My morning news ritual while my coffee is brewing is to turn on MSNBC and see if Trump died overnight (and see what their main stories are) and fire up my laptop to see what HUFFPOST has their main story.

The illustration above shows what HUFFPOST’s opening page looked like at 4:00AM here in Oregon. It featured Trump Promises Voters Vengeance In His Final Pitch Before Iowa Caucus as the top story.

In Salon Igor Derysh wrote “Even if you vote and pass away, it’s worth it”: Trump urges Iowans to vote sick in subzero temps.

“Morning Joe” was talking football when I turned on the TV. As I write this they’re talking politics with the concensus being that Trump will do well in Iowa.

One thing that got to me was the HUFFPOST headline about Trump promising to punish his enemies.

This is the article:

Trump Promises Voters Vengeance In His Final Pitch Before Iowa Caucus

The former president told supporters that Monday’s caucus was their “personal chance” to help him get back at his political enemies.

Here’s an excerpt:

“These caucuses are your personal chance to score the ultimate victory over all of the liars, cheaters, thugs, perverts, frauds, crooks, freaks, creeps and other quite nice people,” Trump told the audience. “The Washington swamp has done everything in its power to take away your voice. But tomorrow is your time to turn on them and to say and speak your mind and to vote.”

His including “other nice people” in his list is, well, just plain weird and reminded me of his saying that there were very fine people on both sides after the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. He is correct in one respect. The so-called Washington swamp has tried to take away the voice of the bigots and haters in his cult.

It seems appropriate to “bullet” point the promises coming from the man who once said he could get away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue:

● Punishing enemies

● Promising vengeance

● Getting back at his political enemies.

It is an aspect of human nature for an individual to wish they could exact revenge against someone who has personally wronged them and to take pleasure if, after hurting them, something bad happens to them.

What we observe with Trump’s cult is that Trump has managed to demonize people who haven’t done anything directly to hurt them. He’s managed to make people feel that everyone from Joe Biden to some fantasy random rapist crossing the Rio Grande is their enemy. It doesn’t matter that neither Biden nor a hyopthetical brown-skinned immigrant actually hurt them or anyone they know.

In this respect Trump has out-Hitlered Hitler. Hitler successfully demonized Jews, some of who may have owned a neighborhood shop where they had a bad experience or were bankers who turned down a loan request. Trump has transformed people who never did anything bad to them personally into demons who deserve to be punished.

Trump knows that he has an iron grip on his cult. If you doubt this consider that he also said the following in Iowa:

“You can’t sit home. If you’re sick as a dog, you say ‘Darling, I gotta make it.’ Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it.

Trump saying this has been replayed on MSNBC and is getting a lot of attention, see Google search for what he said here.

Here’s a video of him saying this.

This has made the news more that any of his other Iowa remarks. Just do a Google search. There are so many tweets on X about it I gave up looking at them after reading about 20.

Read previous Stressline blogs.