Donald Trump Must Die!

The headline on Rob Patterson’s Substack: I So Wish Donald tRump Would Just Die. Or…. You don’t need to be on the FBI’s Watch List to figure out the missing words. For which Mr. Patterson makes no apologies…

There. I said it. And I am hardly alone in my sentiments. I can safely posit that just about every sane and well-informed American with a mind, soul and heart has likely felt the same thing. If only for a second or two.

That’s one hell of a premise: tens of millions of people want to see Donald Trump die one way or… the other. And implies that anyone who doesn’t share that desire is mindless, soulless and heartless.

“I certainly don’t wish him to be killed,” Mr. Patterson dissembles, attempting to unring the headline’s bell. “(I won’t say assassinated as I don’t consider him a legitimate president; Hillary won the popular vote in 2016).”

That said, “Being rid of his fractious, odious presence would be the full 12 Days of Christmas for our nation at large as well as the whole wide world… it would hopefully be a step a beneficial direction.”

I’d like to believe Mr. Patterson is wrong about how many people want to see Donald Trump six feet under, STAT. But the Left’s hatred for the ex-President is unlike anything I’ve seen in my 64 years on the planet.

The Left thought George Bush was an idiot. His father capitalist swine. Richard Nixon a craven criminal. Trump trumps them all. So-called Progressives see the ex-prez as the political anti-Christ.

What has President Trump done to enrage this mob of murderous malcontents? I don’t think it has much to do with his policies during his time as Commander-in-Chief. Or his pronouncements going forward (some of which have raised red flags at the otherwise circumspect Wall Street Journal).

It’s not what Trump did or wants to do. It’s who the Left think he is. A blowhard. A boor. A molester. A rapist. A fraud. A demagogue appealing to Americans’ basest instincts (homophobia, racism, sexism, nativism, capitalism, etc.). More than all that, a fascist. A threat to democracy.

OK, sure. You can’t start a pyre without a spark. The connection between Trump’s post-election prevarication and one of the world’s most haphazard and least effective insurrections certainly put a match to the villagers’ torches.

But it’s still something of a leap to suggest Donald Trump is a dictator-in-waiting – which Patterson and the mainstream media have taken without hesitation or deviation, with endless repetition.

“Trump, who has pledged to use a new term to go after his opponents, sees no limits on his power if he wins next year,” CNN proclaims.

“Trump, if elected, will use the federal government to go after his political rivals and critics, even deploying the military toward that end. His allies are hatching plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one,” The Guardian warns.

Needless to say, President Biden’s peeps are down with the anti-Trump sickness. "Donald Trump’s America in 2025 is one where the government is his personal weapon to lock up his political enemies,” campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa declared.

I reckon the constant caviling evokes Shakespeare’s King Henry II, albeit with a nod and wink (i.e., “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”). Hearing the semi-homicidal howls, Trump is telling his supporters that President Biden is the real threat to democracy.

“He’s been weaponizing government against his political opponents like a Third World political tyrant,” Trump said at a campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Does he have a point? Doesn’t matter. Trump haters aren’t bothered by President Biden’s social media censorship, or other examples of his administration’s heavy-handed tactics and Executive overreach.

Whataboutism’s got nothing to do with it. We’ve met Hitler and his name is Trump. No surprise, then, that Mr. Patterson’s rant includes the opposite of a get well card.

So rather than kill off Trump or wait for his 91 felony charges to play out and – as the overwhelming evidence suggests – land him in the pokey, garbed in a jumpsuit that matches his fake “tan,” I hope for something more immediate. More effective. I’m even tempted to add it to whatever passes for my prayers to the Divine. Desperate times call for Deus ex machina measures to rid us of the accursed bloated bag of blubber, bullpuckey and bile. Yet not blot out his fat ass.

Would Patterson et Al. be upset if a nutcase took their cue from the cacophonous call for Trump’s political/legal demise and stabbed, shot, blew-up or poisoned the native New Yorker? I don’t think so.

Which makes an assassination attempt all the more likely. When self-righteous zealots dehumanize their opponents in front of large swathes of like-minded supporters, bad shit happens.

Don’t get me wrong. In this President Trump is no different from his critics. The Republican Party’s leading contender for the Presidency said the following at a Veteran’s Day speech.

We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.

Truth be told, both Trump and the anti-Trump army are a threat to democracy. Call me cynical, but what politician isn’t a threat to democracy? Good thing the United States isn’t a democracy.

Our country is a Constitutional Republic. A political system with guardrails designed to confine the worst excesses of amoral power-seekers of every kind, sort and description. As we’ve seen in the past. And will again in the near future, come what may.