Is Trump a Mass Murderer?

[Friday]

Hi, age 42 in a few days. The question I'm posing here is a very simple one:

Is it accurate to refer to Trump as a mass murderer who has, through action and inaction, killed hundreds of thousands of people or more, Americans and otherwise?

I am posing it here, on these boards, because:

1. I believe this is probably the place that would be most likely to say "yes" and agree with me, meaning that if I get a "actually, no, and here's my sixteen paragraphs why" it's definite proof my assertion is wrong, because if you guys don't agree, then nobody will. Believe it or not, this is not an attempt to validate my opinions, but rather to check them if they are out of touch with reality.

2. My friends all balk at me labeling him as this. I'm not sure why, really given the following.

Some facts as I understand them: (and please correct me if any of these are wrong. I'm not making them up, I got them from articles, but articles can be and frequently are wrong.)

The US had 40% more Covid deaths than the average of the other G7 nations. This has been attributed to Trump's bad actions (misinformation) and inactions (let it kill the people in cities) during the pandemic.

In 2018, 22,000 people were estimated to have died due to Trump's rollbacks on environmental protections and safety regulations.

Given just these two facts I feel confident that Trump is accurate defined as a mass murderer. Specifically, a mass murderer with intent. He's on record to have said to let Covid kill the people in the cities in order to reduce the population of voting Democrats. Now, as it turned out, this sort of backfired on him as Covid ended up killing more reds than blues when all was said and done. This is irrelevant to my point.

[Mongrel]

I think dumb might be the wrong word in the poll questions when callous would be more accurate. I don't think it's controversial or "armchair psychiatry" at this point to say that Trump is a massive sociopath.

In legal terms, I'd say it was negligent homicide, which, crucially, is grouped with 1st & 2nd degree murder in most countries, unlike manslaughter. Though in many US states, there is also a charge titled "Depraved-heart murder" which is an even more severe charge, basically negligent homicide with a legal severity of 2nd degree murder. Such charges are brought in cases where, for example, the accused walks by a guy dying on the sidewalk who begged the accused to call an ambulance and the accused laughs at the guy before walking off. I feel like that an even better fit, but it's idiosyncratic enough that maybe I shouldn't use it.

My point here is not to defend Trump, simply to retain the distinction between what folks like Trump do compared to, say, Pol Pot. Or Ron DeSantis. Or alternately: There's Stochastic Terror, and then there's actual Reigns of Terror.

[Thad]

"Hell, can you think of any recent U.S. President who doesn’t belong in the Serial Killer Hall of Fame?"
- Robert Anton Wilson, 2000

Not to imply a false equivalence between Trump and, say, Jimmy Carter, but I think it's accurate to describe any president in modern history as a mass murderer.

Reagan let people die of AIDS because they were gay. Bush let people drown in a flood because they were poor and Black. Trump let people die of COVID because masks smeared his makeup. Trump's reasons are the pettiest, in a "say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos" kind of way.

[KingRoyal]

Technically, most modern US presidents could equally be referred to as mass murderers if you don't make the distinction between pirates and emperors. Societies have always made a distinction between the actions of rulers and the personal actions of individuals. This has been to the massive benefits of those in charge

As for your specific example? Yes. It's not just a matter of he made bad policy decisions, but the man actively dismantled a pandemic preparedness program that had been built by both Bush and Obama, drastically reducing America's ability to initially combat the virus. But on top of that, he publicly pushed the idea that the virus was a hoax AND that it was not big deal and no one needs to take precautions.

[Crick]

And, I think, outside of that, I believe he knowingly says inflammatory things to get his base to enact violence on his behalf. This is speculation, but I think the idea that he has a small devoted force that will act on his command excites him a WHOLE bunch and perhaps makes him feel more important than almost anything else in his life.

Body count probably isn't as high as the other stuff previously mentioned, but I also think this aspect is still ongoing.

[Upthorn]

Yes for Covid, (though Biden also qualifies for same, perhaps to a greater extent, as he immediately set us on a course back to sunday brunch normalcy.)

Yes for border policy and other reasons relating to his tenure in office (by which most modern presidents qualify--I haven't seen the case for Jimmy Carter, but certainly JFK, Nixon, and everyone since Reagan).

However, the tangerine joker is, significantly, also a mass murderer outside of his official capacity as president, by way of knowingly encouraging violence against groups people who then, in fact, did have murders happen to them, with the direct perpetrators citing speeches by him as direct inspiration.
The way in which he is a mass murderer was literally previously construed by our government as enough to get an American citizen declared as an enemy combatant and then drone-striked without trial.

Again, there is literally recent precedent in our country for his actions meriting the declaration of terrorist, designation as a military target, and summary execution. (Although I did strongly disagree with those decisions in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki)

[Thad]

I haven't seen the case for Jimmy Carter

Sold arms to Indonesia when they needed to restock after the East Timor genocide; supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan, including providing support and training to Osama bin Laden.

Still manages to be one of the most decent and moral people ever to hold the office, if not the most. But yeah he's in the club.

[Mongrel]

he knowingly says inflammatory things to get his base to enact violence on his behalf.

Correct. This is exactly what Stochastic Violence is.

[Crick]

Ah yep. Missed that in your post, my bad.

[Mongrel]

Ah yep. Missed that in your post, my bad.

Oh, no no, all good. Some people don't actually know what that stuff is as it's not used very often, though it has been picking up in use lately. In this case, I do think attaching a label is quite useful in that it specifically frames it as a criminal or at least grossly immoral act.

[Thad]

Stochastic terrorism is, in most cases, legal under US First Amendment jurisprudence.

Incitement is unprotected speech, but the standard for determining whether or not something is incitement (known as the Brandenburg test) is "intended and likely to cause imminent lawless action." It's an extremely difficult standard to meet, due to the intent requirement and the "imminence" standard. It's not a slam-dunk that even Trump's rally on January 6 would meet the standard for incitement, which is why the feds didn't charge him with that; they've stuck with charges they're confident they can prove.

Now, this is a pretty fucking obvious drawback to the Brandenburg standard. But there are obvious downsides to expanding it, too. Prior to Brandenburg, the standard for incitement was the clear and present danger test, which the Supreme Court invented to justify sending a man to prison for handing out anti-draft literature during WWI (in Schenck, the case best remembered for the phrase "falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic", which dullards who aren't familiar with the details of the case like to quote or misquote in support of suppressing some kind of speech or another).

So it's a pretty serious fucking dilemma. Right now we have a standard that lets guys like Trump use "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" rhetoric that threatens people's lives and it's legal for him to do it (usually; it got him a gag order yesterday, but that's in an ongoing trial, which is a special case). But the idea of expanding the standard is extremely fraught too, because as history has shown us, it's very easy for a broader standard of incitement to result in authoritarian crackdowns on criticism of the government.

[Yoji]

In legal terms, I'd say it was negligent homicide, which, crucially, is grouped with 1st & 2nd degree murder in most countries, unlike manslaughter.

I was thinking about Derek Chauvin. I think second-degree murder is where you don't intend to kill someone, but you deliberately act in a way that you know could kill someone and then whoops you killed someone by doing that? Like, you all KNOW that kneeling on someone's neck for minutes on end could kill them, but you can't be bothered to do otherwise? That's murder. You know pretending a deadly new virus isn't real will kill people, but you do it anyway because you're more worried about your pole numbers? People died in large numbers because you intentionally did something deadly, which could quite charitably be described as mass murder.

"Hell, can you think of any recent U.S. President who doesn’t belong in the Serial Killer Hall of Fame?"
- Robert Anton Wilson, 2000

Not to imply a false equivalence between Trump and, say, Jimmy Carter, but I think it's accurate to describe any president in modern history as a mass murderer.

Reagan let people die of AIDS because they were gay. Bush let people drown in a flood because they were poor and Black. Trump let people die of COVID because masks smeared his makeup.

I think it was Cody Johnston over on Some More News who said only kinda jokingly that almost all presidents deserve to go to prison, like it should just be a matter of course. You get to be the president, but when the job is done you are expected to go straight to prison.