“Quiet, Piggy”

If the subject line of this email offends you, as it does me, your moral compass has likely survived the first year of the second Trump administration. Even after many months of threatening rhetoric from this president, it’s hard not to be taken aback by this misogynistic insult he lobbed at a female reporter earlier this week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the most offensive or dangerous thing uttered or amplified by President Trump in the past few days.

In the Oval Office with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the CIA concluded ordered the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump attacked another female reporter for asking about his murder. Yesterday, Trump called for the execution of Democratic members of Congress who posted a video urging members of the military to refuse unlawful orders. Trump falsely accused these Democrats of sedition for urging service members’ adherence to the Constitution, and signaled support for their hanging.

All of this in a vacuum would be quite alarming, but what makes it even worse is the political context in which it occurred. Earlier yesterday, the U.S. Coast Guard, run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced they were no longer classifying swastikas, Confederate flags, or nooses as “hate symbols.” Instead, these images were officially (albeit temporarily) downgraded by the DHS to “potentially divisive” symbols, as if their meaning is up for interpretation and debate.

What appears to be up for debate is how much longer the American people and the Republican Party will tolerate Trump’s depravity. This week, we began to see cracks in the MAGA movement surrounding the release of the Epstein files. Recognizing he had lost the support of Republicans, Trump acquiesced to public opinion and immense pressure in his own party, which led to a fast-moving train of defeat for him in the House and, surprisingly, the Senate. How and when Trump’s Department of Justice releases the Epstein files now remains to be seen, but the fact that elements of MAGA have turned against Trump is significant.

We are also seeing some cracks emerge when it comes to Republicans speaking out against right-wing antisemitism. Sen. Ted Cruz recently called antisemitism a “growing cancer” in the GOP and noted, “this poison of anti-Semitism on the right, it is spreading with young people. It is gaining traction.” He’s correct, but the larger problem is that the leaders of the GOP – specifically President Trump and his White House – are the leading cause of this cancer’s metastasis, and no Republican elected officials or organizations have condemned Trump.

Last month, Vice President Vance downplayed outrage surrounding the release of hundreds of bigoted, antisemitic, and racist texts from young Republican leaders as “pearl clutching.” In doing so, he sent a clear signal from the White House of acceptance and normalization of these antisemitic and hateful beliefs. This past weekend, when faced with a choice between rejecting extremists or pandering to them, Trump chose to defend Tucker Carlson for his controversial interview with Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist leader whom Trump hosted at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.

These mixed messages are reportedly “confusing” a younger generation of Republicans exposed to far-right extremists and their insidious ideology. The problem – which Democrats do not have – is that the person at the top of the GOP has repeatedly aligned with, defended, echoed, accepted, embraced, hosted, and even pardoned the most dangerous elements of the far-right.

We “whatabout” this danger away or get distracted by other problems at our own peril, as recently demonstrated by the reemergence of the Oath Keepers, a militia whose leader was sentenced to 18 years of jail time for sedition following his role in January 6. The head of the Oath Keepers, Stuart Rhodes, who was also the first person Donald Trump pardoned, recently urged Trump to “call up” and deploy far-right militias “under his command.”

That’s right – yesterday, our president accused Democratic lawmakers of sedition, while an extremist actually convicted of and jailed for sedition and pardoned by Trump recently announced his willingness to fight for him on our streets. With this, we are one step closer to Trump having a dangerous, extrajudicial militia – the same kind of group that authoritarians have used to violently oppress minorities and political opposition.

So what can we do about it? We need to take this fight to the ballot box and continue to send Trump a message similar to that which he conveyed this week – “QUIET, PIGGY” – and the loudest voices must come from Republicans. It may sound offensive, but these are literally his own words… and let’s face it, they’re fitting.