Trump fantasizes about shooting reporters

Traditionally, a campaign’s closing argument is supposed to reveal its main themes. At a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump did just that – once again fantasizing about violence against his perceived enemies.

Describing how his open-air podium was largely surrounded by bulletproof glass, the former president noted the gap in that protection and added: “To catch me, someone would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that, so much.” Underneath By “fake news,” he meant members of the press covering his rally.

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The crowd screamed and applauded. Many of Trump’s rallies display an instant hatred of the journalists in attendance, whom he accuses, among other things, of distorting his message, not praising him enough, reflexively favoring Kamala Harris, fact-checking his statements, noticing empty seats, and reporting that people leaving his events early.

But journalists are just a few of the many “enemies from within” whom Trump has name-checked at his rallies and on his favorite social network, Truth Social. He suggested that Mark Zuckerberg faces “life imprisonment” if Facebook’s moderation policies punish right-wingers. He suggested using the National Guard or the army against the “radical left-wing lunatics” who were disrupting the election. He believes that people who criticize the Supreme Court “should be put in jail.” A recent post on Truth Social said that if he wins on Tuesday, Trump will go after “lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials” who engaged in what he called “rampant fraud and fraud.” Just last week, he publicly fantasized about his Republican critic Liz Cheney facing gunfire, and he previously promoted a post calling for her to face a “televised court-martial” for treason. In all, NPR found more than 100 examples of Trump threatening to prosecute or prosecute his opponents. One of his recent targets was this magazine.

Does this rhetoric matter to voters? Of course that’s how it should be. Harassing journalists is what autocrats do, and yet many Trump supporters on the right who claim to care deeply about free speech seem decidedly unconcerned. But his campaign has attempted to correct today’s offensive remarks, something his team rarely bothers to do. (The most recent major example came after comedian Tony Hinchliffe called Puerto Rico “trash island” while warming up the crowd at a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden last weekend.)

After today’s speech in Lititz, Trump’s team is trying to portray his comments as nothing more than tender concern for the well-being of reporters. “President Trump spoke brilliantly about two attempts on his own life,” Trump spokesman Stephen Chung wrote in a statement. (Let’s take a moment to enjoy the self-deprecation required to write this. brilliantly.) He continued:

Word Orwellian too overused, but come on, Stephen Cheung. Do you expect people to believe this nonsense? That hilarious final exclamation mark gives the whole statement a hint of sarcasm, and rightly so. Trump clearly meant that if he were attacked from a nearby rooftop, he would at least get some small comfort if the innocent cameraman from the local TV station was killed first.

The rest of Trump’s speech was the usual minestrone of cheap insults, petty grievances and strange asides. He repeated a statement he had previously made on The Joe Rogan Experience— where he said he wanted to become a “whale psychiatrist” — that offshore wind farms are killing whales. He suggested he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after losing the 2020 election. At times he seemed bored and regretted having to give a dumb speech that the audience had probably heard “900 times.”

He took aim at his most hated Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was “not a smart girl”; Harris was “lazy as hell”; and Adam Schiff had an “enlarged watermelon head.” He complained about “Barack Hussein Obama” and said that since Obama’s wife criticized him, “I think we’ll start having some fun with Michelle.” Notably, given his other comments about the media, he also threatened CBS’ broadcast license because he claimed the network fraudulently edited one of Harris’s responses to an interview 60 minutes. (The network denies the allegations.) For those who think Trump’s threats are simply exaggerated rhetoric, it should be noted that he also filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS in a part of Texas where the only federal judge is a Republican.

Read: The Relentless and Turbulent Final Days of the Trump Campaign

Trump’s current mood may be due to his stagnation in recent opinion polls and his declining chances of winning in betting markets. Accordingly, at Lititz, he added a new name to his list of opponents: J. Ann Seltzer, a widely respected Iowa pollster with a track record of producing surprising results that hold up on Election Day. Last night her poll for Des Moines Register found Harris leading by three points in Iowa, a state Trump won by eight in 2020. Last year, when Seltzer’s poll correctly showed Trump’s lead in the state’s Republican primary, he called her a “very influential” pollster who produced a “big, beautiful poll.” However, in Lititz, he called Seltzer “one of my enemies” and equated her with the media: “The pollsters are as corrupt as some of the writers there.”

The campaign is coming to an unexpected end. Trump surrogates run amok: Elon Musk says his push for government efficiency will cause ‘temporary difficulties’; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged this weekend to remove fluoride from drinking water; and House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Republicans would “likely” abandon the CHIPS Act, which subsidizes U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. None of this is a winning message for Republicans. (Johnson later said he would not try to repeal the bill.)

But the bigger problem is the candidate himself. The more professional elements of the campaign appear to be losing control of Trump, who is tired, bored and hungry for revenge. Whatever happened on Tuesday, we can say with authority that it was Trump’s darkest campaign yet.