Trump insists on posing as the salient question of the election: are you crazier today than you were four years ago?
Donald Trump’s threat to execute Liz Cheney, “with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her”, is the apogee so far of his Hitlerian rhetoric. By his own words, Trump has proved her point that he is a “danger” to the constitution and defied his apologists who insist he can be contained or that he doesn’t really mean what he says. “And let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said. Hours after Trump declared his wish to kill Cheney, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, his reliable excuse maker for the executive collaborator class, published an editorial stating, “We don’t buy the fascism fears, and we doubt Democrats really do either.”
Trump is hellbent to break through any “sane-washing” of the media smoothing over his viciousness and vulgarity. His call for an elaborate execution of a pre-eminent political opponent, a conservative Republican of the most partisan pedigree, is his definitive and final answer to those who quibble about his intentions and his unmooring from all traditional politics.
Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
