The President Is Pushing the Exact Conspiracies Cited by the Pittsburgh Shooter 5 Days After the Attack

Finally, President Trump has released his very own Willie Horton ad. The original was crafted by the 1988 campaign of George H. W. Bush, now considered a member of the Republican Party's polite aristocrat wing—that is, the folks who use the inside voice while trying to scare the bejeezus out of old white people, and, consequently, get them to the voting booth. There is no inside voice for Donald Trump, who released a racist bullhorn of a political ad Wednesday, a neat encapsulation of his party's strategy for the homestretch of the 2018 midterms. Fittingly, he tweeted it out himself. No dogwhistles, no middle man:

It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

This is a quintessential example of outright propaganda, directly from the president. The most despicable member of a subgroup that could be found—Luis Bracamontes, the undocumented cop-killer you might recognize from his frequent features on Fox News—is held up as representative of the whole. A clip of him bragging about killing police officers, and promising to kill more, is woven together with footage of The Caravan, Trump's number one propaganda piece for this campaign cycle—the sequel to The Ebola Panic (2014) and The Email Protocol (2016). The implication couldn't be clearer: there are hordes of Luis Bracamontes clones swarming towards the border like it's World War Z, and Democrats will let them in. Undocumented immigrants are violent criminals, and only Donald Trump and Republicans can protect you.

Never mind that immigrants are significantly less likely to commit crimes than are native-born citizens, and most cities that have seen an influx of immigrants over the last few decades have seen a drop in violent crime over the same period. Never mind that The Caravan is still a month or even two from reaching the southern border, where those who make it will present themselves to immigration authorities to apply for asylum—as is their right under international law. Never mind that most will settle in Mexico, and the vast majority will not be permitted to enter America. The President of the United States is determined to cast them as violent criminals swarming over the border to murder cops, and Democrats as aiding and abetting them.

This, you might remember, was one part of the conspiracy theory percolating in the mind of a man who entered a synagogue in Pittsburgh last week and committed mass murder. Robert Bowers posted this on Gab, a social media haven for white supremacists, minutes before he murdered 11 Jewish people on Saturday:

HIAS likes to bring invaders that kill our people.

I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.

Screw your optics, I’m going in.

"Invaders that kill our people." The president and his allies now frequently refer to The Caravan—and illegal immigration in general—as an "invasion." Never mind that, apart from a slight uptick in 2018, illegal immigration has been falling for years. Why, five days after a man who believed undocumented immigrants are coming here in large numbers to kill people, is the President of the United States producing propaganda that says the exact same thing?

It's not just that dimension of the Pittsburgh shooter's conspiracy theory that Trump proved willing to back Wednesday. He also dabbled in the anti-Semitic dimension:

REPORTER: Do think somebody is funding the caravan?

TRUMP: "I wouldn't be surprised, yeah. I wouldn't be surprised."

T: "I don't know who, but I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of people say yes." pic.twitter.com/U1w9EYHcw6 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2018

This is not the first time Trump has peddled nonsense on the basis many people are saying something. It's his go-to line when he's fabricating something out of whole cloth.

But this is the same week a mass murderer carried out an explicitly anti-Semitic attack based on the idea Jewish people are assisting The Caravan. So the president suggests that a top boogeyman on the right—George Soros, a wealthy Jewish financier who last week was himself targeted with a pipe bomb as part of a rolling attempted assassination campaign by a Trump supporter—could be involved? This follows on his continued rhetoric about "globalists," an anti-Semitic code word popular with white nationalists. Yes, the reporter here deserves some of the blame for prompting the president with this vile nonsense. But he's the goddamned president, and he is doubling down on the exact conspiracy theories that led people on the fringes of society to engage in domestic terrorism last week.

The president is not concerned about any of that, though. He really isn't. You can tell by an interview he did with Axios this week, which caused a stir Wednesday because of some journalistic malpractice that sparked the ridiculous 14th Amendment "debate." The Be Smart folks released another teaser clip Thursday morning, in which the president essentially defended his rhetoric that is placing reporters in graver and graver danger on the basis that, well, maybe they should say nice things about him:

EXCLUSIVE: President Trump defends his "enemy of the people" attacks on the media https://t.co/ucMwCkXvBp pic.twitter.com/qK0CMLycnX — Axios (@axios) November 1, 2018

The president proudly says he demonizes the media because it makes his fans "like him more." He also says it's his "only way to fight back" against "false" reporting. That's right, folks: just don't say anything false, and we're good. Except, as the president has admitted multiple times, false reporting to him includes all negative reporting about him. If it's negative, it's false. It doesn't comport with his personal reality. After all, saying negative things about Donald Trump violates the first law of the Trumpian worldview: that Donald Trump is a winner, not a loser. You're the loser!

The real message here is that, if you want to avoid the ever-escalating threat that you will be killed in an act of political violence, you should just say positive things about the president, all the time. It's not complicated—just ask the Brain Geniuses over on the president's favorite teevee show:

Fox & Friends Defends Trump Media Attacks: He's Simply Asking Report it the 'Way I Want it Reported' https://t.co/yEcmyTvUin pic.twitter.com/toN6mvmDkR — Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 1, 2018

That, after all, is the purpose of the free press: to report what's happening in a way that pleases the most powerful people in the country. Wait, what? Have these people lost their minds? Just say what he wants you to say and you won't have any trouble. We've reached an unnerving crossroads of Stockholm Syndrome and mafia omertà.

But there was only one way for the president to truly demonstrate his total non-concern about right-wing political violence in this country. Just to cross his T's, his administration is ending a program designed to combat white supremacist domestic terrorism—you know, like the Pittsburgh shooting. Or, it increasingly seems, the Kentucky shooting.

"Trump admin will apparently not renew program to fight domestic terror"https://t.co/EztlV0enlA pic.twitter.com/O8xS5jeADk — Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) November 1, 2018

The president has embraced political violence from the rally podium. He praised a political ally for assaulting a reporter. He has encouraged supporters to punch protesters in the face and offered to pay their legal bills. He's suggested "Second Amendment people" could find a solution if his then-political opponent, Hillary Clinton, defeated him in an election. He suggested Clinton's security detail should stop protecting her, adding, "Let's see what happens to her." When white supremacists marched through the streets of an American city chanting his name, and one got in his car and killed a counter-protester, Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides—on both sides." He has cast his political opponents as criminals avoiding just legal punishment, and cast his struggle with them—and the media—in apocalyptic terms.

Now, after a spasm of right-wing political violence, some of which was perpetrated by suspects who explicitly cited conspiracy theories the president has pushed, the president is continuing to push those exact conspiracies. He is publicly declaring his non-concern about violence against reporters, and rolling back programs meant to combat the individuals and groups who are hell-bent on waging the kind of attacks we've seen recently—or worse. The question now is whether this is merely his strategy for the homestretch of the 2018 midterms, or whether it will continue beyond Election Day.

Another question? Whether more blood will spill before it's all over. Or maybe the question is how much.