By Philip Bump
National correspondent
Today at 10:42 a.m. EST
Jamie Fialkin used to do stand-up comedy in Brooklyn. He now lives in Arizona, where he drives for Lyft part time while taking care of his daughters. The middle-aged Fialkin wrote a book a few years ago offered as a survival guide for other older parents, according to a report from Reuters.
More recently, he called Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and, amid plenty of expletives, told her that she was going to be hanged for treason.
Fialkin is by now deeply mired in the world of far-right conspiracies. His targeting of Hobbs was downstream from his acceptance of various false claims made by former president Donald Trump, most centrally that the 2020 presidential election results in his state were tainted by fraud. They were not, and there’s no credible evidence that either they were or that Hobbs did anything untoward in managing the state’s vote. But Fialkin doesn’t believe it, nor will he believe Reuters or The Washington Post telling him that fraud was not an issue, since we are part of a grand conspiracy he believes controls the country.
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Because of the multiple calls Fialkin made to Hobbs, he may face federal criminal charges — making him only the most recent of hundreds of Americans whose embrace of Trump’s false claims led them to the same result. The same pattern has repeated over and over. People frustrated by Trump’s loss accept his nonsensical claims about fraud and lash out at his perceived enemies, either out of uncontrolled frustration or some misguided belief that they might somehow change reality. Two victims emerge, evoking different levels of sympathy: the threatened legislator or official, who has to deal with the real risk of danger, and the person making the threat, whose derangement has led them to significant legal consequences.
Meanwhile, Trump skates past unscathed, still hollering — even this week! — about how the election was stolen. Even now, Trump claims that the real “insurrection” was a free election in which voters decided that he should be retired from the presidency.
The Reuters article doesn’t just focus on Fialkin. Reporters identified nine people who made similar threats targeting elections officials, all because they accepted Trump’s nonsense as true. Not solely because of Trump, of course. There emerged a universe of dishonesty in the wake of Trump’s loss as hangers-on realized they could gain attention and influence by echoing Trump’s claims and receiving his blessing. One of those identified by Reuters had been enraged by the entirely ludicrous allegations presented by pillow salesman Mike Lindell.
The same pattern emerged before the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump’s claims about fraud and encouragement for people to show up that day were leveraged by others to raise money and raise profiles. The result was the same, as The Post reported on Tuesday.
“[C]ourt records show that the vast majority of the roughly 650 people federally charged in the riot were not part of far-right groups or premeditated conspiracies to attack the Capitol. Rather, many were an array of everyday Americans that included community leaders, small-business owners, teachers and yoga instructors,” that report explains. It continues: “About 573 have no known affiliation with an extremist group, according to a Post analysis of court filings and public records as of Nov 3.”
That’s the pattern: people who’ve been misled, over and over tipping over into violence actions or language. The mob mentality displayed at the Capitol has a mirror online, where Trump supporters and Trump himself stoke similar fury and encourage similar anger. A PRRI poll released this month found significant overlap of belief in Trump’s false claims about fraud and support for using violence to “save our country”: Among the 3 in 10 Americans who think the election was stolen (a group that includes most Republicans), nearly 40 percent think that political violence might be required. That’s about 1 in 9 Americans overall.
Part of this impulse probably derives from the casual use of violent imagery in American politics, particularly on the right. This week, Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), a fervent Trump supporter, shared a video on social media in which he was depicted as the hero in an animated Japanese cartoon in which he attacked characters representing Democratic officials including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Trump himself shared similar imagery, back before his social media accounts were shut off out of concern that he would stoke further violence after Jan. 6. Trump’s excoriation of the election as stolen sits alongside his long-standing embrace of violence as a political tactic. Even Republican legislators who have crossed Trump have felt the pressure of threatened violence.
While there is a legal risk to threats like those posed by rioters on Jan. 6, there’s also a potential reward. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and other Trump-loyal legislators have worked hard to cast those arrested in the day’s violence as political prisoners being intentionally held in substandard conditions. Her effort brought her to Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on Monday, where she treated those arrested as martyrs and pledged to work on their behalf. Her goal, like Carlson’s in hosting her, was political, hoping to present President Biden as vindictive and tyrannical. But the side effect of her advocacy is to potentially soften the societal cost for engaging in an effort to block the transfer of political power after a fairly conducted election. As a judge who has heard multiple cases involving rioters put it, “Many of the defendants who are pleading guilty are not truly accepting responsibility.” Greene and her allies are bolstering that inclination even as Trump continues to argue that their actions were in defense of an actual threat to the republic.
The question that emerges is how this ends. We might presume that fury about Trump’s 2020 loss would fade, but it has been more than a year and there is still palpable anger from the former president and many of his allies. Reuters documented threats being made against elections officials in Vermont just last month, including a “guarantee” that they (along with Reuters reporters) would be “popped.” It keeps moving forward, Trump shoving it along.
Someone will be the last person to face criminal charges or to go to jail because they believed Trump’s dishonesty about the election. Who it will be is less interesting than when it will happen: Will this wind down in weeks or months or years?
More importantly, how many innocent people will be targeted as a result of Trump’s ongoing claims and the fury they stoke? How many, if any, will actually be targeted by violence that Trump and his allies have been deliberate in rationalizing?
National correspondent
Today at 10:42 a.m. EST
Jamie Fialkin used to do stand-up comedy in Brooklyn. He now lives in Arizona, where he drives for Lyft part time while taking care of his daughters. The middle-aged Fialkin wrote a book a few years ago offered as a survival guide for other older parents, according to a report from Reuters.
More recently, he called Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and, amid plenty of expletives, told her that she was going to be hanged for treason.
Fialkin is by now deeply mired in the world of far-right conspiracies. His targeting of Hobbs was downstream from his acceptance of various false claims made by former president Donald Trump, most centrally that the 2020 presidential election results in his state were tainted by fraud. They were not, and there’s no credible evidence that either they were or that Hobbs did anything untoward in managing the state’s vote. But Fialkin doesn’t believe it, nor will he believe Reuters or The Washington Post telling him that fraud was not an issue, since we are part of a grand conspiracy he believes controls the country.
ADVERTISING
Because of the multiple calls Fialkin made to Hobbs, he may face federal criminal charges — making him only the most recent of hundreds of Americans whose embrace of Trump’s false claims led them to the same result. The same pattern has repeated over and over. People frustrated by Trump’s loss accept his nonsensical claims about fraud and lash out at his perceived enemies, either out of uncontrolled frustration or some misguided belief that they might somehow change reality. Two victims emerge, evoking different levels of sympathy: the threatened legislator or official, who has to deal with the real risk of danger, and the person making the threat, whose derangement has led them to significant legal consequences.
Meanwhile, Trump skates past unscathed, still hollering — even this week! — about how the election was stolen. Even now, Trump claims that the real “insurrection” was a free election in which voters decided that he should be retired from the presidency.
The Reuters article doesn’t just focus on Fialkin. Reporters identified nine people who made similar threats targeting elections officials, all because they accepted Trump’s nonsense as true. Not solely because of Trump, of course. There emerged a universe of dishonesty in the wake of Trump’s loss as hangers-on realized they could gain attention and influence by echoing Trump’s claims and receiving his blessing. One of those identified by Reuters had been enraged by the entirely ludicrous allegations presented by pillow salesman Mike Lindell.
The same pattern emerged before the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump’s claims about fraud and encouragement for people to show up that day were leveraged by others to raise money and raise profiles. The result was the same, as The Post reported on Tuesday.
“[C]ourt records show that the vast majority of the roughly 650 people federally charged in the riot were not part of far-right groups or premeditated conspiracies to attack the Capitol. Rather, many were an array of everyday Americans that included community leaders, small-business owners, teachers and yoga instructors,” that report explains. It continues: “About 573 have no known affiliation with an extremist group, according to a Post analysis of court filings and public records as of Nov 3.”
That’s the pattern: people who’ve been misled, over and over tipping over into violence actions or language. The mob mentality displayed at the Capitol has a mirror online, where Trump supporters and Trump himself stoke similar fury and encourage similar anger. A PRRI poll released this month found significant overlap of belief in Trump’s false claims about fraud and support for using violence to “save our country”: Among the 3 in 10 Americans who think the election was stolen (a group that includes most Republicans), nearly 40 percent think that political violence might be required. That’s about 1 in 9 Americans overall.
Part of this impulse probably derives from the casual use of violent imagery in American politics, particularly on the right. This week, Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), a fervent Trump supporter, shared a video on social media in which he was depicted as the hero in an animated Japanese cartoon in which he attacked characters representing Democratic officials including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Trump himself shared similar imagery, back before his social media accounts were shut off out of concern that he would stoke further violence after Jan. 6. Trump’s excoriation of the election as stolen sits alongside his long-standing embrace of violence as a political tactic. Even Republican legislators who have crossed Trump have felt the pressure of threatened violence.
While there is a legal risk to threats like those posed by rioters on Jan. 6, there’s also a potential reward. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and other Trump-loyal legislators have worked hard to cast those arrested in the day’s violence as political prisoners being intentionally held in substandard conditions. Her effort brought her to Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on Monday, where she treated those arrested as martyrs and pledged to work on their behalf. Her goal, like Carlson’s in hosting her, was political, hoping to present President Biden as vindictive and tyrannical. But the side effect of her advocacy is to potentially soften the societal cost for engaging in an effort to block the transfer of political power after a fairly conducted election. As a judge who has heard multiple cases involving rioters put it, “Many of the defendants who are pleading guilty are not truly accepting responsibility.” Greene and her allies are bolstering that inclination even as Trump continues to argue that their actions were in defense of an actual threat to the republic.
The question that emerges is how this ends. We might presume that fury about Trump’s 2020 loss would fade, but it has been more than a year and there is still palpable anger from the former president and many of his allies. Reuters documented threats being made against elections officials in Vermont just last month, including a “guarantee” that they (along with Reuters reporters) would be “popped.” It keeps moving forward, Trump shoving it along.
Someone will be the last person to face criminal charges or to go to jail because they believed Trump’s dishonesty about the election. Who it will be is less interesting than when it will happen: Will this wind down in weeks or months or years?
More importantly, how many innocent people will be targeted as a result of Trump’s ongoing claims and the fury they stoke? How many, if any, will actually be targeted by violence that Trump and his allies have been deliberate in rationalizing?
