MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2024
Possibly not for Harris either, but also possibly yes: In our view about who to vote for this year, we differ from the New York Times' Bret Stephens.
We're going to vote for Candidate Harris. Here's what Stephens tells Gail Collins in this week's episode of The Conversation:
We Cannot Go One Like This
[...]
Bret: Can I vote for Trump? Never. Will I vote for Harris? Maybe, but she hasn’t sealed the deal with me yet.
Gail: Hey, at least you’re moving in the right direction.
What hasn't Harris sealed the deal? Earlier in their conversation, Stephens offers a list of the ways he sees the dueling nominees.
In our view, some of this doesn't quite make sense—but also, some of it does:
Bret: If Trump wins the election, I’ll feel sick. If Harris wins, I’ll feel scared.
A Trump victory is going to complete the G.O.P.’s transition to a full-blown MAGA party that trades conservative convictions for illiberal ones. A Harris victory puts an untested leader in the White House at a moment of real menace from ambitious autocrats in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran.
A Trump victory means the country is again going to go crazy with all the cultural furies he unleashes, both for and against him. A Harris victory means four more years of misbegotten economic policies, like the threat to put controls on prices some federal bureaucrat deems to be too high.
A Trump victory is dreadful for Ukraine. A Harris victory could be terrible for Israel.
A Trump victory empowers people who don’t accept the results of an election. A Harris victory empowers a candidate who has never won a primary and whose supporters want to jail their political opponent.
If Trump wins, he says he’ll feel sick. If Harris wins, he'll feel scared.
In our view, that list of ruminations gets weaker as it proceeds. That said:
As someone who will be voting for Harris, we'd say it's true that she's "untested" in certain ways. It's true that there's no clear way to know how she'd proceed in the White House.
In our view, that isn't exactly her fault. We think of what President-elect Lincoln was reported to have told a crowd of well-wishers as he left that other Springfield on his way to the White House:
My friends:
No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried.
I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon General Washington.
Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.
To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
It was February 11, 1861. It's called the "Farewell Address." Lincoln said he was leaving the friends among whom he had grown to be an old man "to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington."
It's a bit like that with Candidate Harris. With President Biden's withdrawal from the campaign, she suddenly faced a highly unusual task. No one before her has had to assemble a presidential campaign on such remarkably short notice, presumably with almost no planning at all.
It's stunning to us, but not surprising, that we've seen so few analysts say that.
Harris has been asked to do something which few people have done before. In many ways, she's done an amazing job at this task. It's still the case that she's a bit of an "accidental" nominee—a nominee whose instincts, views and capabilities aren't extremely well-known.
For ourselves, we'd limn it like this:
If Trump wins, we hope we get to live long enough to see, and to attempt to record, the essence of what he does. On balance, we assume he's some version of (clinically) "mentally ill"—and for that reason, we regard this as a dangerous time.
People like Stephens and Collins aren't allowed to discuss that fairly obvious possibility. The guild has chosen to cling to its hoary rule in the face of approaching disaster.
In our view, Stephens is possibly being just a bit fastidious in the way he scores the race between the candidate who's mentally ill and the candidate who isn't. In fairness, he may not see it that way. Tens of millions of neighbors and friends don't see this the same way we do.
At any rate:
If Trump wins, we hope we live long enough to see the history unfold. If Harris wins, we agree with Stephens to a certain extent:
It's hard to know what she will be like as an American president. In our view, she delivers a truly sensational speech, but it's even less clear than it typically is where things go from there.
We'll close with something else Stephens said. The fuller exchange went like this:
Bret: Can I vote for Trump? Never. Will I vote for Harris? Maybe, but she hasn’t sealed the deal with me yet.
Gail: Hey, at least you’re moving in the right direction. Maybe you could create a I-Hate-Harris-But-At-Least-She’s-Sane movement.
Bret: Just so you know: I absolutely do not hate Harris. She exudes warmth. And disagreement isn’t hatred.
Gail: I reserve the right to go back to harping on your voting plans...
We agree with Collins. Candidate Harris does seem to be sane! The warmth and the strength she's exuded so far have been a bit of a joy to the world.
That said, General Washington faced a daunting task. If elected, she'll face a daunting task too.
Let us hope that all will be well, Lincoln said that day. With respect to his friends in Springfield, he did find a way to "save the Union," but he wasn't allowed to return.
Bob says it isn't Harris's fault that she's untested. Silly point IMO. Regardless of whose fault it is, she's untested in foreign an military affairs and she has no experience. Nor has her campaign demonstrate any expertise or knowledge of military or foreign policy.
ReplyDeleteThese are complex, difficult matters. Hoping she will be skilled reminds me of the old joke
"Can you play the violin"
"I don't know: I never tried."
go fuck yourself, Dickhead, you want to hand power to a man who tried to orchestrate a coup. A fat ugly corrupt business man actor in a reality tv show.
Delete"untested in foreign and military affairs and she has no experience"
DeleteThere's an empirical statement. Let's test it by comparing Harris to recent presidents before they took office, remembering that Harris has 4 years as a US senator and 4 as Vice-President.
Trump? Harris has more experience.
Obama? Harris has more experience.
Bush? Harris has more experience.
Clinton? Harris has more experience.
Well put DIC . You have an affinity for old jokes.
DeleteI’ve got an Idea. Harris can round up all the 4 and 5 star generals who have worked with Trump and denounced him as unfit, and make a cabinet out of them. That should work.
“Nor has her campaign demonstrate any ….”
DeleteThis is rich. Republicans have given her ownership of virtually everything Biden’s administration is criticized for, but whoa, suddenly she has no experience. So which is it, Kamala’s foreign policy or Kamal hasn’t done foreign policy? Maybe we needing to have a debate between Harris and Mike Pence considering how much policy making the vice president is credited with accomplishing as per recent Republican dogma.
When VP George HW Bush ran for President, his party associated him with President Reagan. Today, it's the opposing party that seeks to associate the VP with the President she served under. Reagan was viewed as a success. Biden is viewed as a failure.
DeleteFirst sentence: wrong
DeleteSecond sentence: wrong
Third sentence: wrong
Fourth sentence: wrong
Aah, consistency.
“Biden is viewed as a failure”
DeleteExplain why large surveys of historians and experts in the study of presidents rate Biden higher than Trump. Of course it would be impossible to rank lower than Trump. Even among historians who self identify as conservatives, Trump ranks in the bottom 5 of all presidents to date. He is at the very bottom including all historians irrespective of party affiliation. This is entirely consistent with 40/44 of his appointees stating that he is unfit for office. But of course your opinion supersedes all of these people. Trump had an approval rating of 31% the year after he left office. That was when it was fresh in everybody’s mind what a failure he was.
"Explain why large surveys of historians and experts in the study of presidents rate Biden higher than Trump."
DeleteBecause the people being surveyed are just about all liberals.
Read my comment again. Historians that self-label conservative placed him in the bottom 5. You have never come to grips with the fact, also, that 40/44 of his appointees would not vote for him to be re-elected. People who saw his “leadership “ up close. Are you saying that they are also liberal?
DeleteHere's an alternate explanation: Trump was a terrible president, who continuously said and did outrageous, unpresidential things, deliberately stoked division, undermined the rule of law, used the presidency to enrich himself and his family, tried multiple ways to overturn the results of a free and fair presidential election, culminating in his incitement of a violent attack on the Capitol (during which he engaged in a vile dereliction of duty), engaged in national security crimes, extorted an ally during war, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. To recall, viscerally, just how awful Trump's "leadership" was during the start and at the height of the pandemic, I highly recommend this (long but worth it) interview with sociology professor Eric Klinenberg:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNsZI2vV0RQ
DIC can try to explain this:
Deletehttps://presidentialgreatnessproject.com/
Agree with above comment as well.
Mike I: that Eric Klinenberg interview is quite good. The US population, as he states, has collective amnesia for the facts surrounding the pandemic and its mismanagement by Trump resulting in many thousands of unnecessary deaths.
DeleteYeah, he's super insightful and articulate. And most people have forgotten, or never fully understood in the first place, how much worse Trump made the pandemic in the U.S.
DeleteI don't think Trump was a great President. I do think that the US and the world were in much better shape during his regime than during Biden's.
DeleteRanking Presidents is very personal. Thomas Sowell ranks Obama as the worst President. I'm not saying he's right, but Sowell is very smart and not prejudiced against blacks.
"I do think that the US and the world were in much better shape during his regime than during Biden's." No thanks to Trump.
DeleteThomas Sowell is not a historian. Choosing Obama as the worst president is the kind of self -indictment to be expected from a biased clown that once remarked in one of his 50 + books that the gender wage gap is the appropriate response of employers to womens’ inefficiency in the workplace. So no, we are not going with a gender and apparently race-biased clown’s opinion on anything here. He still believes in Reaganomics , as I recall. LOL. And incidentally, writing 50+ books is not an indication of scholarship- it is the opposite. This is quite typical of the drivel to be expected from you. But go ahead and explain, without Thomas Sowell, why 40 out of 44 Trump appointees will not be casting a vote for him.
DeleteIn regards to your comment that Thomas Sowell is not biased against blacks: go ahead and explain the fact that he chose the only black president in US history as the worst. It is a pathetically biased display that gets to the heart of his intellectual dishonesty. No wonder you are a fan.
Delete"Because the people being surveyed are just about all liberals."
DeleteNot completely true, but no one----other than the most vile bigots ever put on Earth---wants to be associated with Conservatives anymore.
I was a single issue voter. I am against Democrats using Blue state laws to bypass parents and transing other people’s young children. Now there may a bigger issue. With all the warmongering neocons now spooning Harris, she may be goaded into WW3 by the argument “You are a woman. You must show you are tough”. The dingbat is going to get us all killed if she is elected.
ReplyDeleteYou have posted the same claptrap many times by now. Give it a rest. No one gives a fuck about your little confused mind.
Delete3:57 “I was a single issue voter”
DeleteOh no. You’ve got issues. More than one.
You'll fit in with Republican voters.
DeleteThey're single issue voters, too.
Their single issue is bigotry.
They're for it.
You're partly right. ONE of our candidates is obsessed with demonstrating "toughness." You chose the wrong one.
DeleteThat 'dingbat' triggered Trump into several layers of decompensation.
DeleteYeah , loved watching that dingbat laugh derisively while the demented codger faceplanted at the debate. Then refused another debate with his tail between his legs. They’re still scraping the orange mascara off the canvas. Down for the count.
Delete" ... transing other people’s young children."
ReplyDeleteTroll harder.
“ he did find a way to "save the Union,"”
ReplyDeleteYes, he “found a way”: he pounded the confederacy into the ground.
lol
DeleteMy vote is going for Jill Stein. I could never vote for anyone who venerates Dick Cheney.
ReplyDeleteSpoken like a true Mao.
DeleteI am not able to vote for someone who says they admire Cheney. That crosses a moral line for me. It doesn't matter though. My vote doesn't count because of the electoral college. It doesn't matter who I vote for. So I may as well vote with my values.
DeleteCmike why do you post under all these different nyms? Why don't you just go with one>? You're not fooling any one. You know that, don't you?
DeleteVoting for Jill Stein? Great idea. If you think that being irrelevant is a sign of integrity more power to you.
Delete"My vote is going for Jill Stein. I could never vote for anyone who venerates Dick Cheney. "
DeleteSo I'm going to vote for someone who venerates Putin.
Who “venerates” Cheney? Harris? She touts his endorsement as a way of trying to persuade republicans who dislike Trump to vote for her. It’s called electoral strategy. And it’s smart.
Delete@9:25 Are you talking to me? I hate to burst your bubble, but I don't post under any other nym on here. On rare occasion I'll post anonymously.
DeleteIt may be a smart electoral strategy but it lost her my vote. Cheney is an immoral monster. Embracing him is embracing his worldview and criminal past. Harris will have to win this one without my vote.
DeleteThere is not a single shred of evidence that Harris venerates Cheney but if you have to fabricate that to vote for Stein, that is your prerogative.
DeleteI am not voting for Harris because she said she was proud to receive his endorsement. I look at that as a veneration. But it's not so much about the word veneration as it is about normalizing an immoral war criminal. That crosses a line for me. I simply can't vote for anyone who would say that. I understand she is doing it as a cynical political strategy which may be really smart. But it crosses a line for me. And she doesn't need my vote. I live in a red state and my vote doesn't matter.
DeleteCheck it out, David in Cal.
DeleteTrump is such a loser, that even people like 7:02 are willing to cast their vote for the other Russian-backed candidate instead of him.
8:03: Try to think of it not so much as veneration of Cheney, but rather total horror at the thought of a second trump term.
Delete9:48 Thanks. I have thought of that. I get that part of it. My vote doesn't count so a second Trump term will or will not happen despite of who I vote for. But never in a million years would I vote for someone who proudly accepts Cheney's endorsement. I'm physically revolted just thinking about it.
DeleteTrump today: "Russia, China, various places — I don't know that they're enemies," said Trump. "I think we'll get along great with China. I think we'll get along great with Russia."
ReplyDeleteYes. Just by the sheer strength of his personality, his mental "toughness," he'll put an end to rivalries among global powers.
The man is delusional. Republicans used to promote "realism" in foreign affairs, insisting that conflict with Russia and China was inevitable and unavoidable. Now they cheerfully line up behind this guy.
Great quote. The current iteration of the Republican Party has been dragged by their leader into Putin appeasing cult status.
DeleteI thought the following tally was interesting. It puts the recent assassination attempts in historical perspective. I didn't know about the vast majority of these. And I think they might have missed at least one involving Clinton. (Didn't Bob mention an assassination attempt on Clinton involving a small plane?)
ReplyDeleteAbraham Lincoln:
February 23, 1861: President-elect Lincoln passed through Baltimore amid threats of the Baltimore Plot, an alleged conspiracy by Confederate sympathizers in Maryland to assassinate Lincoln en route to his inauguration. Allan Pinkerton's National Detective Agency played a key role in protecting the president-elect by managing Lincoln's security throughout the journey. Although scholars debate whether the threat was real, Lincoln and his advisers took actions to ensure his safe passage through Baltimore.
August 1864: A lone rifle shot fired by an unknown sniper missed Lincoln's head by inches (passing through his hat) as he rode in the late evening, unguarded, north from the White House three miles (5 km) to the Soldiers' Home (his regular retreat where he would work and sleep before returning to the White House the following morning). Near 11:00 PM, Private John W. Nichols of the Pennsylvania 150th Volunteers, the sentry on duty at the gated entrance to the Soldiers' Home grounds, heard the rifle shot and moments later saw the president riding toward him "bareheaded". Lincoln described the matter to Ward Lamon, his old friend and loyal bodyguard.
April 11, 1865: John Wilkes Booth, who would make a successful attempt on Lincoln's life three days later, attended Lincoln's final public address in Washington, D.C., with his fellow future conspirators David Herold and Lewis Powell. During the speech, Booth became enraged when Lincoln expressed his support for granting voting rights to former slaves and ordered Powell to shoot Lincoln. Powell ultimately decided against it for fear of the crowd, but Booth vowed to "put him through" and formulated a plan to kill Lincoln which came to fruition on April 14.
Harry S. Truman:
Mid-1947: During the Jewish insurgency in Palestine before the formation of the State of Israel, the Zionist paramilitary organization Lehi was alleged to have sent a number of letter bombs addressed to the president and high-ranking staff at the White House. At the time, the incident was not publicized, but Truman's daughter Margaret Truman disclosed the alleged incident in her biography of Truman published in 1972; the allegation was previously disclosed in a memoir by Ira R. T. Smith, who worked in the mail room. According to Truman, the Secret Service was alerted by British intelligence after similar letters had been sent to high-ranking British officials and Lehi claimed credit; the mail room of the White House intercepted the letters intended for President Truman and the Secret Service defused them.
November 1, 1950: Two Puerto Rican pro-independence activists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to kill President Truman at the Blair House, where Truman was living while the White House was undergoing major renovations. In the attack, Torresola injured White House policeman Joseph Downs and mortally wounded White House policeman Leslie Coffelt. Coffelt returned fire, killing Torresola with a shot to the head. Collazo wounded an officer before being shot in the stomach. Collazo survived with serious injuries; Coffelt died of his wounds 4 hours later in a hospital. Truman was not harmed, but he was placed at a huge risk. Collazo was convicted in a federal trial and received the death sentence. Truman commuted Collazo's death sentence to life in prison. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter further commuted Collazo's sentence to time served.[77]. [continued below]
John F. Kennedy:
DeleteDecember 11, 1960: While vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida, President-elect John F. Kennedy was threatened by Richard Paul Pavlick, a 73-year-old former postal worker driven by hatred of Catholics. Pavlick intended to crash his dynamite-laden 1950 Buick into Kennedy's vehicle, but he changed his mind after seeing Kennedy's wife and daughter bid him goodbye.[78] Pavlick was arrested three days later by the Secret Service after being stopped for a driving violation; police found the dynamite in his car and arrested him. On January 27, 1961, Pavlick was committed to the United States Public Health Service mental hospital in Springfield, Missouri, then was indicted for threatening Kennedy's life seven weeks later. Charges against Pavlick were dropped on December 2, 1963, ten days after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.[79] Judge Emett Clay Choate ruled that Pavlick was unable to distinguish between right and wrong in his actions, but kept him in the mental hospital. The federal government also dropped charges in August 1964, and Pavlick was eventually released from the New Hampshire State Hospital on December 13, 1966.[79][80][81] He died in 1975 aged 88.
Richard Nixon:
April 13, 1972: Arthur Bremer carried a firearm to a motorcade in Ottawa, Canada, intending to shoot Nixon, but the president's car went by too fast for Bremer to get a good shot. The next day, Bremer thought he saw Nixon's car outside of the Centre Block, but it had disappeared by the time he could retrieve his gun from his hotel room.[82] A month later, Bremer instead shot and seriously injured the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who was paralyzed from the waist down until his death in 1998. Three other people were wounded. Bremer served 35 years in prison.
February 22, 1974: Samuel Byck planned to kill Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the White House. He hijacked a DC-9 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport after killing a Maryland Aviation Administration police officer, and was told that it could not take off with the wheel blocks still in place. After he shot both pilots (one later died), an officer named Charles 'Butch' Troyer shot Byck through the plane's door window. He survived long enough to kill himself by shooting.
Gerald Ford:
Mid-August 1974: Muharem Kurbegovic, also known as The Alphabet Bomber, said in a message that he was going to come to Washington, D.C., and throw a nerve gas bomb at President Gerald Ford, then just ten days into his presidency.[86] Within one day, the CIA, the U.S. Secret Service, and other law enforcement agencies, working out of the White House basement, identified Kurbegovich; he was arrested on August 20.[87]. The group had identified his Yugoslav origins, using a CIA voice analysis of his tapes, with court records of the cases handled by his first targets—the judge and the police commissioners—triangulating his identity.[88]
September 5, 1975: On the northern grounds of the California State Capitol, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, drew a Colt M1911 .45-caliber pistol on Ford when he reached to shake her hand in a crowd. She had four cartridges in the pistol's magazine but none in the firing chamber, and as a result, the gun did not fire. She was quickly restrained by Secret Service agent Larry Buendorf. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, but was released from custody on August 14, 2009 (two years and eight months after Ford's death in 2006).[89]
[Ford, continued:] September 22, 1975: In San Francisco, California, only 17 days after Fromme's attempt, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from 40 feet (12 m) away.[90] A bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore's arm and the shot missed Ford, striking a building wall and slightly injuring taxi driver John Ludwig.[91] Moore was tried and convicted in federal court, and sentenced to prison for life. She was paroled from a federal prison on December 31, 2007, after serving more than 30 years—one year and five days after Ford's natural death.The two assassination attempts on Gerald Ford in September 1975 are the only two known cases of women attempting to assassinate an American president.
DeleteJimmy Carter:
May 5, 1979: Raymond Lee Harvey was an Ohio-born unemployed American drifter. He was arrested by the Secret Service after being found carrying a starter pistol with blank rounds, ten minutes before Carter was to give a speech at the Civic Center Mall in Los Angeles on May 5, 1979. Harvey had a history of mental illness,[92] but police had to investigate his claim that he was part of a four-man operation to assassinate the president.[93] According to Harvey, he fired seven blank rounds from the starter pistol on the hotel roof on the night of May 4 to test how much noise it would make. He claimed to have been with one of the plotters that night, whom he knew as "Julio". (This man was later identified as a 21-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, who gave the name Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz.)[92] At the time of his arrest, Harvey had eight spent rounds in his pocket, as well as 70 unspent blank rounds for the gun.[94] Harvey was jailed on a $50,000 bond, given his transient status, and Ortiz was alternately reported as being held on a $100,000 bond as a material witness[92] or held on a $50,000 bond being charged with burglary from a car.[94] Charges against the pair were ultimately dismissed for a lack of evidence.[95]
John Hinckley Jr. came close to shooting Carter during his re-election campaign, but he lost his nerve. He would later attempt to kill President Ronald Reagan in March 1981.[96][97]
Bill Clinton:
January 21, 1994: Ronald Gene Barbour, a retired military officer and freelance writer, plotted to kill Clinton while the president was jogging. Barbour returned to Florida a week later without having fired the shots at the president, who was on a state visit to Russia.[103] Barbour was sentenced to five years in prison and was released in 1998.
October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a 7.62×39mm SKS semi-automatic rifle at the White House from a fence overlooking the North Lawn, thinking that Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing there (Clinton was inside). Three tourists, Harry Rakosky, Ken Davis and Robert Haines, tackled Duran before he could injure anyone. Found to have a suicide note in his pocket, Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.[104][105]
[Clinton, continued:] October 2018: A package containing a pipe bomb addressed to his wife Hillary Clinton and sent to their home in Chappaqua, New York, was intercepted by the Secret Service. It was one of several mailed to other Democratic leaders in the same week, including former president Barack Obama. Bill Clinton was at the Chappaqua home when the package was intercepted, while Hillary was in Florida campaigning for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. Fingerprint DNA revealed that the package was sent by Florida resident Cesar Sayoc, who was captured two days after the package was intercepted. Prosecutors sought a life sentence for Sayoc, but the judge instead sentenced him to 20 years.
DeleteBarack Obama:
December 2008: A United States Marine, 20-year-old Kody Ray Brittingham, stationed at Camp Lejeune, wrote that he had taken an oath to "protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic." In a signed "letter of intent," he identified President-elect Obama as a "domestic enemy" and the target of Brittingham's planned assassination plot. A search of his barracks uncovered a journal containing white supremacist material. In June 2010, Brittingham was sentenced to 100 months in federal prison.
November 2011: 21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez was influenced by conspiracy theories and fringe religious viewpoints to attempt to murder Obama. Having traveled from his native Idaho, he hit the White House with several rounds fired from a semi-automatic rifle. No one was injured, but a window was broken. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
2011 to 2012: The far-right terrorist group FEAR plotted to carry out a series of terror attacks which included assassinating Obama. The plot was foiled when four members of the group were arrested on murder charges and one, Michael Burnett, agreed to co-operate with authorities in return for a lighter sentence.
October 2012: A mentally ill man named Mitchell Kusick of Westminster, Colorado, was arrested after confessing to his therapist that he intended to kill Obama with a shotgun at a campaign stop in Boulder, Colorado.
April 2013: Another attempt was made when a letter laced with the toxin ricin was sent to Obama.
May 2013: Ricin-laced letters were sent to Obama and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg vowing to kill anyone who tried to take away the sender's guns. The letters in this case were sent by actress Shannon Richardson, who tried to frame her husband Nathan for the crime.
June 2013: Two white supremacists, Glendon Scott Crawford of Galway, New York and Eric Feight of Hudson, New York, were arrested for a plot to kill Muslim Americans and other perceived enemies of Israel with a homemade "radiation gun", described by Crawford as "Hiroshima on a light switch". It later emerged that Crawford had suggested using the device against President Obama as well as several other targets.
February 2015: Three men from New York City were arrested by the FBI after telling undercover agents about their plans to kill Obama and join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
October 2018: A package that contained a pipe bomb was sent to former President Obama at his home in Washington, D.C. The package was intercepted by the Secret Service.
April 2019: Larry Mitchell Hopkins, a member of the United Constitutional Patriots militia, was arrested on April 20 after he allegedly confessed that his militia were training for a planned assassination of Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Joe Biden:
May 23, 2023: Sai Varshith Kandula, a 19-year-old man from Chesterfield, Missouri (near St. Louis), drove a rented box truck into a barrier that separated the White House grounds from the public. Shortly thereafter he was taken into custody by the United States Park Police and was found to have a Nazi flag in his truck. Kandula expressed admiration for the Third Reich and stated his intentions were to "kill the president" and "seize power". [from Wiki]
"If Trump wins, we hope we get to live long enough to see, and to attempt to record, the essence of what he does." I hope so, too, Bob.
DeleteMike L: nice history. As far as living long enough to see the essence of what he (Trump) does, one think we know he does is hang out at his golf resorts. 250 days his last term. Now with heightened security, anyone willing to guess how many tax dollars a round of golf for Donald Trump costs?
DeleteI just love the undecided voter. Do I vote for a convicted felon or a normal human being. It's just so tough!
ReplyDelete