The top post at the online forum TheDonald on Wednesday morning was titled “Fuck Mike Pence. 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻.” And chilling calls for violence against the former vice president were rising to the top of the comments thread.
Pence plays a starring role in the new indictment of Donald Trump, which quotes Trump telling Pence, “You’re too honest” after the vice president refused to block certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win.
And Pence met the news of the indictment with harsh criticism of Trump, now a rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Pence tweeted that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s indictment also recalls how Trump, unable to convince Pence to become a co-conspirator in his despotic plot to steal the presidency, instead unleashed a mob of MAGA supporters against him. “At the Capitol,” the court document reads, “members of the crowd chanted, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’; ‘Where is Pence? Bring him out!’; and ‘Traitor Pence!’”
Such dark sentiments against Pence now have been revived, at an online forum that played a key role for plotters of the unrest of Jan. 6. TheDonald is a Reddit like forum for the Trumpiest of the Trump faithful. Both individual posts, and the comments on them, rise based on the “upvoting” of users, giving a glimpse into the collective psyche of the community.
The top comment on the Pence post called for divine retribution against the “traitor.” It reads: “May GOD Strike him down for his lies and treachery to the American People.” But as other commenters piled on, they fantasized about a public execution of Pence at a gallows. “I want to watch his toes dangle in the breeze,” wrote user BigMikesHairyDong.
“I want to stand beside you as witness,” wrote user Totally_Passable adding, “I want to pull the lever.” This user made clear he didn’t want the violence to end with Pence: “I long for the day we the people pull these traitors… out of their seats screaming, knowing full well what is coming to them, and why its coming.”
Instead of recoiling at the call to execute Pence, other users joined the call for mob violence. “No long drops,” said another user, echoing many of the replies. “Humane execution should be off the table.”
It's pretty insane how these people were told, incorrectly, that Mike Pence could just wave his hand and choose the next president, and are totally ready to murder him because he didn't do something crazy that he didn't even have the power to do.
I remember when my kids were small and I would make them come inside when it would get dark and a fit would be thrown as if I controlled the sun and this was an injustice I was creating. IDK why that popped into my head.
Because the overly vocal fans of the thrice (I think) idicted, twice impeached, attempted overthrower of democracy don't have the mental capacity past what most people reach when they are "small."
I feel the light betray me...
This is kind of what happens when you have a group that is explicitly anti-education. I don't want to come off as elitist, but when there's a vacuum in your brain, it's surprisingly easy for it to get filled with nonsense. Small children believe everything you tell them.
It's not elitist if it's true.
If you put your ear up to their ear, you'll hear the ocean.
It's scarier than that. I saw some of the comments, and they said he couldn't have chosen the next president, but he could've held off while some states did more to investigate the votes that were supposedly stolen. They make it sound so plausible to each other, and it just makes them even scarier because more people say "Oh that sounds reasonable" when it's completely nuts. The state of Georgia and counties in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Texas already had vote recounts by Jan. 6th. What the hell did they expect to find??
I think you know what they expected to find. They expected to find their stupid conspiracy theory that the election was rigged if you just clapped your hands and believed hard enough.
These people could ask God himself about their theories and they'd just say "This conspiracy goes higher than I thought possible" if he did anything but blindly agree.
They expected to find exactly what their propagandising representatives fed them. The "Truth"™.
And they did but, for most conservatives, reality isn't convincing enough so they sought out a different delusion.
The things that get passed around on conservative twitter/fb etc are truly terrifyingly stupid, like, I couldn't even make them up because they're so ludicrous.
100% ageee. I however, living in Indiana for the past 30 years, would like him to drop dead for completely different reasons.
Motherfucker started an AIDS epidemic in Johnson County. Fuck him three ways from Sunday.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/02/how-mike-pence-made-indianas-hiv-outbreak-worse-118648
Holy shit. this is horrible. A life changing sickness and barely a thing was done until it was too late.
How many of these people will, in January of 2025, insist that Kamala Harris can't just wave her hands and appoint Biden as President regardless of the votes?
To be clear: She can't and I don't think she would, but according to their Mike Pence theories, she could just do that.
What I'm calling is that they'll say that Biden didn't win and blame Kamala for appointing him anyway.
They don't think he had a legal ability to do it, they wanted him to break the law, be a traitor to America & democracy, and appoint their Diaper Don as emperor.
And the funniest part of that is they expected everyone to just accept it if it happened. "Gosh, you sure got us! We are completely helpless against this coup! Long live emperor Trump!"
I understand why they felt that way. The civilized world has been tolerating uncountable violations of oath of office by trump and his administration for 4 years by that point. What they failed to grasp is, yes, there is a line that you cannot cross without consequences. You cross that line and suddenly all of these people who have been struggling to accept everything are mobilized to action. The trumpers think of everyone except themselves as a bunch of sissy pushovers, so I think they'd be pretty surprised when the line was finally crossed.
Many Americans have no idea how things work. Think about how many times people talk about how this POTUS or that POTUS increased taxes when it is Congress that enacts taxes.
Lol there are people who think the president sets the price of gas.
Not sure why the cost of gas matters, either, when they have no problem blowing money on Biden gas pump stickers and creating drag on their car by attaching as many Trump and US flags as possible.
Not to mention driving vehicles that get terrible mileage even without the flags.
Most of us have no idea how most of the world works. We live in a complicated society, nobody can be an expert about everything. Admit it or not we all rely on experts every day.
The problem with experts is they can use facts and knowledge to challenge people in power. So people in power foment anti-intellectualism and push a nonsense naritive that we are all rugged individuals. You know better than the so called experts.
This is the result.
Severe lack of education. The Republican Party is truly becoming the party of the uneducated.
isn't this happening right now with Judge Cannon? She was a Trump appointee, has already made an outrageous decision relating to Trump, and now she's presiding over his classified documents case, Trumpers are sending her death threats because they think she has the power to toss the case out at this point. It's like they don't even know when they are winning!
They don't know much. It's pure outrage.