“Prolonged exposure to Trump is injurious to intelligence and fatal to principles ... It is like a disease. You are exposed to it, become infected and succumb to it. The people I know who I once thought well of who have now lost their minds are legion. It’s depressing.” --Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican consultant in Florida
Dustin Thompson, 38, a college-educated Ohio resident, told jurors this week that
he was hoping to gain the "respect" and "approval" of Trump when he stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Thompson said he got sucked into conspiracy theories after he lost his job at the beginning of the Covid pandemic and believed Trump's baseless claims about a stolen 2020 election.
Attorneys for Cesar Sayoc, the 57-year-old man who pleaded guilty to sending improvised explosive devices to several high-profile Democrats and a cable news station, argued in a sentencing memo that their client watched Fox News "religiously" prior to his acts and was influenced by the "provocative language" advanced by some of its commentators, including Fox News host Sean Hannity. He was not discerning of the pro-Trump information he received, and by the time of his arrest, he was 'connected' to hundreds of right-wing Facebook groups." "Many of these groups promoted various conspiracy theories and, more generally, the idea that Trump's critics were dangerous, unpatriotic, and evil," the attorneys added. "They deployed provocative language to depict Democrats as murderous, terroristic, and violent."
Comello's family "began to notice changes in his personality" following the presidential election in 2016 ... Mr. Comello became certain that he was enjoying the protection of President Trump himself, and that he had the president's full support," the court document states.
His attorney's document notes how Comello tried to make citizen's arrests of three prominent politicians, all of whom are Democrats and vocal critics of Trump -- New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, and Representatives Maxine Waters and Adam Schiff. All three of those citizen's arrests, in February 2019 or shortly after, were unsuccessful.
In the de Blasio case, the mayor's security detail thwarted him and in the case with the members of Congress, U.S. Marshals did not help him, which Comello allegedly believed they would.
Matthew Haviland, 30, of North Kingstown was charged Wednesday after sending approximately 28 threatening emails on March 10 to a college professor, whose name and affiliation was withheld by federal officials.
“You are Evil. Pure evil — all Democrats must be eradicated"
In an affidavit, FBI task force officer Richard Laft, Jr. wrote that the professor told authorities Haviland’s “views regarding abortion and politics have become more extreme” within the last year. The professor, who had been friends with Haviland for about 11 years, believed Haviland’s views changed because “of the way the news media portrays” President Donald Trump, Laft wrote.
Extreme examples, possibly, but
maybe there needs to be some careful effort put in by their friends and loved ones to pull them (and people like them) out of the rabbit hole of Trump's cult of personality. To help them become more discerning -- to turn them away from alternate facts and towards facts.
--
And maybe someone should take Trump and his surrogates to task for their dehumanizing rhetoric.
[Trump Jr.] claimed, “[Hillary] doesn’t understand people, she doesn’t have any feelings. She’s like a reptile.”
