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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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Conservative Mike Cernovich (1.2M followers) Tweeted "Trump needs a VP that will make him assassination proof. Anyone saying otherwise has no understanding of the time we are in. Tim Scott as VP? Trump's survivability will drop to zero. It's incredible to me that more don't understand this."

How seriously should Trump take such a threat, and how seriously does Trump take such a threat? Yes, the powers-that-be truly hate Trump and if he became president and had Scott as VP many would rejoice at Trump's death. But by what mechanism might they kill him? Obviously, it creates horrible incentives if Trump believes the threat and it causes him to consider someone such as Kari Lake, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Sarah Palin for his VP nominee. In sort-of support of Cernovich, part of the reason that Biden might be sticking with Harris as VP is to reduce the chances he gets removed from office for senility.

If Trump was at any real risk of being assassinated by the kind of people who are rational enough to care about the VP who would become President as a result, then why has he not already been assassinated, at some point between 2015 and now?

I'm beginning to suspect that Powers That Be may not Be all they're cracked up to be. Current track record on presidential assassinations is leaning really heavily in favor of deranged highly motivated individuals and against the Illuminati.

edit: deranged is not really an appropriate descriptor for many presidential assassins, but even the ones with clear political motives were acting alone or in a small group, not as agents of a significant institution.

It’s not? Out of the four big assassins, the only one who made a coherent plan was Booth. Half credit for Oswald. The Reagan, Teddy, and Jackson attempts were pretty unhinged, too.

I mean, it is clearly is appropriate for many as well, but off the top of my head Booth, McKinley's assassin, the Puerto Ricans, and that one Georgian dude who threw a grenade at Dubya had fairly clear ideological motives. It may not necessarily have involved a good plan, but it wasn't like the ghost of Elvis told them to do it.