After Donald Trump’s Florida residence was hit with a raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Monday night, hypocritical demands for defunding and “destroying” the FBI erupted from Republicans, despite their years-long complaints about the left’s calls for defunding law enforcement.
Mar-a-Lago was the location of the raid. missing classified documentsTrump reportedly brought his camp to the residence, which could have been in violation of presidential archives laws. Trump and his camp loudly bemoanedOfficials said they were claiming the raid was political. have raised concerns about Trump’s repeated insolence when it comes to official document preservation, saying that it kills transparency and threatens democracy itself.
Trump-supporters quickly took to the streets. “DEFUND THE FBI!” wrote fascist Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Georgia). “The GOP majority must defund all forms of tyranny throughout Biden’s government,” tweeted Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), tagging the FBI. They blamed President Joe Biden’s administration for the raid, though the FBI is currently headed by Trump appointee Chris Wray.
Others on the right started openly calling forResponding to the raid with violence equal to civil war
Rep. Cori (D-Missouri), a progressive lawmaker, shot back at right saying, “‘Defund the police’ is what many grieving communities called for to demilitarize policing in the wake of racialized police killings. These white supremacists are just trying to advance white supremacist control and circumvent accountability.”
It’s ironic that the far right would suddenly be on board with defunding a law enforcement agency just because Trump’s residence was raided, after they have railed against the left’s legitimate calls to dismantle law enforcement for years. While the “tyranny” that Boebert refers to does truly exist against left-wingProtesters and foreign leaders, the right’s continual disinformation campaigns paint the right as the perpetual victims, even as they benefit from the same things that they claim are oppressing them.
For instance, it’s true that the FBI tyrannizesThe public, and its abolition would go a long wayin decreasing state sanctioned violence. But insofar as the FBI terrorizes the public, it acts to enforce the right’s repressive vision of the U.S.; the FBI is, in many ways, a right-wing agency, with its ranks full ofWhite supremacists/far right militants and far right activists a sordid historyof killing and suppressing civil right activists and left-wingers.
The right has no reason to complain about FBI. Instead, the right is likely angling to politicize any sort of legitimate inquiry into Trump’s alleged crimes and throw doubt into any and all government agencies, as they have done for years.
Indeed, after the raid, many Republicans took the chance to say that both the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — agencies with missions that have virtually no overlap — should be defunded. Monday night’s raid was a reference to the Inflation Reduction Act. boost the IRSIn hopes of going after wealthy tax cheats, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) tweeted, “After today’s raid on Mar A Lago what do you think the left plans to use those 87,000 new IRS agents for?”
It’s unclear what Rubio thinks the IRS will do, but perhaps just the suggestion that the IRS would also go after Republicans is enough for right-wingers to support defunding the agency. In reality, the right wing is drumming up support to continue hacking away at the IRS’s budget, as they have done for yearsIn order to ensure thatThe agency does not have the resources to audit taxpayers who are poor. lacking the capacityAudit wealthy and corporate tax evasions.
