You vs. the guy they told you to legislate about
By now you've seen the new political ad from Missouri GOP Senate candidate Eric Greitens. It's the one where Greitens brandishes a shotgun and proclaims that he and an armed "MAGA crew" combat team are "hunting," "bagging," and "tagging" his—and the viewer's—political enemies. Never mind that his targets are insufficiently right-wing fellow Republicans. Greitens' ad is boastfully violent, intentionally menacing, and eerily fascist.
It was funny (not in a "haha" way but in a "ffs, America'' way) that Greitens' ad dropped the same week that the Senate he hopes to join passed a bill that modestly tones up gun safety law. Both the ad and the bill were timed for the aftermath of a racist massacre in Buffalo, a school massacre in Texas, and a dozen mass shootings in between.
One good part of the bill is that it narrows the so-called "boyfriend loophole," a bit of shorthand for the gap in federal law making it possible for (usually) men convicted of violence against dating partners to still legally own firearms. Intimate-partner violence is one of the most reliable predictors of later gun violence, so by making it harder for convicted abusers to get guns, Congress may be on track to prevent significant suffering and death.
Greitens is pretty much a walking "boyfriend loophole." He resigned as Missouri's governor in 2018 after a woman he was involved with leveled a bundle of credible sexual assault allegations against him. They included slapping, hitting, and photographing her without consent, then threatening to publish photos he'd taken of her during sexual encounters if she told anyone.
Greitens denied the allegations but only managed to escape charges when the statute of limitations expired. But had prosecutors convicted him, under the Senate bill he would likely not be allowed to legally own the gun he uses to incite violence in his own campaign ad.
Meanwhile, the twisted irony of Greitens' sorry reintroduction was lost on much of the political press. Many reporters covered the "hunting" ad as the GOP's sudden "dark turn" toward violence, instead of what it really was: another example of a party that turned to violence as a political means long ago.
The ad, of course, wasn't conjured out of nowhere. It was planned to appeal to a political base loyal to a leader who fomented a riot on Jan. 6; who glorifies the deadly rioters and promises them pardons if he's made president again; who mused that his VP deserved chants of "Hang Mike Pence!" The House GOP's number-three leader traffics in a low-cal version of the racist theory that fueled mass murderers in Christchurch, El Paso, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. The Senate GOP's campaign chairman tells supporters their political opponents are worse than Nazis. State GOP officials ominously ask supporters if they're ready to die in the name of party propaganda, while the national party blesses an insurrectionist mob as "legitimate political discourse."
(Reporters know this, but the pull to normalize threats to democracy is a strong one. Instead of calling consistently ominous Trumpist GOP violence what it is, each sunrise can bring a new, more comfortable day of reporting on regular old Republican-versus-Democrat competition for midterm votes. That's not what's happening in this country.)
One of Greitens' primary opponents is a man whose sole source of name ID is pointing an assault rifle at Black protesters. If Greitens' ad was a "dark turn" for the GOP, the question becomes, a dark turn from where? The ad isn't a deviation; it's a logical extension. It's also, according to Greitens' ex-wife, a further example of his violent tendencies that she's filing in their ongoing custody dispute.
One of the stated aims of the January 6 committee is to warn the public, and the press, that the Trumpist threat is stark, urgent, and ongoing. Greitens' appeal to the GOP base, and the press' reaction to it, proves their point. Far away from committee rooms or depositions, Greitens' attempt to return to power, and his the message of his ad, show that the violence Donald Trump has helped entrench at the heart of the GOP has now outgrown him.
T.W.I.S.™ Notes
Just when you thought This Week in Subpoenas might be running out of subpoenas… more subpoenas!
- I'm ready for my close-up
British filmmakers will be the saviors of the Republic, after all. First, documentarian Nick Quested provided the January 6 committee with never-seen footage of the first moments of the Capitol riot. Then the committee learned of a new trove of documentary film footage featuring Trump family members and the former president himself in interviews and in action over the course of several months before and after the 2020 election.
The footage shows Trump and family on Jan. 6 and includes an interview with the former president after the insurrection. British filmmaker Alex Holder was subpoenaed and sat for an interview yesterday. Trumpworld people who've definitely been telling the whole truth about what they know seem… a little upset by the revelation.
- Fakes news
"Fake electors" Tuesday at the January 6 committee took on a whole new dimension Wednesday when a federal grand jury served fakes in several states with subpoenas of their own. Fake electors in Georgia and Arizona were served (love it when your candidate for governor gets called in for questioning). A campaign official in Virginia got a subpoena, as did at least one would-be fake elector in Michigan. It was already known that a federal grand jury was investigating potential criminal charges around the fake electors scheme, and there's reason to believe prosecutors may have gleaned important information from the devices of none other than Rudy Giuliani. But this week's news shows the probe is widening.
That awkward Tina phase
BtV favorite Tina Peters will enter the MAGA singularity on Tuesday when the election-denying, alleged election-defrauding county clerk who's banned from running elections… runs in an election. Peters' GOP primary bid for secretary of state goes down Tuesday, though her arraignment on 11 counts of election tampering, impersonation, and fraud has to wait till next month. Stay tuned!
Speaking of Peters' multiple counts, here's a twist: Peters is accused of using the identity of a guy named Jerry Wood to make false security badges so another guy could tamper with and copy data from voting machines. Now, she says Real Jerry is lying about Fake Jerry. Sounds like classic Seinfeld, only in this awful knock-off, Kramer's kooky new friend winds up running elections in Colorado.
Brooks, and done
Alabama GOP Rep. and pardon wanter Mo Brooks lost his Senate primary and has had his career ended, for now, by Donald Trump. Remember that Brooks was a Trump favorite and even helped incite the crowd at the Ellipse rally on Jan. 6. But when he fell to a distant third in March, Trump pulled his endorsement. Brooks then told everyone that Trump has been asking, even up until September 2021, to have Joe Biden removed from office so he can be reinstalled in the White House. The obvious conclusion now is that Brooks, who's under subpoena from the January 6 committee, has nothing left to lose and should testify. Looks like he's down!
The Gableman lifestyle
Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge has been in court explaining why he won't share records of his taxpayer-funded, Trump-fueled election investigations. You gotta read this.
The grift that keeps on grifting
Travel with VICE News' David Gilbert on a journey into the world of Trump's "stolen-election" empire. It's a veritable Mos Eisley Cantina of fraudsters, fabulists, and faux-experts all out to prove a big nonexistent conspiracy and make a buck doing it.
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