What the 2024 Election Is Really About for Trump Supporters
Twenty‐five years before my first book about Donald Trump was published, I wrote a paperback titled The Right to Bear Arms: The Rise of America’s New Militias. It was written after Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, and tracks the emerging anti-government movement that inspired McVeigh to make war on the federal law-enforcement agencies that he, and many other far‐right activists, believed posed a threat both to America and to themselves. On the cover of the book is a photograph of the Branch Davidians’ Waco, Texas, compound engulfed in flames. Federal law enforcement learned that the group was stockpiling weapons and explosives and, after a disastrous siege in early 1993, attempted to storm the compound. With agents closing in, several Branch Davidians set fire to the building, apparently preferring to die rather than be captured by authorities. The body of the cult’s leader, David Koresh, was found with a gunshot to the head. The raid was a colossal failure. To some, though, the debacle represented something far more sinister: a deliberate …
