President AOC ramps up attack on MAGAs
“Father’s Day Massacre” rounds up dads at Home Depot
Jeffrey Denny
After President Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez declared militant supporters of former President Donald Trump “enemies of America,” she ordered federal authorities to round them up for detention and deportation.
Like her predecessor, Ocasio-Cortez invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1789, which allows the president to apprehend, restrain, and remove foreign enemies who pose a national security threat.
Ocasio-Cortez’s directive designated MAGAs as “foreign to American citizenship and values,” a “domestic terrorist organization,” an “invidious, repugnant cult,” and “a danger to the public peace or safety of the United States.”
MAGA “disloyalty and subversive activities gave aid and comfort to a corrupt, corrosive, divisive, destructive would-be dictator who allied with foreign enemies and sought to terminate the U.S. Constitution for supreme power,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She added, “The American people have spoken: If you were complicit in the destruction of our country like no foreign enemy we have ever seen, we will punish you like you wanted Trump to punish the Americans you hate. We don’t want you here.”
“They’re animals”
The president also cited the deadly MAGA attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in the failed attempt to overturn Trump’s reelection loss and keep him in power.
“President Biden could have called out the Marines to put down the coup, defend our Capitol, and protect our lawmakers, even if it meant taking out a few MAGAs as examples,” White House spokesperson Rachel Maddow said. “But he respected that the president isn’t a dictator who threatens and kills innocent people like Putin and other Trump allies.”
Asked if the president was concerned about MAGAs who fear being hunted down and locked up without due process, Maddow said, “Boo-hoo, snowflakes. These are the same bigoted bullies who spread hate, lies, and death threats about innocent immigrants online.” Maddow also confirmed the administration used MAGA posts to identify and target them.
Vice President Rashida Tlaib posted on Bluesky, “These are not people. They’re animals. They’re poisoning the blood of our country. America is under attack from the Invisible Enemy. We need to protect our GREAT American Citizens, and our GREAT Nation.”
Fulfilling her promise
During her presidential campaign, Ocasio-Cortez pledged to arrest 1 million MAGAs during her first year in office and deport them to prison camps in Blue States, like the notorious Rikers Island in New York, even if not accused of a crime.
“The diversity alone at Rikers would kill them,” one aide quipped. “Not to mention the equity and inclusion in the showers.”
Setting a goal of 3,000 arrests per day, the president authorized the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “to take all such action necessary to liberate America from the MAGA Infestation.”
Attorney General Gavin Newsom, taking a page from former Trump aide Stephen Miller’s strategy to quickly boost immigrant deportations, directed federal law enforcement agents to conduct a nationwide MAGA sweep. “Just go out there and arrest MAGAs,” Newsom said, urging agents to target places where Trump backers typically gather or shop.
This has led to thousands of arrests at Cracker Barrel, gun stores, and retail locations across MAGA-dominated U.S. congressional districts, including the so-called “Father’s Day Massacre” at Home Depot outlets as families honored dads by giving them a day away from them to browse power tools.
Recognizing that MAGAs tend to be fully armed, often with AR-15 military-style weapons, President AOC ordered the National Guard to “stand back and stand by” should MAGAs or their allies protest the arrests.
“Chained up like a dangerous animal”
Trump communities expressed alarm that masked, armed groups in tactical gear who refused to show identification or warrants were arbitrarily snatching MAGA-looking people off the street and pushing them into unmarked EV SUVs that drove away.
The paramilitary-looking agents, “could be a band of Antifa, BLMs or Columbia students for all we know,” one resident said. Others said warnings, decades ago, by the National Rifle Association of jack-booted government storm troopers attacking law-abiding citizens and taking away their constitutional rights were coming true.
“This is like being in a police state,” one man said. “They’re treating us like common immigrants.”
Families of arrested MAGAs accused the government of “kidnapping” loved ones. “My father gave 18 years of his income to this company,” the daughter of one MAGA arrested at Walmart said.
“I don’t know where they’ve taken him,” said another man whose brother was detained. “The only crime he committed was trying to live a better life and trying to get ahead and work. Because of that dream, I had to witness him being chained up like he was some dangerous animal. The whole process wasn’t just inhumane, it was illegal.”
McCarthyite tactics
White House sources say the administration is considering revoking the citizenship of MAGAs who participated in, supported, or defended the J6 insurrection, and deporting them. They argue that participating in an effort to overthrow the U.S. government was treason, which permits even citizens born in the country to be denaturalized and removed.
Legal experts say that this is a broad and untested interpretation of denaturalization law, but no less of a stretch than when the Trump administration stripped work and school visas and then deported the visa holders as “illegals.” The Trump administration also set a precedent by ignoring laws and federal judges it opposed.
The president is also said to have a file of 4,000 MAGA sympathizers who had infiltrated federal agencies as Trump political appointees to undermine the U.S. economy, national security alliances, national unity, the rule of law, and checks on presidential powers by the federal courts.
Ocasio-Cortez accused “MAGA symps,” including top Fox News personalities who later became Trump officials, of conspiring to destroy the free press, turn cable news into a propaganda arm of the Trump government, and censor books and the arts to suppress ideas MAGAs found uncomfortable.
The ACLU, despite its reputation among MAGAs as radical leftists, denounced the president’s tactics as McCarthyite guilt-by-association, character assassination, and intimidation.
Reaping what they sowed?
One MAGA, a 60-year-old white male who would only be identified as “Patriot,” expressed bewilderment as he was handcuffed and led away from a town hall meeting of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“I hated the woke libs because they were for people who aren’t like me,” he said. “But when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me.”
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
