Mark Karlin: Trump's Embracing of Ashli Babbitt as a Martyr Proves He Is Guilty of a Coup Attempt. Message to the Media: It's in Plain Sight, and He Is Now Boasting About It.

Trump at CPAC in 2017. His most recent 2021 speech incorporated his greatest big lie hits. (Gage Skidmore)

July 12, 2021

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH

In the last week, including at CPAC and in an interview with his growling-voiced Fox handmaiden Maria Bartiromo, Trump has started to demand that the police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt as she tried to break into the House Gallery be outed. She was in apparent pursuit, along with a menacing crowd, of capturing or doing harm to Congressional representatives. After a window was smashed open, the officer was the only line of defense between the elected officials who were being hunted down and a lunging Babbitt.

Trump has not only been honoring her as a heroine but he wants to dox and put a target on the back of the policeman who shot her, a heinous act of betrayal to police and to the man and his family, who would most likely be immediately targeted by Trump’s armed brown shirts.

According to Politico,

“Who is the person that shot an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman, right in the head?” Trump said. “There is no repercussion — that were on the other side, it would be the biggest story in this country. Who shot Ashli Babbitt? People want to know and why.”

Bartiromo then referred to Babbitt as “a wonderful woman fatally shot on January 6 as she tried to climb out of a broken window.” Their remarks echoed those of some of Trump’s backers, including Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who has claimed Babbitt was “executed.”

Trump also signaled his full-fledged support by asking why “protesters” were still in jail. Trump said of them, “These were peaceful people, these were great people.”

Politico also noted that Trump said,

In his interview with Bartiromo, Trump said those at the events of Jan. 6 were loving people who wanted to save the nation.

“The crowd was unbelievable and I mentioned the word ‘love,’ the love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said of his rally on the Ellipse. “That’s why they went to Washington.”

He added: “Too much spirit and faith and love, there was such love at that rally, you had over a million people,” inflating the size of his rally crowd.

Trump has long practiced the strategy of at first denying an unfavorable fact, projecting the blame on others, and then, after a period of time, embracing the original fact and championing what he originally denied.

In his Fox interview and at CPAC, Trump was, in plain sight, publicly admitting his coup attempt, while posing a direct threat to a law enforcement officer and defending his insurrectionists against police action, such as it was, taken to stop them from vandalism and assault and murder.

This is an astonishing development, although not unexpected given how Trump has sidled his way in the past to admitting wrongdoing that he regards as “patriotic.” He even had the gall to blame Nancy Pelosi for letting the violence of January 6 occur.

The mainstream media is treating this admission of treason as more of the same from the big lie man. But it is a lot more than that. It’s the boasting that the January 6 sedition was just another step on his way to returning to the presidency, which he still insists was stolen by a wide margin. The Democrats also haven’t seemed able to grasp that Trump’s whining confirms that a coup was his intention and that the rioters were “patriots” because they were supporting his delusionary vision that he was the victim of a stolen election.

Trump told Fox, he gave “a very mild-mannered speech” on January 6.

Now, he has abandoned plausible deniability. On January 6, he fully backed the insurrectionists who tried to overturn an election. More information will come out about the planning of the assault on the Capitol and the role of Trump, Roger Stone, and GOP members of Congress such as Gosar, Brooks and Biggs.

Combined with his “Neo-Confederate Best of the Big Lie” Speech he gave before CPAC on Sunday night, we are left with the Dems and the media unable to contend with a continued national uprising against the will of the people. This must be stopped by bold, uncompromising, full-throttled leadership and the recognition that Trump now is admitting to an ongoing coup attempt, of which January 6 sets the precedent for impunity for insurrectionists, at least in Trump’s mind, including, of course, Trump.