The Leader of the Pro-Death Party

It's not just the guns

Oh, look—teleprompters.

Last Friday, I thought there was a possibility that the illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court was finally going to rule on presidential immunity. But, because they want to give Donald as much help as possible, they put the decision off yet again. And instead, they decided to kick us all in the teeth by dealing another blow to gun safety. The decision, which held that the federal ban on bump stocks is not authorized by existing statute, was so bad that Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench.

This case stems from a statute put in place by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 2018 in the wake of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas in which the shooter holed up in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and, using several rifles that were modified with bump stocks, proceeded to slaughter 60 people and wound over 400. In the eleven minutes in which all of those people were killed and injured (some of them grievously), the mass murderer fired over 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

The United States Supreme Court had already determined that a machine gun ban was constitutional, and the ATF reasonably concluded that bump stocks are the equivalent to machine guns because guns utilizing them fire ammunition at similar rates. Friday’s ruling, written by Clarence Thomas for the six-justice super-majority, simply said, from a purely technical point of view, bump stocks are not like machine guns—because rifles using them cannot fire more than one shot by a single function of the trigger, and cannot do so automatically—and therefore they cannot be banned under the same statute.

Friday was a terrible day for those of us who don’t want to die — and don’t want our kids to die — at the hands of mass murderers wielding weapons of war, modified or otherwise. The irony, of course, is that the Trump-era bump stock ban was one of the very, very few decent things the Trump administration managed to accomplish. And the Supreme Court he cobbled together, with a big assist from Mitch McConnell, Leonard Leo, and short-sighted Founder, simply declared that the 60 people murdered in Las Vegas don’t matter because of a technicality.

And what was Donald’s reaction to the decision? Well, for the first time in a long time, he said he respects a court decision. Then he bragged about getting the NRA’s endorsement.

Back in February of this year, Donald said, “During my four years, nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me, having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield.” And, with the exception of the bump stock ban, this is true. Las Vegas was followed by the Sutherland Springs church shooting that killed 26; the Parkland shooting that killed 17; the El Paso shooting that killed 23; and dozens of other mass shootings during his administration and he did, indeed, do nothing. In the wake of Friday’s Supreme Court decision, we can expect more of the same if Donald is allowed back in the White House.

As horrified as I am by the court’s decision — and I am very horrified — I’m also grateful to them for making it so clear what the election in November is all about: life or death. Friday’s decision—and Donald’s response to it—were powerful reminders that the leader of the Republican is the death candidate. 

Gun deaths are now the number one killer of American children. In a sane society, that would be enough to mobilize vast majorities of the electorate and their representatives to take urgent action. But in an end-stage democracy, not even the slaughter of 21 six-year-olds at Sandy Hook and 19 nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds at Uvalde was enough to make any Republicans care.

It’s not just Donald’s cynical embrace of weapons of war that should alarm us—after all, this has been a mainstream Republican position for years. He was also willing to turn a global pandemic into a wedge issue. And during the horrors of the first two waves of COVID, when as many as 5,000 Americans were dying every day, he played golf and bragged about his television ratings.

In the end, in excess of 400,000 Americans died of COVID because of his incompetence and malicious inaction. He never expressed any sorrow. He refused to help the country come together or mourn. The only thing he gave a damn about was the possibility that the pandemic was hurting his campaign.

In the process, he might have killed Herman Cain at a rally. ; he almost killed Chris Christie at debate prep; and he tried to kill Joe Biden during the debate.

You could also make the argument that Donald has killed the Republican Party—or at least their sense of patriotism, decency and shame—but that’s hardly a great loss. 

Whether it’s his anti-vaccine platform (he continues to claim that he will defund any schools that require vaccines for diseases like polio and smallpox), his love of dictators, or his racism, Donald does not care about American lives. Kim Jong Un killed Otto Warmbier and Trump still talks about how much he and the North Korean dictator love each other.

He took out front page ads in New York City’s major newspapers calling for the now-exonerated Five to get the death penalty. He suggested the country’s top general should be killed.

As I wrote in my first book, Too Much and Never Enough, “If he can in anyway profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.”

And how do we even begin to estimate the number of American women he has killed or will get killed with his increasingly extremist anti-choice stance and the Supreme Court rulings that embody it? How many will he kill with his fossil fuel corruption and climate change denialism? How many has he killed with his calls for extremism and violence? And how many will die if he loses in November? How many more if he wins?

The harsh reality is that Donald is a serious national security threat to the American people. This is a life-or-death election. And my uncle is the death candidate. Let’s choose life, shall we?