US NYT: A Trump Rally, a Right-Wing Cause and the Enduring Legacy of Waco - Thirty years ago, a fiery federal raid on a doomsday sect turned the city into a symbol of government overreach. Donald Trump will speak there on Saturday, and some supporters — and critics — say it’s no accident.

A Trump Rally, a Right-Wing Cause and the Enduring Legacy of Waco
The New York Times (archive.ph)
By Charles Homans
2023-03-24 09:00:32GMT

In the chapel at Mount Carmel, the longtime home of the Branch Davidian sect outside Waco, Tex., the pastor preaches about the coming apocalypse, as the sect’s doomed charismatic leader David Koresh did three decades ago.

But the prophecies offered by the pastor, Charles Pace, are different from Mr. Koresh’s. For one thing, they involve Donald J. Trump.

“Donald Trump is the anointed of God,” Mr. Pace said in an interview. “He is the battering ram that God is using to bring down the Deep State of Babylon.”

Mr. Trump, embattled by multiple investigations and publicly predicting an imminent indictment in one, announced last week that he would hold the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign on Saturday at the regional airport in Waco.

The date falls in the middle of the 30th anniversary of the weekslong standoff involving federal agents and followers of Mr. Koresh that left 82 Branch Davidians and four agents dead at Mount Carmel, the group’s compound east of the city.

Mr. Trump has not linked the rally to the anniversary, and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment on whether the rally — his first ever in the city of 140,000 — was an intentional nod to the most infamous episode in Waco’s history. And there are other reasons for the former president to open his campaign in Texas, a state rich in electoral votes where he trailed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by double digits in a state Republican Party poll late last year.

But the historical resonance has not been lost on some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent followers. “Waco was an overreach of the government, and today the New York district attorney is practicing an overreach of the government again,” said Sharon Anderson, a retiree from Etowah, Tenn., who is traveling to Waco for Saturday’s event, her 33rd Trump rally.

Mr. Pace said he believed it was “a statement — that he was sieged by the F.B.I. at Mar-a-Lago and that they were accusing him of different things that aren’t really true, just like David Koresh was accused by the F.B.I. when they sieged him.”

“I’m going to the rally, for sure,” he added.

The attention to Mr. Trump’s choice of locale highlights the long political afterlife of the Waco standoff. A polarizing episode in its own time, the deadly raid was invoked in the 1990s by right-wing extremists including Timothy McVeigh, often to the dismay of the surviving Branch Davidians. It has remained a cause for contemporary far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

Alex Jones, the conspiracy-theorist broadcaster who helped draw crowds of Trump loyalists to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, rose to prominence promoting wild claims about the Waco standoff. The longtime Trump associate and former campaign adviser Roger Stone dedicated his 2015 book, “The Clintons’ War on Women,” to the Branch Davidians who died at Mount Carmel.

“Waco is a touchstone for the far right,” said Stuart Wright, a professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Tex., and an authority on the standoff.

He said Mr. Trump’s decision to begin his campaign there, if intentional in its nod to the siege, would echo Ronald Reagan’s August 1980 speech affirming his support of “states’ rights” at a county fair near Philadelphia, Miss., a town known for the murder of three civil rights activists 16 years earlier.

“There’s some deep symbolism,” Mr. Wright said.

Mr. Trump has a long history of statements that feed the far right, even as he claims that was not his intent. That list includes his equivocating response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that left one woman dead; his message to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in a presidential debate; and his exhortations to supporters in Washington just before many stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn his defeat.

As state and federal investigations have drawn closer to him in recent months, he has often portrayed himself in embattled or even apocalyptic terms. When F.B.I. agents searched his Mar-a-Lago resort in August looking for classified documents, he issued a statement declaring himself “currently under siege.”

In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Coalition conference this month, he described the 2024 presidential election as “the final battle” and vowed “retribution.” As word of a possible indictment from a New York grand jury investigating Trump’s role in payments made to a porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign circulated this month, he posted a message to supporters in all-caps to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”

Newt Gingrich, a prominent critic of the federal government’s handling of the standoff during his time as House speaker, noted a major theme of Mr. Trump’s campaign: “the degree to which the federal government is corrupt and incompetent.”

Whether or not the historical resonance of his Waco rally was intentional, Mr. Gingrich said, “It would certainly fit as a symbol of federal overreach and a symbol of a Justice Department run amok.”

Parnell McNamara, the sheriff of McLennan County, home to Waco, said he did not believe there were security concerns beyond the ordinary preparations for a presidential campaign rally.

“Him coming here, to me, is just a totally different situation, and really has nothing to do with that,” he said in reference to the 1993 raid, for which he was present as a U.S. marshal. “I have not heard anybody even bring that up.”

On Feb. 28, 1993, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms mounted a raid to serve a search and arrest warrant at the compound belonging to the Branch Davidians, a splinter sect of Seventh-day Adventists then under the leadership of Mr. Koresh. Federal investigators suspected Mr. Koresh of possessing illegal weapons. A gunfight erupted, four A.T.F. agents and six Branch Davidians were killed, and a 51-day standoff began.

It ended on April 19, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation broke off negotiations with Mr. Koresh and advanced with tanks. Mr. Koresh and 75 of his followers, many of them children, were killed as a fire consumed the compound.

The Branch Davidians mostly eschewed politics. But the siege was overseen by the administration of a Democratic president and set off by an investigation of a Christian sect over a weapons charge, at a time when the National Rifle Association had begun stoking fears about the federal government seizing Americans’ guns, factors that help make it a cause on the right.

An independent inquiry completed in 2000, led by the former Republican senator John Danforth, faulted federal agencies for their lack of transparency regarding the standoff, while also seeking to dispel many of the most lurid conspiracy theories.

But by then, the Branch Davidians had already been embraced as martyrs by the far-right extremists of the era, including many members of a rapidly expanding “patriot” or militia movement and Mr. McVeigh, who visited Waco during the siege of Mount Carmel and bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the burning of the compound.

David Thibodeau, a survivor of the siege who came from a “very Democratic liberal family,” found the embrace odd.

“David and the people at Mount Carmel weren’t political at all,” he said. But he said he appreciated the attention of the right-wing groups when the survivors were struggling to make sense of their experience and were treated as pariahs in other political circles.

“Nobody wanted to hear what I had to say except for people on the right,” Mr. Thibodeau said.

Funds for the construction of the chapel at Mount Carmel were raised by Mr. Jones, whose obsession with Waco conspiracy theories led to his firing in 1999 from the Austin radio station KJFK and the start of his own media empire, Infowars.

Invocations of Waco persisted into the next generation of militias and other extremists that emerged in response to Barack Obama’s presidency and supported Mr. Trump’s. In 2009, the founder of the Three Percenters movement warned of “No More Free Wacos” in an open letter to then-attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. The Oath Keepers issued a statement warning that the Bundy family could be “Waco’d” in their standoff with the federal government in 2014.

According to Newsweek, in 2021, Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys and a onetime F.B.I. informant, denounced the agency as the “enemy of the people” in a Parler post, writing: “Remember Waco? Are your eyes opened yet?”

A Texas Proud Boys chapter made a pilgrimage to the Mount Carmel chapel on the anniversary of the raid last year, according to Mr. Pace, whose politicized, QAnon-inflected theology is rejected by some other Branch Davidians. “They come out and pay their respects, and find out what really happened here,” Mr. Pace said.

Mr. Danforth, a Republican, lamented the changes in his party in the Trump years that had brought the conspiracy theories that his report had aimed to dispel into the political mainstream. “It’s the prevailing view of Republicans today that no matter what the facts show, the system is broken, our election system doesn’t work, we shouldn’t have confidence in elections, there’s no finality, it’s all a steal,” he said.

Asked whether his Waco report would be widely accepted as today, he said, “No. It’s just a very different time.”

Charles Homans covers politics for The Times and the Times Magazine. @chashomans
 
Mr. Trump, embattled by multiple investigations and publicly predicting an imminent indictment in one, announced last week that he would hold the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign on Saturday at the regional airport in Waco.

The date falls in the middle of the 30th anniversary of the weekslong standoff involving federal agents and followers of Mr. Koresh that left 82 Branch Davidians and four agents dead at Mount Carmel, the group’s compound east of the city.
This is hilarious. I don't even blame the journos for freaking out.
 
Reminders about WACO Siege:

The Feds went there to try and look good after Ruby Ridge and show people that was a "one off mistake".

Local cops told ATF that Koresh went for daily walks and they could get him out of the compound for interrogation and warranty delivery. ATF denied and instead let him get to the compound to start a siege.

They actually thought blasting loud music to deny apocalypse cultists sleep was gonna result in anything other than making them paranoid and double down on this being the end.

They eventually broke into the place under the excuse of "rescuing children" from "abuse". They saved the kids from being abused by burning them alive.

Afterwards and particularly in the last 10 years feds and glowniggers have pivoted to focus on the kids and insist the siege was about child abuse and rescuing the kids, trying to ignore and sideline the argument on the "illegal full auto guns" that were shown to never exist. Said abuse has flimsy evidence, kids were not rescued and it was all done under the administration of Bill "Epstein no.1 Client" Clinton who I am sure was a big lover of children and only concerned about them.

Federal agents are not human. They do not have human rights. It is morally acceptable to treat them as 2nd class citizens.
 
I can't stand journoscum using thinly veiled weasel words. WACO wasn't a "symbol" of government overreach, it WAS government overreach.

If trump can manage to not be retarded for like 3 months all he needs to do is just point out how much worse things are now with Biden in charge for 3 years, doesn't matter how much of that is bidens fault. I don't think any president has had such an easy campaign lined up for them.
I expect something to cock it up
 
Imagine you're a normal resident of a city and you're forever known as the place where crazy cultists killed themselves and everything about your home is seen through that lens.
The federal government burned 76 people alive in the Koresh compound. "Killed themselves"? Are you stupid, evil, or both?
 
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I can't stand journoscum using thinly veiled weasel words. WACO wasn't a "symbol" of government overreach, it WAS government overreach.

If trump can manage to not be retarded for like 3 months all he needs to do is just point out how much worse things are now with Biden in charge for 3 years, doesn't matter how much of that is bidens fault. I don't think any president has had such an easy campaign lined up for them.
I expect something to cock it up
19 months, and that's a VERY big ask for the Donald.
 
I can't stand journoscum using thinly veiled weasel words. WACO wasn't a "symbol" of government overreach, it WAS government overreach.

If trump can manage to not be retarded for like 3 months all he needs to do is just point out how much worse things are now with Biden in charge for 3 years, doesn't matter how much of that is bidens fault. I don't think any president has had such an easy campaign lined up for them.
I expect something to cock it up
All the Republican candidate really needs to do it seems, if they can get over their internal drama.
 
Ahh, the usual journoturd tactics are contained in this article. Lots of gaslighting and casting aspersions on conservative concerns as just imaginary.
at a time when the National Rifle Association had begun stoking fears about the federal government seizing Americans’ guns
Case-in-point. Sounding the alarm is not "stoking fears". Dianne Feinstein demanded that Mr. and Mrs. America "turn them in", and the likes of Sarah Brady and Janet Reno explicitly said registration is a precursor for confiscation.

Whenever a liberal tells you that gun control is "for the children", remind them that the Feds were willing to blowtorch children to enforce gun control.
 
Reminders about WACO Siege:

The Feds went there to try and look good after Ruby Ridge and show people that was a "one off mistake".

Local cops told ATF that Koresh went for daily walks and they could get him out of the compound for interrogation and warranty delivery. ATF denied and instead let him get to the compound to start a siege.

They actually thought blasting loud music to deny apocalypse cultists sleep was gonna result in anything other than making them paranoid and double down on this being the end.

They eventually broke into the place under the excuse of "rescuing children" from "abuse". They saved the kids from being abused by burning them alive.

Afterwards and particularly in the last 10 years feds and glowniggers have pivoted to focus on the kids and insist the siege was about child abuse and rescuing the kids, trying to ignore and sideline the argument on the "illegal full auto guns" that were shown to never exist. Said abuse has flimsy evidence, kids were not rescued and it was all done under the administration of Bill "Epstein no.1 Client" Clinton who I am sure was a big lover of children and only concerned about them.

Federal agents are not human. They do not have human rights. It is morally acceptable to treat them as 2nd class citizens.
Last I checked rescuing someone doesn't involve lighting fires and then shooting automatic suppression fire at the only exits to the building (as shown by FLIR footage) where you started the fire, but what do I know.
 
Ahh, the usual journoturd tactics are contained in this article. Lots of gaslighting and casting aspersions on conservative concerns as just imaginary.

Case-in-point. Sounding the alarm is not "stoking fears". Dianne Feinstein demanded that Mr. and Mrs. America "turn them in", and the likes of Sarah Brady and Janet Reno explicitly said registration is a precursor for confiscation.

Whenever a liberal tells you that gun control is "for the children", remind them that the Feds were willing to blowtorch children to enforce gun control.
But those children deserved it because they were Nazis! I even heard one of them say that women can't have penises! So they deserved to be blowtorched!

Stop being such a gun loving fascist Meat Target!
 
Reminders about WACO Siege:

The Feds went there to try and look good after Ruby Ridge and show people that was a "one off mistake".

Local cops told ATF that Koresh went for daily walks and they could get him out of the compound for interrogation and warranty delivery. ATF denied and instead let him get to the compound to start a siege.

They actually thought blasting loud music to deny apocalypse cultists sleep was gonna result in anything other than making them paranoid and double down on this being the end.

They eventually broke into the place under the excuse of "rescuing children" from "abuse". They saved the kids from being abused by burning them alive.

Afterwards and particularly in the last 10 years feds and glowniggers have pivoted to focus on the kids and insist the siege was about child abuse and rescuing the kids, trying to ignore and sideline the argument on the "illegal full auto guns" that were shown to never exist. Said abuse has flimsy evidence, kids were not rescued and it was all done under the administration of Bill "Epstein no.1 Client" Clinton who I am sure was a big lover of children and only concerned about them.

Federal agents are not human. They do not have human rights. It is morally acceptable to treat them as 2nd class citizens.
More reminders, the original "hostage rescue team" was led by the same guy that did Ruby Ridge. Also, the government decided they needed close to 20 tanks for the assault, including a couple Abrams.

I think the Branch Davidians were looney tunes nutjobs, but Janet Reno's decisions were insane on every level.
 
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