Kagan’s piece was accompanied by a graphic that spliced the bottom half of Trump’s head with the top half of a statue of Julius Caesar. Kagan referenced Caesar twice during the first third of this rambling piece, noting how “indicting Trump for trying to overthrow the government will prove akin to indicting Caesar for crossing the Rubicon, and just as effective”, and that Trump, like Caesar, “wields a clout that transcends the laws and institutions of government.”
Brief though these references may have been, together with the image they were more than enough to establish a very clear subtext. Trump is America’s Caesar. And every schoolboy knows – or used to know – what happened to Caesar after he became dictator for life.
Are we being primed for the Brutus Option?
When the deep state talks this openly about the future, we’d be foolish not to pay attention. The suggestion that Trump is at risk of being killed before election day might seem a little melodramatic to you, but the signs are everywhere. In recent weeks, multiple news outlets have run stories speculating on the possibility of Trump’s imminent death.
Two weeks ago, MSN ran a piece with the headline, “Here’s what happens if Donald Trump dies while running in the 2024 presidential election.” Similar headlines also ran on Business Insider and the Brookings Institute’s website: “What happens for GOP candidates if Trump dies during the 2024 election?” “What happens if a presidential candidate cannot take office due to death or incapacitation before 2025?”
When did the media ever speak about a presidential candidate, especially a former president, in this way? There may be some parallels with Reagan in ’84, but they’re very thin. Reagan was 73, and signs of dementia were becoming too obvious to ignore. It seemed that Reagan’s age and health were going to dominate the campaign until, during the second debate with Walter Mondale, Reagan quipped, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” And that was that. The issue was put to bed with a nice cup of hot cocoa. At no point did the media ever suggest that Reagan might drop dead before the election cycle was over.
Trump is in his late 70s. He’s far from a young man. But he’s still four years younger than the incumbent and apart from his heft – remember he’s 6’3”, though – there’s no indication that he’s in anything other than remarkable shape for a man of his age.
As I noted in a tweet, “What’s amazing about Trump is that 7 years of the most relentless scrutiny, in and out of office, have had no discernible effects on his health. In fact, he looks better than ever. Biden, meanwhile, looks more and more like the host from Tales from the Crypt…” It’s true. For a man who loves fast food and drinks as many as 12 cans of Diet Coke a day, Trump really does appear to be built different. He has USA in his DNA.
It’s quite simple. All these references to Trump’s death aren’t informed speculation: They’re wish fulfilment.
It’s not the first time the media has got carried away with the hope that Trump might die. Remember the crowing when he got COVID, back in 2020? “Here’s what happens if Trump dies or is too sick to be president”, said Vice, explaining how if Trump had died and then Mike Pence died as well, America could have ended up with a Nancy Pelosi presidency…
Just what is going on?
Talk of a Trump dictatorship has been unceasing, since before he even took office in 2016. The Trump Reich never materialised. "Orange Hitler" didn’t launch a global nuclear war or round up all the ethnic minorities. The Squad weren’t sent on a one-way helicopter ride over Lake Michigan. He didn’t even lock up Hillary Clinton. Instead, Trump just followed sensible policies that would have put him firmly in the political mainstream barely a few decades ago.
He placed American manufacturing back on its feet; attempted to stabilise and regain control of America’s borders; and, crucially, he prevented America from becoming embroiled in more needless foreign wars, while reminding America’s allies in NATO of their obligations for mutual defence. Even a mild assertion of American self-interest was a mortal threat to the globalists’ plans. But we know all of this.
Of course, Trump, troll that he is, likes nothing more than to play up his enemies’ fears. At a presidential townhall in Iowa recently, he added fuel to the media’s fire by reassuring Sean Hannity that he has no plans to be a dictator – “except for day one.” “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he added. Closing the border and resuming domestic drilling for oil and gas are both well-established prerogatives of the president, and would require no special extra-Constitutional measures to achieve.
Trump has promised a harsher line should he regain office including the most massive series of deportations in America’s history. You only need to look at his mugshot, whose release catastrophically backfired on his opponents, to see that he is now a man who knows exactly who his enemies are. The same could not be said of Trump for most of his first term, if not all of it. Some have already suggested Trump 2.0 will be a “retribution presidency”, but what that will probably amount to is a new determination not to allow grifters, carpetbaggers and deep-state operatives to hijack his presidency again. This is just good sense, a basic actualisation of the friend-enemy distinction that lies at the base of all politics, not a planned sequel to the Night of the Long Knives.
What matters, ultimately, is the narrative that dictatorship provides Trump’s opponents. It justifies any and all methods used against him. And I mean, any and all. It has justified the unceasing, unprecedented persecution of Trump, his family and his supporters for the last seven years – don’t forget, an anti-Klan statute is currently being used to jail a Trump supporter, Douglass Mackey, for making memes about Hillary Clinton – and it will justify further measures to prevent him from becoming president again.
America is, after all, a democracy, the antithesis of tyranny. The nation exists because of an act of rebellion against a supposed tyrant, George III. There is no more American act than to throw off the shackles of a dictator.
“Don’t tread on me” cries the deep state as it strikes out at you.
Trump now has the Republican nomination wrapped up, no question, and new polls show that Biden is trailing him in five of the six most important battleground states. Biden is currently losing to Trump by 4-10% among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Democrat voters are abandoning Biden in droves. The testimony of Spencer Weiss, a 53-year-old man from Bloomsburg Pennsylvania, could be taken as representative. He voted for Biden in 2020, but is now putting his misgivings aside and backing Trump. “The world is falling apart under Biden… I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role-model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him.”
Even herpes-ridden actor Michael Rapaport has declared, with his famous eloquence, that he might have to vote for Donald Trump. In a video posted to Twitter, Rapaport said, “if it comes down to pig-dick Donald Trump and Smokin’ Joe Biden, I’m sorry… voting for pig-dick Donald Trump is on the table.” He quickly reassured his fans that “I’ll still call him slob-dick Donald Trump, pig-dick Donald Trump and all that. But we need to get this whole f- situation under control.” Rapaport’s principal concern was anti-Semitism in the wake of the Israel-Gaza crisis and the Democrats’ dismal response to it. Whether Rapaport and other prominent libtards really are single-issue voters on anti-Semitism remains to be seen, but it’s hard not to treat such a declaration as a real turning-point for Biden.
In a speech back in November, Trump referred to his political opponents as vermin. Many of them really are. But vermin are most dangerous when cornered and desperate. Virtually every option, legal and illegal, has been exhausted to prevent Trump from reaching the White House. He still keeps on coming.
Robert Kagan is right: “Unless something radical and unforeseen happens” Trump really can win the election. “Radical and unforeseen,” you say, Rob? I wonder what that could mean?
In recent years, attempted assassinations and attacks on prominent right-wing figures have become ever more common across the Western world. The “Trump of the Tropics”, Jair Bolsonaro, was stabbed during the election in 2018. He survived and went on to win. The man who attacked him was later acquitted as “mentally ill”, but Bolsonaro maintained that the attack was politically motivated. Adélio Bispo de Oliveira told police he was acting “on God’s orders”, but he was a committed leftist who had criticised Bolsonaro extensively on social media. He knew exactly what he was doing and why.
In recent months there have been serious attacks against Dutch politician Thierry Baudet, and one of the co-founders of Spain’s Vox party was shot in the face in a drive-by shooting as his party attempted to block the left-wing takeover of the country. Anti-right-wing violence is now a fixture of political life in Germany as well, with candidates for the surging AfD under near constant attack by Antifa groups and migrants, with the tacit support of Germany’s security and intelligence services. The German government now regularly states that it might ban the AfD, ensuring every left-wing lunatic and his wife’s boyfriend know it’s open season on the party and its membership.
America, we should not forget, has a long history of nasty political violence. Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy were all assassinated in office, and Reagan was wounded but not killed. Theodore Roosevelt was shot on the campaign trail in 1912, just as he was about to deliver a speech. (The story is legendary. The former president, after a cursory self-examination of the wound, decided it was not going to kill him, and so took the stage and spoke for nearly 90 minutes, with blood soaking his shirt. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began, “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!”)
Sic semper tyrannis! Thus is it always for tyrants! These are the words Brutus is claimed to have said after plunging his knife into Caesar. Trump isn’t a Caesar and he never will be, for good or ill. But that won’t stop his sworn enemies from taking their concocted tyrant narrative to its logical democratic conclusion if they have to. They’ll justify it in your name, and the name of America. They’ll call it patriotic. I pray to God they fail.
