The top post at the online forum TheDonald on Wednesday morning was titled “Fuck Mike Pence. 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻.” And chilling calls for violence against the former vice president were rising to the top of the comments thread.
Pence plays a starring role in the new indictment of Donald Trump, which quotes Trump telling Pence, “You’re too honest” after the vice president refused to block certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win.
And Pence met the news of the indictment with harsh criticism of Trump, now a rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Pence tweeted that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s indictment also recalls how Trump, unable to convince Pence to become a co-conspirator in his despotic plot to steal the presidency, instead unleashed a mob of MAGA supporters against him. “At the Capitol,” the court document reads, “members of the crowd chanted, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’; ‘Where is Pence? Bring him out!’; and ‘Traitor Pence!’”
Such dark sentiments against Pence now have been revived, at an online forum that played a key role for plotters of the unrest of Jan. 6. TheDonald is a Reddit like forum for the Trumpiest of the Trump faithful. Both individual posts, and the comments on them, rise based on the “upvoting” of users, giving a glimpse into the collective psyche of the community.
The top comment on the Pence post called for divine retribution against the “traitor.” It reads: “May GOD Strike him down for his lies and treachery to the American People.” But as other commenters piled on, they fantasized about a public execution of Pence at a gallows. “I want to watch his toes dangle in the breeze,” wrote user BigMikesHairyDong.
“I want to stand beside you as witness,” wrote user Totally_Passable adding, “I want to pull the lever.” This user made clear he didn’t want the violence to end with Pence: “I long for the day we the people pull these traitors… out of their seats screaming, knowing full well what is coming to them, and why its coming.”
Instead of recoiling at the call to execute Pence, other users joined the call for mob violence. “No long drops,” said another user, echoing many of the replies. “Humane execution should be off the table.”
It’s scarier than that. I saw some of the comments, and they said he couldn’t have chosen the next president, but he could’ve held off while some states did more to investigate the votes that were supposedly stolen. They make it sound so plausible to each other, and it just makes them even scarier because more people say “Oh that sounds reasonable” when it’s completely nuts. The state of Georgia and counties in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Texas already had vote recounts by Jan. 6th. What the hell did they expect to find??
I think you know what they expected to find. They expected to find their stupid conspiracy theory that the election was rigged if you just clapped your hands and believed hard enough.
These people could ask God himself about their theories and they’d just say “This conspiracy goes higher than I thought possible” if he did anything but blindly agree.
They expected to find exactly what their propagandising representatives fed them. The "Truth"™.
And they did but, for most conservatives, reality isn’t convincing enough so they sought out a different delusion.
The things that get passed around on conservative twitter/fb etc are truly terrifyingly stupid, like, I couldn’t even make them up because they’re so ludicrous.