Chuck Edwards Needs Our Thoughts and Prayers

On March 23rd, Congressman Chuck Edwards retweeted a screenshot of a Truth Social post from Donald Trump. The post starts with Trump saying that he just “watched our GREAT Republican Congressman from North Carolina, CHUCK EDWARDS, hold a Town Hall in Asheville.” Trump goes on to say how all the crowd did was “scream, shout, and use filthy language,” alleging that they were largely “paid agitators, with fake signs and slogans, who were only there to make trouble.” 

By reposting Trump’s screed, Edwards is doing what the Republicans running our country—the most powerful, wealthiest men in America right now—love doing: painting themselves as beleaguered victims under attack by “haters” and “radicals.” 

Even though Elon Musk has seen Tesla stocks plummet recently, with a net worth of $362.5 billion (according to Forbes, as of the first week of April), he’s still the richest man in the world and one given unprecedented power by the sitting President. Still, like Trump (who has made a career—and Presidency—of whining about how everyone is out to get him), Musk wants us to know he’s under attack and is attempting to mobilize action against Tesla boycotters. 

Both Trump and Musk took to X and Truth Social over the spring to decry boycotts and vandalism of Tesla dealerships as domestic terrorism, noting that something must be done. On March 30, Edwards joined this call to action and appeared on Fox News to stump not for NC-11 but against the vandalism of Tesla dealerships in Charlotte (NC-12, for those wondering). 

Like the beleaguered Trump and Musk, poor Chuck can’t catch a break. He’s recently in the news, for allegedly losing his temper at an event and hitting a man. Is this true? Inconclusive (and as much as I’d like to be, the reporting around this incident is very he-said, she said), and he’s wisely (and somewhat surprisingly) not commented on it, but the allegations certainly add to the persona he’s been carefully trying to craft as a victim of radical liberal bullying. 

I have a solution for these men, one we can all start trotting out the next times they feel bullied or like something truly heinous is happening to them. It’s a strategy I’m confident works because it’s one that MAGA Republicans have employed during horrific times. Now, these MAGA Republicans are fully running this country while simultaneously enriching themselves. 

Ready for it?

It’s a strategy known as “thoughts and prayers.” 

Hear me out here. 

While most of us have heard this phrase ad nauseam, I wanted to give you the most accurate definition, so I turned to Google, which is aligned with these powerful men (Google’s CEO Sundar Picahai had a front-row seat at Trump’s inauguration). The Google AI search result told me, “thoughts and prayers is a common phrase used to express sympathy and support during difficult times, such as a natural disaster or mass shooting.” 

Trump, for example, offered a version of “thoughts and prayers”—”love and prayers”—last fall when news of the damage Helene wrought on our slice of WNC become widespread, and has repeatedly sent “thoughts and prayers” to North Carolina, almost as much as he’s advocated for the dissolution of FEMA. 

And while it is used for natural disasters, it’s most associated with mass shootings. 

For example, when 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed by a mass shooter in Uvalde, Texas, Chuck Edwards said, “All Americans need to keep the families of the Texas shooting victims in their thoughts and prayers.” Donald Trump and Mitch McConnel (amongst many other prominent Republicans) similarly prioritized thoughts and prayers via Twitter above any sort of meaningful action (like gun control) that might stop school shootings. In fact, after the same shooting, Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said that “the lack of thought and prayers is probably the single biggest factor in what is behind them.” “Them,” naturally, being the mass shootings.  

Again, thoughts and prayers over real action seem to have worked for these men, so I suggest it’s something we start offering them in droves. 

The next time Elon Musk complains about the domestic terrorism aimed at Teslas? Let’s all think and pray for his lowered but still enormous bank account. 

When Donald Trump takes time out of running a floundering country to complain that another obscure portrait in a state capitol building is unflattering, let us not remove the picture, but simply think and pray about it. 

And in the future, if say, Chuck Edwards needs to take to social media to, I don’t know, complain about a witchhunt when intrepid citizen journalists start looking into whether or not the sponsor of the Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act ever employed illegal immigrants at the many McDonad’s he’s owned or say, gets upset if disgruntled constituents in NC-11 start boycotting said McDonald’s, we can make sure to keep Chuck in our thoughts and prayers.