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Given that we write about politics on a daily basis, we are well aware that Donald Trump has thoroughly inured the country, and the world, to shockingly problematic behavior. With that said, we are surprised that this is not bigger news. As you may or may not have heard, the former president publicized the (possible) address of his even more former predecessor, causing a particularly deranged Trumper to try to make an assassination attempt.
The would-be assassin is named Taylor Taranto, and as you can see in the 26-page indictment filed against him, he has a long history of combining both violence and lunacy. He participated in the 1/6 insurrection, as you might guess. He's also threatened the life of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), up to and including showing up at Raskin's kids' school, he's bragged of plans to invade the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and he's made threatening phone calls to the office of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Taranto has also been banned from the set-aside-for-protesters "Freedom Corner," outside the Capitol, for his abusive behavior toward other protesters. And, of course, he's got several social media accounts that he uses to post absolutely unhinged ALL CAPS rants and raves.
How does Trump enter into this, other than generally encouraging this kind of problematic behavior? Let's directly quote the Taranto indictment:
On June 29, 2023, Former President Donald Trump posted what he claimed was the address of Former President Barack Obama on the social media platform Truth Social.
The reason we post that directly is that Trump's reason for making these posts is not clear to us. The former president sent out a total of four messages; you can see the one that had the actual address here (with the address blurred out, of course). However, nobody seems to have published the full set of four messages (for obvious reasons), and so it's not clear exactly how or why Trump highlighted the inclusion of Obama's identifying information. The indictment does not give details beyond the general statement above, and all the news coverage, such as it is, just repeats the DoJ's verbiage.
What can be said with certainty, however, is that: (1) Trump was, at very least, reckless and (2) once it became clear that the information was potentially putting Obama at risk, Trump did not remove the post from his account. It is also well within the realm of possibility that Trump wanted Obama to be threatened. And certainly, that is what happened. Taranto showed up in the general neighborhood indicated by the address. Nobody is saying if the address was actually correct, once again, for obvious reasons. Our guess is that it was; in any case, it was close enough that the would-be assassin entered into an area that was under the protection of the United States Secret Service. Taranto was trying to live-stream the assassination attempt, but once he realized the feds were onto him, he fled. As it turns out, the U.S.S.S. is way better at this than a random crackpot is, and so they nabbed the perp. The government had already been trying to arrest Taranto, but had not had success because he is apparently homeless. So, by blundering into an area being monitored by law enforcement, he did the feds a favor.
The conclusion here is in the headline: Trump's rhetoric and his reckless behavior are going to get one of his rivals killed one of these days. It's as simple as that. And that is on top of any foreign assets who might already have been killed due to the former president's handling of classified information. (Z)