Psst: Donald Trump's Waco Campaign Rally Isn't Really About the 2024 Election
It's an opportunity for the former President to embrace his role as a right-wing Messiah
The Friday post was delayed because of my ongoing family duties—but never fear! Being in contact with my favorite political junkies = normal life, so although I may be irregular in the coming weeks, I will always show up. And if you know someone who would like this post, please:
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Did we need another sign that Donald J. Trump is mobilizing anti-government white supremacists in his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination? Not really. But we have one.
This evening, and facing criminal indictments in the coming weeks, Trump will hold his first big campaign rally in Waco, Texas. As Julia Manchester at The Hill characterizes it, Waco is “friendly territory” for Trump. This is something that could not be said unequivocally about Austin, Houston, or San Antonio, cities with far more liberal voting constituencies.
As (or more) importantly, Waco is a sacred place for the extreme right in the United States, its recent history a dog whistle for white, religious, domestic terrorists. On February 28, 1993, a joint task force of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began to surround a compound outside Waco operated by David Koresh, a charismatic cult leader of the Branch Davidian Church.
Why would the federal government attack a religious group? Then-Attorney General Janet Reno knew that the Davidians were stockpiling weapons, many of which were illegal for civilians to own. But what is said to have pushed her to confront Koresh and his followers was an informant’s report that children were being sexually abused in the compound.
Although Reno, in the face of the post-siege public relations disaster, said she was mistaken about child sexual abuse, in fact, she was not wrong. Girls as young as 11 or 12 were taken from their parents to be “married” to Koresh. Children also told investigators that they were routinely beaten for minor infractions.
In addition, Koresh was setting the entire group up for a mass death event, not unlike the 1978 Jonestown Massacre. According to a recent book by Texas journalist Jeff Guinn, the heavily-armed Davidians were not just prepared to die; they welcomed death. Until they were dead, Koresh had told them, they could not be resurrected as God’s army. The last time I looked, both murder and suicide were illegal.
In other words, there were plenty of good reasons to break up a criminal organization that was under the delusion that its leader and membership were religious visionaries. And so, on this date, 30 years ago, after mercilessly harassing the Davidians with loud music and bright lights for weeks in an attempt to get them to surrender voluntarily, the FBI delivered an ultimatum. Although some cult members had already escaped, federal negotiators warned that unless another 20 people were released from the compound by 4 p.m., they would move armored vehicles into the perimeter in preparation for an assault.
No additional members emerged. Thus, the government began a three-week armed siege that ended with the compound engulfed in flames on April 19. It was the early days of cable news, and as news cameras recorded the battle, millions of Americans watched it play out. As importantly, white supremacists from around the country gathered around the government perimeter to bear witness and pray for the safety of Koresh and his followers.
During the battle, four ATF agents were killed and 16 wounded; 82 Branch Davidians died, 76 of whom were in the building when it burned. It was a horrible screw-up on the part of the Clinton administration, one that followed two decades of dithering about the rise of organized white violence in the United States. As Kathleen Belew points out in her book about the growth of the modern white power movement, the Waco disaster was partly caused by the federal government’s reluctance to confront the emergence of a growing and violent network of anti-government groups.
Those groups still exist, and they are a core element of Donald Trump’s most loyal activist base going into the 2024 election.
Of course, Trump will not tell the crowd that assembles to hear him in Waco tonight that violent, spectacular death was part of the Branch Davidian plan all along. He will not tell the MAGA faithful that David Koresh was not only a serial rapist who targeted little girls but that he also forced male cult members to abstain from sexual intercourse so that he would have exclusive access to their wives.
I reiterate this point to emphasize that a narrative about actual federal violence can be successfully massaged to feed a populist anti-government narrative. But it is also crafted to co-exist comfortably with right-wing falsehoods that children are currently endangered by teachers and doctors who “sexualize” and “groom” them with honest information and talk about sex and gender.
I will bet money that tonight, Trump will cite another galvanizing event for the Christian nationalist right: the battle with survivalist Randy Weaver and his family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, that occurred on August 21-30, 1992.
However, there are important differences between the two events about which, inarguably, federal agents ought to have made different decisions, even in the face of an armed threat. Unlike the Branch Davidians, the Weavers, also living off the grid in anticipation of the Apocalypse, intended to survive that event. They did not want to die: instead, they wanted to be left alone and safeguard themselves from what they believed was the chaos to come.
In addition, Randy Weaver did not abuse members of his family unless you consider pulling your kids out of school and making them live without modern conveniences to be a form of abuse. In addition, the pretext for Weaver’s arrest was very different: he was obtaining what cash the family needed by dealing in illegal, converted, long guns. Weaver had sold one to an undercover federal agent, failed to show up for his court hearing, and the federal agents who initiated the confrontation were serving a warrant.
Yet both incidents have two important elements in common, which Trump will exploit in today’s speech. They feature government injustice, martyrdom, and mass grievance.
Practically speaking, Trump will intentionally reignite right-wing outrage about these iconic incidents, events that have galvanized the Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement and made anti-government violence a cornerstone of the American right over the last 30 years. Among other things, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was committed by two men who marked the two-year anniversary of Waco by murdering government workers and their children. Arguably, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in which organized Trump supporters literally intended to kidnap and kill elected officials, also has its roots in grievance subcultures that formed around Waco and Ruby Ridge.
But more importantly, Trump is fighting back against the government forces closing in on him by taking his place in the scary patriarchal firmament of men who, like Koresh and Weaver, are widely perceived as martyrs on the extreme right. It’s really only a baby step at this point. As many have remarked, the Former Guy is already perceived as a sacred figure and a martyr by his most fervent supporters. Worshippers speak of him as the equivalent of a modern Jesus, a man anointed as a Messiah by God.
In other words, Trump is going to Waco to say that he is one of them and to officially take command of America’s violence-prone, grievance-ridden, far-right. If we needed any further proof, the Branch Davidians, who still exist, are delighted that the man they call “God’s battering ram” is coming to Waco to revive their cause.
So you can think of today’s event as a campaign rally if you want. But it isn’t. It’s a pilgrimage. It’s a tacit embrace of anti-government violence by a former president. And it is Trump’s call for war against the democratic system.
What remains to be seen is whether the entire GOP is going to follow the increasingly loony, embattled Trump down this rabbit hole.
Short takes:
I am less bewildered than some about why Peter Thiel, an out, married, gay man, has bankrolled homophobic culture warriors like J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. Thiel is richer than God and makes his own rules. But unlike many in MAGA-world, Thiel has managed so far to remain a cipher. Now, The Intercept’s Ryan Grim reports on the death of one of Thiel’s romantic partners, model Jeff Thomas, whose death is being investigated as a suicide and who appears to have been a bird in a gilded cage. “Thomas and Thiel eventually struck up a relationship in the early stages of the pandemic,” Gri writes. “But it wasn’t a typical relationship. Thomas described himself as being in a `kept’ situation that made him uncomfortable.” Yet it wasn’t uncomfortable enough not to do it, at least until Thomas, it seems, became overwhelmed by it. (March 23, 2023)
At the New York Times, opinion writer Jessica Grose asks: can we stop pathologizing teenage girls? Responding to research about a spike in anxiety and depression, Grose points out that not only was this study done as kids were grappling with Year 1 of the Pandemic, but that girls are more likely than boys to speak honestly about their emotions. Furthermore, anxiety is a normal human response to stress, and by not acknowledging that adults are failing to teach kids to cope with difficult—but temporary—emotions. The result? As Grose writes, “we need to consider that teenagers may be expressing their feelings in a different way than the way we might have in our day. Anxiety is a good example of a term that’s now ubiquitous, whose meaning, as a result, has become more diffuse.” (March 23, 2023)
Arizonan Ray Epps went to the Capitol on January 6, 2021; as he explained to the Congressional subcommittee, “he supported Trump in 2020 and attended the DC protest because he was concerned about widespread voter fraud.” Little did he know that Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson would finger him as an undercover FBI agent tasked with mounting the event as a false flag operation. As Oliver Darcy and Marshall Cohen report over at CNN Business, Epps has had enough and has filed a lawsuit against the network that would require, among other things, an on-air retraction. (March 23, 2023)
Very informative. Thank you for this!
I was alive for Waco but not old enough to know anything beyond what KCRA TV reported. Showtime has a quasi fictional series about it.