MAGA violence and intimidation

Click here for a Substack article by Robert Reich entitled "Trump the mob boss," subtitled "His threats to mobilize his mob are escalating."

Shortly after the 2016 election, I spoke with a Republican friend who had retired from the Senate years before. I asked him why so many Republican lawmakers remained silent in the face of Trump’s vile lies and bigotry.

After a pause, he said, “Some of his supporters are nuts, and they have guns.”

I laughed, thinking he was joking. He was dead serious. “They’re a dangerous mob, and Trump’s the mob boss,” he added.

He follows with a list of examples of Republican lawmakers being intimidated by MAGA threats to them or their families, and concludes:

Threats and intimidation are hallmarks of mob bosses.

Mob rule is incompatible with democracy.

Rep. Liz Cheney warned a few weeks ago that if Trump is reelected, “all of the things he attempted to do but was stopped from doing by responsible people around him … he will do. There will be no guardrails … . He will unravel the institutions of our democracy.”

People disapprove of comparisons with Hitler, but sometimes they're apt: In the early 1930s, Nazi violence and intimidation frightened off many of his political opponents. 90 years later, an American parallel?