The Right's Response to Charlie Kirk's Assassination Provides a Glimpse Into How They'll Handle Donald Trump's Death
It feels like Donald Trump will never die. The deal he struck with the devil for unlimited power and the adulation of the stupidest people in the world seems to have included eternal life as a bonus.
How else can you explain why a seriously overweight old man who never exercises, consumes only fast food and crushed-up Adderall, and exists in a state of perpetual rage has made it nearly to eighty?
Trump will die. Everyone does. Along with taxes, death is the only sure thing in this rotten world. Then again, Trump brags about both his massive wealth and stubborn refusal to pay taxes because he’s “smart.” If he can avoid paying taxes, it’s horrifyingly possible that he’ll find a way to avoid life’s other irrevocable certainty as well.
I sincerely hope that Trump doesn’t die during his second term in office or during a theoretical J.D. Vance presidency, because a MAGA administration would undoubtedly respond to Trump’s demise the way the Trump administration handled Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
If Trump dies while a Democrat occupies the White House, his cultists will undoubtedly respond with fury and rage, but they would lack the massive institutional power of the most power-hungry administration in American history.
The instant deification of Charlie Kirk plays like a test run for the inevitable moment when, to use a Scientologist term, Trump drops the body and is rewarded for a lifetime of cruelty, divisiveness, and decadence with an executive position in heaven, possibly above God and Jesus.
As with Charlie Kirk, Republicans will slap a halo over Trump’s blessed memory and begin the process of rewriting history in his favor. Trump’s infinite, unconscionable sins will be forgotten and forgiven, while his ostensible virtues will be exaggerated to a comic degree.
Like Kirk, a man who traveled the world spreading hate toward people of color, the LGBTQ community, and women, Trump will be lionized as a hero motivated by love: love for his country, love for his family, love of God, and love for his followers.
The vulnerable people Trump spent every day in office railing against and demonizing will be expected to show Trump’s blessed memory a level of respect, sensitivity, and consideration that he did not extend to them. We’ll be sternly lectured that Trump wasn’t just a man but a movement, and that criticizing him will be a gob of spit in the face of the eighty million people who inexplicably voted for him.
A party that has become morally indefensible under Trump’s rule will sanctimoniously cast judgment on people who treat his memory with insufficient reverence.
Trump’s self-serving lies will be treated like unassailable truths. His character flaws will be converted magically into strengths. Trump’s stubborn unwillingness to think before he talks or consider the emotions of anyone other than himself will be posited as the blunt honesty of a straight-shooter. His child-like unwillingness to accept responsibility, ever, and his desperate need to blame everything negative on his enemies will somehow be seen as a sign of strength.
The president’s xenophobia will be portrayed as a fierce desire to protect the patriotic, hardworking Americans he loves from illegal immigrants universally committed to raping white ladies, stealing jobs, and eating pets.
A party that sold its soul to a cheap, tacky con artist who took away grandma’s Medicare, her grandson’s free lunch, and life-saving aid to struggling third-world countries to fund massive tax cuts for billionaires will ludicrously claim moral high ground over people who acknowledge that Trump’s conception of himself as a beloved savior of democracy who scored landslide victories in three consecutive elections is violently divorced from reality.
The right will prostrate itself before the imaginary greatness of someone who posts sentiments like the following: “Ilhan Omar’s Country of Somalia is plagued by a lack of central Government control, persistent Poverty, Hunger, Resurgent Terrorism, Piracy, decades of Civil War, Corruption, and pervasive Violence. 70% of the population lives in extreme Poverty, and widespread Food Insecurity. Somalia is consistently ranked among the World’s Most Corrupt Countries, including Bribery, Embezzlement, and a Dysfunctional Government. All of this, and Ilhan Omar tells us how to run America! P.S. Wasn't she the one that married her brother in order to gain Citizenship??? What SCUM we have in our Country, telling us what to do, and how to do it. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
One of the many fucked up things about what he posted to Truth Social less than a week ago is that it’s not at all unusual. It’s pretty much par for the course. I’m not sure if it would even make a list of the 100 most racist and sexist things Trump has done in his second term.
After Trump dies, posts like that will be aggressively defended as the pugilistic aggression of a consummate fighter who refused to yield to political correctness, thought police, or the Woke Mind Virus.
We’ll be continually reminded that Trump had a wife and children. They won’t mention that Trump cheated on all of his wives and ignored his children. Lots of people have wives and children, including serial killers. That doesn’t make them good, or even halfway decent people. All it means is that they married and reproduced.
Ben Carson will be trotted out as proof that Trump couldn’t possibly be racist. After all, would a racist appoint a Black person to a cabinet position, or express fondness for his Black cultists? Checkmate, libs.
In its MAGA era, Republicans aren’t a traditional political party. MAGA is not a coherent political philosophy. It’s a cult, and when the leader of a cult dies, it throws the cult into chaos and confusion. They’re likely to focus their worshipful energies on completing Trump’s life’s work, oppressing the powerless on behalf of the powerful, and helping build a utopia where the press is encouraged to go after the Democrats with the crazed intensity of a rabid dog, but being overly critical of Trump and his administration is somehow illegal and not covered by the First Amendment.
These last few weeks have given us a glimpse into what it will look like when the Alt-Right rage-mourns someone a fraction as important and revered as the current president.
Like Kirk, Trump will be larger in death than he was in life. He’ll live forever as a symbol and a rallying point despite doing his damnedest to ruin a country he clearly sees as a violent, weak, crime-ravaged, horribly mismanaged disaster that’s lucky to have him fix it.
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