A Trump-supporting sheriff in California is facing a backlash from the MAGA faithful for claiming to have prevented an assassination attempt on Donald Trump over the weekend.
You may remember Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco from his appearances on “Dateline’s” “To Catch a Predator” series back in the aughts, in which host Chris Hansen confronted alleged sex predators. But in the decade-plus since the show aired, Bianco’s extremism has become his claim to fame. In 2021, he was exposed as a former member of the extremist Oath Keepers militia; in touting his support for Trump earlier this year, he has said, “I think it’s time we put a felon in the White House.”
The sheriff’s claim that an armed man at a recent Trump rally was out to assassinate the former president has landed him in some hot water — though perhaps, not with whom you might expect.
As the Los Angeles Times reported:
Before a Trump rally in Coachella, Bianco’s deputies arrested Vem Miller, a Trump supporter from Los Angeles, who was caught trying to enter the rally carrying two loaded weapons, a fake ID, a phony license plate and a fake passport. Miller said that he had no plans to kill the former president and that he carried the firearms for self-protection. ‘I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt,’ Bianco told reporters after the arrest. ‘I truly do believe that we prevented another assassination attempt.’
A federal law enforcement source told a local NBC affiliate there’s no indication an assassination attempt was in the works. Miller claimed he had long been involved in Republican politics and told the local NBC station that he was attending the rally as a journalist. The LA Times reported that Bianco on Tuesday hedged his claims a bit:
‘Three days later, IF everything Mr. Miller has said is true, and I really hope it is, then he probably wasn’t there to hurt former President Trump,’ Bianco said in a text message to The Times. ‘I definitely said it and can’t change that.’
This backtrack came after Bianco had used Miller’s release from jail to attack California’s supposedly lax bail laws.
But the MAGA movement, to which Miller proudly belongs, doesn’t seem inclined to let the incident go without kicking up a fuss. One of Miller’s MAGA associates, actor and reality-TV personality Mindy Robinson, has accused Bianco of making the assassination claim for “clout.” And Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation and had his sentence commuted by Trump, tweeted an attack on Bianco claiming the sheriff had perpetrated a “hoax” and would soon face a defamation suit.
Miller, who is pictured with Stone in the latter’s social media post, filed that lawsuit on Wednesday. The sheriff’s media information bureau told the Desert Sun that the department is taking it “seriously” but wouldn’t comment on pending litigation.
But whatever the outcome of that legal proceeding, the backlash Bianco is facing offers a valuable lesson about the loyalty of his MAGA friends and allies.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.