We knew this was going to happen…

Enormously long day on the road today and we only just arrived at our hotel. I am just going to repost text by a blogger I really like (Mary Geddry) on the shooting of two elected Democrats. Dear Leader hasn’t said a word, of course, implicitly endorsing the whole thing…

“The largest manhunt in Minnesota history ended not with a dramatic shootout or a cinematic standoff, but with a soggy man in a cornfield surrendering to a swarm of drones and ditch-crawling SWAT teams. Vance Boelter, the man accused of assassinating Democratic House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and wounding another state senator and his wife, was found Sunday evening after two days of terror and speculation. His car abandoned, his cowboy hat ditched in a field, Boelter emerged not as a mastermind but as a radicalized, debt-ridden evangelical security contractor who once led a fake company and now stands accused of multiple counts of politically motivated murder. Authorities recovered multiple AK-47s, handguns, a ballistic vest, and a hand-scribbled hit list targeting Democratic politicians and Planned Parenthood locations.

Boelter, we now know, was a devoted Trump supporter. Friends say he spiraled after failed business ventures, consumed by financial anxiety and conspiracy-fueled rage. He dressed as a police officer to carry out his attacks, reportedly drawing inspiration from Trump’s rhetoric about “liberating” cities from liberal rule. It worked exactly the way stochastic terrorism is supposed to work: deny responsibility, light the fire, walk away whistling. On Sunday morning, while Minnesotans reeled, Trump called Governor Tim Walz a “grossly incompetent person” and said nothing, nothing, about the targeted killings. And why would he? His administration had already gutted the DHS office tasked with preventing precisely this kind of violence. The Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), designed to interrupt radicalization before it turned deadly, was stripped to the studs, reduced from 45 full-time staff to “a handful,” in the words of its former director.” Mary Geddry, today.