On August 3, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, famed as the teenage mascot of Elon Musk’s DOGE assault on the federal bureaucracy, got badly beaten up during an attempted carjacking in Washington, D.C. President Trump reacted with a wild and angry screed threatening to federalize the D.C. government. Then on August 11, Trump followed through with a wild and angry press conference in which he quite literally fabricated a violent-crime wave in Washington to justify a takeover of the local police force and the deployment of National Guard units.

On August 8, as Team Trump planned this little coup, a more violent crime than Coristine’s beating unfolded in Atlanta as a shooter, apparently inspired by anti-vaxx propaganda, fired 180 rounds of ammunition at four headquarters buildings of the........

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