Through its lies, the Trump regime is giving the green light to more extrajudicial executions
The regime’s mind-blowing dishonesty is ultimately a way to demean and mark those who resist. They function as fascist solidarity, signaling that partisans can and should do anything and everything to political enemies, no matter how violent, cruel, or unnecessary.
Trump lies about so many things and with such frequency that it can start to seem like a gag or a joke. He lied about the crowd size at his first inauguration. He lied that a hurricane would hit Alabama in 2019, and doubled down when corrected. He lied that you could fight covid with bleach treatment, then said he’d only been joking (which was a lie).
The president spreading disinformation for any reason is bad. But often Trump and his minions lie not just to stoke his ego, but as a deliberate tactic to justify and escalate fascist violence. Lies give the president’s followers excuses and justifications to target, harass, and murder the regime’s enemies.
This has happened repeatedly in Minneapolis. After ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good to death, Trump called her a “professional agitator” and claimed she ran Ross over in her car (both disgusting lies). These falsehoods became a pretext for the FBI to refuse to investigate the killing — and instead to try to investigate Good’s widow.
They also prompted Vice President JD Vance to claim that ICE agents are “protected by absolute immunity,” and cannot be prosecuted for anything they do on the job. As a matter of law, this is a lie — federal agents cannot murder everyone they want.
But the lie is not really meant to convince legal experts or even judges. It’s meant to signal to ICE agents that the administration will back them up when they murder, no matter what.
The agents who confronted Pretti heard the message loud and clear. The vice president of the authoritarian regime told them they could kill anyone who annoyed them. Pretti annoyed them. So they killed him. And now the lies that Miller, Noem, and Trump are telling about Pretti’s death are intended to encourage further extrajudicial executions and likely will do so. [Continue reading…]