MAGAReport 10/14/2024 - Not an assassination attempt
The guy arrested with guns at the Coachella Trump rally is well known in the far-right and he wasn't going to shoot Trump
Trump supporters cannot get enough of “assassination attempts”. They love them because it feeds the narrative that big forces are acting against them and that Trump is some type of martyr protected by God who is coming to save the country.
At the Coachella Trump rally this weekend, a man named Vem Miller was arrested at a checkpoint with guns, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, “I truly do believe we prevented another assassination attempt.”
There is all kinds of crazy nonsense going on in this story.
The Secret Service doesn’t believe he was planning to assassinate the President. He is not being investigated for that and was not charged with anything related to an assassination attempt. The FBI is not investigating him, either. Vem says he was not planning to do anything.
So if he wasn’t trying to kill Trump, (1) why would he show up with a bunch of guns and (2) why would the Sheriff say this was an assassination attempt?
(1) Vem is well-known to people who follow the far-right. He has been spending a lot of time with Ivan Raiklin this summer. Ivan is a Trump supporter and election denier, who has been at lots of Trump events. He is, in the opinion of everyone I’ve talked to who has encountered him, obnoxious.
Vem calls himself a journalist and documentary filmmaker and has been filming Ivan at some of these events. And Here’s a clip of Vem interviewing Ivan about Ivan’s plans for thwarting another Trump assassination attempt:
You can check out Vem’s Instagram and see that he’s clearly a Trump supporter.
So if these guys are pals, both support Trump, and they are focused on the impact of assassination, why would Vem bring guns to a Trump rally?
Vem is a 2nd Amendment enthusiast and a Sovereign Citizen. The Sovereign Citizens, if you have been lucky enough to avoid knowing about them, are an extremist anti-government movement that does not believe they are subject to laws. They don’t pay taxes, they make their own license plates, and are absolutely wild in court. If you’d like to get a sense of them, please watch this compilation from A&E.
A sovereign citizen who loves guns is totally the kind of guy who would create fake media credentials and bring his guns somewhere they weren’t allowed. These guys generally like to push authorities and do outrageous things.
(2) Why would the Sheriff claim this was an assassination attempt when this is a MAGA guy who was probably just trying to piss people off and maybe make Trump look good? Probably because the Sheriff is also a MAGA guy.
Sheriff Bianco is a former Oathkeeper (a far-right, anti-government militia), and if you check out his Twitter feed, it’s all far-right. He follows End Wokeness, a far-right influencer account; True the Vote, a Big Lie account; and Luke Slywalker, a QAnon influencer. He also follows Ivan Riklin, the retribution-loving pal of our gun-toting subject, Vem Miller! Bianco even attended the Trump rally in Coachella himself as a VIP.
So I guess it could be that Vem really was going to try to shoot at Trump in an attempt to make him look good and help his friend Ivan carry out some retribution and further the MAGA movement. I think it’s more likely that Vem just wanted to poke the bear and do what sovereign citizens do by provoking the Secret Service at the rally.
But more importantly, regardless of Vem’s intentions, this shows a lot of interconnectedness among the far-right, Trump, local authorities (not just here but around the country), and how that feeds into the narrative about Trump.
Beyond this, there are still no organized plans for action or violence, but a lot of talk about violence generally.