"I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with. The only thing is, I’ve left instructions — if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before."

Said President Trump, quoted in "Trump tells The Post he’s ‘left instructions’ should Iran assassinate him: 'Bomb them at levels' never seen before" (NY Post).

That's dramatic and colorful, but when he is dead, he will not be the President, and his "instructions" will be nothing more than an expression of a preference.

He seems to want it to work like the "doomsday machine."

There's a strong temptation to uglify what Trump has made such a show of trying to beautify.

There's all that water in the Reflecting Pool. Is it well guarded? There are all those fountains and statues. And then there are the great stretches of well-tended lawn.

Now, we're seeing "Large etchings of numbers signaling opposition to Trump appear on National Mall/A White House spokesman decried the numerals '86 47' marked into the grass near the World War II Memorial as an endorsement of political violence" (WaPo)(gift link).

White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded to a request for comment on the markings with an email. “Anyone who engages in or endorses political violence or assassination culture must be condemned in the harshest terms possible,” Ingle wrote. “They should also immediately seek psychiatric help to treat their severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has warped their brains and made them sick in the head.”

I just wrote, at the end of the previous post, "The more grim, puritanical, humorless, imperious, and repressive you are, the funnier it is to make fun of you." There's a similar concept at play here: The more you show how much you care about pristine beauty, the more exciting it becomes to besmirch it. We can't have nice things.

Oh, but those who endorse the idea "86 47" might respond, these "nice things" are not nice. They are Trump things and therefore the ugliest things of all. To desecrate them is to move in the direction of true beauty. 

"There is an active Bluetooth network labeled 'BOMB'..."

"... one self-identified passenger wrote on TikTok.... Another Reddit post of someone who claimed to be the spouse of a passenger similarly reported that the word in question was 'bomb' and that the device was a teenager's speaker. The flight eventually reboarded and landed in Palma de Mallorca at 3:47 p.m. local time on Sunday, about 9 and a half hours late."

NPR reports on a United flight that had to turn around. 

"Once an unseemly feature of the web’s fringes, deliberately ambiguous chatter about political violence has spread on mainstream platforms over the past year..."

"... most often in reference to Trump and Elon Musk, according to a new report from Know Your Meme, which tracks the rise of viral posts. 'Somebody should do it' and its online variants, the authors wrote, is wink-nudge shorthand for suggesting that somebody kill a powerful person. One of the earliest cases to go viral was a TikTok video from a Brooklyn comedian nebulously talking about 'all the Elon, Trump stuff.' Someone should 'throw their life away,' he said in the February 2025 post, and 'take one for the team.' The conservative Libs of TikTok reposted the clip. So did Musk, helping it rack up 48 million views.... Know Your Meme found that interest in the 'Somebody should do it' trend spiked after an armed man’s thwarted attack last month at the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington, where Trump was scheduled to speak...."

From "They’re not saying someone should kill Trump. But they’re coming close. 'Somebody should do it' and its variants have become increasingly popular online memes" (WaPo)(gift link).

The top-rated comment over there: "Trump has condoned threats, attempts, and actual murders of people he doesn't like, and his sycophants condemn any comment they say is aimed at him as TDS. No one should be calling for assassination of anyone; I prefer impeachment or the 25th amendment to get him out of office. Trump's own rhetoric has fueled the fire and perhaps he should stop calling for senators and others to be killed."

"The two charges stem from a photo that Comey posted online showing seashells on a beach that were arranged to write out '86 47.'"

"Trump is the 47th president; '86' can mean banning or removing someone, but it can also be slang for killing a person. Comey quickly removed the post after receiving criticism that the phrase could be used to communicate the threat of violence."

From "James Comey indicted over 2025 social media post allegedly threatening Trump/The former FBI director issued a video statement maintaining his innocence and criticizing the current Justice Department" (WaPo).

Here's the post I wrote last year when Comey purported not to "realize some folks associate those numbers with violence": "James Comey purports not to have known that 86 means to get rid of (after he posted a picture of rocks in the form 8647 (47 being easily read as a reference to Trump)). Is Comey credible?"

The post title was a Grok prompt. Additional prompts: "Compare that to how Trump was treated for telling protesters on January 6th, 2021 to walk 'peacefully and patriotically' to the Capitol" and "I'm interested in the difference in seeing violence in words and consider that Comey, like Trump, has loyalists who might hear direction and take it."

"I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction...."

Trump assures us, at Truth Social.

Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as South Pars Gas Field in Iran. A relatively small section of the whole has been hit. The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen. Unfortunately, Iran did not know this, or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the South Pars attack, and unjustifiably and unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar’s LNG Gas facility. NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar - In which instance the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before. I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction because of the long term implications that it will have on the future of Iran, but if Qatar’s LNG is again attacked, I will not hesitate to do so. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

"I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as..."

"... me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days. Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them. However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right — nay, obligation — to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created."

Writes JK Rowling, on X, responding to a video you can see at the link.

Rowling has kept a silence as long as her antagonists were children, but now she's decided to speak — to write — and no one can out-write her. She continues:

"Treasury secretaries dating back to Alexander Hamilton have a history of dueling."

Quipped the Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, quoted in "Scott Bessent invokes deadly Hamilton-Burr duel when asked about threat to punch Bill Pulte in ‘f–king face’" (NY Post).

And here's the full punch-you-in-your-fucking-face quote: “Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face."

"They said the film ['Barbie'] promoted homosexuality and insulted the image of women."

Said the mayor of Noisy-le-Sec, France, quoted in "Muslim youths shut down Barbie screening for ‘promoting homosexuality’/The incident in a Paris suburb plays into anxiety about cultural conflict in France, whose government says Islamists may be trying to undermine society." 

This article is in the London Times, which I subscribe to and would like to trust to report the relevant facts, but I can't figure out what the "Muslim youths" did that shut down the Barbie screening. We're told there was an "incident" but not what it was and why it was enough to shut down what was to have been a free outdoor screening. The article quickly moves to the topic of "widespread anxiety" about Muslims "impos[ing] their traditions on French life."

The mayor is quoted saying "An incident at Noisy has been taken over by the far-right fringe to stigmatise a neighbourhood." If the "far-right" is spinning the incident, tell us what is the left-wing or moderate spin? Is not detailing what happened the best you can do? As for the mayor, he made a point of saying that "he had not mentioned the religion of the youths."

With 2 great search terms — Noisy-le-Sec and Barbie — I easily found an article in the Brussels Signal – which some sources identify as right wing — "French mayor cancels Barbie film screening due to threats of 'disruption.'" Here, we find more details, but word "Muslim" does not even appear:

"James Comey purports not to have known that 86 means to get rid of (after he posted a picture of rocks in the form 8647 (47 being easily read as a reference to Trump)). Is Comey credible?"

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok.

Follow-up prompts: "Compare that to how Trump was treated for telling protesters on January 6th, 2021 to walk 'peacefully and patriotically' to the Capitol" and "I'm interested in the difference in seeing violence in words and consider that Comey, like Trump, has loyalists who might hear direction and take it." And: "Detail Comey's 'history of cryptic social media posts.'"

Grok's responses: here.

AND: Here's the article in WaPo: "Comey under investigation for ‘86 47’ social media post, Trump team says/The Trump administration accused the former FBI director of insinuating a call to violence in his Instagram post, which he denied" (free-access link).

"A university dedicated to free thought should know better. The First Amendment draws a clear line..."

"... between unprotected 'true threats' and core political speech. Speech is only a true threat when it demonstrates a serious, specific, and imminent intent to commit unlawful violence against a particular individual or group. That’s a high bar — and for good reason. It’s meant to protect public debate, especially about uncomfortable topics. Advocacy for violence, no matter how disturbing, remains protected unless it crosses that line. Decker’s essay never comes close. It’s abstract, hypothetical, and lacks any indication of intent to commit violence. Asking about the moral propriety of force is philosophy, not a true threat...."

From "George Mason University calls cops on student for article criticizing Trump/GMU student Nicholas Decker’s Substack essay 'When Must We Kill Them?' earned him a visit from the Secret Service" (FIRE).

"Sean Combs was able to stay relevant for many years, in part because he used his power to intimidate people in the industry, particularly women, who might say no to him."

"In an article for The New York Times Magazine in July, Danyel Smith, who was the editor of Vibe Magazine in the late 1990s, wrote about the 'menacing encounters' she had with Diddy. He threatened he would see her 'dead in the trunk of a car' if she didn’t show him a cover before publication. Smith describes the ethos of the music industry at the time: 'To report sexual misconduct — whether it was to attorneys or law enforcement or even your supervisor — often meant losing your job. Being ostracized. Or being a girl that just didn’t "get it," or didn’t know how to fend for herself.'"

Writes Jessica Grose in "Sean Combs and the Limits of the 'Family Man' Defense" (NYT).

I didn't excerpt the references to the "family man" defense. I don't think that's necessary, but I would like to quote the last sentence of the column so you can click on the link it contains, which will get you to a high-impact photograph: "There are limits to the ‘family man’ defense no matter how many photos you take with your kids wearing matching pajamas."

I'm less interested in Combs's groping to defend himself now than I am in how so many people supported and protected him for so long.

Trump says he thinks that Biden withdrew because he was "threatened... violently."

From the Theo Von podcast embedded in the previous post — at 44:31. Von asked about what pushed Biden to let go of the nomination he had won in the primaries. Trump said:

"I know what happened, and you're not supposed to do that. It's not supposed to be probably constitutional. She got no votes. He got 14 million votes. All of a sudden they're telling him to get out. or they threatened him. And he is an angry person."

Von breaks in to ask, "But who are 'they'?" and Trump responds:  

"Well, I would say Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party, yeah — and they did, they threatened him violently, I think. And he didn't want to get out. Remember he said only God will get me out — right? Only God... Yeah, and what happened is they went to him, and they said — this was after the debate — now, if he didn't have the debate he would still be running...."

What violence is Trump talking about?  

Haven't I looked into the word "violence" before? Yes, I did the OED routine back in 2019 when Elizabeth Warren introduced the term "traffic violence":

To what extent does "violence" mean that the damaging action was intentional? The first definition is, as expected, "The deliberate exercise of physical force..."

But then there's "Great strength or power of a natural force or physical action" — for example, a storm or an earthquake. There's no mind deliberating there (though maybe there's an implication of human will and the usage is metaphorical, such as when corny writers tell you the sea was "angry").

"Violence" is also "Great intensity or severity, esp. of something destructive or undesirable. Example: " Mrs. Viveash had been reduced, by the violence of her headache, to coming home..for a rest." (That's Aldous Huxley.)

Similarly, there's "Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion." Example, from Shakespeare, "Marke me, with what violence she first lou'd the Moore." But now we've got the human mind in play again. I don't think what's being called "traffic violence" is any intensity in the traffic, just accidents, by people who didn't mean to do that (if we set aside the very tiny proportion of car damage done by an evildoer deliberately running somebody down).

"Violence" is also used to refer to restrictions imposed on nature, as in "He was obliged to attend near a Quarter of an Hour, though with great Violence to his natural Impetuosity, before he was suffered to speak" (Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (1749)).

And then there's the "Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention." Again, from "Tom Jones": "A Passion which might, without any great Violence to the Word, be called Love."

Back then, the issue was the lack of intentionality in car accidents. Pressuring Biden to drop out was completely intentional, so the issue here is whether "violently" connotes physically injuring him. I find it very hard to believe anyone threatened to physically injure him, but perhaps it's not so hard to believe that Trump thinks that or that Trump would lie and say that he thinks that. 

But let's look at the fact that Trump did say that he thinks Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party — threatened Biden violently.

Now, maybe the word "violently" was used in a different sense that doesn't involve physical injury, that aligns with the OED's definition of "violence" in terms of great intensity, severity, vehemence, fervor, and passion. Maybe Trump just meant to say They threatened him very strongly. Then his use of "violently" may be easy to accept... depending on what the meaning of "threatened" is.

Of course, Trump has been accused of inciting violence on January 6, 2021. That word looms large in his subjective experience of persecution. So I don't think he uses it lightly. I think he feels mistreated in these accusations of violence. Perhaps he thinks: If they're going to use that word wildly as they come for me, I'm using it against them. Very strongly.

I don't know what's up with Robert De Niro and X.

I saw:

"Saturday Night Live" collaborates with Nikki Haley and it's embarrassing.

Even the Trump impersonator guy is off:

“I see dead people.” That’s exactly what voters will think if this race is between Trump and Biden in the fall.

Had a blast tonight on SNL! Know it was past Donald’s bedtime so looking forward to the stream of unhinged tweets in the a.m. pic.twitter.com/W43LlPOoi2

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 4, 2024

Will "I see dead people" earn a visit from the Secret Service? Or is it suitably nonthreatening to passively gaze at old people and visualize them at the end of a natural life span?

"The Cornell University student accused of making violent threats against his Jewish peers is a 21-year-old engineering student..."

"... who suffers from such 'severe depression' that his mother worried he was on the brink of suicide just moments before his arrest. Patrick Dai, a junior at the prestigious university, was arrested by federal authorities Tuesday for allegedly making a string of disturbing online posts over the weekend threatening to kill and rape Jewish students and to 'bring an assault rifle to campus.' Investigators traced the deranged posts to Dai’s IP address at his off-campus apartment, where he allegedly admitted to being the culprit, according to a federal complaint."

The NY Post reports.

It does seem that he wanted to be caught: He was traceable through his IP address. It seems he's thrown his life away, and his parents thought he was going to commit suicide. 

He was "one of those guys who was like Eddie Haskell."

Said a woman who had worked with Joshua Pleasnick at the the Green Owl restaurant on Madison’s East Side. "When the owner was not around, he would talk all kinds of smack about her and other women in general..."

Joshua Pleasnick is the man in "Man with handgun seeking governor arrested in Wisconsin Capitol, returns with assault rifle" (Wisconsin State Journal). 

The shirtless man (shirtless men rarely make history):

The sound of no one calling for civility.

 

Seen this morning because I went to Twitter and clicked on "Kavanaugh" in the "What's happening" sidebar.

If you're wondering whether writing "Really fuck you" on someone's photograph and posting it on Twitter is a protected speech under the First Amendment, read the Supreme Court's new "true threats" case, Counterman v. Colorado.

Sarcasm on top of sarcasm.

Here’s Roseanne Barr saying the Holocaust never happened but should’ve because “Jews cause all the world’s problems,” so 6M of us shd be killed! Is that a “true threat” as SCOTUS defined it today in Counterman v. Colorado? Maybe not but It comes close!https://t.co/FOWHtLpUFp

— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) June 27, 2023

Context:

The Supreme Court issues its "true threats" case.

"The state must show, Kagan writes, that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence. The state need not prove any more demanding subjective intent to threaten another."

Summarizes SCOTUSblog.

Opinion here: Counterman v. Colorado.

ADDED: From the majority opinion by Justice Kagan: