Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, in the Original German

Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos Getty, Wikimedia Commons

1. Political Violence

Because irony is dead, two weeks ago, the Trump administration hosted an international conference on “The Resurgence of Political Terrorism.”

This would be the same Trump administration whose first act was to pardon hundreds of political terrorists who attempted a violent coup. The administration headed by a man who summoned thousands of people to Washington for the express purpose of carrying out a coup. A man who, on January 6, 2021, after being warned that members of his mob were armed, directed them to march on the Capitol where Congress was attempting to ratify the results of the election and said:

[Y]ou'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. . . .

If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country because it's illegal when the votes are illegal when the way they got there is illegal when the states that vote are given false and fraudulent information. . . .

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

An administration headed by a man who has expressly called for violence against his opponents over, and over, and over:

But this conference—the administration tried to class it up by referring to it as a “ministerial”—wasn’t about all political violence. It was about one very specific sub-class: “Left-wing” political violence.

I know. You are not shocked by this.

What will shock you are the words spoken by Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller in their prepared remarks to the “ministerial.” Because they weren’t just shameless, or hypocritical.

Oh no. These two men went full Nazi.