FROM OUR REPORTER
WACO (TEXAS) – Donald Trump has warned that America risks “death and destruction” if impeached and has attacked judges (“corrupt”, “animals”), beginning with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. In this climate, the former president called his supporters together at Waco Airport yesterday. “Elect me again and you will be avenged,” he promised in a contemptuous and sometimes apocalyptic rally. Thousands, sunburnt on the shadowless runway, waited for hours for him, some with small children in strollers. “Nobody talks about size anymore, it’s one witch hunt after another. I’m being pursued by prosecutors and the Justice Department, paid for by Democrats and Hillary Clinton,” Trump said, comparing the investigation against him to that of Stalinist Russia. “If we don’t destroy the Deep State, the Deep State will destroy America.”
It was the first rally since Trump urged his supporters to take back the country a week ago, using words reminiscent of the attack on Congress (the Waco event was preceded by a video of the former president shouting with some rioters, ” Justice for All” sang). sentenced on January 6). It was also his first major campaign launch event of 2024.
Without words, the place is significant: Waco is a symbol of hostility to federal government interference in America. A Trump spokesman denied any connection to the extremists, saying the city of 140,000 is simply one of the most populous centers in Texas and has the right infrastructure. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told the crowd that he was the one who picked Waco when Trump called him and said, “I’m coming to Texas, pick a nice town.” The rally falls right on schedule the 30th anniversary of the Siege of Waco. The scene of the tragedy is a thirty-minute drive from the stage from which the former President challenged US authorities yesterday.
On February 28, 1993, the Federals of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms Agency (ATF) attempted a raid on the compound where the Davidian religious sect lived among the cow pastures east of Waco. Their leader, David Koresh, 33, called himself the Messiah, stole 13 wives from his own followers and had sex with underage girls. The Davidians were armed to the teeth with machine guns and automatic rifles in anticipation of the apocalypse: they were ready for battle between God’s army and the federal government. The raid was repelled, four agents were killed, the FBI, snipers and Abrams tanks intervened: a 51-day siege began. The negotiators managed to get about twenty people out. But on April 19, 1993, as they contemplated forcing Koresh and some eighty Loyalists to surrender by throwing tear gas at the compound, they all died in a mysterious fire.
Today there is a church/museum on the site and a memorial to commemorate the victims – including children aged 1 and 6. In front of them are three flags with the inscription: “Trump saves America again, 2024”. Current Davidian leader Charles Pace, partially blind and with a prosthetic leg in place of his right leg lost in a tractor accident, is a Trump fan: He claims the former president was chosen by God to overthrow “the deep state.” of Babylon” and that he has decided to hold a rally in Waco to underscore exactly that he is under FBI siege, just as Koresh was thirty years ago. Anti-Clinton conspiracy theories can be read on the walls of the church, which was built with the help of Texas conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, later a Trump supporter (he was President in 1993): “Koresh was a false prophet – says Pace – but he knew too much, the Clintons couldn’t let him live.”
Former Deputy Sheriff Terry Fuller tells us it’s sort of a church, just for tax reasons: “How many churches have you seen that are closed on Sundays?”. There are no believers (Pace claims they are all online), but it is a tourist destination: we meet couples, families with children, three Irish people, two motorcyclists with Harley-Davidsons (“Johnny V” and “Papa di Rosa”) names engraved on the leather of their waistcoats) who take our hands to pray for the victims. But in Waco, writes the Houston Chronicle, the highest-circulating newspaper in Texas, Trump is “playing with fire” because it is “a haven for the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers and other anti-government extremists.” … how many see this as proof that the federal government is not protecting citizens, even violating their rights, taking the guns away from those who see the FBI as a tool of Democratic presidents: sentiments Trump could ride.
Army veteran and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh sold gun stickers near the compound during the siege. On April 19, two years later, he blew up the federal office where Bob Ricks, the former FBI spokesman in Waco, worked, killing 168 people. One of the founders of the Three Percenters said, “Waco could happen at any moment. But the result will be different next time.” About thirty Proud Boys, a militia who took part in the attack on Congress in 2020, came to visit last year: they say Waco is “the new Alamo” of American patriots. And Pastor Pace replied, “If Koresh were alive, he would be one of you.” In a documentary just out on Netflix, titled Waco: American Apocalypse, one of the snipers involved in the siege explains that he’s been searching for a glimmer of meaning for a long time: ” How is it possible for a cow paddock to go to the site of a fire that kills 80 people only to return to a cow paddock? All I know is that violence comes out of nowhere, destroys lives and then moves elsewhere.”