It is Trumpists like Erin Elmore who "beget" the violence we are seeing now

We have been getting more and more information concerning the attempted coup of January 6, which appears to be—far from being “spontaneous”—a carefully planned and coordinated attack. Pipe bombs had been strategically-placed to lure police away from the Capitol building, and the insurgents appeared to have foreknowledge of where their targets were, even unmarked offices of Democratic members of the House. Many believe that the insurgents were provided assistance from both the inside and outside, not just from pro-Trump police, but possibly extremist lawmakers. One combat-equipped insurgent with a handful of ziptie handcuffs apparently hoped to take a few lawmakers as hostages.

Yet shockingly there are those who refuse to accept the full import of what occurred, particularly House Republicans. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and soon-to-be ex-first lady Melania Trump are among those who have been overly sympathetic to Ashli Babbitt, who was one of a group of insurgents who refused to halt trying to break down this door while a police officer was threatening to shoot:

Before the coup attempt, Babbitt had left this tweet behind:

Nothing will stop us....they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light!

Babbitt is now a "martyr" to the cause, and being used to recruit other far-right, white supremacist, QAnon-espousing fanatics. 

This level of fanaticism is difficult to take. These people refused to believe recounts, refused to accept the judgment of 60 court cases that found claims of fraud without merit. These people claim to “love” this country, “love” democracy, “love” the rule of law. They claim to be “Americans” and “patriots.” They are in fact none of these things; what they actually believe in is a fascist authoritarianism that bestows the powers of thuggery and brutality to their “leader” to disregard any law or moral and ethical reservations in order to create that “banality of evil” that allows a regime a free hand to remove or oppress any persons, groups or ideologies that obsess their hatreds, fears and paranoia. 

To gauge the hypocrisy and insanity of some of these people, the UK’s Sky News has allowed one Erin Elmore to appear as a “Republican Strategist” who apparently was a Trump campaign “spokesperson” in 2016, although you’d be hard-pressed to find her appearing on any mainstream media channel in this country, and for good reason. Sky News was founded by Rupert Murdoch to be an “alternative” to the BBC, but has since been purchased by Comcast and generally hews toward “factual” news. One suspects that Trump’s unpopularity overseas is aided immensely by supporters like Elmore, who provides British viewers with a comical, quizzical and disturbing look at just how extreme American politics has become, at least from the “right” side.

Last week, Elmore was invited to chat with Sky News host Adam Boulton to discuss the attempted coup. Boulton is your typical British stiff upper lip type, speaking in an even tone, only betraying his opinion of what is being said through barely perceptible changes in expression. The “optics” of this in relation to Elmore’s highly emotional and highly irrational “alternate facts” and “whataboutisms” was, well, “striking”; being in the same room with her for five minutes is akin to being subjected to verbal domestic violence. When Boulton asked about her thoughts about last’s week coup attempt, Elmore started out with a “rational” observation: “I don’t think anyone in America or otherwise is proud of what happened.”

But it was all downhill from there, as Elmore did everything possible to avoid the subject, preferring to lay all of the blame on the “left.” She spent the rest of the eight minute interview wildly gesticulating and shouting at Boulton in an accusatory manner. “We all should condemn all acts of political violence” she exclaimed. “Political violence begets political violence, and that’s what we have seen over the last year here in America, whether this is on January 6, or it was burning and desecrating of St. John’s Church, whether it was rioting and looting in Philadelphia, New York, Minneapolis, by BLM and antifa. All acts of violence political or otherwise, should be completely disavowed by everyone, including the media.”

A plain reading of the words may convince some people that Elmore has a valid point; the problem is that listening to it reminds one that she has been attacking the Black Lives Movement as a terrorist group all year, is now being called upon to denounce the violent coup attempt by white supremacist and far-right extremists; but instead of addressing it directly, she laid the blame for all of it squarely at the feet of “leftist” groups who were “begetting” the violent coup attempt last week, when it was absurd to accuse BLM and antifa for the election lies and incitement that Trump and his supporters have been peddling the past two months. She refused to acknowledge the existence of far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the “Boogaloo” movement and Patriot Prayer which have all been involved in violent street activities over the past year, as well as killings by the odd Trump-inspired vigilante, as we saw in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Of course facts do not mean much to Trumpist fanatics like Elmore. When Boulton noted that Trump and his son had egged on the protesters prior to the coup attempt with terms of violence, Elmore gave this bizarre, incomprehensible “explanation” that engaged more in absurd “whataboutism” rather than answering the point of the question, which would have required some kind of comprehension of the culpability of Trump:

Well, I think a “fight” means political fighting for our country because conservatives believe in our military and our police officers and democracy. And what is happening right now is undemocratic. I remember Maxine Waters say if you see a conservative go up to them in a shopping mall or while they are eating dinner. That is a fight. I remember Kamala Harris tweeting to bailout BLM protesters who desecrated and destroyed cities and were involved in the killing of 30 Americans this summer So that, I think, is a fight.

First of all, we have learned that Trump not only did not feel at first blush that the terrorist insurgents were doing anything “wrong,” but seemed to be thrilled by what they were doing on his behalf. This is what he was secretly hoping would occur, that lawmakers would feel the threat of physical harm in order to be “persuaded” to overturn the election. This is a far, far cry from expressing an opinion to someone at the mall or the diner, and that someone can actually claim that these are “equal” reminds one of just how demented Trumpists can be. On the other hand, the largely peaceful protesting by the Black Lives Movement—which is not a “political” movement—was largely overshadowed and coopted by the violence of white “anarchists” and the “black bloc” movement. The reputation for “violence” by the antifa movement is largely a fiction and based more on clashes with violent far-right groups and with police zealously using excessive force.

Boulton persisted in his pursuit of any kind of admission that Trump helped incite the violent coup attempt. Elmore was equally persistent in being completely blind for reasons of extreme political partisanship and hypocrisy, insisting that the coup insurgents were largely “peaceful” compared to BLM protesters:

It certainly doesn’t. It is the right as Americans to peacefully protest and assemble. Over the summer, all we saw was people saying that these were mostly peaceful protests as my city—I had to flee because it virtually burned to the ground.

This was a bald-faced, self-serving lie. The city she is referring to is Jupiter, Florida, where protests by again mostly white people were, in fact, largely peaceful. Elmore is apparently assuming that her British listeners would believe every lie she told because they wouldn’t know any different. But again Boulton flustered her by sticking to the matter at hand and the facts: “We are talking about what happened here. There were no BLM protesters breaking in here or committing acts of violence, and led to the death of a police officer. This is what we are talking about. Trump appeared to have encouraged that behavior and calling a rally on that most sensitive day. And that Trump should face some kind of punishment.”

Again when faced with facts, like any Trumpist Elmore refused to accept the factual answer to the question, insisting on looking at it as a “totality” as a country and accusing the mainstream media of ignoring the protests over the summer. Elmore became so discombobulated that she began violently jabbing her finger toward the camera, demanding that Boulton “disavow the violence that occurred this summer”:

Elmore then hypocritically exclaimed that “if we want to heal as a nation and move forward as a democracy we have to disavow all violence. I disavow all violence. It makes me utterly sick in my heart. I ask you to do the same thing right now.” This is her making her violent “point” again:

 

Note that fanatics like this keep talking about “healing” when Der Fuehrer has been actively sowing division in the country since at least 2011, and has been peddling not just race and anti-immigrant hate, but now baseless election fraud conspiracies to further inflame Trumpists and cause further wounds.  Boulton informed Elmore that he is a British observer and that “I’m not a person involved in this fight,” so answer the question. Instead of answering for the culpability of Trump in inciting division and violence, Elmore once more took the coward’s way out, accusing Boulton of not “disavowing the murder of 30 Americans.”

Nonplussed, Boulton asked her “Do you accept, are you shocked that there is a much more gentle treatment of these largely white protesters by police compared to BLM protesters?” Elmore gestured in “shock” at the insinuation, exclaiming “You are saying nothing that is grounded in fact,” in the way typical of self-deceiving fanatics who only see what they want to see. Boulton persisted: “If these protesters had been black would they have been treated in a different way.” Elmore “agreed,” but in a dishonest fashion: “They would have. They would have been ignored by the mainstream media. It would have been absolutely ignored, and called peaceful protest, and would have had politicians and celebrities bail them out of jail”—another QAnon-type conspiracy claim.

Boulton restated the question, making plain that he was referring to the actions of law enforcement, who were in full battle gear at an earlier BLM protest, but this time seemed to allow coup insurgents to roam free threatening lawmakers for the first few hours, with few arrests initially despite a police officer beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by insurgents. Elmore responded with a pre-packaged non-answer: “So now blue lives matter? Now we are not into defunding the police?”

Boulton them pointed out that Trump could potentially go to jail for ten years for breaking his own order increasing penalties on destruction of government property. Elmore lamely claimed that “words don’t desecrate statues,” but Boulton insisted that Trump could be liable for supporting the desecration of Capitol Hill. Elmore responded to this with this chilling assertion: Since he “wrote” the law, he could not be held responsible for his words or actions “in any way, shape or form.” It was just total “leftist media talking head propaganda.”

When Boutlon suggested that Trump was not fit to hold office and could be removed by the 25^th Amendment, Elmore exclaimed that “People should worry more if Joe Biden is fit to serve. We know that he stumbles on his words, appears to be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s dementia.” Naturally, Elmore didn’t seem mindful of Trump’s own frequent trips and falls with words and phrases.

Boulton ended the interview by wryly observing that Elmore was speaking from a city named after a planet; “Many British viewers in particular will think you are living on another very strange planet that has lost touch with right and wrong and political morality. What would you say to them?” This excited these gesticulations:

 

Elmore, seeing that her arguments had no effect on Boulton, weakly muttered that his “one-liners don’t hurt me very much” before going off on the usual mostly nonsensical MAGA claptrap: “70 million Americans voted for president Trump and those are people just like me who have family who serve in the military, who paid for everything they ever earned in their life (huh?). I wasn’t handed anything by anyone and I am an American who has traveled all over the world and respects Great Britain and respects Australia. I am a person who respects those who fight our wars and pay our taxes, love this country and for you to call me anything less than a proper god-fearing, god-loving American who loves this country, who loves this flag it is shameful and disgusting.”

This is what we are up against. In the midst of all of this, Elmore also let it be known that she expects Trump to run again in 2024, and that the current effort to impeach him will be a failed effort to prevent him from doing so. But more than anything else, what we saw here (besides the fake cardboard bookshelf behind her) is a diehard Trumpist who will never give-up, will believe every lie, will refuse to accept any truth—and worst of all, is the kind of person who lies about who they are, who call themselves “Americans” who claim to “love” their country, when in fact they are traitors to everything this country stands for. 

Boulton thanked Elmore for showing up, allowing himself a chuckle at her expense:

Unfortunately for us, it is no laughing matter.