It's Getting to the Point

NEWS: Since January, Trump’s campaign has posted more than 2,000 ads on Facebook including the word “invasion.” They are part of a Facebook ad buy for Trump immigration spots that total $1.25 million since late March, @thomaskaplan reports. https://t.co/xqgdCZh2h8

— Patrick Healy (@patrickhealynyt) August 6, 2019

I keep coming back to this because it keeps coming up.

The Mulvaney defense of Trump vis a vis the weekend shootings, a defense NO ONE is talking about (and that's fine, because), has become my personal obsession.  Unfortunately this hadn't happened yet, and/or Chuck Todd failed to bring it up in riposte:

[Cesar] Sayoc launched his fear campaign in October 2018 by sending pipe bombs to 13 prominent liberals and news organizations around the country, before he was arrested in South Florida.

[U.S. District Judge Jed] Rakoff said that the pipe bombs were intended to cause “fear and terror” while calling the campaign a series of “horrific acts of domestic terrorism.”

Sayoc had apologized to the court, reportedly calling himself a “sick man” while expressing regret for his actions.

“Now that I am a sober man, I know that I am a very sick man,” he reportedly said. “I know I should have listened to my mother, the love of my life.”

Upon his arrest, Sayoc was found to have been living in a van plastered with pro-Trump stickers and art. His social media accounts revealed an obsession with the President, as Sayoc threatened his opponents online.

Sayoc’s defense attorneys had contended that amid a life outcast from society, he “found light in Donald J. Trump.” In an argument for 10 years 1 month behind bars – a lenient sentence – the defense said that Sayoc’s steroid-addled mind was further addled by Trump’s extremist rhetoric.

Mulvaney argued the President couldn't be held responsible for the effect of his rhetoric on his audience.  But I can't think of a President in recent memory so linked to so much violence, either indirectly or, in this case, directly.  And Trump never apologizes for it; he revels in it.

His Twitter feed since this morning has been about China, or video from his "proof of life" speech this morning, where he read a teleprompter with such a flat affect some surmised he was on drugs.  How long the staff can maintain control of Twitter is anybody's guess.

Meanwhile, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney defended the president, saying the El Paso shooter "felt this way a long time before Donald Trump got elected president."

How Mulvaney knows that is anybody's guess, but if the shooter just wanted to kill Hispanics, he could have simply gone down to San Antonio, 3 hours away from Dallas.  Instead he headed for the border because he'd heard there was a crisis there; and where did he hear that? No, this is entirely at the feet of the President. That bully pulpit has powers all the squid ink in the world can't hide. There's a reason no one has taken up Mulvaney's defense. The truth us so obvious the President's allies have to distract from him.

No one can defend him; not on this.