Elon Musk's disgusting "joke" after Trump's second assassination attempt

 

Support our nonprofit journalism

September 16, 2024 A man previously convicted of possessing a machine gun was arrested Sunday over his apparent attempt to assassinate Donald Trump—the second time in nearly two months that the former president has been the target of an assassination attempt. This is abhorrent and horrifying stuff; everyone should feel demoralized. So how is the right responding? By blaming Democrats and "Communist Left Rhetoric" seemingly without any intention of hoping to cool things down in a politically overcharged environment. Men like Elon Musk are making disgusting "jokes." Many of these same people refuse to abandon their hateful lies about Haitian immigrants despite multiple bomb threats. It's this feverish incitement, amid two assassination attempts against a former president and extreme fear in communities, that troubles me the most at the moment. Because at what point does the fever break? Will it ever? It's been years on the same never-ending path of increasing violence: school shootings, assassination attempts, racist hate. Regardless of how you intend to vote in November, aren't you just tired of all of this? —Inae Oh

Advertisement

What Immigration Experts Want From a Harris Administration The VP's immigration platform shows promise—but a rightward shift on asylum and the border troubles advocates. BY MELVIS ACOSTA

SPONSORED CONTENT FROM SOCAP Inspirational Leaders Share Strategies for Meaningful Climate Justice The SOCAP24 keynote speaker list features renowned global leaders driving climate justice and action, including Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s top climate change diplomat who delivered the Paris Agreement on Climate; Helena Gualinga, a climate activist from the Kichwa community of Sarayaku in Ecuador's Amazon; Damien Huang, CEO of climate-neutral outdoor clothing brand Cotopaxi, and more! Join these and more speakers who bring solutions for how capital can drive climate action at SOCAP24, held Oct. 28-30 in San Francisco.

Shots fired in an apparent second assassination attempt against Trump, FBI says BY JULIANNE MCSHANE How JD Vance unleashed the racist backlash against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio BY NOAH LANARD "Republicans for Harris" keeps expanding with the help of ex-Reagan staffers BY JULIANNE MCSHANE Women on TikTok are schooling a Trump ally who denied people are “bleeding out” due to abortion bans BY MADISON PAULY

Advertisement

Kamala Harris framed climate action as a patriotic duty. New research shows why that's effective. Psychologists found that appealing to American values could boost support for environmental measures. BY KATE YODER

MOTHER JONES MEMBERSHIP UPDATE A HUGE OPPORTUNITY A generous board member just chipped in a $50,000 digital matching gift, and we need newsletter readers to help us make the most of it. Any donation you make online from now until September 30 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.   You know the stakes right now. And with your support going twice as far, Mother Jones can lead the way these next 60 days in showing the corporate media how to cover the unique danger that Trump represents and not make the same mistakes they did in 2016 and 2020.   Please help with a donation if you can—even just a few bucks helps. A monthly gift would be incredible. Donate Now

Did you enjoy this newsletter? Share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Donate Donate Monthly Subscribe For advertising opportunities see our online media kit. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today. www.MotherJones.com PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more The Vance Dance The VP candidate has morphed into a dangerous MAGA extremist Dan Rather and Team Steady Sep 16 Credit: Getty Images JD Vance could be a heartbeat away from the presidency. It’s a thought you may want to seriously consider, because at the top of the Republican ticket is a 78-year-old obese man showing signs of mental decline.  Vance is getting lots of headlines, mostly bad, and there was even talk early on that Donald Trump might drop him. We need to understand — quickly — who Vance is, what he stands for, and what he might do if he finds himself sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. You may feel like you just got off a carnival ride after reading all about him. Suffice it to say, he’s light years from the stolidness of Mike Pence. Answering some of those questions about Vance is easier than others. His life story, as told by him, is fairly well known, thanks to his 2016 bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Vance grew up in a blue-collar county in southwest Ohio. His parents divorced when he was a toddler. Because his mother struggled with addiction, Vance was raised by his maternal grandparents. After high school, he enlisted in the Marines and served for four years. He then got a bachelor's degree from Ohio State University and a law degree from Yale. After practicing law for a few years, he moved to Silicon Valley to become a venture capitalist before heading back to Ohio to run for the Senate. His campaign was funded by his mentor, the far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Sounds like a great resume for an extreme-right politician. But a resume tells us only what he has done, not what he believes.  At 40 years old, Vance is the first millennial candidate for vice president. As such he brings vitality and energy to a tired Republican ticket. But he also brings a lot of baggage, in the form of a massive digital footprint. Almost everything he has said or written lives somewhere on the internet, available to be read, listened to, and parsed.  The most startling takeaway from a deep dive into Vance’s legion of interviews is that he is a wildly ambitious and opportunistic chameleon. He has transformed from a fairly moderate conservative, a self-described “never Trumper” who called the former president “cultural heroin,” “reprehensible,” and “America’s Hitler,” to a lapdog loyalist who has seemingly been absolved by Trump — perhaps because he has proven to be the anti-Mike Pence, willing to do anything to “win” an election.  Last week, on the “All-In” podcast, Vance said that in 2020, he “would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we had,” thus throwing the presidential election results into complete chaos. He would have done this with no evidence of any election fraud, much less widespread fraud. Vance is an authoritarian in the making. Just a reminder: Vance is willing to become vice president for a man who sent an angry mob to kill his last vice president.  Vance’s total and complete transformation into the MAGA heir-apparent happened as he sycophantically sought Trump’s endorsement of his 2022 Senate candidacy. Vance converted to Catholicism from atheism five years ago. He now identifies as Christian nationalist. His reactionary views on gun control and same-sex marriage are not surprising. What is much less mainstream, even for MAGA, is when he veers into strident misogyny. Vance opposes abortion, including in cases of rape and incest. He believes a pregnancy resulting from rape should not be considered “inconvenient.” He has said that professional women “choose a path to misery” by picking careers over having children. He has called child care subsidies “class war against normal people” and opposes no-fault divorces, suggesting women should stay in abusive marriages. With views as radical as these, even some Republicans have questioned Trump’s choice of Vance as his running mate. But if it’s an attack dog Trump wanted, he got it. It was Vance who gave legs to the now infamous lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating residents’ pets. He told Trump about it. One might think that after the political fallout from Trump regurgitating the story several times during the debate, and the real fallout in Springfield, where hospitals, schools, and even city hall have been threatened, he would let it go. He did not. On Sunday, Vance made the rounds of the political talk shows doubling down on his false narrative.  He told CNN’s Dana Bash that “the American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” Bash replied, “You just said that this is a story that you created.” Vance then tripled down. “It comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents. I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it. I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies.” A point of clarification: The Haitian immigrants in Springfield are there legally and came because the city needed workers, according to the mayor.   So Trump gets his toadying pit bull, and we might get a dangerous politico who makes decisions based on what it will mean for his future, not for ours. In the meantime, the Trump-Vance lies continue to distract and dominate news coverage. If you value independent journalism that provides critical information to protect our democracy, please consider upgrading to become a supporting member. It allows me to keep Steady sustainable and free for those who cannot afford it, especially in an election season when we need everyone to see it. Thank you. No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading. Stay Steady, Dan