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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   24923 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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Now hold on, there's a difference between being happy someone is dead and actively supporting violence against them. Trump himself has cheered on the death of multiple people who he disliked, including the murder of Rob Reiner. Hell, Trump has even called for the death penalty against those Dem lawmakers like half a year ago which is one of the closest things you can get of support for violence while still not quite crossing the boundary.

Now maybe those are crass comments (I think they are), but I wouldn't interpret them as instructions to "go out and kill Democrats". Heck Trump once posted Obama's address leading to an armed man afterwards showing up casing the joint looking for a "good angle" to shoot. I could say that Trump caused this, but I could also just say that this guy was a nutjob who had a history of threatening Democrats, and consider that most people didn't try to kill Obama. This guy didn't do it because of Trump, he did it because he was a violent and hateful man.

Hell, Trump has even called for the death penalty against those Dem lawmakers like half a year ago which is one of the closest things you can get of support for violence while still not quite crossing the boundary.

I'd say a government official with the power to set in motion the process of executing somebody calling for them to be executed clearly does cross the boundary - it is, in non-clown cases, an order to start that process. When Trump does it he arguably isn't calling for violence because when Trump speaks in public it is presumed to be (especially by his supporters) a mindless bloviation intended to express emotions, not an attempt to communicate.

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