Coop Scoop: Trump Jesus Opens the Milwaukemberg Rally

Too bad he got shot. But No "Unity" with Christian Fascists

July 15, 2025

By Marc Cooper

Let’s be crystal clear about where we are at 24 hrs after a 20 yr old gun freak with an AR tried to punch Trump’s ticket.  The voluminous outpouring, the veritable tsunami of inauthentic sentimental bullshit that has ensued since, defies all description and reveals a country that willingly lies to itself on a constant basis...you know…”like violence has no place in American life” or the insipid pleas to “both sides” to lower the termperature when it is one side that has been inciting “retribution” against the other as their main campaign theme.

No violence in American politics? You mean that all those American presidents who have been shot or shot at didn’t happen? You mean, MAGA congressturds don’t send out Xmas cards decorated with their deranged spawn holding AR-15’s? You mean Trumpies don’t drive around their pick ups with mentally twisted decals of their AR-15 “family” on their rear windows? You mean SCOTUS didn’t really legalize bump stocks while saying it’s ok if domestic abusers keep their guns? You mean that Trump himself has not been the loudest voice in America encouraging and justifying political violence? You mean he did not identify some of the torch-bearing Nazis in Charlottesville as “good people.” He did not have federal agents tear gas a peaceful demo so he could do an upside down bible photo op? He did not encourage the violent assault on the US Capitol and now lionizes the violent thugs who beat up cops as heroes and hostages? He did not call to execute dissenting generals? He did not call upon his rally goers to “knock the crap” out of non-violent protesters? He was not adjudicated legally for sexual abuse? Or is forcefully fingering a woman cornered in a dressing room just not qualified as violence in MAGA World? He is not raising the political temperature talking about suspending the constitution, becoming dictator for a day and building concentration camps to hold rounded up migrants?

So.. yeah.. I feel sorry he went thru that shooting. Now, I am done with that part of my reaction. ok? I am moving on. You are welcome to stay behind and toss a teddy bear onto some MAGA memorial somewhere in some god awful neighborhood. But that’s more than enough sympathy this demagogue deserves or is getting from me.

So let me take a shot at saying a few obvious truths, dead obvious ones but, somehow, still taboo.  Nobody really wishes a violent death on any elected official or candidate – at least in public and at least in a democracy (few tears were shed when Mussolini was beaten and lynched, nor did anybody mourn former Nicaraguan dictator Somoza when he was pulverized by an RPG, nor when Hitler and Goebbels murdered their themselves and families).  Strongmen who rise by violence often if not almost always succumb to it because, in most cases, they led the movements that normalized or at least generalized mass political violence in their respective venues in the first place.

Trump’s place in history is not exactly analogous with these two other dead reprobates.  At least not yet (check back in 2028). But can we at least approach some minor level of modest partial honesty and say there are millions, if not tens of millions of Americans who –in private—sort of wished that shot would not have missed? It’s an easy reflex precisely because it missed, none of Trump’s ill-wishers would have to consider the probable horrific consequences of a successful assassination. I am glad it missed. It’s bad enough as it is. But the moment did produce a freebie no-consquence death wish for Trump.

Likewise, there are millions of Trump supporters, including his top aides, his probable cabinet members and now his pick for Vice-President who have spent the last number of years not only wishing ill on Democrats, but threatening to inflict “retribution” as soon as possible, dehumanizing political opponents with the Nazi verbiage of “scum…vermin…animals…and poisoning the blood line.”  David Frum neatly summarized how we should look at this situation today:

“Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life."

"The Republican National Convention, which opens this week, will welcome to its stage apologists for Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its aggression against U.S. allies. Trump’s own infatuation with Russia and other dictatorships has not dimmed even slightly with age or experience. Yet all of these urgent and necessary truths must now be subdued to the ritual invocation of “thoughts and prayers” for someone who never gave a thought or uttered a prayer for any of the victims of his own many incitements to bloodshed. The president who used his office to champion the rights of dangerous people to own military-type weapons says he was grazed by a bullet from one such assault rifle."

In other words, we acknowledge Trump’s brush with death and condemn it. We equally condemn him and his MAGA movement and identify them as the greatest immediate threat to American constitutional and must be soundly defeated in November.  And after that defeat, God willing, we must dance on their political graves.

So, in short… to quote Scaachi Koul in Slate  

“Everything feels different, but really, nothing is. We’re still in the same place we were last week, even while it feels like our world has been irrevocably upended. Biden remains woefully unequipped to handle this campaign, this news cycle, and perhaps even a second term—he continues to poll behind his vice president, Kamala Harris, and it’s increasingly predicted that only an October Surprise could swing the election in his favor. (On Saturday evening he announced he had halted campaigning—as if it would make any impact at all!) The Democratic Party, meanwhile, continues to buckle from deep fissures among its members. Socialist darlings like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have continued to back Biden even as he’s continued to operate as a centrist, leaving leftists forgotten in this election. The Democrats continue to suffer because they fail to speak to their own voters; Biden, and many other establishment Democrats, continue to be uninspiring choices for left-of-center voters.”

“Republicans, meanwhile, are happy to use the assassination attempt to further sow division; Trump acolyte (and vice presidential pick) J.D. Vance suggested Biden’s campaign rhetoric was responsible for the attempt before any actual information became available. There are plenty of conspiracy theories floating around online too, from liberal ones (that the shooting was staged, an inside job to boost Trump’s chances in November) to conservative ones (that the Democratic institution couldn’t beat him in November, and so they had to kill him instead). Occam’s razor likely wins out here: It was not a conspiracy, it was just an act of violence—a school shooting at a Trump rally.”

Talk of “unity” and of “lowering the temperature” in the wake of the shooting are absolutely delusional and also quite offensive as it suggests the threat of poitlical violence is symmetrical. It is not. Certainly there were some violent excesses during the 2020 BLM marches. But the last decade has been marked by a radical increase in violence and support of violence from the Radical Right.

The first night of Trump’s week long Milwaukemberg convention was opened up by none other than the Georgia Fascist-Imbecile Marjorie Taylor Greene and in the coming hours and days that dais will fill with a frightening collection of zealots, wing nuts, extremists, Christian Nationalists, MAGA/Fascists, werewolves and mad dogs.  The convention will canonize the former president at Trump Jesus, saved personally by God to continue his mission to purify a decadent mixed-race America. 

Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance is quite consequential.  He’s the best and the worst of choices.  By a mile he’s smarter, more rational, more competent, more charismatic than any other contender.  Yes, he back in 2016 he called Trump a “America’s Hitler” and yes he called him a bunch of other names before he decided it was better to join Hitler than oppose him…a better turn on to be seen as a sweaty macho Gauleiter than a wimpy Yale intellectual book author.  Make no mistake:  J.D. Vance has gone through no conversion.  You can bet your toasted testes he still believes Trump is a fascist.  He just decided he wants in on the scam.  And that’s what makes him so damn dangerous.  I think it safe to assume that if Trump is elected he will spend most of his time on camera and it will be the very fascist Vance in charge of day-to-day operation of the Reich administration.

Has Trump already won the election?  Maybe but not inevitably. Not if the Democrats and the American people respond with sobriety and firm determination and not get sidetracked by weak leaders, soppy sentiments, and media bullshit.  As is often the case, I have chosen to close this piece with some words from Never Trumper Steve Schmidt (it’s also significant that these former Republicans speak with a much sharper edge about Trump than do leading mushy-mouthed Democrats).  Here is an extended excerpt from Schmidt’s latest The Warning (look for it on substack), saying it better than I can:

“Donald Trump is an American fascist who has survived an assassination attempt, and is now raising money from it. Meanwhile, the MAGA faithful and his leading candidates for vice president are competing in an Olympics of demagoguery blaming President Biden for the crime.”

“…Joe Biden’s ads have been completely ineffective, and every single penny of the already spent money has been wasted, so the performative decision by his campaign to suspend advertising in the aftermath of Donald Trump surviving an assassination attempt is meaningless, but pathetic nonetheless. How long do they propose the vigil last? “

“Donald Trump is a man of violence. He has courted it, incited it, curated it, and now he has been victimized by it personally. His campaign has been a call to retribution and revenge, and now this man of malice will use his attempted murder to raise the stakes, raise the temperature and justify his threats. “

“The act was cowardly, and like the January 6 attack and every assassination attempt of a candidate, officeholder, election official, it was an attack on the United States. Saturday was yet another awful day in our worsening national crisis. }

“Let me be clear about something. “

“I have worked at the highest levels of American politics for a very long time. I have played senior roles in two presidential campaigns, served in a White House and been involved in scores of political campaigns, including leading the 2020 Lincoln Project, which helped in electing President Biden, based on the premise of making the race about Trump. “

“My life was never threatened until Donald Trump entered politics. The FBI never came to my home where my children sleep when I ran a campaign against Senator Obama. Boxes of human excrement were never mailed to my home. Millions of dollars of mailings calling me a pedophile were mailed into communities across the country, and the purpose of them was to trigger an unhinged person to show up at my home like one showed up at Comet Ping Pong Pizza.”

“I blame Donald Trump and MAGA for this. President Biden should understand that when he talks about the fact that “there’s no place for this kind of violence in America” he is offering a prayer for the future, not an observation of our history, which is resplendently violent. Three of the first four Republican presidents were assassinated in a 40-year period between 1860 and 1900: Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.” 

Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan all survived assassination attempts. Other political leaders from the segregationist George Wallace, Governor Huey Long, Gabby Giffords, Steve Scalise, Harvey Milk and George Moscone have suffered severe wounds or been gunned down by assassins. Violence has always ridden in the shadows of our republic, accompanying our progress towards justice every step of the way. Part of the reason 1968 lays claim to being the most turbulent year in American history is because of the bullets that killed MLK and RFK. 

This history is what has always made Donald Trump and his MAGA movement an obscenity. 

He has incited violence.

In the wake of the Charlottesville violence he said:

You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.

Reacting to protests in Minneapolis, following the death of George Floyd, he said:

When the looting starts, the shooting starts.

He celebrated thuggery in the 2020 presidential debate:

Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

He has killed with words, following his speech on January 6:

We’re going to walk down to the Capitol…you have to show strength, and you have to be strong.

He has openly pondered the killing of his fellow Americans. 

Let’s be clear about what this election is about. 

Donald Trump is a fascist who tried to overthrow the US government, and shred the US Constitution when he lost an election. He incited a mob to attack the peaceful transition of power in the United States and the suspension of the constitution. He is running on a platform of revenge and retribution, and has made clear his disdain for the American way of life. 

The choice in the election is perfectly clear because what Trump stands for is perfectly clear. 

National suicide is on the ballot, and Trump is Dr. Kevorkian looking for the vein. Talking about this isn’t just honest, but reality-based. 

Many in the national media believe the criminal act of a failed assassin have obliterated the existential stakes of the 2024 election. Suddenly, Donald Trump is a martyr calling for unity and apportionment for the deterioration of our democracy, public discourse, and morality is to be apportioned equally to everyone. 

This is a lie. In fact, it is a dangerous one. 

I condemn political violence unequivocally, so I must oppose Donald Trump unequivocally. 

I condemn the assassin and curse his name for the damage he has done to our country. 

I condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will soon be spreading Trump’s brand of unity to the assembled fascists and their sympathizers, collaborators and business partners in Milwaukee. The staging may be different than the Bund in 1938, but when Tucker Carlson takes the stage the old spirits will flutter anew. 

Personally, I do not wish for unity with a man who has called for the suspension of the US Constitution, queried about the shooting of peaceful black protestors, dines with Nazis, slandered America’s war dead, and incited violence a thousand times. 

I do not wish to compromise with fascists and religious extremists who seek to create a Caesar out of the presidency, and strip women of their bodily autonomy, gays of their marriages and black people of their voting rights. 

Donald Trump survived and I am grateful for that, but his political cause remains as vile, un-American and dangerous as it did on Friday. He is a corrupt and failed president who celebrates the world’s dictators, while denigrating our ideas and values. He is a most contemptible man, and the most unfit to serve and rise to the pinnacle of power in the United States. 

He must be beaten. 

Why? 

Because he is a fascist and all fascists are violent. 

History didn’t stop on Saturday night. It kept moving forward. 

I understand the urge to give up.  Don’t even dream about it.  We are going to resist the fascist threat 24/7 through, during and after the election.  It’s do or die.

Cannot be said better than that. Up off the couch. Prepare. We have some big fighting in front of us. Biden is dead in the water and cannot win at this point. I am not sure Harris can either but she would reset the race and boost Democratic enthusiasm that is now flat lining.++

I don’t want to bang the cup too hard but we are in an emergency funding crunch and it is not clear if the Coop Scoop can be properly sustained till November. NO KIDDING.

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