MAGA’s Assassination Fascination: Just Another Shiny Object to Distract the Lemmings

Populist grifters would rather validate egotistical fantasies than talk about what it really takes to save a country.

Sleazy grifter Tucker Carlson rang in the new year with an indicator that he hasn’t made a resolution to shape up in any way, in the form of an interview with fake tough-guy grifter Dan Bongino that touched on a theme he’s peddled before, the idea that the sinister, all-powerful “they” will likely try to assassinate Donald Trump. From the Daily Caller:

“In the case of Trump, they started with protests, they moved to impeachment, now they’re at indictment. None of it has worked,” Carlson said. “What’s next? What is, what could possibly be next?”

“None of it has worked”? So Joe Biden—quite possibly the worst Democrat presidential nominee in American history—didn’t replace Trump as president in January 2021, and didn’t immediately set to work undoing the executive orders that constituted so much of Trump’s legacy? Because that seemed to work just fine for them.

“If you felt, and you really believe it, and a lot of them do, that the worst thing that could happen to the country, and more specifically, to you in the professional class is to have Donald Trump as president — and everything you have tried has failed, and they have been accelerating steps – protests, impeachment, indictment – like, how many more arrows do you have in your quiver? And what’s the next one? And of course it’s assassination,” Carlson said.

“Of course,” Tucker says, as if to try to paper over the abject absurdity of the claim by acting like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

In the real world, Trump’s untimely demise is the absolute last thing Democrat movers and shakers would want. The fact that Democrats haven’t replaced Biden with a candidate who isn’t sundowning is entirely due to their confidence that Trump’s legal problems will sink him in a general election, an advantage that would completely disappear with Ron DeSantis (or anyone else) as the Republican nominee. Further, even if Trump does beat Biden (a possibility neither side should discount), Democrats know full well that the hopeless buffoon and his clown car of yes-men would pose no more danger to them in a second term than he did in his first.

Certainly, there are people on the Left who would fear Trump returning to the White House—the market for all the Hitler narratives has to come from somewhere, after all—but those people are the zombie follower class of private citizens, artists, students, low-level activists, etc. that actually believe the hysterics they get from radical academia and the mainstream press. The leftist leaders, the Democrats who actually influence things, absolutely know better.

“People have been assassinated in this country,” Carlson said of the United States. “Far more often than we’re willing to admit.”

This is just more bait to Tucker’s target audience of conspiracy junkies, which he actually started pandering to while still at Fox (such a mystery why they canned him). In December 2022, you may recall, he claimed the following:

We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained. We asked this person directly, "Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President? And here's the reply we received verbatim. Quote, "The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It's a whole different country from what we thought it was. It's all fake."

This got crackpot types excited as supposed “confirmation” at the time, never mind that (a) the alleged source was totally anonymous and unverified, (b) the alleged source still only said he “believe[d]” the CIA was involved, and (c) Carlson never followed up with any elaboration or actual evidence. (Indeed, it was a warning sign for the state of conservative media that it fell to conservative comic-book artist Ethan Van Sciver to push back on the JFK Truther nonsense that the Conservative Infotainment Complex couldn’t be bothered with). Fortunately for Tucker, he is now completely free of any obligation to back up what he says.

Carlson said he spoke to Trump about a potential assassination, but the former president “did not engage” with the subject. Carlson admitted he does not know what Trump makes of the possibility, but said Trump is “smart, so he must know that it’s true.”

I would feel like a broken record if I harped on the absurdity of calling Trump “smart” or spent too much time reiterating Tucker’s actual opinion of the man, so instead let’s unpack Trump’s unwillingness to take the assassination bait in the August interview. Do you think for one minute that the guy who doesn’t even have the courage to face a real political opponent on a debate stage would still be running for president if he honestly believed the government would murder him over it?

Of course not. Trump may be a complete civic ignoramus, but his experiences have given him a firsthand look at how corrupt bureaucracies actually destroy their enemies: by manipulating the legal process, not assassination plots that would mean lethal injections for all involved in the far-too-likely-for-comfort event that they became known.

“If you want to know what’s true, just look at the things that you aren’t allowed to say. You’re not allowed to say them not because they’re conspiracy theories or lies,” Carlson said. “You’re not allowed to say them precisely because they are not conspiracy theories or lies. They are true. And that is true. Period.”

Say, remember a time when conservatives universally agreed that knowing what’s true was determined by reason and evidence? When letting feelings guide everything was recognized as one of the fatal flaws of liberalism? That’s all out now, apparently, replaced with “always trust your gut” and some trite sophistry.

I believe that one of the reasons why political assassination fears are so mesmerizing to the audiences of Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and company is because it helps validate populists’ fundamentally warped understanding of how both good and evil get done in this country. They say Trump will be assassinated because “nothing else has worked,” “nothing else stops him,” etc. In his chat with Carlson last month, Jones cited Trump’s popularity among Republicans (along with an entirely-fabricated claim that Trump was “15-20 points ahead of Biden) as evidence that the Deep State’s efforts thus far have “backfired.”

As noted above, those efforts worked just fine to make Trump a private citizen again, so we have to ask: stop him from what? Stop him from talking? From running? From holding events? Why would our enemies care about any of that?

They wouldn’t, unless mere words and symbolic gestures—the mere acts of attending rallies, mouthing off online, putting up MAGA flags, etc.—carry some inherent power that threatens the Deep State all on their own. If that’s true, then those devoted to the talk-over-action president are doing their part to save the country simply by doing what they’re already doing. It’s not just about whipping the audience into a frenzy about the opposition; it’s about making fanboys feel important, feel dangerous, feel like they're doing something of value as they amuse themselves from their basements.

But performing and commiserating in echo chambers isn’t dangerous to the Left, and it isn’t of value to the Right. In the wake of Trump’s first (and hopefully only) four years, it turns out that standard-bearers do have to know what they’re doing in order to be successful. If Republican primary voters don’t take that lesson to heart, that is what will kill America—not a kill squad of Jason Bourne villains.