President Donald Trump, Republican officials, and their right-wing media allies have laid the groundwork for a broadbased attack on core progressive and Democratic Party institutions in response to Saturday’s planned nationwide “No Kings” protests. They are reframing and weaponizing the concept of antifa as a framework to target their political enemies — and anyone else who dissents from their authoritarian political project. 

Trump hosted a White House event last week in which he indicated a willingness to stretch the “antifa” label so that it covers as many of his political enemies as possible — including peaceful protesters holding signs and the organizations and funders who pay for them. Attorney General Pam Bondi made comments this week which similarly suggested she sees no distinction between antifa activists whom the president has identified as criminals and terrorists and peaceful protesters. 

The MAGA plan for this Saturday seems clear. The right-wing media have spent months fearmongering about the conditions in American cities to justify Trump’s deployment of military and quasi-military forces on their streets. They want headlines about violence at No Kings rallies that the president can use as a pretext to target his political foes. 

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote this great piece showing how Trump is seeking to bend the No Kings protests to his own authoritarian ends.

• Time Magazine’s cover image of Trump this week drew backlash from the president and his right-wing media acolytes. The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles complained that while Trump is a “good looking guy,” Time’s cover photo makes him look “wrinkly” and makes “his face look like it’s Saran wrap being wrapped around a basketball.” Newsmax’s Greg Kelly also complained about the photo and suggested an editor had “some sort of agenda,” but also conceded that the photo “kind of works for President Trump.”

Pundits who portray Donald Trump’s recent steps to secure federal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James as simply a response to prosecutorial efforts to hold Trump accountable after his first term have either forgotten what actually happened during Trump’s first term or are lying to their audiences. 

Trump, an authoritarian to his core, repeatedly sought the investigation, prosecution, and imprisonment of his political foes throughout his first four years in the White House. The fact that he’s had more success leveling actual criminal charges at his enemies in his second term says far more about the sycophants and toadies with which he’s populated the government than about his own demeanor, which has always been laser-focused on using the levers of power to punish his perceived enemies. 

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz detailed how Trump’s campaign to persecute his political opponents is not novel to his second administration, but is a recurrent theme of his political career. As Matt put it: “What’s changed is that during Trump’s second term, when federal prosecutors declined to bring charges, he replaced the recalcitrant U.S. attorney with a crony who had no issue seeking indictments anyway. But explaining that reality won’t keep you on the good side of the MAGA movement.”

• Newsmax host Carl Higbie said to “throw in a good treason charge for good measure” against former special counsel Jack Smith. 
• Some right-wing and right-leaning podcasters have embraced the extreme rhetoric of “spiritual warfare” against their political opponents, accusing political and cultural figures they disagree with of harboring a “demonic” ideology.

On Monday, conspiracy theorist and right-wing commentator Glenn Beck posted, “The FBI showed up to my house to discuss my TV show exposing Antifa’s network.” He appended a clip from his radio show in which he said that he had met for two hours on Saturday with agents sent at the behest of the extremely online FBI Director Kash Patel. 

Beck has spent a decade and a half trying to make the case that various progressive organizations, activists, and funders are radicals bent on destroying the country. His claim of FBI interest in his report on antifa, an umbrella term for a broad and decentralized grouping of militant far-left activists who say they oppose fascism, comes as Donald Trump and his administration are attempting to reframe the concept of antifa as a framework to target their political enemies. 

The FBI calling on Beck’s expertise is both a comical revelation about the ineptitude of Patel’s FBI — and a five-alarm fire for civil liberties. The Trump administration’s methods may be unserious, but its leaders are extremely focused on punishing their political opponents at all costs.

• This week Politico reported on a group Telegram chat involving various leaders of Young Republican groups around the country which contained horrifically racist, bigoted and gross language. Various right-wing media figures dismissed the reporting, claiming that people were overreacting to edgy jokes made by young people (even though the participants reportedly range in age from 24-35), dismissed the chat as full of nobodies, and attacked conservatives who criticized the comments. 
• Major cable and broadcast news outlets seem to have largely ignored a Wall Street Journal report that Donald Trump Jr. stands to potentially benefit financially from a deal between BlinkRx and the government-run TrumpRx pharmaceutical program. 
• Joe Rogan has been critical of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies. Responding to him, a Fox contributor said it’s his “toxic empathy speaking.” 
• Eric Trump has been using recent media appearances to accuse Jack Smith of “planting” evidence during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. One problem with this is that Smith was not special counsel at the time of the search.