying the sentencing. However on the immunity part I would assume Judge Merchan doesn’t want the trial verdict overturned on appeal; some of the evidence was from TFG’s time in office, even if it would be laughable to call a hush-hush payment to Michael Cohen an “official presidential act.”
It’s laughable but his lawyers actually argued that during the trial, IIRC.
If Stephen Miller was so upset that convention speakers weren’t sending their “thoughts and prayers”, he should be thankful that noone did a Trump style call for civility. There was a related type of incident with Nancy Pelosi’s husband. Mr. Trump didn’t send condolences or try to turn down the heat. He went around the country making jokes about it. As if it was funny to have political violence– but only against others. So Mr. Miller can at least take comfort in no speakers making fun of the shooting at Trump’s rally.