Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
If you own a car, or can borrow one from a friend, it might be worth your while to get in and fasten your seat belt, because you’re going to need it for this one. The Utterly Unhinged One from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has been busy spreading a lie that the FBI was planning to assassinate Donald Trump when they searched Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022. Here is her initial tweet posted yesterday:
“The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light. Does everyone get it yet???!!!! What are Republicans going to do about it? I tried to oust our Speaker who funded Biden’s DOJ AND FBI, but Democrats stopped it.”
Did your seatbelt hold? It gets worse.
Trump immediately took to his failing Truth Social to follow up with what amounts to a confirmation:
Missing from any of this insane garbage was the fact that the FBI arranged with the Secret Service in advance to make sure that Trump would not be present at his resort/hotel/club/residence that day in August of 2022.
Also missing was the fact that the law enforcement document Trump appears to be referring to that is part of Department of Justice court filings in the stolen national security documents case was a standard boilerplate FBI policy statement on the use of force that is included in any application for a search warrant. The policy statement says that FBI agents are authorized to use deadly force only if they are in “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.” Which never happened at Mar-a-Lago during the search that turned up a stash of national security top-secret documents that were found in Trump’s office and bedroom, among other places.
In a story about the assassination lie yesterday, the Washington Post noted that “A former president falsely accusing his successor and rival of posing a threat to his life is without precedent in modern U.S. history.”
Which hardly needs to be said, but I just thought I would throw that in to insure that the record is complete when it comes to this episode in our national descent into freakishness and madness.
Greene continued her lie-fest yesterday with this: “Were they going to shoot SS then Pres Trump, Melania, and Barron too??? Speaker Mike Johnson fully funded the DOJ and FBI plus new building and tied our hands behind our backs to hold them accountable. We have the power of the purse and Johnson has handed the purse to Chuck Schumer.”
It is worth pointing out that Trumpaganda has metastasized significantly here. Following the intent of Greene’s tweets—if such crazed babble can be said to have an intent—it’s pretty clear that she made up the whole thing about Biden planning on assassinating Trump to feed her attempt to get rid of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, because…you know…he’s such a Republican squish, and she wants someone strong in there, like maybe Greene herself, do ya think?
But the MAGA hordes don’t care what Greene was trying to accomplish. They don’t care that Trump was nowhere near Mar-a-Lago on the day the FBI executed a search warrant that had been approved and issued by a federal court. All the MAGA hordes care is that Trump has seized on this wild allegation and is using it not only to take shots at Biden, but to fund-raise off spreading the lie.
Yesterday on Truth Social, Trump shared a video with the words “Unified Reich” in a purported headline announcing a Trump win in November. President Biden attacked his use of “Hitler’s language,” and Trump took down the post. Trump’s lie about Biden wanting to assassinate him is extreme even for him, and he’s going to find ways to spread worse lies as the campaign moves into the summer and fall.
He’s using the assassination lie, among many others, to whip up his base. What are we doing to energize ours? There are 167 days between now and election day on November 5. Being ready and turning out to vote has never been more important.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
