Authorities are monitoring for a spike in extreme rhetoric online, wary of it crossing over into real-life violence
The top post at the online forum TheDonald on Wednesday morning was titled “Fuck Mike Pence. 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻.” And chilling calls for violence against the former vice president were rising to the top of the comments thread.
Pence plays a starring role in the new indictment of Donald Trump, which quotes Trump telling Pence, “You’re too honest” after the vice president refused to block certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win.
And Pence met the news of the indictment with harsh criticism of Trump, now a rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Pence tweeted that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s indictment also recalls how Trump, unable to convince Pence to become a co-conspirator in his despotic plot to steal the presidency, instead unleashed a mob of MAGA supporters against him. “At the Capitol,” the court document reads, “members of the crowd chanted, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’; ‘Where is Pence? Bring him out!’; and ‘Traitor Pence!’”
Such dark sentiments against Pence now have been revived, at an online forum that played a key role for plotters of the unrest of Jan. 6. TheDonald is a Reddit like forum for the Trumpiest of the Trump faithful. Both individual posts, and the comments on them, rise based on the “upvoting” of users, giving a glimpse into the collective psyche of the community.
The top comment on the Pence post called for divine retribution against the “traitor.” It reads: “May GOD Strike him down for his lies and treachery to the American People.” But as other commenters piled on, they fantasized about a public execution of Pence at a gallows. “I want to watch his toes dangle in the breeze,” wrote user BigMikesHairyDong.
“I want to stand beside you as witness,” wrote user Totally_Passable adding, “I want to pull the lever.” This user made clear he didn’t want the violence to end with Pence: “I long for the day we the people pull these traitors… out of their seats screaming, knowing full well what is coming to them, and why its coming.”
Instead of recoiling at the call to execute Pence, other users joined the call for mob violence. “No long drops,” said another user, echoing many of the replies. “Humane execution should be off the table.”
It's pretty insane how these people were told, incorrectly, that Mike Pence could just wave his hand and choose the next president, and are totally ready to murder him because he didn't do something crazy that he didn't even have the power to do.
I remember when my kids were small and I would make them come inside when it would get dark and a fit would be thrown as if I controlled the sun and this was an injustice I was creating. IDK why that popped into my head.
This is kind of what happens when you have a group that is explicitly anti-education. I don't want to come off as elitist, but when there's a vacuum in your brain, it's surprisingly easy for it to get filled with nonsense. Small children believe everything you tell them.
It's scarier than that. I saw some of the comments, and they said he couldn't have chosen the next president, but he could've held off while some states did more to investigate the votes that were supposedly stolen. They make it sound so plausible to each other, and it just makes them even scarier because more people say "Oh that sounds reasonable" when it's completely nuts. The state of Georgia and counties in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Texas already had vote recounts by Jan. 6th. What the hell did they expect to find??
I think you know what they expected to find. They expected to find their stupid conspiracy theory that the election was rigged if you just clapped your hands and believed hard enough.
How many of these people will, in January of 2025, insist that Kamala Harris can't just wave her hands and appoint Biden as President regardless of the votes?
To be clear: She can't and I don't think she would, but according to their Mike Pence theories, she could just do that.
They don't think he had a legal ability to do it, they wanted him to break the law, be a traitor to America & democracy, and appoint their Diaper Don as emperor.
Many Americans have no idea how things work. Think about how many times people talk about how this POTUS or that POTUS increased taxes when it is Congress that enacts taxes.
Most of us have no idea how most of the world works. We live in a complicated society, nobody can be an expert about everything. Admit it or not we all rely on experts every day.
The problem with experts is they can use facts and knowledge to challenge people in power. So people in power foment anti-intellectualism and push a nonsense naritive that we are all rugged individuals. You know better than the so called experts.
isn't this happening right now with Judge Cannon? She was a Trump appointee, has already made an outrageous decision relating to Trump, and now she's presiding over his classified documents case, Trumpers are sending her death threats because they think she has the power to toss the case out at this point. It's like they don't even know when they are winning!
This is why you will never be "One of the good ones", you can literally be Trump's second in command and still not be far right enough for the bloodlusting mob.
"Why are they going after gays and not radical gender theory?"
Bitch being gay IS a radical gender theory... as it is in direct defiance of rhe social heteronormative understanding that love and lust are things that can only happen between a man and a woman that has been the status quo in the modern world as far back as King James making the King James bible to convince the catholic church he wasn't gay.
I swear these Log Cabin Republicans on some type of shit.
Their ability to constantly be surprised that the GOP is homophobic is.. amazing.
I seriously wonder if they freak out every morning when they see a giant fireball in the sky obfuscating the presence of the moon.
I read the long threat of this. They were debating if a person that was quoting the bible was actually Christian... I shit you not. These folks were accusing a person quoting the bible as wrong and not what it meant. It takes 10 seconds to Google the quote for fuck sakes.
That's because they don't give a shit about God and/or Christianity. Trump is their religion. The ones that aren't simply psyops employees paid to enable the propaganda and stoke the fascist echo chamber fires, that is.
Someone pleas explain the mental state of these people if they’re pissed that Pence -by Trump’s own admission- was being “honest” by not handing him the election.
Iirc it's a custom Reddit clone hosted by Epik. "Epik has provided services for websites, platforms, and groups including Parler, 8chan, Gab, BitChute, Patriots.win, The Daily Stormer, InfoWars, One America News Network, AR15.com, Kiwi Farms, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers."
Completely unsurprising. When you believe you are punishing your enemies with divine retribution any amount of cruelty is acceptable, and thus we get posts like this. Thanks GOP for giving us these people.