Yeah, the new nor­mal as Gov. Brown por­tends. But it does­n’t end with the “wild­fires” . Just wait for that first rain and flash floods and mud­slides.

Here’s an arti­cle that’s a chill­ing reminder both the pre­vi­ous reports on phys­i­cal attack on the Cal­i­for­nia elec­tri­cal grid and the reports of a Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen inten­tion­al­ly start­ing a South Cal­i­for­nia wild­fire: PG&E just released a more detailed account of what it was expe­ri­enc­ing on the day the Camp Fire broke out, turn­ing it into the largest wild­fire in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s state his­to­ry. Accord­ing to the report, about 15 min­utes after the util­i­ty expe­ri­enced a trans­mis­sion line out­age in the area near a high-volt­age tow­er near the town of Pul­ga, a PG&E employ­ee spot­ted flames in the vicin­i­ty. This was around the time the Camp Fire first broke out, sug­gest­ing that this was the source of the fire. And inves­ti­ga­tors lat­er dis­cov­ered that a hook con­nect­ing part of the trans­mis­sion line to the trans­mis­sion tow­er was bro­ken and found a flash makr on the tow­er.

So was this a ran­dom acci­dent that caused the trans­mis­sion line to unhook? Per­haps, but but PG&E also reports of a sec­ond out­age that was report­ed just a few miles away about 15 min­utes after the wild­fire start­ed and when crews when to check that out­age the next day they “observed that the pole and oth­er equip­ment was on the ground with bul­lets and bul­let holes at the break point of the pole and on the equip­ment.”

So the Camp Fire is believed to have start­ed in an area where some sort of event cause a trans­mis­sion line to get dis­con­nect­ed from the high-volt­age tow­er, and only 15 min­utes after the start of the wild fire we learn that there was a sec­ond out­age report­ed in the area and that sec­ond out­age appears to have been caused by some­one shoot­ing at elec­tri­cal equip­ment. In oth­er words, some­one may have been inten­tion­al­ly try­ing to sab­o­tage the elec­tri­cal equip­ment to start the fire that day:

CNN

PG&E work­ers found dam­aged tow­er and bul­let holes near Camp Fire ori­gin site

By Nicole Chavez, CNN
Updat­ed 6:00 AM ET, Thu Decem­ber 13, 2018

(CNN)A Cal­i­for­nia util­i­ty com­pa­ny said its crews found a dam­aged trans­mis­sion tow­er and holes in a pow­er pole at sep­a­rate loca­tions near the site where the Camp Fire start­ed.

More than a month after the dead­liest and most destruc­tive wild­fire in the state’s his­to­ry broke out, Pacif­ic Gas & Elec­tric Co. released a more detailed account of out­ages it expe­ri­enced that day.

In a let­ter to the Cal­i­for­nia Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion, PG&E said one of its employ­ees called 911 on Novem­ber 8 — the day the dead­ly wild­fire began — after spot­ting flames in the vicin­i­ty of a high-volt­age tow­er near the town of Pul­ga in Butte Coun­ty.

That fire was report­ed almost 15 min­utes after the util­i­ty expe­ri­enced a trans­mis­sion line out­age at the same loca­tion, the com­pa­ny said. It was also around the same time the Camp Fire broke out.

The elec­tric util­i­ty had dis­closed in a reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing last month that it “expe­ri­enced an out­age” on a trans­mis­sion line in Butte Coun­ty about 15 min­utes before the wild­fire began but had not released addi­tion­al details.

PG&E said in its Tues­day let­ter that inspec­tors lat­er dis­cov­ered that a hook con­nect­ing part of the trans­mis­sion line and the trans­mis­sion tow­er was bro­ken. They also found a flash mark on the tow­er.

The com­pa­ny also detailed a sec­ond out­age at anoth­er loca­tion. That inci­dent was report­ed a few miles away from the first out­age and about 15 min­utes after the wild­fire start­ed.

When crews went to check the out­age a day lat­er, the let­ter states, they “observed that the pole and oth­er equip­ment was on the ground with bul­lets and bul­let holes at the break point of the pole and on the equip­ment.”

Mered­ith E. Allen, PG&E’s senior direc­tor of reg­u­la­to­ry rela­tions, explained that details about the inci­dents are pre­lim­i­nary and they remain under inves­ti­ga­tion.

“The cause of these inci­dents has not been deter­mined and may not be ful­ly under­stood until addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able, includ­ing infor­ma­tion that can only be obtained through exam­i­na­tion and test­ing of the equip­ment retained by CAL FIRE,” Allen wrote to reg­u­la­tors.

The Camp Fire burned through more than 153,000 acres in Butte Coun­ty, killing at least 85 peo­ple and destroy­ing thou­sands of struc­tures. It was con­tained Novem­ber 25 after becom­ing the dead­liest and most destruc­tive wild­fire in Cal­i­for­nia his­to­ry.

Cal Fire, the state’s forestry and fire pro­tec­tion agency, has said the cause of the Camp Fire is still under inves­ti­ga­tion.

...

PG&E made its find­ings pub­lic weeks after a fed­er­al judge ordered the com­pa­ny to explain any poten­tial role it played in caus­ing the dead­ly Camp Fire and any oth­er major wild­fires in the state.

The com­pa­ny has until Dec. 31 to sub­mit writ­ten answers to fed­er­al offi­cials, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

———-

“PG&E work­ers found dam­aged tow­er and bul­let holes near Camp Fire ori­gin site” by Nicole Chavez; CNN; 12/13/2018

“More than a month after the dead­liest and most destruc­tive wild­fire in the state’s his­to­ry broke out, Pacif­ic Gas & Elec­tric Co. released a more detailed account of out­ages it expe­ri­enced that day.”

So this is just the first round of details that PG&E is releas­ing more than a month after the fire. And accord­ing to the com­pa­ny, there was a fire in the vicin­i­ty of a high-volt­age tow­er spot­ted around the same time the Camp Fire broke out and this fire appears to have been caused by a hook con­nect­ing part of the trans­mis­sion line to the tow­er break­ing, with flash mores on the tow­er. That sure sounds like this was at least one of the loca­tions where the Camp Fire start­ed and it was caused by this trans­mis­sion tow­er event:

...
In a let­ter to the Cal­i­for­nia Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion, PG&E said one of its employ­ees called 911 on Novem­ber 8 — the day the dead­ly wild­fire began — after spot­ting flames in the vicin­i­ty of a high-volt­age tow­er near the town of Pul­ga in Butte Coun­ty.

That fire was report­ed almost 15 min­utes after the util­i­ty expe­ri­enced a trans­mis­sion line out­age at the same loca­tion, the com­pa­ny said. It was also around the same time the Camp Fire broke out.

The elec­tric util­i­ty had dis­closed in a reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing last month that it “expe­ri­enced an out­age” on a trans­mis­sion line in Butte Coun­ty about 15 min­utes before the wild­fire began but had not released addi­tion­al details.

PG&E said in its Tues­day let­ter that inspec­tors lat­er dis­cov­ered that a hook con­nect­ing part of the trans­mis­sion line and the trans­mis­sion tow­er was bro­ken. They also found a flash mark on the tow­er.
...

But we still don’t know what exact­ly that event was? Was there some sort of strong pow­er surge that caused the flash mark on the tow­er and the hook to break? Or did a bul­let cause the flash mark on the tow­er and the hook to break? That still needs to be inves­ti­gat­ed, but the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sab­o­tage is look­ing a lot more pos­si­ble when we learn that there was a trans­mis­sion out­age report­ed at a sec­ond loca­tion, just miles away from the first loca­tion, that was also report­ed on the day the fire broke out. And at that sec­ond loca­tion, employ­ees found a col­lapsed pole and oth­er equip­ment on the ground with bul­let holes at the break point on the equip­ment. That sure sounds like some­one decid­ed to shoot up this pole and pow­er equip­ment and they were appar­ent­ly doing in the gen­er­al area of where the fire start­ed and at the gen­er­al time of the start of the fire:

...
The com­pa­ny also detailed a sec­ond out­age at anoth­er loca­tion. That inci­dent was report­ed a few miles away from the first out­age and about 15 min­utes after the wild­fire start­ed.

When crews went to check the out­age a day lat­er, the let­ter states, they “observed that the pole and oth­er equip­ment was on the ground with bul­lets and bul­let holes at the break point of the pole and on the equip­ment.”
...

So was anoth­er one of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s recent wild fires inten­tion­al­ly caused by some­one shoot­ing at elec­tri­cal equip­ment? At this point we don’t know, but it’s a chill­ing reminder that phys­i­cal attacks on the US pow­er grid can dou­ble as attempts to spark wild­fires too. It’s a domes­tic ter­ror twofer.

Mis­souri man flies to Cal­i­for­nia, sets 13 wild­fires, then tries to fly home, cops say

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article235503592.html?fbclid=IwAR2JuVxWOmy4kVgA-3cT524m0ECc6a_tQFuvPqCOdDX5Z0HBcmZQ_RQ13Ms

Here’s a pair of arti­cles that relate to the ongo­ing and increas­ing­ly per­va­sive right-wing push to foment some sort of civ­il con­flict by char­ac­ter­iz­ing Antifa and Black Lives Mat­ter as domes­tic ter­ror­ist out­fits. The arti­cles poten­tial­ly relate to both the report back in May about the dis­cov­ery of the encrypt­ed “Red Storm” chat serv­er that was oper­at­ing as a plan­ning nexus where neo-Nazis, QAnon adher­ents, and more tra­di­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tives hashed out plans to infil­trate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cam­paigns and run influ­enc­ing oper­a­tions in the 2018 elec­tion cycle and the 2018 sto­ry about a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen being respon­si­ble for inten­tion­al­ly start­ing a large South Cal­i­for­nia wild­fire:

There’s been such a del­uge of hoax sto­ries about Antifa being respon­si­ble for start­ing wild­fires that 911 oper­a­tors are appar­ent­ly get­ting flood­ed with calls ask­ing if the infor­ma­tion they read online about Antifa start­ing wild­fires is true and now local offi­cials in areas cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing wild­fires are call­ing on res­i­dents to stop spread­ing the Antifa rumors and stop call­ing in reports about Antifa start­ing fires:

Talk­ing Points Memo
News

False Rumors About Antifa Start­ing West Coast Fires Fol­low Months-Long Con­ser­v­a­tive Hys­te­ria

By Matt Shuham
Sep­tem­ber 11, 2020 11:55 a.m.

The dead­ly wild­fires in Cal­i­for­nia, Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon have blan­ket­ed the West Coast in smoke and dis­placed hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple. But on top of the chaos, locals — includ­ing first respon­ders deal­ing with the cri­sis itself — are fac­ing a wave of rumors about “antifa” pur­pose­ful­ly start­ing fires.

...

“STOP. SPREADING. RUMORS.” read a Face­book post shared by the Dou­glas Coun­ty, Ore­gon Sheriff’s Office.

“Remem­ber when we said rumors make this already dif­fi­cult inci­dent even hard­er?” the office wrote. “Rumors spread just like wild­fire and now our 9–1‑1 dis­patch­ers and pro­fes­sion­al staff are being over­run with requests for infor­ma­tion and inquiries on an UNTRUE rumor that 6 Antifa mem­bers have been arrest­ed for set­ting fires in DOUGLAS COUNTY, OREGON.”

Police in Molal­la, about 45 min south of Port­land, even­tu­al­ly edit­ed a gener­ic Face­book post about report­ing “any sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty” to clar­i­fy they were talk­ing about pos­si­ble loot­ers, “not antifa or set­ting of fires.”

“There has been NO antifa in town as of this post­ing at 2:00 am,” they said ear­ly Thurs­day.

A jour­nal­ist who’d been check­ing out the area, Gabriel Trumbly, told Buz­zFeed News that he and his part­ner Jen­nifer Paulsen were the sub­ject of a fake antifa rumor cycle them­selves in the area. A poster in a local Face­book group claimed to have “just wit­nessed a fire being start­ed” and flagged the couple’s vehi­cle. Sev­er­al peo­ple, com­ment­ing on the post, called for vio­lence.

“This was kin­da fun­ny to me at first. How­ev­er, after talk­ing to Molal­la PD, I was way too close to get­ting shot tonight,” Trumbly sub­se­quent­ly wrote on Twit­ter. “If my part­ner didn’t see one of the reposts, I was plan­ning to go back a few hours lat­er and film some more. Sounds like I would have been met by armed cit­i­zens.”

I am offi­cial­ly #AntifaTer­ror­ist. Went out to Molal­la, filmed some fires. Locals report­ed me to the police, and are look­ing for me to “shoot on sight.” With­in an hour of this post there were 180 com­ments, includ­ing a desire to “shoot on site” and to dep­u­tize locals. pic.twitter.com/UPrxBabPpp— Every­thin­gUn­derthe­Sun (@sun_everything) Sep­tem­ber 10, 2020

Snopes and Poli­ti­fact iden­ti­fied a tweet from Turn­ing Point USA’s Katie Davis­court, which was shared thou­sands of times, that point­ed to the police department’s orig­i­nal notice about “sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty” and claimed “These fires are alleged­ly linked to Antifa and the Riots.”

Sep­a­rate­ly, Paul Romero, who lost Oregon’s Repub­li­can Sen­ate pri­ma­ry this year to QAnon believ­er Jo Rae Perkins, wrote in a tweet shared more than ten thou­sand times that “Pal­let Com­pa­ny in Ore­gon City con­firmed Antifa arson­ist on cam­era.”

Romero told the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that the fires could be pinned on an “army of arson­ists” with fire­works, but offered no evi­dence. The only list­ed pal­let com­pa­ny in Ore­gon City, Willamette Week lat­er report­ed, “said they had expe­ri­enced no fire or arson.”

To the north, Washington’s State Patrol and Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources were inun­dat­ed with calls Thurs­day about the reports of antifa start­ing fires, The Spokesman-Review report­ed. While one man was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of start­ing a fire on a high­way, he made “no polit­i­cal state­ments” a patrol spokesper­son told the paper. Accu­sa­tions about the man’s affil­i­a­tion with “antifa” appeared to stem from the 2014 arrest of a man with the same name at a protest in Wash­ing­ton. He faced charges relat­ed to weapons the police found in his back­pack.

The AP tal­lied yet more rumors, one about a woman who pur­port­ed­ly tried to start a fire in Spring­field, Ore­gon (she didn’t) and anoth­er about a report­ed shootout between a landown­er and arson­ists.

“So my broth­er is a log­ger as you all know,” a text mes­sage pic­tured in the false, viral Face­book post, began. It described the landown­er dis­cov­er­ing “a group of antifa throw­ing molo­tov cock­tails on his prop­er­ty” and sub­se­quent­ly exchang­ing fire with the pur­port­ed arson­ists. Police told the AP that, con­trary to the Face­book post’s claims, the described event nev­er hap­pened.

The rumors, in some cas­es, turned into armed con­fronta­tions.

“So we just got a few guns pulled on us,” jour­nal­ist Alis­sa Azar tweet­ed, before post­ing a pic­ture of the men who stopped her and oth­er jour­nal­ists with her, includ­ing Ore­gon Pub­lic Broadcasting’s Ser­gio Olmos.

Ore­gon wild­fires pic.twitter.com/j7LQ9JKMil— Ser­gio Olmos (@MrOlmos) Sep­tem­ber 10, 2020

In recent months, armed right-wingers have tak­en rumors as grounds to stage shows of force at the scene of sus­pect­ed antifa sight­ings, such as when a mul­tira­cial fam­i­ly going camp­ing in Wash­ing­ton was trapped at their camp­site after armed men felled trees all around them. (Local high school stu­dents even­tu­al­ly cleared the way with their own chain­saws.)

In Bethel, Ohio, motor­cy­cle gangs coun­ter­protest­ing a Black Lives Mat­ter demon­stra­tion assault­ed sev­er­al demon­stra­tors in front of local law enforce­ment.

In July, armed groups includ­ing far-right extrem­ist flocked to Get­tys­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia, after a hoax event orga­niz­er promised an antifa flag burn­ing. Ulti­mate­ly, armed men con­front­ed a man at Get­tys­burg Ceme­tery in a Black Lives Mat­ter t‑shirt. But the man in ques­tion, sem­i­nar­i­an Trent Somes, wasn’t light­ing fires — he was vis­it­ing an ancestor’s grave, he told The Wash­ing­ton Post.

————-

“False Rumors About Antifa Start­ing West Coast Fires Fol­low Months-Long Con­ser­v­a­tive Hys­te­ria” by Matt Shuham; Talk­ing Points Memo; 09/11/2020

“Police in Molal­la, about 45 min south of Port­land, even­tu­al­ly edit­ed a gener­ic Face­book post about report­ing “any sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty” to clar­i­fy they were talk­ing about pos­si­ble loot­ers, “not antifa or set­ting of fires.””

The Antifa hys­te­ria is now at such a fevered pitch that author­i­ties are pre­emp­tive­ly ask­ing for no more ‘Antifa start­ing fires’ reports. And while some of the hys­te­ria is no doubt from peo­ple who have been legit­i­mate­ly duped there’s unde­ni­ably an active cam­paign of com­plete­ly fab­ri­cat­ing false events:

...
The AP tal­lied yet more rumors, one about a woman who pur­port­ed­ly tried to start a fire in Spring­field, Ore­gon (she didn’t) and anoth­er about a report­ed shootout between a landown­er and arson­ists.

“So my broth­er is a log­ger as you all know,” a text mes­sage pic­tured in the false, viral Face­book post, began. It described the landown­er dis­cov­er­ing “a group of antifa throw­ing molo­tov cock­tails on his prop­er­ty” and sub­se­quent­ly exchang­ing fire with the pur­port­ed arson­ists. Police told the AP that, con­trary to the Face­book post’s claims, the described event nev­er hap­pened.

The rumors, in some cas­es, turned into armed con­fronta­tions.

“So we just got a few guns pulled on us,” jour­nal­ist Alis­sa Azar tweet­ed, before post­ing a pic­ture of the men who stopped her and oth­er jour­nal­ists with her, includ­ing Ore­gon Pub­lic Broadcasting’s Ser­gio Olmos.
...

So giv­en the keen inter­est in sell­ing the pub­lic on the idea that Antifa and BLM are domes­tic ter­ror orga­ni­za­tions and giv­en the recent his­to­ry of far right indi­vid­u­als actu­al­ly start­ing wild­fires, we have to ask: are any of these wild­fires being start­ed by the far right for the pur­pose of pro­mot­ing this ‘Antifa is start­ing the fires!’ pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign? At this point it’s hard to rule the idea out.

Next, here’s an update on the sto­ry of Pres­i­dent Trump’s ‘plane loaded with thugs’ sto­ry that he was glee­ful­ly pro­mot­ing last week that pro­motes the idea that Antifa and BLM are paid fronts of George Soros: It turns out the like­ly anony­mous source for the sto­ry is Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Devin Nunes. That’s what peo­ple were able to deduce after it was noticed that Nunes had recount­ed to Bre­it­bart News an anec­dote that sound­ed awful­ly close to what Trump was describ­ing. An anec­dote that turns out to be a per­fect exam­ple of how the GOP sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­torts real­i­ty for the pur­pose of por­tray­ing lib­er­als as dan­ger­ous vio­lent ter­ror­ists. So what hor­ri­ble behav­ior to Nunes wit­ness on this plane? They mooed at him. Specif­i­cal­ly, one of the BLM activists filmed her­self ask­ing Nunes if he sued any cows late­ly and then mooed at him and then returned to her seat. That was it. She post­ed the video. And from that amus­ing inci­dent — which is a ref­er­ence to Nunes suing a fake Twit­ter pro­file called “Devin Nune’s cow’ for $250 mil­lion — we end­ed up with Pres­i­dent Trump repeat­ed­ly hint­ing to the Amer­i­can pub­lic that he heard cred­i­ble reports about a plane being filled with “the loot­ers, the anar­chists, the riot­ers.”:

The Salt Lake Tri­bune

Trump’s ‘plane loaded with thugs’ appears to be a Salt Lake City flight with Black Lives Mat­ter pro­test­ers

By Bryan Schott
·
Pub­lished: 09/06/2020
Updat­ed: 09/08/2020

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump raised some eye­brows ear­li­er this week when he stat­ed a plane “loaded with thugs wear­ing dark uni­forms” flew into Wash­ing­ton, D.C., recent­ly as part of his claim that shad­owy groups were con­trol­ling Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Joe Biden. Turns out that con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry might have a con­nec­tion to Salt Lake City.

Trump first made the claim about a plane full of agi­ta­tors dur­ing an inter­view with Fox News’ Lau­ra Ingra­ham.

“We had some­body get on a plane from a cer­tain city this week­end, and in the plane it was almost com­plete­ly loaded with thugs, wear­ing these dark uni­forms, black uni­forms, with gear and this and that,” Trump told Ingra­ham.

The fol­low­ing day, Trump dou­bled down on the sto­ry, telling reporters ” a per­son” got on a flight, which quick­ly filled up with “the loot­ers, the anar­chists, the riot­ers.”

Yup, and he just dou­bled-down. Here’s the clip: pic.twitter.com/pcLwuM2Acb— The Recount (@therecount) Sep­tem­ber 1, 2020

Where did Trump get this sto­ry? And who was this unnamed per­son?

The answer to both of those ques­tions may well be Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can Rep. Devin Nunes.

Dur­ing an inter­view with Bre­it­bart News, Nunes spun an eeri­ly sim­i­lar sto­ry about his recent jour­ney to attend the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion. He said his trip to D.C. includ­ed a stop in Salt Lake City, where he got on a flight with a num­ber of Black Lives Mat­ter pro­test­ers who were head­ed to the nation’s cap­i­tal for the anniver­sary of the March on Wash­ing­ton.

“So these peo­ple that descend­ed on Wash­ing­ton, D.C., most of them were not local. In fact, I flew in with a bunch of them where I got on a plane in Salt Lake City where I had to com­mute through and I saw maybe two dozen BLM peo­ple,” Nunes said.

“The irony is they were all white peo­ple, they weren’t even Black, but some­one was pay­ing for them to go there — they were coor­di­nat­ed, pay­ing for that, and then what they did was they were not protest­ing,” he con­tin­ued. “This is not protest­ing when you block the exits of the White House.”

The Nunes/Salt Lake City con­nec­tion was first report­ed by The Dai­ly Beast.

...

Salt Lake City res­i­dent Jamie Carter says when Trump float­ed the “antifa plane” idea, she imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized her “very mild encounter” with Nunes was the like­ly gen­e­sis of the tale.

In a post for the lib­er­al Dem­cast USA, Carter said she was trav­el­ing to D.C. with a group of activists to take part in the 2020 March on Wash­ing­ton, which arose out of protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.

“I knew from the moment I heard this that some­how the sto­ry of my very mild encounter with Devin Nunes on the flight from Salt Lake City to D.C. had made its way to Trump,” she wrote.

Carter said she real­ized that Nunes was on the plane when she board­ed. After mak­ing a trip to the restroom, she says she “decid­ed to have a lit­tle fun” with the con­gress­man on her way back to her seat.

Antifa Air­lines full of thugs and anar­chist moo­ing at every­one’s favorite CA rep. I’m shocked he sur­vived the angry mob. ??????I would also like to ask who paid for the 1st class flight tick­et and why he was wear­ing the mask around his neck? pic.twitter.com/z7rtVdfhNY— Jamie Carter #AntifaAir­Pro­tes­tor (@JCTheResistance) Sep­tem­ber 1, 2020

“I pulled out my phone and hit record. Stop­ping at his seat, I asked him ‘Have you sued any cows late­ly?’”

Carter is refer­ring to Nunes’ efforts to sue Twit­ter over posts by a par­o­dy account called @DevinNunesCow that were crit­i­cal of him. Nunes brought a law­suit assert­ing posts by the account were defam­a­to­ry. His law­suit was dis­missed by a judge ear­li­er this year.

In the video post­ed to Twit­ter, Carter moos at Nunes, then returns to her seat.

After Carter returned to Salt Lake City, she said she heard about Trump’s claim and said she sus­pect­ed the inci­dent with Nunes was the cat­a­lyst.

“I thought, ’No, that can’t be me,’” she said dur­ing a tele­phone inter­view on Sat­ur­day. “When I read about Nunes’ inter­view, I was shocked.”

Carter, who works for a left-lean­ing grass­roots dig­i­tal media com­pa­ny, describes her­self as a polit­i­cal junkie, which is why she rec­og­nized Nunes. And it’s why she decid­ed to say some­thing to him.

“I thought it would be fun to heck­le him a lit­tle bit. Maybe it was a lit­tle rude, but it was noth­ing dark or unsa­vory,” she said.

“Our entire inter­ac­tion last­ed 12 sec­onds. I didn’t touch him at all,” she con­tin­ued.

Carter said that she had no idea that her brief encounter with the Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can would explode in this way.

“It’s sur­re­al,” Carter said. “You don’t expect some­thing so inno­cent to be a week­long sto­ry, some­thing that was sup­posed to be a joke. It’s alarm­ing that it led to some­thing like this.”

Carter con­firmed many of the pas­sen­gers on the flight were wear­ing Black Lives Mat­ter or oth­er social jus­tice mes­sages on their clothes. She was wear­ing a BLM mask when she approached Nunes. She, though, denies that the group was “thugs” or agi­ta­tors or that they were part of a shad­owy orga­ni­za­tion that’s con­trol­ling Biden.

————-

“Trump’s ‘plane loaded with thugs’ appears to be a Salt Lake City flight with Black Lives Mat­ter pro­test­ers” by Bryan Schott; The Salt Lake Tri­bune; 09/06/2020

““It’s sur­re­al,” Carter said. “You don’t expect some­thing so inno­cent to be a week­long sto­ry, some­thing that was sup­posed to be a joke. It’s alarm­ing that it led to some­thing like this.””

Yes indeed it is sur­re­al and alarm­ing that a sil­ly joke first led to Nunes recount­ing his appar­ent­ly har­row­ing expe­ri­ence to Bre­it­bart. And even more sur­re­al and alarm­ing that Trump decid­ed to take Nunes’s inter­view and turn it into some big mys­tery sto­ry that he repeat­ed­ly dan­gled in front of the pub­lic:

...
Trump first made the claim about a plane full of agi­ta­tors dur­ing an inter­view with Fox News’ Lau­ra Ingra­ham.
“We had some­body get on a plane from a cer­tain city this week­end, and in the plane it was almost com­plete­ly loaded with thugs, wear­ing these dark uni­forms, black uni­forms, with gear and this and that,” Trump told Ingra­ham.

The fol­low­ing day, Trump dou­bled down on the sto­ry, telling reporters ” a per­son” got on a flight, which quick­ly filled up with “the loot­ers, the anar­chists, the riot­ers.”
...

And yet this is all exact­ly what we should expect at this point. Just as fan­ning false flames about Antifa and BLM start­ing fires is exact­ly what we should expect. Cre­at­ing false nar­ra­tives and warp­ing real­i­ty is the con­tem­po­rary Republ­cian Par­ty’s pri­ma­ry polit­i­cal tac­tic. It’s how they win elec­tions. It’s why the ‘QAnon’ move­ment is sup­port­ed by a major­i­ty of Repub­li­can vot­ers. Repub­li­can Big Lies are a major the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion run­ning 24/7. The future of the par­ty is based on sell­ing these Big Lies and right now that means sell­ing the pub­lic on the idea that Democ­rats are being secret­ly led by ter­ror­is­tic Antifa/BLM groups. Which, again, rais­es the ques­tion: is the far right inten­tion­al­ly start­ing wild­fires in order to blame it on Antifa and BLM? Or to put it anoth­er way, we already have a grow­ing num­ber of exam­ples of the ‘Booga­loo’ move­ment plot­ting to infil­trate the protest move­ments to car­ry out arson, vio­lence and stoke con­flict. Is start­ing wild­fires amidst a far right pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign about Antifa and BLM start­ing the fires real­ly a stretch at this point?

Here’s a sto­ry that could end up being just a total­ly ran­dom crime sto­ry. But it con­tains enough bizarre facts to war­rant a clos­er look:

A North­ern Cal­i­for­nia col­lege lec­tur­er, Gary Stephen May­nard, was just accused of going on an arson spree in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia in con­nec­tion to the Dix­ie Fire. Both wit­ness­es and geolo­ca­tion evi­dence points towards May­nard being the cul­prit.

So what’s the motive? Avail­able evi­dence points in the direc­tion of some sort of men­tal health cri­sis. Inves­ti­ga­tors found that one of May­nard’s col­leagues report­ed­ly con­tact police in Octo­ber of 2020 after May­nard told her he was suf­fer­ing from anx­i­ety, depres­sion, split per­son­al­i­ty and that he want­ed to kill him­self. She also believed he was liv­ing out of his vehi­cle, which is the same vehi­cle asso­ci­at­ed with the fires. Keep in mind that the May­nard was an adjunct fac­ul­ty mem­ber in the soci­ol­o­gy depart­ment at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty from Sep­tem­ber 2019 to Decem­ber 2020. And as an adjunct pro­fes­sor, he was there­fore was prob­a­bly paid close to pover­ty wages. So the idea that a pro­fes­sor was liv­ing out of his car is a lot more plau­si­ble when you learn he’s an adjunct pro­fes­sor.

Here’s where it gets real­ly bizarre: May­nard’s area of exper­tise are list­ed as crim­i­nal jus­tice, social sci­ence research meth­ods, cults and deviant behav­ior. In par­tic­u­lar, he’s stud­ied the Jon­estown mas­sacre and the role Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der (NPD) may have had in how the events of Jon­estown played out. And as we’ll see in the sec­ond arti­cle below, May­nard gave a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view in the days fol­low­ing the Novem­ber 2020 elec­tion where he dis­cussed the remark­able par­al­lels between the psy­chol­o­gy of Jim Jones and Don­ald Trump. May­nard basi­cal­ly diag­noses Trump with NPD and draws upon the lessons Jon­estown to pre­dict how Trump will behave in the wake of an appar­ent loss. And he basi­cal­ly nails it. May­nard pre­dict­ed, quite accu­rate­ly, that Trump would refuse to accept the loss and was psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly head­ing towards a Jon­estown-style moment where he was going to declare “F*ck it!” and do some­thing tru­ly dan­ger­ous to stay in pow­er. Which, of course, was exact­ly what hap­pened dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. Keep in mind that this inter­view hap­pened after May­nard’s col­league report­ed­ly con­tact­ed police to report his errat­ic state­ments to her.

Now, it’s impor­tant to recall that A LOT of peo­ple were mak­ing the same pre­dic­tions about Trump’s response to los­ing. May­nard was far from unique in that respect. But he is rel­a­tive­ly rare in hav­ing stud­ied the psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors dri­ving deviant cult behav­ior and we have to hand it to him, his analy­sis fol­low­ing the elec­tion was pret­ty spot on. Yes, the appar­ent cul­prit for Cal­i­for­ni­a’s cur­rent round of for­est fires appears to be both men­tal­ly ill him­self and also an expert on the kind of men­tal ill­ness grip­ping Trump and the broad­er death cult fol­low­ing him. So while May­nard’s motive remains very unclear, the metaphor­i­cal links between the wild­fires May­nard start­ed and the sociopo­lit­i­cal wild­fires he stud­ied are hard to ignore:

KCRA

Nor­Cal col­lege lec­tur­er accused of set­ting fire near Dix­ie Fire, court doc­u­ments read

Jonathan Ayestas
Updat­ed: 9:19 AM PDT Aug 11, 2021

A 47-year-old North­ern Cal­i­for­nia col­lege lec­tur­er was arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with start­ing a fire on fed­er­al for­est land near where Cal­i­for­ni­a’s largest active wild­fire is burn­ing, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments obtained by KCRA 3.

Using track­ing data, tire tracks left behind at the scene of sev­er­al fires and oth­er pat­terns inves­ti­ga­tors employ to con­clude or rule out arson, offi­cials believe there to be prob­a­ble cause that Gary Stephen May­nard inten­tion­al­ly start­ed wild­land fires near where Cal­i­for­ni­a’s largest active wild­fire is burn­ing, court doc­u­ments show.

Tyler Bolem, a U.S. For­est Ser­vice spe­cial agent, wrote in an affi­davit request­ing a search war­rant on May­nard’s vehi­cle, as well as an arrest war­rant, after weeks of inves­ti­gat­ing led him to believe he start­ed a wild­land fire Aug. 7 in Lassen Coun­ty.

The Dix­ie Fire ignit­ed in mid-July. Pacif­ic Gas & Elec­tric report­ed to Cal­i­for­nia util­i­ty reg­u­la­tors that its equip­ment may have been involved in the start of the wild­fire.

How the inves­ti­ga­tion began

May­nard was first sus­pect­ed at the scene of the Cas­cade Fire, a July 20, 2021, wild­fire where his vehi­cle was parked along a dirt road a cou­ple of hun­dred meters away. Bri­an Mur­phy, a cer­ti­fied wild­land fire inves­ti­ga­tor, respond­ed and spot­ted a man who appeared to be liv­ing in his vehi­cle, a black 2012 Kia Soul with a license plate of 6XBA609.

The per­son, lat­er iden­ti­fied as May­nard, was described as about 6 feet tall, aver­age size frame, short brown hair and wore glass­es, court doc­u­ments read. Mur­phy tried speak­ing with May­nard, and he mut­tered some­thing about being a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor “down south.”

Mur­phy spoke with the only oth­er per­son parked on that dirt road, who told him that the Kia showed up ear­li­er in the morn­ing before the fire start­ed. The wit­ness said he had a brief inter­ac­tion with the man before the man pulled out a large knife on him, the affi­davit reads. The wit­ness described the man to Mur­phy as men­tal­ly unsta­ble.

Bolem and Mur­phy lat­er returned to where the car was parked and noticed burnt mate­r­i­al and an unused wood­en match near where the Kia was parked. There was a sec­ond burn pile near­by with tire tread pat­terns that resem­bled the tread pat­terns of the Kia, based on a pho­to Mur­phy took while speak­ing to May­nard.

The pat­tern matched sev­er­al oth­er wild­fires.

July 6

Inves­ti­ga­tors could not find any phys­i­cal evi­dence of arson for the Sweet­bri­ar Fire that burned near Dun­smuir, but Bolem said it “bears the hall­marks of wild­land arson.”

July 11

A fry­ing pan was found at the igni­tion site of a fire that burned over 300 acres south of the Mount Shas­ta area. Lat­er dubbed the Bradley Fire, inves­ti­ga­tors were unable to rule out arson as a cause. Though the inves­ti­ga­tion remains ongo­ing for this case, tire tracks were found near­by that were sim­i­lar to May­nard’s Kia.

July 21

Fol­low­ing a wild­fire lat­er named the Everitt Fire, there were three sets of tread pat­terns: Two of them matched those of the fire trucks who respond­ed to the fire that sparked that morn­ing, and the third set was con­sis­tent with those of May­nard’s vehi­cle.

Iden­ti­fy­ing the pro­fes­sor

After obtain­ing May­nard’s license plate from Mur­phy, Bolem looked up his num­bers and found a list­ing for a Gary May­nard on 164 South Mor­ri­son Avenue in San Jose. Fur­ther, the pic­ture for the dri­ver’s license matched the descrip­tion Mur­phy gave.

How­ev­er, Bolem did not believe that May­nard still lived in San Jose. He called the police depart­ment, where dis­patch­ers told him about an Octo­ber 2020 phone call where a con­cerned cit­i­zen called offi­cers about her col­league: May­nard.

The cit­i­zen said May­nard worked as a pro­fes­sor at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty and report­ed that May­nard told her he was suf­fer­ing from anx­i­ety, depres­sion, split per­son­al­i­ty and that he want­ed to kill him­self.

She also told San Jose dis­patch­ers that she believed May­nard was liv­ing out of his vehi­cle, which also match­es Mur­phy’s descrip­tion when he met the man lat­er iden­ti­fied as May­nard at the scene of the Cas­cade Fire.

Sono­ma State Uni­ver­si­ty con­firmed to SFGate that May­nard was a part-time lec­tur­er in the depart­ment of crim­i­nol­o­gy and crim­i­nal jus­tice in fall 2020. He cur­rent­ly does­n’t have an appoint­ment with the uni­ver­si­ty, the school said. The Sono­ma State web­site says his areas of exper­tise are crim­i­nal jus­tice, social sci­ence research meth­ods, cults and deviant behav­ior.

May­nard was an adjunct fac­ul­ty mem­ber in the soci­ol­o­gy depart­ment at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty from Sep­tem­ber 2019 to Decem­ber 2020, the uni­ver­si­ty said.

Track­ing Gary May­nard

Bolem issued a war­rant for May­nard’s sus­pect­ed cell­phone num­ber, and a judge issued a war­rant for May­nard’s pre­cise loca­tion on July 29. The next day, a ping for his loca­tion showed he was with­in a 600-meter radius of Susanville in Lassen Coun­ty.

May­nard was spot­ted along Conard Road in the Lassen Nation­al For­est on Aug. 1 in his vehi­cle. A short time lat­er, he was seen at a Safe­way in Susanville before return­ing to the nation­al for­est.

Agents con­firmed May­nard was the one dri­ving the vehi­cle, and Bolem applied for a vehi­cle track­ing war­rant for the Kia. Bolem installed a track­ing device on May­nard’s Kia while Susanville police issued a traf­fic stop on him.

Using the track­ing device, inves­ti­ga­tors found that May­nard was the only per­son using that vehi­cle. Author­i­ties said they also found evi­dence of arson along Maynard’s routes and stop­ping points.

From here on, his loca­tion would show May­nard’s loca­tion to be the site of the next few fires, the affi­davit shows.

On Aug. 5, track­ing data showed May­nard turn­ing onto Mooney Road in the Lassen Nation­al For­est. As a fed­er­al for­est offi­cer spot­ted a wild­fire burn­ing along that road soon after May­nard emerged from the road. The fire, lat­er named the Moon Fire, was deter­mined to be the cause of arson.

Two fires back-to-back

The Ranch and Conard fires both began Sat­ur­day morn­ing, with the Ranch first spark­ing around 10:40 a.m. May­nard’s loca­tion showed him dri­ving away from a camp­site before going south­bound along Conard Road.

Bolem hiked toward where May­nard was parked for about 28 hours and then spot­ted a large col­umn of gray and black smoke. In the affi­davit, he said he head­ed to the fire after noti­fy­ing park offi­cials and found tire track impres­sions in the same loca­tion where May­nard’s Kia was parked. Cal Fire deemed the prob­a­ble cause of this fire as arson.

The Conard Fire sparked short­ly after. A For­est Ser­vice agent was about three miles away from where track­ing data showed May­nard was stopped for about 6 min­utes after leav­ing the camp­site he parked at for over a day. He was at the new loca­tion around 10:45 a.m., min­utes after leav­ing where he was sus­pect­ed of start­ing the Ranch Fire, where arson is also the prob­a­ble cause.

...

Arrest­ed the same day of the Ranch and Conard fires

A Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol offi­cer pulled over May­nard after he was spot­ted dri­ving through an emer­gency clo­sure area toward where the Conard Fire burned. The offi­cer smelled mar­i­jua­na and con­duct­ed a prob­a­ble cause search for open con­tain­ers.

Through the car win­dow, the offi­cer saw May­nard’s phone screen, which “read some­things [sic] along the lines of, ‘direc­tions to Old Sta­tion, avoid high­ways,’ ” the affi­davit read.

May­nard was issued a cita­tion for the mar­i­jua­na and was arrest­ed on charges relat­ing to unau­tho­rized entry into a closed emer­gency area, accord­ing to the court doc­u­ment.

In speak­ing with For­est Ser­vice agents, May­nard said he spent the night pri­or in the com­mu­ni­ty of Old Sta­tion, 50 miles west of where the Ranch Fire start­ed. How­ev­er, Bolem said in the doc­u­ments that May­nard’s claim did not match the track­ing data and the agents who spot­ted him.

May­nard also denied set­ting any fires despite agents telling him his Kia’s tire tracks match those near a num­ber of fires. When an agent told him a felony arson charge was added, he became enraged and kicked the jail cell door, threat­en­ing offi­cers and scream­ing exple­tives, the affi­davit read.

His felony charge is for “will­ful­ly set­ting fire to land owned by or under the juris­dic­tion of the Unit­ed States,” the affi­davit read.

—————

“Nor­Cal col­lege lec­tur­er accused of set­ting fire near Dix­ie Fire, court doc­u­ments read” by Jonathan Ayestas; KCRA; 08/11/2021

“Using track­ing data, tire tracks left behind at the scene of sev­er­al fires and oth­er pat­terns inves­ti­ga­tors employ to con­clude or rule out arson, offi­cials believe there to be prob­a­ble cause that Gary Stephen May­nard inten­tion­al­ly start­ed wild­land fires near where Cal­i­for­ni­a’s largest active wild­fire is burn­ing, court doc­u­ments show.”

The data appears to be pret­ty cir­cum­stan­tial­ly strong: tire tracks, track­ing data, and wit­ness inter­ac­tions with May­nard describ­ing him as men­tal­ly unsta­ble paint a com­pelling pic­ture:

...
May­nard was first sus­pect­ed at the scene of the Cas­cade Fire, a July 20, 2021, wild­fire where his vehi­cle was parked along a dirt road a cou­ple of hun­dred meters away. Bri­an Mur­phy, a cer­ti­fied wild­land fire inves­ti­ga­tor, respond­ed and spot­ted a man who appeared to be liv­ing in his vehi­cle, a black 2012 Kia Soul with a license plate of 6XBA609.

The per­son, lat­er iden­ti­fied as May­nard, was described as about 6 feet tall, aver­age size frame, short brown hair and wore glass­es, court doc­u­ments read. Mur­phy tried speak­ing with May­nard, and he mut­tered some­thing about being a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor “down south.”

Mur­phy spoke with the only oth­er per­son parked on that dirt road, who told him that the Kia showed up ear­li­er in the morn­ing before the fire start­ed. The wit­ness said he had a brief inter­ac­tion with the man before the man pulled out a large knife on him, the affi­davit reads. The wit­ness described the man to Mur­phy as men­tal­ly unsta­ble.
...

Then when inves­ti­ga­tors start look­ing into the back­ground of their top sus­pect they find fur­ther evi­dence of some sort of men­tal health cri­sis: one of May­nard’s col­leagues called the police to inform them that May­nard told her he was anx­i­ety, depres­sion, split per­son­al­i­ty and that he want­ed to kill him­self. It also sounds like he was liv­ing out of his vehi­cle, a plau­si­ble sce­nario giv­en that the guy was work­ing as an adjunct pro­fes­sor (which tends to pay pover­ty wages):

...
After obtain­ing May­nard’s license plate from Mur­phy, Bolem looked up his num­bers and found a list­ing for a Gary May­nard on 164 South Mor­ri­son Avenue in San Jose. Fur­ther, the pic­ture for the dri­ver’s license matched the descrip­tion Mur­phy gave.

How­ev­er, Bolem did not believe that May­nard still lived in San Jose. He called the police depart­ment, where dis­patch­ers told him about an Octo­ber 2020 phone call where a con­cerned cit­i­zen called offi­cers about her col­league: May­nard.

The cit­i­zen said May­nard worked as a pro­fes­sor at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty and report­ed that May­nard told her he was suf­fer­ing from anx­i­ety, depres­sion, split per­son­al­i­ty and that he want­ed to kill him­self.

She also told San Jose dis­patch­ers that she believed May­nard was liv­ing out of his vehi­cle, which also match­es Mur­phy’s descrip­tion when he met the man lat­er iden­ti­fied as May­nard at the scene of the Cas­cade Fire.
...

And note May­nard’s inter­est­ing area of study: cults and deviant behav­ior. That’s a big part of what makes this sto­ry so fas­ci­nat­ing: an aca­d­e­m­ic expert on cults and deviant behav­ior was just caught engag­ing in the kind of deviant behav­ior one might expect from a dan­ger­ous cult mem­ber:

...
Sono­ma State Uni­ver­si­ty con­firmed to SFGate that May­nard was a part-time lec­tur­er in the depart­ment of crim­i­nol­o­gy and crim­i­nal jus­tice in fall 2020. He cur­rent­ly does­n’t have an appoint­ment with the uni­ver­si­ty, the school said. The Sono­ma State web­site says his areas of exper­tise are crim­i­nal jus­tice, social sci­ence research meth­ods, cults and deviant behav­ior.

May­nard was an adjunct fac­ul­ty mem­ber in the soci­ol­o­gy depart­ment at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty from Sep­tem­ber 2019 to Decem­ber 2020, the uni­ver­si­ty said.
...

That brings us to this absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view of May­nard con­duct­ed in the days fol­low­ing the Novem­ber 2020 where May­nard offers his pre­dic­tions on what Trump does next in the wake of his appar­ent loss. And you have to hand it to May­nard, he total­ly calls it, accu­rate­ly pre­dict­ing that Trump will refuse to accept the elec­tion results and only vol­un­tar­i­ly leave office after it’s clear he has no oth­er means of stay­ing in office. May­nard also goes a lit­tle into his study of cults and deviant behav­ior, with a focus on the role Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der (NPD) played in the events that led up to the Jon­estown mas­sacre. As May­nard saw it, Trump and Jim Jones have a lot in com­mon, with NPD being a major shared trait. And it’s that diag­no­sis NPD diag­no­sis of Trump appears to have large guid­ed May­nard’s pre­dic­tions in how Trump was going to react to the loss.

Also keep in mind the tim­ing here: we are told in the pre­vi­ous arti­cle that a con­cerned col­league of May­nard con­tact­ed police in Octo­ber 2020 after he expressed he was suf­fer­ing from anx­i­ety, depres­sion, split per­son­al­i­ty and that he want­ed to kill him­self. This inter­view was in Novem­ber of 2020. So when May­nard was shar­ing these insights into the par­al­lels of Trump’s and Jim Jones’s psy­cho­log­i­cal afflic­tions dur­ing that pre­scient inter­view he was pre­sum­ably doing this while suf­fer­ing from his own psy­cho­log­i­cal tur­moil. It rais­es the dark ques­tion of how much of the anx­i­ety and depres­sion May­nard was expe­ri­enc­ing dur­ing this time was due to extreme con­cern May­nard express­es about what Trump was like­ly to do next:

Report­ing Fine Art

What is there to fear now that rea­son has pre­vailed?
Just irra­tional­i­ty itself.

The Week­end Swamp
7/8 Novem­ber 2020

Charles Krause

EDITOR’S NOTE

I urge you to read this inter­view with Gary May­nard and send it to any­one you know in gov­ern­ment or the main­stream media. Dr. May­nard has done pio­neer­ing research doc­u­ment­ing Jim Jones’s malig­nant Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der (NPD). Maynard’s research strong­ly sug­gests it was this men­tal ill­ness that com­pelled Jones to order the assas­si­na­tion of Rep. Leo J Ryan and sev­er­al jour­nal­ists trav­el­ing with him and the mass sui­cide mur­der of more than 900 of his fol­low­ers, his fam­i­ly, and him­self, 42 years ago this month in Jon­estown.

Dr. May­nard believes Don­ald Trump suf­fers from the same ill­ness, malig­nant NPD, which he fears could trig­ger in Trump the same kind of vio­lent and destruc­tive response to defeat, it did in Jones in 1978, when he thought the Con­gress­man would expose Jon­estown for what it was once he returned to Wash­ing­ton. Dr. May­nard explains what to look for in Trump, as the Pres­i­dent reacts to his defeat—and how best to avert an irra­tional act of ret­ri­bu­tion with poten­tial­ly far greater con­se­quences and loss of life than Jon­estown, between now and Trump’s last day in office two months from now.

THE MAYNARD INTERVIEW

Gary May­nard received his PhD from Stony Brook and is cur­rent­ly an adjunct lec­tur­er in the Soci­ol­o­gy depart­ment at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty in San­ta Clara, Cal­i­for­nia.

His research con­firms what many of us who trav­eled to Jon­estown with Con­gress­man Ryan, includ­ing the Congressman’s leg­isla­tive assis­tant at the time, now Con­gress­woman Jack­ie Speier (D‑Calif), sus­pect­ed about Jones’s men­tal ill­ness, and informs our con­cerns about the dan­gers Pres­i­dent Trump’s Nar­cis­sism pos­es to the Nation.

A psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­file of our Nar­cis­sist Pres­i­dent as he con­tem­plates defeat

SWAMP: Do you think Pres­i­dent Trump suf­fers from the same malig­nant Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der as Jim Jones did?

MAYNARD: Yes, I do and I think he may not real­ly be aware of the vio­lent out­burst that he is capa­ble of since he grew up wealthy and bul­lied peo­ple, who basi­cal­ly let him get away with threats of phys­i­cal or career vio­lence with­out need­ing to actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly attack peo­ple. For the Amer­i­can peo­ple, this issue of Don­ald Trump not real­ly being aware of the vio­lent ten­den­cies he has inside him and has been build­ing year after year (just watch his look of hatred and anger when Oba­ma mocked him at the correspondent’s din­ner in 2015).

Don­ald Trump’s lack of or unwill­ing­ness to self-reflect in order to self-improve, and his lack of empa­thy while being threat­ened with his first major, pub­lic, polit­i­cal and per­son­al defeat, might acti­vate a sense of the need for the use of vio­lence, vio­lent protests by his sup­port­ers or out­right sab­o­tage of the nation by lock­ing down the econ­o­my or some oth­er major act to dam­age the nation before he is forced to leave office, if he los­es.

If he wins, he will take the time (a lot of time) in humil­i­at­ing, mock­ing, attack­ing and even arrest­ing and try­ing to exe­cute peo­ple who doubt­ed and opposed him, sim­i­lar to when he threat­ened Sen­a­tor Flake of Ari­zona right in the White House dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing with oth­er Sen­a­tors.

Win or lose, “we have not seen the last of this NPD suf­fer­er”

I fear for his reac­tion, either way, and the reac­tion of the QAnon and Trump sup­port­ers in gen­er­al, if Don­ald con­tin­ues to push the con­cepts to his fol­low­ers that Joe Biden and the Dems are demon­ic, inhu­man and un-Amer­i­can – those are trig­ger words and a form of race and gen­der bait­ing.

Jim Jones, on the oth­er hand, grew up neglect­ed, abused and very poor. He was stig­ma­tized by oth­ers and cul­ti­vat­ed a per­sona of a bat­tered man who fought against the injus­tices of life. The main dif­fer­ence is that Don­ald was the bul­ly and there­fore has not yet, but may soon, feel per­se­cut­ed, trapped and cornered…(Destroying the prize the vic­tor has won) is one of the ways those with severe NPD, will lash out in a vio­lent and self-destruc­tive and sui­ci­dal way to go out in a “blaze of glo­ry” beat­ing back the oppos­ing forces who are just jeal­ous ene­mies of the NPD suf­fer­er and are stop­ping the nar­cis­sist from achiev­ing his/her des­tiny of great­ness.

Will he jump like a wound­ed wolver­ine into the face of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, peo­ple and the whole world? And what will be the response of the oth­er ego-mani­ac NPD suf­fer­ers? Or of his oppo­nents, who are not aware of what dam­age and hatred he may or may not have in his mind.

The NPD suf­fer­er then moves into the world of Bor­der­line Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der with vio­lent rumi­na­tions and ideations and then it is only a match throw away from the per­son explod­ing. And if they are the pres­i­dent or were, they can cause a lot of dam­age.

SWAMP: How else are they sim­i­lar?

MAYNARD: They both have/had mes­si­ah com­plex­es – but Trump’s is more like the Sin­ful Mes­si­ah of David Kore­sh, but more vul­gar – he by no means thinks he is Jesus, but he def­i­nite­ly sees him­self as wor­thy of the hon­or and pow­er and thinks this is his pur­pose of life now. And that is a lot to try and mod­er­ate and pre­vent it from hyper-inflat­ing his ego, which he did not need. He, like Jim Jones, was fas­ci­nat­ed by charis­mat­ic his­tor­i­cal fig­ures like Hitler and Mus­soli­ni and knows how to get a crowd to react – since pol­i­tics is new to him, he may not know what and how to try and effect a coup d’état or vio­lent resis­tance, but even if he is removed peace­ful­ly, he will not go away and stay qui­et like oth­er for­mer pres­i­dents have.

I can even see him try­ing to run again in 2024, since he did not serve two terms. If he wins again, that might mol­li­fy or dis­tract him from the spe­cif­ic levers he could use to detain peo­ple he hat­ed or use mar­tial law/Stasi tech­niques to hound his ene­mies into mis­ery.

Either way, I would not count on him focus­ing on the real issues and busi­ness of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. And who knows what mis­takes are wait­ing for him since he refus­es to see that he exag­ger­ates, mis­per­ceives and mis­rep­re­sents him­self and the real­i­ty sur­round­ing him­self and the coun­try.

Evi­dence of Trump’s malig­nant nar­cis­sism dur­ing the cam­paign and since

SWAMP: Did you see evi­dence of Trump’s NPD dur­ing the cam­paign?

MAYNARD: Yes, his atten­tion grab­bing at the debates—especially the first one. The need and dri­ve to have his ral­lies with his ador­ing pub­lic. The 60 Min­utes inter­view where he walked out. The town hall that replaced the 2nd debate. His bout with Covid-19. His last-minute trips to the bat­tle­ground states and his refusal to accept the coro­n­avirus issue and not wear­ing the mask.

Now, I see him retreat­ing and see­ing every­one, even his own chil­dren, as trai­tors and blam­ing them if he los­es – once a malig­nant nar­cis­sist los­es all the peo­ple who make them feel like the best/the great­est, they blame and then turn on them and that is the begin­ning of the end as they can slow­ly unrav­el or implode with light speed dead­li­ness. Since Don­ald is fac­ing hard dead­lines, if he wins or los­es, that will force his hand.

SWAMP: Have you seen evi­dence of his NPD since the polls closed Tues­day (specif­i­cal­ly, his White House state­ment claim­ing vic­to­ry ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing)?

MAYNARD: Yes, and the law­suits he filed and him retreat­ing is wor­ri­some. With vain malig­nant nar­cis­sism – if they brood and burn up in qui­et des­per­a­tion as their pow­er slips away, that is when they decide to say “Fu ck it – let’s go out and take out those who harmed and sab­o­taged and betrayed me.”

I could see him blam­ing AG Barr and Sen­a­tor Gra­ham and Pelosi, etc. And, if that hap­pens, then it will indi­cate to me that he is plan­ning and plot­ting. And, if his nar­cis­sis­tic enablers, like his fam­i­ly and so-called friends, do not pull him out of it by putting it into con­text – say­ing things like – “you had a good run and they are just jeal­ous and you are bet­ter than them, you can get them back lat­er,” then he will light his own fuse.

Now that Biden has reached 270, how to tem­per Trump’s Nar­cis­sism

SWAMP: Would you expect Trump to con­cede defeat?

MAYNARD: I think he will if it is clear that he can­not over­come the “cheat­ing” and that Biden and oth­ers play up (to the) vain part of his ego and not to the supe­ri­or part and tell him what a great job he did and they will nev­er for­get you now. Champ – that kind of stuff. The mil­i­tary, Con­gress, Supreme Court, and the Secret Ser­vice, along with the mil­i­tary, need to “talk him off the ledge” by sub­tly, but firm­ly, telling him that it is time to go.

Play on his warped sense of being a patri­ot and this fight is not worth it.

...

SWAMP: Will he work with Biden to ensure a smooth and peace­ful tran­si­tion?

MAYNARD: Only if Biden feeds into his ego and com­pli­ments him and hon­ors his pres­i­den­cy and maybe even admits that the Steele Dossier was a hoax. Oth­er­wise, he will use both ver­bal and legal means to beat them down and make it hard to get into the White House and get any­thing start­ed. If they call him names or show any dis­re­spect, I could see him forc­ing the issue with the Secret Ser­vice and again appeal for civ­il strife to avenge the injus­tice done to him.

Signs that Trump is becom­ing irra­tional, plan­ning ret­ri­bu­tion and revenge

SWAMP: What else might he do?

MAYNARD: I expect com­plain­ing, name call­ing, drop­ping scan­dalous and com­pro­mis­ing mate­r­i­al on Biden and Clin­ton and Oba­ma and maybe even using the exec­u­tive orders to make some last minute extreme procla­ma­tions, or try to arrest Biden or at least his son.

The QAnon peo­ple real­ly, real­ly wor­ry me, that they will see this as the last hour of their move­ment where they must act to save the world from the com­mu­nist Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, the one-world gov­ern­ment, and the demon­ic child sex cult that is run­ning the world.

SWAMP: What will you be look­ing for to deter­mine if he has entered the final stage of NPD (when malig­nant Nar­cis­sists under­take vio­lent acts of ret­ri­bu­tion against their per­ceived ene­mies and even sup­port­ers they blame for fail­ing to pro­tect them)?

MAYNARD: If he is too qui­et and has that 1000 mile stare in his eyes – if he is not his nor­mal high ener­gy and irri­ta­ble and iras­ci­ble self – if he does not fight against the media and then launch­es some ill-advised attempt to hold the White House OR he ramps up his rhetoric to include more mor­bid and explic­it ref­er­ences to vio­lence OR you see the Proud Boys act as if Don­ald was tweet­ing to get them to act to stop the crimes and crim­i­nals that are “ille­gal­ly remov­ing him from office.”

Trump won’t go qui­et­ly

SWAMP: How might that play out?

MAYNARD: Vio­lence in the streets from the left and right – that will spur him to act. He may become the first pres­i­dent to be forcibly arrest­ed and removed from the White House.

Or, he may, like has been men­tioned, start a news net­work, and do every­thing to spread mis­in­for­ma­tion and ruin Biden’s pres­i­den­cy and maybe even run for Sen­ate some­where.

Either way – we have not seen the last of this NPD suf­fer­er. He will not go qui­et into any good­night and he will suf­fer as he gets old­er and has a stroke or can­cer and has to face death. Many baby boomers in pow­er and active in the 60s cul­ture are very, very fright­ened by the specter of dying and being ren­dered pow­er­less in the world. Not being able to speak and get around by your­self is dev­as­tat­ing to those who fear aging and death.

Don­ald will NOT stay qui­et or stay still or play nice. The ques­tion then becomes will he get vio­lent or spur on vio­lence? Because he does not care if he ruins the peace and safe­ty of the US soci­ety. And he would not care about dri­ving the econ­o­my fur­ther into the ground as long as it hurts Biden and not him.

————

“What is there to fear now that rea­son has pre­vailed?” by Charles Krause; Report­ing Fine Art; 11/07–11/08/2020

“Dr. May­nard believes Don­ald Trump suf­fers from the same ill­ness, malig­nant NPD, which he fears could trig­ger in Trump the same kind of vio­lent and destruc­tive response to defeat, it did in Jones in 1978, when he thought the Con­gress­man would expose Jon­estown for what it was once he returned to Wash­ing­ton. Dr. May­nard explains what to look for in Trump, as the Pres­i­dent reacts to his defeat—and how best to avert an irra­tional act of ret­ri­bu­tion with poten­tial­ly far greater con­se­quences and loss of life than Jon­estown, between now and Trump’s last day in office two months from now.”

The US was careen­ing towards a Jon­estown-style melt­down, trig­gered by Don­ald Trump’s psy­cho­log­i­cal inabil­i­ty to han­dle the loss due to his malig­nant Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der. That’s how Dr. May­nard was char­ac­ter­iz­ing the sit­u­a­tion in the days fol­low­ing the elec­tion, only to have his pre­dic­tions large­ly pan out over the fol­low­ing months cul­mi­nat­ing in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion.

It’s also worth not­ing the warn­ing May­nard had at the time for how some sort of cri­sis could poten­tial­ly be avoid­ed: Trump’s nar­cis­sis­tic enablers, like his fam­i­ly and so-called friends, were the ones who real­ly need­ed to put the loss into con­text – say­ing things like – “you had a good run and they are just jeal­ous and you are bet­ter than them, you can get them back lat­er.” With­out that, Trump was bound to brood and burn up in qui­et des­per­a­tion until he declared “F*ck it!” Which is, of course, exact­ly what hap­pened. ‘F*ck it!’ was basi­cal­ly the under­ly­ing theme of the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion:

...
SWAMP: Have you seen evi­dence of his NPD since the polls closed Tues­day (specif­i­cal­ly, his White House state­ment claim­ing vic­to­ry ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing)?

MAYNARD: Yes, and the law­suits he filed and him retreat­ing is wor­ri­some. With vain malig­nant nar­cis­sism – if they brood and burn up in qui­et des­per­a­tion as their pow­er slips away, that is when they decide to say “Fu ck it – let’s go out and take out those who harmed and sab­o­taged and betrayed me.”

I could see him blam­ing AG Barr and Sen­a­tor Gra­ham and Pelosi, etc. And, if that hap­pens, then it will indi­cate to me that he is plan­ning and plot­ting. And, if his nar­cis­sis­tic enablers, like his fam­i­ly and so-called friends, do not pull him out of it by putting it into con­text – say­ing things like – “you had a good run and they are just jeal­ous and you are bet­ter than them, you can get them back lat­er,” then he will light his own fuse.
...

And note how May­nard’s warn­ings about Trump aren’t lim­it­ed to the imme­di­ate post-elec­tion cri­sis peri­od. He’s pre­dict­ing Trump’s NPD is going to get worse as he gets old­er, weak­er, and clos­er to death:

...
SWAMP: How might that play out?

MAYNARD: Vio­lence in the streets from the left and right – that will spur him to act. He may become the first pres­i­dent to be forcibly arrest­ed and removed from the White House.

Or, he may, like has been men­tioned, start a news net­work, and do every­thing to spread mis­in­for­ma­tion and ruin Biden’s pres­i­den­cy and maybe even run for Sen­ate some­where.

Either way – we have not seen the last of this NPD suf­fer­er. He will not go qui­et into any good­night and he will suf­fer as he gets old­er and has a stroke or can­cer and has to face death. Many baby boomers in pow­er and active in the 60s cul­ture are very, very fright­ened by the specter of dying and being ren­dered pow­er­less in the world. Not being able to speak and get around by your­self is dev­as­tat­ing to those who fear aging and death.

Don­ald will NOT stay qui­et or stay still or play nice. The ques­tion then becomes will he get vio­lent or spur on vio­lence? Because he does not care if he ruins the peace and safe­ty of the US soci­ety. And he would not care about dri­ving the econ­o­my fur­ther into the ground as long as it hurts Biden and not him.
...

It’s a warn­ing to keep in mind as the prospect of a Trump rerun in 2024 con­tin­ues to linger. If you think he’s bad now, just give his NPD a few more years fes­ter out of pow­er. Jon­estown 2024.