As you no doubt know, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, the retreat of former President Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday. Adding insult to injury has been the response from the other side, including Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media.
Symone Sanders-Townsend, who campaigned for President Joe Biden and until last year worked for Vice President Kamala Harris, issued a call over Twitter for people to stop calling what the FBI did a "raid."
In a since-deleted tweet, Tim Wise, who refers to himself as an "antiracism educator," said to "end them," referencing "Any MAGAt who advocates violence in response to Trump facing justice should be arrested now."
That was just the start of things to come.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post published a column by Dana Milbank, who tends to have the worst of hot garbage takes. For this column, though, "GOP hysteria over the Mar-a-Lago search is an invitation to violence," they even printed it in Spanish a day later.
It's not just people posting on social media, though, who Milbank goes after. Rather, it's Fox News and Republican officials who are responsible:
I would like nothing more than to be wrong about this. But the reckless response by the GOP-Fox News axis to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago makes it feel as though we’re falling into the abyss.
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Responsible media and political figures would, at the very least, counsel people to wait until all the facts about the Mar-a-Lago search are known. Instead, Republican officials encouraged hysteria. House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy accused the Justice Department of “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed the “weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.” Others referenced “3rd world Marxist dictatorships,”Democrats “abusing power with no recourse,” and an FBI trying “to take political enemies out.”
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And from Fox News: “This is the worst attack on this Republic in modern history, period,” said radio host Mark Levin. “We’re at war,” said former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, baselessly claiming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain approved the search. “We need to choke down the FBI and choke down the Justice Department.”
On and on, they ranted: Fox News’s Dan Bongino said, “You do not live in a constitutional republic anymore.” Former Trump administration official Michael Caputo said, “The FBI is the KGB” after the “military-style raid.” Former Trump budget director Russ Vought wanted to “dismantle the FBI into a thousand bits.” Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump said, “This should shake you to your core.” Host Laura Ingraham threatened that “when we get power back, it’s time to hold everyone accountable.”
These are open invitations to the violent and the unstable to take matters into their own hands.
Speaking of the Washington Post, they are taking heat from both sides. As Matt covered earlier this morning, the outlet dared to go with a headline that read, "Garland vowed to depoliticize Justice. Then the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago." After a freakout from liberals, the outlet decided to change the headline and issue a tweet apologizing for it.
As if Milbank's column wasn't bad enough, the editorial board pretty much went with the same exact narrative in a Wednesday opinion piece of their own, "Republicans' response to the Mar-a-Lago search is disturbing and dangerous."
It starts even more annoyingly by referencing "Lock her up" chants about Hillary Clinton and later on uses Trump pleading the Fifth, as is his right, against him:
“Lock her up, lock her up.”
Donald Trump’s supporters lobbed this rallying cry at Hillary Clinton in 2016 — hoping for the imprisonment of a political opponent for allegedly mishandling classified material. Now, however, some of the same people appear to believe that even a rule-of-law investigation of Mr. Trump for a possible violation of the same set of rules is out of order.
.... Republicans are proclaiming outrage over the search, arguing that no president has ever been subjected to such a proceeding. They may be right. But then, no modern president has been the subject of as many and varied investigations as Mr. Trump — who invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination in one of them on Wednesday.
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For now, the prudent reaction to the search would be to await its tangible results. Instead, Republicans are behaving with gross irresponsibility: from talk show hosts urging violence that seems all-too-possible after the events of Jan. 6, 2021, to Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon comparing the FBI to the Gestapo, to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) declaring the Justice Department in “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.” This rhetoric is disturbing and dangerous — not to mention hypocritical. In fact, it is Mr. Trump’s administration and acolytes who sought to weaponize the Justice Department, and it is they who today are attempting to turn what to all appearances is a legitimate inquiry into a political circus.
The Washington Post wasn't the only outlet to get in the game of slamming Republicans' reactions to an unprecedented raid on a former president. Writing for Vox, Zack Beauchamp on Tuesday afternoon warned that "The Republican response to the Mar-a-Lago raid should scare you," a piece which made it to Wednesday's edition of RealClearPolitics.
Beauchamp, like others, referenced House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), though he claims the former "responded by openly threatening Attorney General Merrick Garland." Even those Republicans who didn't make remarks got under Beauchamp's skin, deserving his ire:
Some leading Republicans, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, did not engage in such fevered speculation and kept their counsel. But the backlash from the party has been loud and broad, revealing the GOP as basically in lockstep with the Trumpian line that the Justice Department has been fully politicized and needs to be brought to heel.
The larger point of Beauchamp's piece is to claim "Republicans [are] against the rule of law," as evidenced by a subheader under which he writes:
During the Trump era, however, Republicans began to embrace an increasingly radical critique, one that rejected the very notion of a neutral “rule of law” as illusory under current conditions.
In their view, Democrats and liberals have so thoroughly seized control of major American institutions — including the federal bureaucracy and law enforcement apparatus — that nonpartisan governance is functionally impossible. This belief, ironically reminiscent of some arguments made by critical race theorists, argues that the very idea of small-l liberal neutrality is a fiction — that politics is a no-holds-barred struggle for power, and the question is whether it is wielded for us or against us.
Not to be outdone, POLITICO's Kyle Cheney and Meridith McGraw wrote Thursday morning, "Trump world gripped with anger, fear and a host of conspiracies about the FBI search." Their subheadline claims, "There is anxiety in the ranks about how this happened, even as they seek to benefit politically from it." Though when it comes to such a benefit, that's on the Biden administration, Democrats, and those in the mainstream media who were for such a raid.
"A wave of concern and even paranoia is gripping parts of Trump world as federal investigators tighten their grip on the former president and his inner circle," is how they go on to begin their piece, which also at one point claims, "Trump world is no stranger to being deeply suspicious, even conspiratorial."
As we've been saying ever since the raid took place, if anything, this raid has likely emboldened Trump to run again in 2024. In fact, we might even be treated to an official announcement sooner rather than later.