A few last words about the MAGA man

The Column: 06.20.25

Minnesota used to be a state where if a man with a badge knocked on your door at 3:30 a.m., you’d open it and after last week’s shootings we may be considering various alternatives. Do we all need to purchase firearms? Will Apple develop a cop-detector and Siri will tell you he or she is legit? Or maybe a tranquilizer dart you shoot with a peashooter?

Will legislators and other public officials make their addresses known? Will they need to serve under pseudonyms such as X12 or YME while housed in a secure cellblock facility? Will their children need to change their names and live with foster parents? My suggestion is that we hire Canadians to legislate and adjudicate; their country seems to be running well, why not import experts?

One thing is clear about last week’s MAGA attack: the shooter was not only off his rocker, he was also stupid. The press represented him as being in the security business, working for big companies, but actually he worked in a 7-Eleven. Somehow we imagined that he had worked out a devious plan, was probably holding a fake passport and carrying a bundle of cash, probably was on a flight to Albania even as the search went on, but no. After he shot the four persons, he went back to his home in Green Isle and hid in the woods where police found him. He was surrounded by SWAT teams and if he’d had a heart and a soul, he’d have put a pistol to his forehead and deleted himself, but instead he meekly surrendered and was taken into custody.

Two Trumpy Republican senators speculated that he was a Marxist but he wasn’t even a good marksman — shooting people at close range doesn’t require skill — and people who knew him well said, No, he was a MAGA man. He drew up a list of persons he wanted to shoot and left this incriminating evidence in a car at the scene. Now the state has to find a defense lawyer willing to defend a guy who, to borrow Trump’s words, is a sleazebag, a lowlife, a low IQ individual, and a pile of garbage.

Where will the state find a jury of twelve impartial citizens? I hope they don’t move the trial to South Dakota or Wyoming — a jury there would probably acquit the jerk if the president sent them an executive order.

Now we understand why the president didn’t call Governor Walz and express sincere sorrow at the shootings but had JD Vance do it instead. Sorrow is not a feeling that comes naturally to Mr. Trump. Bragging and insulting do but it’s hard to imagine him shedding a tear or even his eyes moistening. Asked Sunday morning if he would call Walz, Trump said, “Well, I may. He’s a terrible governor and grossly incompetent but I may call him.”

What sort of brain responds to that question with insults? Why not just say what you think, “Those Democrats deserved to get shot.”

The simple fact is that MAGA is the revolt of stupidity against education, science, government, the legal system, journalism, people who aren’t from here, people who don’t look like MAGGOTs; it has less to do with conservatism than it has to do with a cheese omelet. It’s a revolt fostered by the 94-year-old Australian MAGGOT Rupert Murdoch, whose loudspeaker tells the uneducated that the world has conspired against them and needs to be destroyed. Anarchy is what Murdoch has to sell and he’s been quite successful: it isn’t journalism, its cynicism, vandalism. The First Amendment gives Murdoch the right to spray-paint trash talk on the marble walls of government and now at last he has elected a vandal to spray them from the inside.

Federal charges have been brought, meaning the shooter could be eligible for the death penalty, which seems too merciful to me. Why not lifetime solitary confinement in a cell with a speaker on the wall broadcasting Trump’s three-hour campaign speeches nonstop 24 hours a day, the prisoner not allowed any cloth or paper to stuff in his ears. Let him wear wooden underwear and listen to His Greatness around the clock. I predict that dementia will set in after about six weeks and the man will be babbling, waving an imaginary pistol.

One dope can do an enormous amount of damage to a large population. Trump has demonstrated this and now his acolyte has too. What’s the answer? Kindness. Charity. Good manners. I apologize for this ugly column. I shouldn’t have written it. I promise not to do it again.

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