Protecting America - NDN's Statement After Gilroy, El Paso, And Dayton

Protecting America

"Responsible leaders of both parties need to act with great moral clarity now and spend this fall confronting three grave threats to our homeland – deadly right wing domestic terrorism, gun violence, and foreign and domestic manipulation of our elections and discourse. The Republican Party’s refusal to tackle these threats has left our democracy weakened and our fellow citizens dead in malls, parking lots, churches, and schools.  It is long past time to for us to act like patriots not partisans and come together to protect America by tackling these threats head on. 

It was extremely disappointing to see the President this morning tying immigration so directly to domestic violence here in the US – that was the goal of course of the El Paso terrorist.  It was a terrible misstep in the early hours of our response to these cascading tragedies and just another sign of how unfit he is to lead this great nation."

- Simon Rosenberg, Monday, August 4th, 2019

On Friday, before the horrors of El Paso and Dayton, Simon posted a thread which did a deep dive on the President's open embrace and encouragement of domestic extremism.  It began with:

"Alarm bells about Trump's open support of domestic terrorism, political violence have to be ringing loudly now. QAnon was on stage last night w/the President, and his choice for DNI, Rep. Ratcliffe, openly voiced support for a deep state conspiracy similar to QAnon last week."

The thread also reminded us that the President's support of domestic terrorism in the US has come not just through words but with direct Presidential action. He has weakened DHS's ability to counter this domestic threat, and pardoned two right wing extremists who had been convicted of domestic terrorism and were serving time in jail.  He personally intervened to have two domestic terrorists released from jail - what more could this movement want?

NDN also notes that the threat to our democracy posed by manipulation and disinformation are no longer just a foreign threat.  In what is an ominous development, it appears that the Trump campaign and the GOP more broadly have begun to adopt Russian style disinformation tactics in their own day to day politics.