“I think Donald Trump MUST die in prison…because either we’re going to protect the Democratic Republic or we’re going to allow people, in this case Trump to chip away at our democracy and chip away at what we believe in these institutions.”
That was Dean Obeidallah, long an extreme deranged leftist featured on the air and on the web by MSNBC (because extreme deranged leftists are the only alleged journalists and pundits that MSNBC deems worthy of a public platform), confirming again the totalitarian impulses of Democrats and the progressives of 2023. In an interview with Mediaite’s most left-biased reporter, Obeidallah ranted in part,
Trump MUST die in prison because I don’t care if he was 45 years old, you should get life in prison if you attempt a coup, and there should be no chance of parole. I don’t care who it is….That’s why I’m so passionate about, like with every fiber of my being, that Donald Trump has to live out his natural days, his last days of natural life in a prison cell…….And people accuse me like, oh, you say things that get people riled up like, nope, I or get what you said. I get organically riled up about this because I believe in this system. And, and if you don’t believe in it, so be it. But if you believe in it, I don’t think there’s any conclusion could bring that. Donald Trump has to end up in a prison cell and live his last days out in that prison cell.
In those three dots, Obeidallah claimed that the riot at the Capitol was an “attempted coup,” which is legal, factual and linguistical nonsense, and that’s what he thinks Donald Trump should be locked up for without a chance of parole. I’ve instructed my family that if I ever say anything that stupid in private they should bash in my head with a brick, and Obeidallah is paid by MSNBC for to give that level of ignorant, hysterical, inflammatory and irresponsible commentary over the air. I guess I owe Tucker Carlson a mea culpa: I thought he was too much of a demagogue to be allowed on TV.What system does this fascist believe in? Oh, right, this system…
He believes the United States should lock up “dangerous” people, defined as people whose policies and philosophies he and his pals fellow ideologues don’t agree with. He makes no mention of due process, either because he doesn’t believe in rights when the people he wants to “get” are bad, or because he doesn’t understand the concept. (My guess: both.) Obeidallah represents is what increasingly is the orientation of the Democratic Party and their base, motivated by hate, willing to sidestep individual rights for “the greater good,” and so terrified of Donald Trump that they are one step removed from recruiting a hit squad. How can such unhinged and hypocritical individuals—who talk about wanting to preserve democracy in the same breath with advocating imprisoning their adversaries—be trusted with elected office? With appointed office? With a teaching position? With an opinion column? With power of any kind? With even giving their opinions on a hack network like MSNBC?
They can’t.
Ethics Alarms 
“And people accuse me like…”
The part starting here was copied twice in the quote.
Thanks. BOY, was I having trouble with word press formatting today. I was screaming epithets so loudly from my office Grace thought I was being attacked.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the hit squad was already ready to go. Trump can beat indictments possibly. He can’t beat a bullet in the head.
We don’t want him to die. We want him to live a very very very long time. In prison.
It’s a reasonable position to hold about a life-long scofflaw like Trump. You’d hold that same position if he didn’t express a desire to use any power he can gain to take revenge on people you dislike.
Why would you want him in prison?
So the guards can turn their back at just the right minute for him to get shanked?
I can think of a couple of other former public officials who I’d like to see warming a prison cell, starting with Ted Wheeler and Jenny Durkan, who didn’t just scoff at the law but abandoned their sworn duty and allowed their people to be victimized by those to whom laws mean absolutely not. However, if Federal prosecutors actually had these folks arrested and said they were going to prosecute them, the left would go apeshit, saying it was a political prosecution and a Witch Hunt. These prosecutions are nonsensical and they are banana Republic stuff. The United States is not supposed to be a place where the guy in power tries to put his main political rival in jail to sideline him. A case could be made that Biden also belongs in prison, depending on what this new impeachment inquiry turns up. If anyone is more likely to spend the rest of his life in the clink it would be him, since I think he has very little time left.
Here’s the thing, though. Jack’s point here is that the left is headed towards becoming a totalitarian party. There is mounting evidence that is the case. Totalitarians try to control every aspect of life down to what you can drive and what you can use to cook your food. Totalitarians lean on the courts and attempt to force them into line with whatever the executives vision is, no matter what the law may say. Totalitarians try to put their political opposition in jail. And it’s totalitarians who try to spin these actions as good or for the good of the country. If they went this far, I wouldn’t put outright assassination beyond the pale. It isn’t like it hasn’t been talked about already, with all these crazy people in black masks talking about how this or that right-wing figure can’t do anything if he’s face down in a puddle with a bullet in him.
I think this is a terrible precedent to set, and I think it may well result in more aggressive actions against the other side if and when power flips, and you know it will. I think it is also daring the other side. Essentially the left is saying that “we are going to take away the ballot box, the jury box, and the soapbox and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it, unless you’re willing to use the cartridge box, but you’re not brave enough to do that.” The response might well be a bullet between the eyes and an “oh aren’t we now?”
Funny, for three or four years now I have been talking about how America is going to be headed for its own version of the Troubles if we keep going the way we’re going. A few people have responded that I’m an idiot, the two situations are nothing alike, and other denials, but no one’s ever told me why or how that can’t happen. Jack has pointed out that a denial is not a strategy, and I would add that a denial is not any kind of analysis. I believe this can and will happen if the left is not reined in.
This post reinforces Jack’s point about “. . . confirming again the totalitarian impulses of Democrats and the progressives of 2023. ”
The claim he is a lifelong scofflaw is a baseless debunked claim and without any direct evidence that he has gotten away with breaking the law.
I can safely say that’s the stupidest thing I’ve read with your screenname next to it.
I was going to comment that what Obeidallah said about Trump needing to die in prison would be seconded by nearly every standard issue lefty. But I guess I don’t have to make that comment. Res ipsa loquitur. It’s still Wednesday morning November 9th, 2016, in all those deranged minds. They might as well be as stuck as Bill Murray’s character in “Groundhog Day.” Every day, they wake up and Trump’s still there. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s a good thing. Trump’s existence has ripped the veneer of humanity from the left. They’re sociopaths. Good to know. And boy, do they ever have a projection problem.
It is unfortunate that the Democratic leadership simply did not tell Hillary Clinton to shut up back then.
But it’s also a useful thing to read and ponder, an important, indeed an essential comment.
They used to talk about Clinton Derangement and Bush Derangement, but those were exaggerations. I know many, many intelligent, normally rational, ethically perceptive people, friends, relatives and colleagues, never mind elected officials and journalists, who could have written valky’s comment and would have meant it, even though they would have told you, pre-Trump Derangement, that nobody deserves the fates they now wish on Donald Trump. The condition is clinical, frightening, sad, and threatens to ultimately do as much tangible harm as the pandemic. It bolsters the totalitarian tendencies of those who really are the enemies of democracy and “the people,” who are exploiting it and the slippery slope it polishes.
“I know many, many intelligent, normally rational, ethically perceptive people, friends, relatives and colleagues, never mind elected officials and journalists, who could have written valky’s comment and would have meant it.”
Me too. It’s creepy. So ironic they call Trump and his followers NAZIs and fascists. Cue Fred Rogers: Can you say “projection” children? Of course, you can.
I don’t wish that valkygrrl hadn’t written it, nor would I deny him/her the right to think or speak it. And frankly, I should probably have written more than just a hit-and-run reply, so…
What I bristled at was the last sentence:
“You’d hold that same position if he didn’t express a desire to use any power he can gain to take revenge on people you dislike.”
How dare he/she project that way of thinking onto me or anyone else. It’s an arrogant and presumptuous generalization. Just because that may be valkygrrl’s wish doesn’t make it mine! I have a strong sense of justice and desire it regardless of party or ideology. And in some sense, justice IS revenge – legal revenge, the proverbial “eye-for-an-eye” – for breaking the law. But I am not interested in exacting revenge on someone (or some group of people) simply because I dislike them or what they believe.
Anyways, that’s what got me upset and caused my rather curt response.
Yep, it smacked of “you’re just hopelessly biased and I’m above that.”
I didn’t project anything onto you, I replied to someone else’s comment. But hey, you actually read the comment before typing so you did better than some people.
Thanks! You don’t post a lot of comments here and honesty compels me to write that we may not agree on a good number of issues, but I find your responses thought-provoking (dare I say “provocative”?). This particular one got me riled up a bit even though, yeah, it wasn’t directed at me.