Amid Trump’s ongoing attacks against the Pope, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus on Truth Social:

This, not surprisingly, upset a lot of Christians, including a lot of high-profile MAGA personalities. Eventually, Trump deleted the post without apologizing, claiming that he thought it depicted him as “a doctor”.

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The response to this post on the MAGA forums has been wild, and I think it is a great look in at the way MAGA loyalists respond to Trump’s most wild missteps. There are four main takes here: Trump actually is Jesus, Trump was never trying to say he was Jesus, Trump was trying to say he was Jesus, but it’s just a meme so no one should be upset, and Trump really screwed up by likening himself to Jesus. The latter is the most popular response, but let’s take a look at all three.

Some of them remain fully loyal, arguing that Trump is sort of a God:

We need to take Trump seriously. It’s not crazy to think that after all he has accomplished he is definitely closer to a God than a human that he might be the new Jesus Christ

That post inspired debate:

• After much deliberation, the panel have decided that, yes, it is in fact a crazy thing to think.

• You can’t be serious. Just here to troll?

  • Tell me what proof we have he hasn’t Jesus. Trump said multiple times he is the only one who could save the world. That sounds a lot like Jesus

  • why not? if you are a christian, you believe in the second coming. why can’t it be Trump?

• Are you retarded? This picture is blasphemous af

  • Ok commie.

Some pretend that this post was never supposed to depict Trump as Jesus. One person posted “Retards are trying to say this is Trump as Jesus” with the image above. The commenters, basically, said “well yeah, because it is”.

• Ummmm… Definitley Jesus imagery, cross or no cross.

• OP see an optometrist. You can bicker over whether it’s offensive, blasphemous, or whatever, but you can’t argue that is just Trump dressed up as some random “healer”.

• Sure depicts him as being the saviour! 🤷‍♂️

  • Where’s the cross? Any cross for that matter? It’s not even religious. All I see are patriotic symbols, AND a man who’s purpose is to save the U.S., not mankind.

    • Are you serious? You think all Jesus imagery depicts a cross? Or all christian imagery depicts a cross? 🤣🤦🏻‍♂️

      • Like I said, show me the cross. All I see are patriotic symbols. You ever see a fighter jet in a religious image or icon? What about the Statue of Liberty? You see that in any religious renderings? Anyone who has an ounce of common sense realizes this isn’t Trump as Jesus. It’s Trump as the SAVIOR of the UNITED STATES. Period.

Another person in this camp tried to argue this was actually depicting Trump as “The Magician” from a tarot deck:

There are lots of comments that essentially say “It’s a meme. CALM DOWN!” These represent the nihilistic core of MAGA and they are the main body of comments in opposition to the final, most popular group, which recognizes Trump’s post as a mistake:

• he’s really trying to alienate all of his bases, isn’t he? weird strategy.

  • he could have just owned the mistake and apologized. the ‘red cross doctor’ excuse is insulting.

    • Exactly. How is it that everyone can just repat that stupid answer without thinking for themselves. My mind is blown how many on theDonald are full blown redditards.

  • None of ‘his bases’ has ever been the compulsively offended menstruating faggots.

Over in Proud Boys corner, it is no surprise that they called Trump out for this. Unlike the forums of MAGA loyalists, they do not see Trump as infallible and they let him know when they disapprove. From the Cape Fear Proud Boys on Telegram:

Donnie, you’re not Jesus.

It’s difficult to articulate what a poorly thought out political/optics decision this was. It’s an L across the board. The Christian right hates it, both Evangelicals and Trad-Catholics. The Fox News boomers hate it, the zoomer right thinks you suck at making memes and the noticers have noticed what religion you wouldn’t dare make fun of. On the left, the mainline rainbow Protestants with their female pastors hate it, so do the modern Papist Vatican worshiping open-border Catholics. You also handed the secular left more ammunition for the case they are making in convincing the national electorate that you’re a clown. This is a case they are winning by the way. Who was this post intended for? How does this move the needle anywhere but down? We can’t afford self-inflicted wounds like this. What happened to you? Where is the guy we voted for in 2016?

Please stop being retarded.

One of Trump’s big appeals starting back in 2016 was his political incorrectness, brazenness, and his trolling of the left. Up through the present, that escalated into weaponization of the state, including threats of, and actual use of, government violence against Trump’s enemies. I have written extensively in previous MAGAReports about the appetite for this among hard core MAGA supporters. But Trump seems to be repeatedly overstepping what even his core supporters have an appetite for. The violence in Minnesota; the military actions in Venezuela and Iran and, he promises, in Cuba; his close alliance with Israel; his insults directed at the Pope - these are largely beyond what MAGA wanted to see from him this term.

Trump is probing the boundaries of what MAGA will accept, and he seems to be doing so without a clear goal or reason. I think the Proud Boys’ post captured the confusion in the base most accurately. “Who was this post intended for? How does this move the needle anywhere but down?” My take is that we are, increasingly, seeing Trump’s psychology and his own nihilism laid bare, and that he himself is unaware of what his supporters will think is funny or powerful and what will appall them.

“He means our civilization,” replied one hard-core MAGA supporter.

MAGA is crumbling.

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For nearly a decade, I have been monitoring this movement, especially the die-hard core of it. I speculated about events that could, possibly, break their loyalty to Trump: Epstein. His support of H1-B visas. Higher grocery prices. All of these caused ripples of unhappiness, but quite quickly, those smoothed out. When the War in Iran started, there was another flicker of discontent and that, too, seemed to smooth over in a day. As the war dragged on, though, that disapproval resurfaced.

I wrote last week that for the first time, we were seeing real, sustained disagreement in the MAGA community over the war. Yes, they celebrate individual victories (e.g. the rescue of the pilot who was shot down), but when it comes to the bigger picture, there is a lot of anger. This is especially notable on a forum where the first rule of participation is “Be here for MAGA and Trump”.

Last night, Trump made this post on Truth Social:

In the discussion about this post and the latest action in Iran on the MAGA forums I monitor, the top post is, indeed, supportive of Trump.

Timeline: Trump moves on Venezuela and secures some of the worlds biggest oil fields back into US hands. Oil that our refineries are custom designed to process.

Cuba falls afterwards due to being starved of needed resources so our southern flank is secured.

Now he moves on Iran and takes out their oil production forcing the parts of the world that relied on that oil to buy from us.

This is what a leader with balls can accomplish.

But the top replies almost unanimously disagree:

• The inside of our house is infested with termites, but by god the lawn looks great.

• This is what I’ve been wanting forever.

  • Are you on the board of multiple international banks perhaps

• Cope harder why am I paying $4 for gas when I was paying $2.60 a month ago

• Your forgetting... The 50 million barrels that we seized? That went to Israel.

• Feels like Trump is doing everything in his power to boost up the dems for the midterms.

• Whelp it looks like it is begging the question if we just entered FAFO time.

  • What if we’re the ones who are going to find out?

• Wait, what regime has been totally and completely changed?

  Trump must be a time-traveler.

• Get ready for 1ten dollar a gallon gas

• I hope whatever we are trying to do is worth the massive price.

• Are we living in a simulation?

• Ghost of the 70s fuel crisis may visit us with a vengeance.

• Again, I’ll be happy to day I’m wrong, if I’m wrong. And I don’t mean some messy draw in the war and the support side of Maga is like ‘huge win’! No, I mean a conclusive win on the world stage and America is better off. I don’t see this scenario. And No, it was not worth losing both chambers by huge margins. That alone makes it not worth it.

• He means our civilization. He’s making sure of it like nobody else before him

This is something we have never seen inside this center of MAGA.

Other formerly die hard Trump loyalists are seeing the issues, too. In the last 24 hours, both Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor-Greene called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.

Outside these loyalist MAGA forums, we see the problems, too. The Proud Boys, who are more independent-minded but who have broadly been Trump supporters over both administrations, had one chapter come out last week with this post. “Still wearing that MAGA hat? Still ‘trusting the plan’?…The Republican Party must be completely destroyed.”

(Also, I love that they are quoting NPR ❤️🖤💙)

None of these people who are frustrated with Trump are likely to vote for Democrats going forward, of course. This crumbling within MAGA certainly has implications for elections, but I think it is more interesting as a sign that we are nearing the beginning of the end for the dominant political movement of the last decade…one that has challenged and changed the country in ways that, during the Obama administration, most of us could not have imagined.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what comes next. But I hope there are people in the administration or the military who will prevent the worst of what Trump’s post threatens.

I went back to the forums today, though, just in time for their LIVE STREAM PARTY of Trump’s address to the nation. If you didn’t watch, here’s a video clip shared by Aaron Rupar that he captioned, “well, that was weird”:

Trump seemed to struggle reading the teleprompter tonight and these kinds of speeches are not his forte. Usually, even when Trump gives a bad or boring speech, this forum is cheering him on, bringing in other information to prop him up, celebrating when he insults his opponents, and so on. This LIVE STREAM PARTY thread should be a digital party, but that’s not what it was.

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I’m going to include a lot of example comments below because what’s happening now is extraordinarily rare in the nearly 10 years this forum has been around. The forum exists to support Trump. Literally, the first rule of the forum is “Be here for MAGA and Trump”. You must be pro-Trump to post here and generally, dissent is quickly shut down. Users who complain about Trump can be banned for that. This is not a discussion baord where there are policy debates, questions about Trump’s efficacy, or nuanced assessments of his administration. This is a forum where they call him the God Emperor and celebrate everything he does.

Except not tonight, and not on a lot of things in the last month-or-so. What we see instead are a lot of supporters who really believed in the No New Wars and America First promises. It really begs the question of how well the MAGA coalition will hold together as Trump’s second term progresses.

• I can’t believe he just repeated what he’s been tweeting for weeks. Where is the jusitifcation for entering into a war after campaigning on America First? The reason the networks gave him the airtime was so he could flop knowing full well no one supports this.

  • He went over that. Where the fuck were you?

    • All i heard was lies about nukes he said he already destroyed last year. So was he lying then or lying now? Pick one. We already know that there was ZERO evidence of an iminent attack from the intelligence community. The best he could of done was apologize and said he was misled and instead he doubled down. Bush 2.0.

• Just think we could have roughly 7 more years of President Trump if he wants to run again, he would easily win for a 4th time. TRUMP2028! Why would we want to have anyone else if we could have him? Best President ever.

  • Who is going to vote for him? He has broken every single important campaign promise at this point. What happened to no new wars? Draining the Swamp? DOGE? MAHA?

    He is intentionally tanking his 2nd term.

• So, that was a bunch of nothing... nothing new said. Not sure why he felt the need to do this address. He looked fine to me. It was teleprompter speech for the most part, he’s always more subdued for those. But, yeah, not sure what the purpose of this address was.

  • To tell people?

    • Tell them WHAT??? He didnt even try and justify entering into a new war after running AGAINST it.

• Thank goodness we have a giant ass surplus of oil - if not these gas prices might be a tad high.

  • The entire world, especially our true allies, except our enemies, are suffering because of this.

    Lack of oil and fertilizer will start to cause widespread heating problems and starvation (crop failure) for most of the human race within six months.

    All for what?

    To please Benjamin Netanyahu and Miriam Adelson?

• What happened here? I just see a bunch of RINOs and low energy losers doubting Trump.

  • Maybe we believed the no new wars promise

  • The question should be what happened with Trump.

  • Actual Trump supporters are pissed he broke his “New New Wars” campaign promise.

  • 45 was better. Someone got to him

    • Disagree

  • 2-3 more weeks and we’re out, guys! Wait...wasn’t that said like 2 or 3 weeks ago? Damn.

    • My favorite so far is Hegseth’s quote on it from a couple days ago. “It could be two weeks or four weeks, or any number”.

• he sounds old and ragged

  never go full miga

• Fuck yes!!!! PATRIOTS ARE IN CONTROL AGAIN!

  • ? Based on this rehash speech from tonight?

• got the lowest refund ever. gas and groceries are still too damn high. and now interrupting my show.

  • My refund was 90% less this year

• I just did a quick channel surf. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNOW are all playing it straight. None of them are running banners trying to criticize.

  • They support this 100% because they know it is crashing his approval numbers. Underwater 50pts with independents and 18-29

When I woke up on Saturday and heard the news of the attack on Iran, I went immediately to the MAGA forums to see what they had to say. As I boarded a flight that morning, I started drafting this edition of the MAGAReport to tell you what the hard core Trump supporters had to say. And had the wifi on that plane been working, I would have sent you a report that said they were very upset about the bombing. That they were America First at heart. That they believed Trump when he said “No More Wars”. That they felt a bit betrayed. Early Saturday morning, they said things like:

• Why are we all simping for Israel....what the fuck is going on..

  • Nobody really is, only the people we voted for

  • Miga apparently [“Miga” is “Make Israel Great Again”, used derogatorily to refer to pro-Israel policies]

• Insane cope. Trump has done everything for MIGA and folded on MAGA when it becomes even slightly contentious or unpopular. The net result? Israel-sympathetic Jews have acquired a new media empire and gotten the war with Iran they’ve always dreamed of. We get no mass deportations, no arrests, no Greenland, no election reform, and no major changes. Then the Dems will sweep the midterms and the admin will be handcuffed even if it wanted to do anything. It’s over.

  • personally looking forward to seeing people who betrayed voters reaping the consequences of that betrayal

    you can hate democrats all you want, but their voters get what they voted for. They wanted trans kids? Got it. They wanted mass migration? Got it. They wanted gun bans? Got it.

    Trump was the one who told JEB! to his face that Bush lied about Iraq. And now he’s bombing Iran the day after Iran said they’d agree to no nukes AND US inspectors.

    • Yep, the GOP is finished, i hope a real MAGA can rise from the ashes, maybe in 2028 or later.

      Say what you want about the Democrats, they actually do things for their voting base.

• LOL, trying to sell us this war as “something good.”

• I was told it “worked” when we bombed the Middle East 8 months ago. “one and done” was the phrase, if I recall. In and out

  8 months later we are bombing the Middle East again. Did it work?

  • Charlie Kirk died for that opinion. He’s gone now, and now we have the war he stood against.

If I had sent you that update, it would have been accurate at the moment I mashed the “Post” button, but not for much longer. Because by the time I touched down 3 hours later, the MAGA crowd had come around to this war.

After the military announced there were no U.S. casualties (this would end up being false) and claimed they were thwarting imminent Iranian attacks on American soil (something they quickly walked back), the forums had shifted into flex mode, celebrating the lethality of our military and Trump’s strategic brilliance:

• Retards criticizing Trump for “new wars” fail to see the enormous difference between Trump’s targeted strikes, which cost 0 American lives and almost zero extra military spend, vs previous entanglements from Obama/Bush/others which cost thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars.

  This is the difference between a US President that wants to serve the war machine vs one that wants to serve America’s interests.

  • ^^^^^^This one right here

  • These panicans are retarded and can’t make distinctions, they think any military action is Iraq 2.0.

  • Like we’re going to make stuff with a shelf life and never use it? And when we need to make more we are not setup to cause we didn’t use what we made.

    Trump doing things the right way.

• I want all the groyper dipshits who were calling Trump a traitor in the early threads to come eat crow on this one. No slinking off to whine about muh Jews for the umpteenth time.

• Our military is insane, how they keep pulling this off is nuts.

• Great, now they can get started on Minnesota.

  • I was thinking about some judges home.

    Then 535 others.

• Our military without one arm tied behind their back like the Obama/Bush years.

  • missiles on loan from God.

Now, a few days later, the discussion has settled into a minor debate. There remains some criticism from the committed America First crowd who oppose any foreign intervention. The majority of the discussion, though, is support for Trump. These commenters declare that our domestic issues - closing the border and deporting immigrants - are either fixed or on the path toward being fixed. Throughout all of this is a throughline of anti-Semitism.

Here is a look at what some of the debate looks like:

• But we can’t even defend the borders and integrity of our own country. Cool.

  • We literally have a secure border now, you fucking idiot.

    • Did we get rid of all the terrorist cells inside the country? I don’t recall deporting 40 million people, or even 1 million.

      • We know nothing will ever be good enough for you solipsistic bimbos.

        You’ll say the same thing when hitting the Cartel; when hitting Venezuela. Both also sources of infestation in our country. Soon, you’ll be saying it about something else. Your transient, unfounded opinions may be safely disregarded as the men take out the fucking trash.

        • Trump could literally televise delta teams murderizing the entire Federal Reserve before giving everyone a $10,000 refund check and then inviting Elon on to explain how he’s achieved limitless fusion energy....

          and they’d still bitch about the fucking price of fast food or something lol

    • He said the border is secure NOW sfb. He didn’t say anything about who came in under Biden. Pay attention!

  • Once we give Israel everything they want, Trump has promised to do a few things for actual Americans

    Patience please

    • You like the 50 yr mortgage? There’s more where that came from!

    • nah, best we can do is move on to the next Israeli target (Egypt or Turkey), or pivot to more Ukraine funding.

      • Egypt will be after they’ve cleared Gaza.. Israel advocates for Egyptian aid to help build wall around gaza

      • Murica first!

  • I’m black pilled beyond belief and even you are a super faggot for this comment. Last I checked no Mexicans crossing the border... Because it was secured

    • They are just mad because they think the jooooos made them gay. In reality it had nothing to do with the Jews

It was clear from my time following the 2024 Trump campaign that many of the things he promised were either things he would not do (release all the Epstein files), could not do (end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours), or had no control over (grocery prices). I wondered once he took office, how his supporters would react when he failed to follow through on those promises and if, eventually, one disappointment would be too many.

Military action is one of those things I was watching closely, but, for most of this MAGA crowd, the joy or pride or patriotism they find in the power of the US military has so far overridden their isolationist tendencies. They always seem to largely find their way back to supporting Trump.

I honestly believed the Epstein files would be a breaking point for a substantial number of the hard core MAGA supporters, but they have not been. There is some frustration that they haven’t been released, but the rare mentions of them on the forums focus on ways that Trump’s enemies are being caught up in them rather than believing Trump may have done something wrong.

Loyalty to Trump is the core principle of this forum, and that appears to hold as the guiding value in their policy opinions. They support what he does, full stop. Something I come back to frequently when writing this report is that this loyalty makes it difficult to have a policy discussion with this crowd. If their policy is supporting the President, it is difficult to connect on much else.

As an aside, I was with the White House Press Corps on Friday photographing Trump’s departure, a few hours before the bombing commenced. I brought my infrared camera with me, which captures reflected IR light in a bright pink. The result is a funky look at the White House, including the photo at the top of this post. Enjoy!

It’s almost not necessary to read the comments to know what they will say. They will accuse the court of going rogue. They will peddle in conspiracy. They will talk about how the justices need to be removed so they do not impede Trump’s agenda. They will probably talk about violence.

And, sure enough, that’s basically what we see there. But I had the impression this time that even they know that their talk of violence is a performance, not a real threat. Here is the top set of exchanges:

• Fuckin crazy. Tarrifs were too effective, they had to get rid of them. This is forced globalism.

  • What now? They murdered Scalia. The Supreme Court obviously needs an enema.

    • Fort Sumter is what happens.

    • [NOTE: we will come back to this comment in a minute!]
      TIME FOR SOME
      FUCKING CIVIL WAR

      FUCKING

      LOCK AND LOAD

      GENTLEMEN

      • If only caps locks won wars.

      • IT’S TIME BOYS, LOCK AND LOAD! IT’S NOW OR NEVER! AMERICA WILL BE LOST!

      • Typed from behind a computer screen while fat belly covered in cheeto dust

      • You’re a fucking joke. This whole place is a fucking joke now. Suck the government dick harder.

      • The cope is exceptionally strong with this one

      • Over tariffs? [NOTE: This comment is heavily downvoted]

        • Since when did MAGA come to love higher taxes? Asking for a fren.

    • “Sumter has fallen, Sumter has fallen”.

  • They can barely rule correctly on the 2a cases they choose to hear so...that’s my real indicator for them. Pretty worthless anti American bunch.

  • Yeah, I mean they don’t just stay home. They go out to drink and eat. Catch them after a few cocktails. Makes it really easy to pass if you can get them to lose control of their vehicle as one example...

I looked at the profile of the guy who made that initial civil war comment, and it seems to be a bit of a schtick. His handle is USNVET6541E5. Here are the titles of some threads he commented on with his comments indented underneath:

• For those still on the fence, with the unrealized capital gains tax.

  • CIVIL

    WAR

    HAS

    BE

    FUCKING

    GUN

• 🚨BREAKING: Law enforcement has ARRESTED one individual, but Nancy Guthrie remains missing, as reported by Fox.

  • EXACTLY. So lock and FUCKING load. Because the dirt naps have arrived.

  • I have a hard time getting it up for beaner bunny. We learned how to cook BUNNY’s in SURVIVAL SCHOOL. OORAH!!!

  • CIVIL WAR

    HAS FUCKING BEGUN [NOTE: This comment is heavily down voted]

  • FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKERS FOR DOWN VOTING ME. I HAVE A GRENADE LAUNCHER & KNOW HOW TO USE IT. YOU BETTER CLICK THE ORANGE UP ARROW OR ELSE

• Shutting down the government DOESN’T TOUCH ICE at all, it’s funded for 3-4 YEARS thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill!

  • If they try to kill ICE by defunding,

    MY MILITIA IS GONNA VOLUNTEER!!!

    Oooooorah!!!

• Multiple Polls Show Majority Of Americans Want All Illegals Deported

  • I WANT ILLEGALS DEPORTED TO CECOT

    AND CIVIL WAR RIGHT NOW

I have been thinking a lot lately about the way Trump and some corners of MAGA talk. Whey they say something, it is often the performance of saying it that matters more than a commitment to doing what they said they would do. Whether they are threats or insults or plans to do things in 2 weeks, the words are intended to convey a feeling - anger, frustration, deflection - rather than a planned action.

This is not only a MAGA thing; some leftists have their own slogans that they don’t exactly mean literally, but that they use to convey a feeling about an issue.

When readers try to argue performative points as literal points, one of the main communication disconnects between the two sides emerges. I see a lot of online discourse where Trump supporters say something and opponents challenge them on whether they literally mean that thing, even though the literal meaning was never the intent.

This is related to a study we did in my lab where we found bad faith interactions - where a comment was not intended to further a conversation - made up nearly 2/3rds of all the interactions we looked at on Twitter.

It seems to me that we have followed a winding path in the evolution of social media discourse that has landed us at the awkward, aggressive, disingenuous state of online communication. My belief - that I hope to prove in some studies - is that this is more responsible for our political divisions than algorithmic echo chambers.

But for now, I do not see these threats of violence as actual threats. They are just frustration at a loss.

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One of these reporters was Lizzie Johnson, who is currently in Kyiv. She wrote “I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I’m devastated.”

I went to the MAGA forums to see their response to the Post layoffs, because the paper is a mainstream media institution they do not support. There, I found a thread specifically about Lizzie Johnson’s post.

I have selected a lot of comments because I think they illustrate a few things about this MAGA community. One is the misogyny. The second is a lack of empathy for people who represent institutions they are opposed to. On one hand, this is simple pair of points. On the other hand, this is so important for understanding and talking to the core of the MAGA community. There is a culture of finding entertainment and amusement at the suffering of outsiders. This drives a lot - likely most - of their posts and comments and the way they argue.

• Send her to a brothel near the front lines

  • Women are always the victims in war!

    • Women are always victims

  • Send her to Greenland to help reinforce the European troops.

• The only time her mouth needs to be open is when she’s switching dicks down at the bus depot.

• Only Fans got another one. Butthole shots incoming in 3... 2... 1... hurry up bitch ,we know that’s your next move.

• She’s attractive, she’ll figure it out.

  • Only Fans will pay her more

  • She can get a DEI preference when she graduates from coding boot camp.

• Can’t take any middle aged lady with a nose ring seriously.

  • And knowing liberals, she probably used a much younger photo of herself, not what she currently looks like.

• I hear NATO is recruiting volunteers to fight on the frontlines in the endless forever corrupt war.

• Soldiers are dying all around her, families are being torn asunder, yet the ONLY thing she is concerned about is herself.

  Bee-atch, you have a ticket outta there anytime you wish to leave.

  • Typical modern day cunt

  • There is no reason for Soros Orgs to send this INTERN money anymore. She has the SADS…

  • Yeah, imagine if she was being kidnapped off the streets and forced to die so a globalist Jew can buy a new Florida mansion, and some stupid blonde cunt reporter chooses to ignore that it’s even happening.

He was one of four independent journalists arrested today for their coverage of the protest. The DoJ had tried to have them arrested earlier, but a judge refused. The government eventually secured grand jury indictments.

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I was in Minneapolis that day and talked with Don earlier that afternoon when we were both covering the protests outside the Whipple Federal Building. From there, he left and went to cover a group of protesters who entered the Cities Church, whose pastor leads an ICE field office, and disrupted a service. If that group of protesters had invited me, as press, to follow them and cover what they were doing, I would have gone along, too, without hesitation. What journalist wouldn’t go cover something like that?

Lemon’s arrest is the main topic of discussion on the MAGA forums I monitor today. Four of the six flagged discussion threads are about the arrest, and there are more trending threads about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of comments about it.

Don Lemon is gay and black. The discussion is overwhelmingly jokes and memes about prison rape. I don’t feel comfortable sharing most of them. You can go look for them yourself on patriots . win if you really want to see.

To give a sampling of the tamer comments, one thread is titled “When life gives you a Lemon you arrest Lemon AIDS”. Another has this discussion:

• The boys are licking’ they lips at LA County lockup

  • And Don is doing the same.

    • Unstoppable force meets immovable object

      • In other words fag meets fags

  • he’s licking their lips

    • *tips

  • Something tells me old Donny is finally going to locate that black hole he claimed swallowed up the jumbo jet.

  • man come on, he going to women’s prison

    • That would be cruel & unusual for him.

  • gonna be a Lemon party in cell block 6

• He voluteered to be arrested once he realized the benefits of being the prison bitch.

  • He’ll have more viewers being slammed in slammer than actual podcast

Threaded through these discussions is a sense from some that the non-MAGA public may react poorly to these arrests. It is not that they think Lemon shouldn’t have been arrested; it’s that they think outsiders will think it is a First Amendment violation, that the government has gone too far, and they will turn against Trump. Here are a few of those interactions which includes some enthusiasm for political violence.

• Unpopular opinion: this is all exactly what dems want.

  They’re trying to make a martyrdom play with this like OMG MUH ORANGE HITLER IS ARRESTING JOURNALISTS JUST LIKE HITLER REEEEE as midterms fuel.

  Like, yes, he needs to face consequences for what he did. But will he really?

  • Dems are gunning for another Kent State, where students burned a building, spat, disparaged and assaulted guardsmen. Guardsmen deployed tear gas that blew away in the wind. Guardsmen fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds killing Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder. Nine were wounded, one permanently paralyzed. It became a turning point in public opinion about the Vietnam War. [NOTE FROM JEN: the second half of this comment feels very AI generated and so outside the tone normally used on this board]

    • Reichstag fires come in many guises, all fuel for the propaganda machine. It is effective. Most humans eagerly believe anything that reinforces their existing biases.

  • Optics are for faggots that don’t understand communism is a one-way trip.

    To get out, you pay with blood.

    So fuck off with “what DA DEMS WANT” bullshit. We’re done. They’re fucking evil fucks and we have to be more than positioning ourselves for next election bullshit.

    • I know it’s hard for you facebook boomers to understand, but we need some real arrests of people who committed actual wanton damage upon the people, not washed up minor celebrities doing PR stunts and getting slaps on the wrist. 🤷‍♂️

      If you think this cockamamie nonsense if of any consequence, then I got some Epstein Files to release to you in about two more weeks!

• Republicans can’t show force like this. The normies and Centrist are turning against Trump for his show of force with ICE. Only dems are allowed to do this kind of stuff. The normal Joe voter doesn’t mind dems raiding grandma’s house at 4am with 50 armed FBI on CNN.

  • fuck-em. I pray for hard core curb stomps

    • That’s what I voted for. “Hardcore Curb-stomps!” Hell, I’ll even settle for plain ole’ curb-stomps!

    • I would enjoy watching more as well. The problem is that he can’t afford to lose the independents. Lose them and the midterms and 28 will be a disaster. We lose those elections and were fucked for good.

I am returning to Minneapolis today where I will do my best to not get arrested or shot!

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Before I get to it, I’d like to point out a few distinctions between the Proud Boys, who I do not usually track for this newsletter, and the hard core MAGA groups that I do. As I mentioned in my last post, ideological consistency is generally not valued in the MAGA community that I usually write about. They often hold contradictory positions and value loyalty to Trump more strongly than anything else.

The Proud Boys, on the other hand, have a set of 12 tenets: Minimal Government, Maximum Freedom, Anti-Political Correctness, Anti-Drug War, Closed Borders, Anti-Racial Guilt, Anti-Racism, Pro-Free Speech (1st Amendment), Pro-Gun Rights (2nd Amendment), Glorifying the Entrepreneur, Venerating the Housewife, Reinstating a Spirit of Western Chauvinism. I think if we sat down to chat, we might have a few of those “I don’t think that word means what you think it means” moments (thinking especially about what a conversation about intersectional anti-racist lenses would look like with these guys), but if we allow the Proud Boys their own definition of these terms, they tend to stick to them. They certainly value consistency with their understanding of these tenets, and they will criticize Trump and other politicians if they act against them. They are a very different group than the one I normally discuss here.

Here is their take on my piece about the shooting of Renee Good. They are focusing on my statement that it is ironic for those on the right to argue the Renee Good shooting was justified while the shooting of Ashli Babbit (as she tried to break into the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol on January 6th) was not.

At first glance this seems to be a fair point. Both were fatal police use of force incidents during a protest. The dissident right condemns the Ashli Babbitt incident but condones the shooting of Renee Good.

There is no hypocrisy in that stance. Ashli Babbitt was unarmed and not physically in a position which would allow her to cause bodily harm to anyone. She was not gesturing towards, or attempting to reach for a weapon. At the time he pulled the trigger, the officer who shot her was not in a situation where a reasonable belief existed that killing her was necessary to prevent death or serious bodily harm. Capability, opportunity and intent must all be present for the use of deadly force. Ashli, being unarmed, did not have the capability or opportunity to cause death or serious bodily harm. Had Ashli pulled a gun, a knife, or somewhere on the grounds of the capitol made an attempt to hit a capitol police officer with a vehicle, her shooting would be justified. Ashli did none of those things.

Renee Good was behind the wheel of a moving vehicle with a curb weight of two tons steering towards an officer. She had the capability of operating the weapon (her vehicle). She had the opportunity to attack the ICE agent with her weapon a she demonstrated clear intent by steering towards the officer after being warned repeatedly to leave the scene. Her actions met all the elements necessary for the employment of deadly force. Shooting her was completely justified.

Whether or not you agree with their take - and I don’t - this is so much more clearly argued than the mindless right-wing yelling that I’m used to on the MAGA forums. It’s nearly refreshing.

Given their reply, I will be curious about their take on the Alex Pretti shooting. Yes, he had a gun on him, but he did not pull it or threaten officers with it. As a pro-Second Amendment group, I would be surprised if the Proud Boys claimed you can’t take a gun to a protest in a state where it’s legal (despite many in the Trump administration asserting just such a thing this week). The video very clearly shows that he did not pull the gun, either; one of the Feds took it out of his holster just before he was shot.

The Pretti shooting has been a breaking point for many on the right who have called out ICE, CBP, DHS, and the administration for the violence. Not on the MAGA boards we normally discuss, though. Their most prominent thread about it today is titled: BREAKING: Just a week before his fatal fight with Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti had ANOTHER tussle with federal agents causing him to break a rib The dude was a full on MILITANT impeding ICE operations — not a “protestor”

Finally, thank you to all the new subscribers and supporters that joined after my last post. I appreciate that my busted camera gear was inspiring! I am heading back to Minneapolis this week and will share updates from there.

Carrying a gun is legal in Minnesota, yet his possession of a gun is being used to justify his killing. How will the hard core MAGAs - notoriously pro-gun and anti-gun control - handle this news?

Allow me to back up a few days to add some context. There was another video going around this week of a man protecting his neighborhood from ICE by standing on the corner with an openly carried weapon - again, something that is legal in Minnesota.

The MAGA spaces I follow are generally Second Amendment absolutists. It has been a challenge for them to reconcile that video of the man on the corner, who is legally and responsibly bearing arms, with their pro-protester views. They responded with a fit of arguments that boiled down to accusations that, by standing there with a gun, he was obstructing law enforcement.

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So we already had some cognitive dissonance over guns coming into today. Then today’s shooting happens. A man who happened to be carrying a gun - that he never went for, let alone aimed at ICE agents - is blamed for his own death because of it. What would MAGA say?

First, they have a thread with a screen grab of the man shortly before the shooting, titled “The faggot that got shot was playing traffic cop”. Comments include:

• ICE agents are Pretti Good shots...

  ...I’m here all week.

  • 😂

• He looks very Jewish.

• Pretti dead...

On the main discussion of the video, a lot of it is just ignoring the issue of whether this shooting was justified:

• The blood is on the hands of democrats encouraging agitation and obstruction.

  • Yep, Walz, Frey, Klobachar... the blood is on their hands and they know it.

    • Ilhan omar too. The traitorous bitch

      • I think we need a different word than “traitor”. In order for that to qualify, she would have been actually loyal to the US at one point.

        • She’s just an evil cunt, her head needs to be separated from the rest of her body.

        • Dude right. Simply a foreign funded enemy combatant on US soil. The answer is military tribunals.

      • Omar is the worst. She and her people are the reason for everything happening in Minnesota right now.

        All these protests are to distract from the massive fraud our politicians helped the Somali pirates commit in exchange for kickbacks and votes.

But some commenters do speak to it, and they put the blame on the protesters:

• It really is and its probably going to get a lot worse (for commies)

  • Seriously. Imagine being so retarded you thought there were no consequences for fighting with feds

    • Not only does ICE have the backing of the entire US gov, they have the backing of every civilian who supports what they are doing. How can you possibly win that war? Leftists aren’t very smart.

  • They can end all of this in one call

    They want the violence, they want their followers dead. Their dumb Low IQ followers are happy to point firearms at LE hoping it will get up promoted in the antifa ladder.

    Well. Boo fuckin hoo

    • Yep. I’m glad ICE is not backing down. Keep up the deportations and shoot any commies who get in the way. This is what everyone voted for in 2024

Some are celebrating:

• Does anyone really care

  • I care but only in a celebration kind of way.

    • Bingo. The majority of the American voting public VOTED for this in Nov 2024. People pearl clutching about “optics” for the midterms are shills

And some are just rolling with the official story:

• This idiot’s blood is on his own hands. Clearly see the gun. Completely justified shooting.

• if you want to live, do not interfere with ICE and DO NOT pull out a gun while you’re being detained.

A few interlopers in the forum have called this logic out. One writes, “They found the gun he was legally carrying, his own hands never went near it.” The post is downvoted and the only reply reads, “Gonna need a source for that”. The video, apparently, is not enough.

One way I often see and hear people pushing back on these MAGA arguments is by calling for consistency. How can they claim Ashli Babbitt was murdered when she was shot climbing through a broken window toward the Speaker’s Lobby in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, bemoan political violence when Charlie Kirk is shot, celebrate Kyle Rittenhouse showing up to at BLM protest with a riffle and killing protesters, and call themselves 2nd Amendment absolutists…and then claim that citizens of Minneapolis who oppose ICE and legally carry guns deserve to be killed in the street?

But a key to understanding this part of the MAGA movement is that they do not care about consistency. Many people, and especially liberals, hold ideological consistency as a core value. MAGA does not share that value. In fact, leaning into the inconsistencies is a way to troll liberals, which makes it even more enjoyable for MAGA. What they value is their side dominating the enemy. They will always celebrate their own side winning and condemn anything that appears like the other side is winning. Full stop.

I am freshly back from spending most of the last couple weeks in Minneapolis after dropping a small fortune on new winter clothes (thank you to the folks at REI who outfitted me properly for the sub-zero weather). I am home now but heading back to the Twin Cities next week. Based on my time there, I am not the slightest bit surprised that ICE shot another U.S. citizen who was protesting. The situation on the ground is not like anything I have seen, and that includes clashes between police and protesters in L.A. and Chicago over the last year. There are twice as many ICE officers in the city as there are local police. They are everywhere. In residential neighborhoods, people stand out on the corners waiting for ICE to pull up so they can sound the alert. A well-organized system deploys chase vehicles to follow ICE in cars through the city. The feds are using pepper spray, pepper balls, and tear gas on anyone that irritates them, often at point blank range, even when they do not pose a threat. You cannot move through Minneapolis without feeling the operation that is underway.

You also cannot help but see how committed the Minnesotans are to opposing ICE. No matter how cold it got - and it was well below 0º F a lot of the time I was there - people were outside demonstrating and standing guard. This is not something that the feds are going to win by wearing the locals down.

If you’d like to see some of the photos I shot for the Associated Press in Minnesota over the last couple weeks, you can find some on my Instagram and the rest in the AP Newsroom.

Also, thanks to all of you for supporting the MAGAReport, and extra thanks to my paid subscribers. I’m finding ways to cover some of my costs on these trips, but not all of them. Your support for the newsletter really helps*.

*And it helps an extra lot this month because, the day before I got my shoe spikes in Minneapolis, I slipped and utterly smashed my camera. This, my friends, is $4,000 of damage -$1,300 to fix the camera and a totaling of the lens which needs to be replaced. Fortunately, the nice people at Sony PRO Support sent me loaner gear to use as I await new parts, but jeez…it’s been an expensive month!

They are not.

I am reporting on a very extreme corner of MAGA, and I wanted to take a little time to characterize just how extreme they are.

I started writing this newsletter during the 2024 election cycle because people who knew my work were frequently asking me about the potential for political violence. They were thinking about January 6, 2021 and wondering if it could happen again. I study radicalization and extremism and, if there were to have been violence from the right, it would have come from Trump’s most extreme supporters. By its nature, this newsletter is and has always been focused on some of the most violent people in the MAGA movement.

I will write about “MAGA” in my posts, but when I do, I am only referring to these very extreme people. That’s the nature of the exercise I am undertaking with this newsletter. I could see how, if one just drops in, they may not understand that, but I think it is important to be clear that when I write about “MAGA”, I am not characterizing the whole of Trump supporters or the broader MAGA community.

It may be difficult for people who don’t engage with MAGA dialogue to see the spectrum from the average Trump voter to people who waved “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” signs at Trump rallies to the men on these forums I monitor, but the differences are stark. The groups I monitor take the ideas the Trump shares and extrapolate them to the most extreme end.

To illustrate this, I want to highlight some of the violent rhetoric that goes on in these groups. I have written about this over and over, but I think seeing it all together paints a clear picture.

• They want people who protest Trump to be killed

  • During the anti-ICE protests in LA, they called for the military to execute the protesters. “Please bring the napalm and cluster bombs, thanks. Nothing of value will be lost.

  • Last week after Renee Good was shot in Minneapolis, they celebrated her death and called for the killing of other protesters. “The bitch died the way she lived, as a fat, Somali loving LGBTQ retard. Nothing of value was lost. In fact, the world became a better place.”

  • They want the police to kill No Kings protesters. “They should just shoot them all dead”

• They want immigrants to be killed

  • They believe Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man “accidentally” deported to El Salvador, should be killed. “We should have killed this guy months ago.”

  • In response to a man being annoyed by his (possibly immigrant) neighbors’ music, they said immigrants should be killed. “Nobody knows who they are, so nobody will miss them when they get buried in the desert.”

  • They believe immigrants should be purged. “Even Rorschach wouldn’t object to the casual murder of illegal immigrants in the streets. And if Rorschach doesn’t mind, I don’t mind either. I say let the purge begin. Trump: temporary immunity granted for all illegal immigrant murders. He will say, the date is a week away. Better quickly flee the country before the purge starts. $1000 reward for the body of every illegal.”

• They want Trump’s political enemies killed

  • After members of Congress made a video telling troops not to follow illegal orders, they called for their execution. “EXECUTE THE SEDITIOUS SIX.”

  • Reflecting on voter fraud in Georgia, they want election officials killed. “Because you didn’t hang them, they’re going to do it again.”

They also think trans people should be killed and they believe women should not have the right to vote. They regularly call for the 19th amendment to be repealed. They fetishize the power of the state being used against their perceived enemies.

Speaking of which, I have just finished my time in Minneapolis covering the response to ICE there. I need a day or two to recover - and thaw - and then I will be sharing some info. In the meantime, you can see some of my photos here: https://www.instagram.com/jagged_photo/

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The narratives on the MAGA forums about the Minneapolis shooting fall into two main categories: degrading the victim and celebration of state violence. Here are some examples (cw for hateful language):

• The bitch died the way she lived, as a fat, Somali loving LGBTQ retard.

  Nothing of value was lost. In fact, the world became a better place.

• Glibly retarded, brainwashed by media lies, a cog in someone else battle, fighting for people who dont give a shit about her and would gladly rape her if allowed to

  • I dont even think they would rape her over a goat if they had to pick.

• we do need a war w these lesbian cunts. they need to be put in their place and reminded they dont want to play with our male world of violence, they will always lose.

• Dig up her grave and prosecute her corpse

• An eyewitness described a convoy of “protest” vehicles impeding ICE vehicles. The dead bitch’s vehicle was the lead vehicle. So, yeah, it’s planned and coordinated.

• Just use lethal force on them all. Ramming someone with your vehicle is attempted homicide, right? The first person to do it is lucky feds didn’t unload like in GTA.

There has also been commentary about Good’s wife:

• Duper’s delight all over both their faces.

  So smugly assured in their ‘training’.

  I hope her partner takes up her mantle.

  • You just know she will. The psych meds and mental illness are strong enough to keep this delusional waste of oxygen going for the cause, even before she collects millions from the “wife of a martyr” gofundme.

    And then, with any luck, she’ll attempt the same stunt (possibly with a child in the car instead of just the dog for maximum psychological damage to everyone, because she’s a horrible piece of shit) and get the same result. For that split second, time slows to a crawl and the only thing her brain processes is “this is it. It wasn’t worth it. Now it’s over. This is exactly what Renee felt, and I’m afraid.”

    Then the bullets hit, and the last thing she hears before everything goes blank is “fuckin’ bitch”.

• “Get of the car”: the officers say. “Drive, drive” is what the idiot lezbo says, and her rug munching partner complies by accelerating at the officer. Fools.

I am writing this on a plane on my way to Minnesota. I will keep you all updated on what is happening on the ground there over the weekend.

A group of around 100 Proud Boys, pardoned insurrectionists, and hard core Trump supporters gathered at the Ellipse in front of the White House yesterday, the fifth anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The small group, ringed by reporters and media, gave speeches over a portable microphone, praying for Ashli Babbit, the woman shot during the Capitol riot as she tried to climb through a broken window to get to the Speaker's Lobby, and airing their grievances about the injustices they suffered when they were prosecuted for trying to overthrow the election.

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One man, out for a lunch time jog, yelled “go back to prison you traitors!” as he ran past. Someone called him a “faggot” but otherwise the crowd remained mellow.

Enrique Tarrio, former national president of the Proud Boys who was convinced of seditious conspiracy for his role in planning the attack, was there. He said hello when he saw me and as I leaned in to give him a quick hug, I whispered in his ear, “Last time I saw you, you got arrested.”

“Yeah, I remember,” he said. “But you got some good pictures!”

“I did,” I said. “They were in the Washington Post!”

The police presence was heavy, especially along the Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues which connect the White House grounds to the Capitol. But unlike five years ago, Trump did not make an appearance, the mood was mellow, and everyone was forewarned not to touch the bike racks that blocked off-limits areas.

The only drama of the day was a minor scuffle between a protester, who frequently appears at these kinds of events, and some of the crowd. The Trump supporters pushed her to the ground but the protester ended up being detained by police.

It was a good day for things to stay boring. It was also a reminder of how much the MAGA movement is rooted in a narrative of victimhood and how difficult that is to maintain when Trump is in office and in control of both Congress and the Supreme Court. Who is there to blame now when things go wrong?

I will be there, too! A detailed report on what all goes down coming tomorrow.

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The response within the hard-core MAGA forums I read has been profoundly mixed. It is one of the rare instances where we see fighting within the community and also disagreement with Trump.

Around 1/3 of the comments are chest-thumping, power-celebrations. These people do not care at all about Venezuela, but they love the United States flexing its military power. “Fuck yeah Mr president we toppled the Venezuelan government in less than an hour.”

Mixed in with this are also some anti-Democrat comments, complaining in advance about how the left is going to criticize Trump for this, even though Maduro was a bad guy. “Anyone wanna take bets on how long it takes for the Democrat party to essentially side with Maduro? I say within 45 minutes of the first nationally syndicated new show that runs Saturday mornings.”

The next 1/3 of comments are jokes making light of the situation. “Remember the scene in Christmas Vacation when Cousin Eddie left in his RV and brought back Clark’s boss tied up with a big red bow? I’m kinda picturing that….”

And finally, the rest of the comments are disapproving. A lot of MAGA supporters believe sincerely in the “America First” platform. Some are truly isolationist, some do not see the value proposition in US involvement around the world whether it’s military action or humanitarian aid, and some were just weary of what they call the “forever wars” of Bush and Obama.

Trump’s America First promises were a big attraction for them, and it is why they have supported policies like cutting off support to Ukraine and dismantling USAID. Now, they see Trump taking military action in a country that they don't care about and that is profoundly disappointing. At the same time, one of the rules of this forum is that participants must be pro-Trump, so any criticism of what he does is disruptive.

We see many critiques, some agreement with the critiques, and also some positively neocon pushback.

One commenter wrote, “If we end up doing this stuff but not prosecuting about a thousand Minnesotan politicians and Somalians for megafraud, yes, I will have a lot to say about it.” This is interesting because it captures the heart of the America First proposition: that we focus our attention on our own issues instead of issues abroad. Also, my (very delayed) draft MAGAReport from the holidays was going to tell you, dear readers, that every single post on the forums for nearly a week has been about the daycare fraud in Minnesota. They have been all-consumed by this, and the news of the day is not enough to draw this person's attention away.

Other comments capture both the indignation in this action and also the long-running desire for retribution against liberals in power.

• So, kidnapping leaders of other nations was always an option? ...can we do more of this please? Liberate Canada and Mexico maybe? No? Ah, alright...

  • I’d rather we do it to some shithead lefty governors

    • Sorry, best we can do is a place nobody gives a shit about.

      Not one of you gave a shit about Venezuela until about 10 minutes ago. You know how I know? Because there wasn’t a single god damn mention of it in 2015, 2020, or 2024. But now MAGA is all about regime change in Venezuela?

      What the fuck happened to you all.

Finally, one commenter has a theory about why we decided to take this action now. He is not about to be distracted: “Captured Maduro, but not a single person from Epstein list.”

One reply agrees: “Unfortunately for Maduro, he wasn’t involved with Epstein in any way.” Another poster did not appreciate the criticism, writing,“take the win, pedo faggot.”

For the last few months, talk on these forums has been almost exclusively celebrations of ICE activity and stories about how immigrants are all criminals. The discussion of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s news today is another one of those discussions. I think it is important to regularly remind ourselves how much this extreme corner of MAGA supports violence against anyone Trump deems an enemy and how they want it in defiance of laws, courts, and regulation. Here are some example comments on the story about the judge’s ruling:

• We should have killed this guy months ago. It would have saved us a lot of time and hassle while taking a violent criminal off the streets.
  Why is it that we can blow up foreign criminals/terrorists in international waters and abroad, but the moment they set foot on US soil, they’re entitled to an attorney, a trial, an appeals process, etc?

  • It baffles me how a criminal alien, involved in human trafficking, and open gang member doesn’t get the rope.

    • Why not have the cameras malfunction for a few minutes while he “hangs himself” like Jeffery Epstein did?

      • Criminal aliens charged with felonies should be under military court jurisdiction and justice.

      • You might run into some issues with that due to ex parte Milligan.

        Which is why I’d prefer to deny them a trial outright

    • Just a hundred years ago, regular people like you and me would have already hanged him from a tree...

      • 60 years ago.

        20 years ago no judge would dare do this.

        We’ve been conquered. There hypothetically and unfortunately needs to be a civil war to end this.

      • Revolution, not civil war.

        There’s a huge difference.

One person responded to this talk about why Garcia hasn’t been killed, saying, “Because we haven’t proved any of those things and deported him to a country over a court order not to?” That comment has been downvoted aggressively; the community does not like it. There is no discussion in favor of due process on the discssion.

I have been writing for over a year about the appetite for violence in these forums, especially against immigrants. These commenters are not policy makers, but it is still worrying that there is deep and persistent support for state violence, extra-judicial executions, and suspension of legal rights for perceived enemies.

While I do not see any evidence of planning for any violence in support of these beliefs right now, this community would likely jump at the chance to commit such violence if Trump encouraged it.

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The main theme of the discussion is that it is time for the government to start shooting civilians who oppose them:

• When will feds start shooting back?

  • They are so afraid of a Kent State situation. But most don’t care any more. Shoot back, chase them, shoot them.

• So you support a police state where they shoot ciivilians agent smith?

  • If it means the commies get what the deserve, we’re headed for authoritarianism no matter what, pick your preferred flavor.

• When are they going to start killing these savages?

• “Well shoot back”

There is a lot of talk blaming the members of Congress who made a video last week telling troops that they should not obey illegal orders. The right is calling them the “Seditious Six” and claiming they are fomenting an insurrection. Trump himself has accused them of committing treason and called for their deaths this week. They are taking a lot of blame for today’s shooting from the MAGA community in their discussion :

• Days after the Seditious Six supported insurrection. Blood is on the hands of every Democrat. Hopefully y’all aren’t letting them sit at your table tomorrow.

  • 2 months after killing Kirk.

• The six have blood on their hands. This is what they wanted. Now the national guard needs to be locked and loaded from now on. The next blood will be broadcast non live TV a la “Kent State”. Then they will smear President Trump on TV for every little incident.

• EXECUTE THE SEDITIOUS SIX.

  EVERY MINUTE THEY DRAW BREATH AFTER THIS DELEGITIMIZES BOTH OUR MILITARY, ITS LAWS, AND THE SOCIETY THAT ABIDES IT.

• Damn things are getting hot with Democrats turning up the heat ever chance they get.

• Damn and right on Thanksgiving eve - Seditious six should answer for it

• If justice barbie and play cop pajeet [NOTE: this refers to Pam Bondi and Kash Patel] ever want me to take them seriously ever again, they will immediately move to crush the six and their purse handlers. They have finally reached my limit.

There is the usual, very intense anti-immigrant, anti-muslim, anti-LGBTQ commentary, speculating that the shooter must be a member of some marginalized community.

This discussion echoes those I have been writing about for over a year, reflecting the strong desire in this far-right corner of MAGA to see the state commit violence against Trump’s opponents. While Trump may be losing his grip on the party and the MAGA movement, if he were to call for violence or, even better, carry it out, he would have strong support from this most loyal part of his base.

I will be back soon with some interesting academic work to discuss but, for now, here are the top threads from today.

• Ask Grok “Has the US Govt been in a near-constant state of armed conflict somewhere in the world since 1945?

• If it is obvious to everyone that entry level white collar jobs (programmers, financial services, etc) are going away, why are we still importing H-1B visa migrants? 80% of H-1B visas go to “entry/junior” level white collar jobs.

• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna : Bill and Hillary Clinton are refusing to appear before House Oversight for their depositions regarding Jeffrey Epstein. Notice how House Democrats suddenly have nothing to say about it.

• Great throw GEOTUS TRUMP!

  • An AI-generated video of Trump throwing a Big Mac

• FBI Reminder

  • An anti-trans post

• ICE officially confirms they’re now going after EMPLOYERS who hire illegal aliens, criminal record or not. Employers MUST be held accountable. Wonder if MTG is listening.

• President Trump just revealed a MASSIVE statistic the fake news refuses to give him credit for “1.9 MILLION more American-born workers are employed today than when I took office...American-BORN.” This is HUGE! “Wages for hourly workers are rising the fastest in 60 YEARS.”

• BREAKING: Massive historic Fentanyl bust in Colorado. Single biggest fentanyl bust in Colorado history. 6th largest single bust in US history. 1.7 million pills seized. 12 kilograms of fentanyl powder seized. Drugs linked to Sinaloa Cartel. REMINDER: A lethal dose is just 2 milligrams.

• President Trump tells McDonald’s franchisees: “I’m honored to stand before you as the very first former McDonald’s fry cook ever to become President of the United States.”

• There’s gotta be 80 million illegals in this country

• Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina Patriots you have elections tomorrow

• BREAKING: President Trump commits to SIGNING the Epstein Files legislation if passed by Congress - PUTS TO BED another leftist narrative. “They can do whatever they want. We’ll give them everything.”

• How Counting Noncitizens Distorts State Legislatures

• Home for the Holidays: Florida Attorney General Announces Rescue of 122 Missing Children

• Epstein’s Lawyer Admits There Was No ‘Dirt’ on Trump: ‘He Would Have’ Used It as ‘Great Leverage’

• Congratulations to the World on the incredible Vote of the United Nations Security Council, just moments ago, acknowledging and endorsing the BOARD OF PEACE, which will be chaired by me

• Abbott never banned Sharia Law in Texas, plans continue for rebranded Epic City. This will be a huge Muslim only community renamed ‘The Meadow’ 🚨 Shell companies, religious nonprofits (NGOs) used to hide and fund the project establishing parallel communities that negate the US Constitution

• Grimace says Make America Great Again!

• Bill Maher leaves his guest visibly dumbfounded after yanking him out of his liberal bubble. Patton Oswalt couldn’t believe what he was hearing: “I’m sorry, I don’t remember [the left doing] that.”

  • This is Bill Maher ranting about teachers having to do…something…related to acknowledging LGBTQ people and sex not being included on birth certificates in California?

• A TRANSGENDER just tried to carry out an attack on federal agents in Charlotte, NC...

• Gov. Ron DeSantis announces his intent to ABOLISH property taxes for primary residences throughout the state of Florida

  • Just a side note that we also don’t have income tax in Florida, so without property tax or income tax, we’re going to have some serious problems.

• LIVE: President Trump Delivers Remarks at McDonald’s Impact Summit - 11/17/25

• REPORTER: “Why wouldn’t [the Epstein files] have been released the last four years when President Biden was in office?” CHUCK SCHUMER (MORON): “That’s the question every American is asking... What the hell is he hiding!?” So true!

• Chicago Public Schools Grilled for Spending Millions on Luxury Vacations While Less Than Half of Students Are Proficient in Math, Reading

• 🚨 Wray lied!!!

• 🚨 It has now been confirmed that attempted Trump assassin Thomas Crooks used they/them pronouns, had a deep interest in furries, and was exploring gender identity.

• Miss Perks Can’t Shut Up

• Adam Schiff: Lawmakers Shouldn’t Try to Destroy Presidents – ‘Stop Viewing Each Other as Our Enemy’

• Trump Reveals He’s in Talks with DEMOCRATS to Totally GUT Obamacare — Ending the Gravy Train for Big Insurance

Here is the response from the hard-core MAGA forums that I’m seeing so far.

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On the news that Spanberger won the VA Governor’s race, the top comment is “Hard to believe after Charlie Kirk etc. this many people still vote hard left. Not a moderate by any stretch of the imagination.” I kept coming back to this one because it’s very telling about these forums. Most American’s had little-to-no idea who Charlie Kirk was before he was shot. They may have recognized the name, but he was not a prominent figure. Even within MAGA, he was a B-list player. But he was prominent to this community and they can’t see how small he was on the national stage.

Secondly, this comment suggests that the “hard left” is somehow related to his murder. This is a narrative that the hard core MAGAs are desperately trying to hold on to, but we just haven’t seen the evidence of it. In fact, there is a notable lack of any information about the alleged shooter, and almost nothing tying him to the left, since his arrest. The evidence about his political leanings has been decidedly mixed and pointing more toward the right than the left (though he mostly seems to be his own thing, as has been the case with a lot of shooters lately).

This is a weakness of the really far right MAGA crowd. They are so deep in their narratives that they sometimes lose sight of what the average person even knows about, let alone cares about.

Some other comments:

• We’re in a civil war. One side has already murdered many on the other side. WHEN they get power again, they WILL kill us on an industrial scale. You have 14 months to prepare.

• They cannot coexist with us. We should force them out of America.

• I more than hate them. They disgust me. I’m tired of dealing with them nonstop.

• How bad of news is this on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst?

  Is losing the virginia governorship about a 5?

  • They literally want us dead. This is a 100 out of 10. They are going to murder us and Trump needs to use the insurrection act

• I don’t care what a piece of paper says. I want the million Somalis living in this country to no longer be here. We are fighting a war for this country. It isn’t 1985 anymore. We don’t have time to engage in elections while the other side cheats.

  I’m glad Matt Walsh is starting to break from his Shapiro programming. He’s 100% correct. We need to be willing to work with anyone who is anti left to win. Democrats already call even spineless Republicans fascists so we may as well use authoritarianism to snuff out all leftism in this country. I want a future where teachers, actors and DAs are terrified of being viewed as leftwing - you know, what we have had to endure for generations.

  We do not need to engage in politics within the confines of what cowardly liberals and moderates think is appropriate. I want to see leftism ripped from every institution.

  If you control the military and police, you control the country. 70% of military and 80% of law enforcement voted for Trump. Those numbers are just close enough that we can seriously just start ignoring judges and DAs.

Finally, the memes of the day:

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Peter Stinson, a former Coast Guard officer, was charged with soliciting the murder of the President. He was charged based on a single BlueSky post he made back in February that said “Take the shot. We’ll deal with the fallout.” The entirety of the evidence against him was a bunch of other tweets, some going back to 2020, where he said things like he wishes someone would shoot Trump or asking whether we could crowdsource a hitman.

On one hand, I don’t think it’s a great idea to post stuff like this online. On the other hand, simply advocating for other people to commit violence, even against the President, is very explicitly protected speech under the First Amendment. Peter didn’t reach out to anyone to ask them to shoot Trump. He didn’t buy guns, he didn’t go on the dark web looking for a hitman, he didn’t convert a bunch of money to crypto to pay one, he didn’t DM with anyone about doing it. He just ranted on social media that he wished someone would do it. That’s it.

I testified on his side to say that people say things like this online all the time and that, on the spectrum of violent speech - which I share often here in the MAGAReport - Peter’s language is pretty mild. If you go on a social media platform and search for phrases like “take out <political figure>” or “can/should/could I hire a hitman” or “hang <political figure>”, you will find hundreds of posts. If people fantasizing about and rooting for the death of public figures they don’t like is a crime, then there are hundreds of thousands of people who would go to jail.

During the trial, the Defense (Peter was represented by an amazing Federal Public Defender) asked me questions for about 20 minutes. I testified about how social media works and what politically violent speech looks like. I defined “shitposting” in Federal Court. The prosecution then cross examined me for a couple hours, mostly by bringing up various copies of the MAGAReport. I think their goal was to make me look politically biased, but I had to keep explaining that this whole report is about a group of MAGAs so extreme that they have been banned from mainstream platforms, they advocate for purge days where they can shoot immigrants and deliver their bodies to the government for a bounty payment, and that they regularly argue that women shouldn’t have the right to vote. (And for the record, in case any prosecutors subscribed, I think this language is profoundly dangerous but also that it is almost always legal.)

In the course of my cross-examination, I got to explain that I thought launching a civil war because one’s preferred candidate loses is unpatriotic and anti-democratic, and I got to tell the jury that they should all read Jason Stanley’s book How Fascism Works.

The trial was only two days, Monday and Tuesday. The only prosecution witness was the FBI guy who presented the tweets (I was not allowed in the courtroom before I testified, so I didn’t get to see him). The defense’s only witnesses were me, and a woman who Peter had organized protests with who briefly spoke as a character witness. The jury got the case at 3:30 Tuesday afternoon.

As we sat around waiting for a verdict, I thought about the implications. There are whole social media accounts dedicated to tracking if Trump has died yet, followed by hundreds of thousands of people. If Peter were found guilty, would the government come after the people who run those accounts and everyone who comments? Would we see mass prosecutions of everyone who tweeted things like “I wish that shooter in Butler had been a few inches to the right” - a post I have seen repeated dozens of times? This little trial, where there was no media in the courtroom, was the thing standing between preserving our right to speak against the President and the destruction of the First Amendment.

At 5:45, the jury announced they had reached a verdict. The existential anxiety I had for the country in the minutes waiting to here - not to mention the anxiety I had for Peter whose freedom depended on the outcome - was pretty overwhelming. After those 2 hours of deliberation, the jury found Peter Not Guilty.

As I testified when asked, I would have taken the stand on behalf of someone on the right if they had said the same things about Biden or Fauci or Clinton. And I pointed out the government has not been especially savvy at understanding online culture lately and it has impacted the way they interpret people's motivations and actions.

If you’re curious about what Peter is up to now, you can find him on Instagram where he is posting up a storm.

Updates on the MAGAs coming soon but the quick update is: they aren’t talking at all about the shutdown (except to blame democrats) or the SNAP lapse. They are primarily celebrating ICE arrests and immigrants’ suffering.

(Interesting side note: Peter’s posts were up on social media for months or years and Peter only got investigated and charged after he applied for permits for the Mayday protest, which is a long-running demonstration advocating for peaceful protest and Trump’s impeachment. It feels like a very politically-motivated prosecution to me…)

Millions of people turned up for No Kings protests against Trump across the US (and the world) yesterday. This kind of thing makes MAGA looks weak - one of the things they cannot stand - so that means they spin up a wide range of narratives to make the protests look weak instead. The main ones were (1) people didn’t know why they were there, (2) the protests were small (though a lot of the MAGAs felt like this was too far and agreed they were big), (3) it was only old people doing cringe boring stuff, or (4) it was violent. What they did agree on is that violence was the right way to deal with protesters.

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There were a few threads commenting on protester-on-the-street interviews where the protesters, in my opinion, gave fairly coherent if slightly vague statements about why they were protesting. They said things like “We are in costumes to show we are not violent” and “We don’t want to lose our rights to protest” and “I oppose a lot of things Trump is doing”. But the MAGA commentary on these posts were that they had no idea why they were there.

Some posts argued that the protests weren’t very big. “FOX News (the traitors) said millions attended across the country. BULLSHIT”. and “All the Liberals were posting fake videos of huge crowds yesterday from different events. All they do is lie. You don’t have to do this if your event was successful.”

Others concede that the protests were very big (though also un-American):

• The one in my town was the biggest clown show I’ve ever seen. People in costumes, the cars going through were part of it, and street theatre is an accurate description. And no American flags in sight.

  • Same. But sadly it was the largest assembly I’ve ever seen in Loveland, CO. I’m 53. Anyone saying the dem party is dead should be punched in the throat. The other side is far more organized than ours.

    • I’m in Massachuestts. It is probably 4 out of 5 people here. Many are very smart. Doctors. Professors. Engineers. They just default to Democrat up here. You have no idea what it’s like unless you’ve lived it. They actually believe that the most evil people in the world are Southern Whites. And they will stop at nothing to force their morality on the world. NPCs are too benign for what is really happening. They deeply believe in process and bureaucracy. And they want to enforce it on everyone at all times.

MAGA influencer catturd wrote “Funny how the party of ‘diversity is our strength’ just had a No Kings protest that was 95% old white boomers.” which sparked it’s own long discussion. Another thread mocked a video of some people dancing, with the title “Donald Trump status: destroyed”. They went on to, like catturd, claim most protesters were older and white. They also blame this group for many conservative-perceived social ills:

• With respect to elderly / patriotic pedes, the boomer class of aggrieved white women and their cuckold husbands has literal blood on its hands. Sure, their political activism is cringey and weak. But the inverse pressure exerted across American society by these morally bankrupt harpies is half the reason we have young women getting raped and stabbed by people who never should’ve been let IN the country, or OUT of the prison / asylum. They are reckless, vapid and dangerous and you are correct to despise them.

  • They’re also the reason for the spread of faggotry.

Yet in Portland one conservative reporter described the scene outside the ICE facility as “war-like”:

Breaking: Federal police deploy endless rounds of tear gas and crowd control munitions to disperse unlawful crowd outside the ICE facility. War-like scenes as protesters launch munitions back at federal agents, starting fires.

ICE was shooting tear gas or smoke bombs at protesters, who were lobbing it back on occasion. But also, a person in a frog costume, a woman with a cane, and a person and their baby were also walking around out there, so war-like is quite an exaggeration.

The discussion on these protests in Portland did hit a point of consensus in the community regarding the use of violence and the importance (or lack thereof) of due process. Some comments:

• they should just shoot them all dead

• why are people talking about non-lethal? people on video laying siege to a federal law enforcement building are domestic terrorists and enemy combatants. anyone throwing a brick, molotov cocktail, etc, should just get splattered by a sniper. they keep this shit going only in these blue shitholes because they know blue communist judges will let them out.

  but there are a shitload of states where they don’t even try anything because the cops will not hesitate to put them down right there.

• Fuck that. Install Ma Deuces and shoot the faggots for real. If the tables were turned they would not hesitate to kill you.

  • I completely agree, but I don’t think everyone shares our opinion!

    So maybe start small, but then escalate if that doesn’t work, pew pew!

• Just fucking snatch these faggots in the middle of the night and take them on helicopter rides.

  Fuck their due process. Sick of this shit.

• Fuck the system. Fuck dUe PrOcEsS when some lefty judge is just going to let them.
  Is time for helo rides.

  • Yeah due process isn’t worth anything anymore if commie “judges” are just picking and choosing when it’s due.

• The smoke bombs don’t seem to effective with all the gas masks. They should switch to something more kinetic like beanbag type rounds.

  • What about this tranq darts they use in zoos. Then they can be easily rounded up

• This is fucking retarded, install the damn permanent water cannons already.

• “A Communist system can be recognized by the fact that it spares the criminals and criminalizes the political opponent.”

  Helo rides are the answer

  • You’re literally advocating for the execution of your political opponents. Does that make you a communist? (FROM JEN: This comment was aggressively downvoted - the community did not like it)

    • Those political opponents are violent and breaking the law every day of their existence. Spare us the preaching.

There was a large protest in Washington, but Trump did not stay in DC for the protests. From the AP:

Trump, meanwhile, was spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

“They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” the president said in a Fox News interview that aired early Friday, before he departed for a $1 million-per-plate MAGA Inc. fundraiser at his club.

A few photos from the DC No Kings protest: