Donald Trump hype man Wayne Allyn Root led a crowd of Trump supporters in a muddled fantasy about the suicide of Hillary Clinton at a Las Vegas Trump rally on Sunday. The right-wing agitator painted a hopeful picture of Clinton as the target of a police chase, driving with top advisor Huma Abedin off a cliff to their deaths, as in the final scene of Thelma & Louise.
Root started off by promising a “Trump revolution,” bragging that he’d gone to England to place the biggest bet of his life on Trump winning the presidency. “The peasants! The serfs! And the taxpayers! With pitchforks, jackhammers, and blow torches are headed for Washington D.C.!” he yelled. To “D.C. elites,” he had this to say: “We’re coming to kick your ass! And we’re coming to put you in prison!” He tried to start the Trump-beloved “lock her up” chant more than once, to mixed success.
Then, Root worked the audience into a tizzy over the prospect of a Clinton suicide colored with contradictory analogies. “I heard a rumor. I don’t know if you heard this rumor, but while we’re all gathered here, all the networks have wall-to-wall coverage of a live police chase,” he said. “And it’s Hillary in a White Ford Bronco! She’s got—she’s got Huma driving and they’re headed for the Mexican border. I have a name … for the future TV movie. It’s called Driving Miss Hillary. And the ending—if we all get our wish, the ending is like Thelma & Louise!”
The ending of Thelma & Louise finds the titular best friends driving full-speed into the Grand Canyon rather than endure certain capture and life in prison for killing a man who raped Thelma. O.J. Simpson was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. Driving Miss Daisy depicts a sympathetic elderly Jewish lady coming to terms with the civil rights movement. So—is Clinton an anti-rape crusader who’ll be held up for all time as a symbol of courage in the face of injustice? A victim of a biased law-enforcement operation who’ll be vindicated in a court of law? A woman gradually getting woke to racial justice? Which is it, Root? WHICH IS IT!? Politico reports that Root continued his Thelma & Louise daydream thus: “When they make the run for the border of Mexico, there’s nowhere to go, because President Trump has built a big, beautiful wall.” A little-discussed effect of the proposed Mexico wall, see, is that it won’t just keep refugees and immigrants out; it’ll keep BFF fugitives in.
Thelma & Louise screenwriter Callie Khouri was not pleased with the reference:
The fans at Sunday’s rally got a big kick out of a Trump-endorsed speaker describing Clinton plummeting to her death. They also loved the ejaculatory imagery Root used to predict Clinton’s downfall. “Hillary and Huma have been done in by a leaking wiener,” he said of the latest round of chatter over Clinton’s email mismanagement, spurred by an FBI investigation into Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner. Of the pundits who said Root was wrong to predict a Trump victory this November, Root mused, “because of Weiner, they are all guilty of premature prognostication.”
What elegant wordplay! Thank you, Trump and friends, for elevating your threats of political assassination with colorful pop-culture references and phallic humor. For your next act, please take our country back from the clutches of mixed metaphors.
