Remember Kirk Bangstad? The unhinged Wisconsin brewery owner who celebrated the assassination attempt on President Trump — twice? The guy whose entire business model appears to be "sell mediocre beer to people who fantasize about political violence"? Well, he's back. And this time he didn't just run his mouth on social media. He doxxed a Secret Service agent. Published the agent's identity online for the world to see. Because apparently threatening the life of a president by proxy wasn't spicy enough for this guy's Thursday.
Let that sink in for a second. A man who has publicly — gleefully — expressed his desire to see a sitting president murdered just exposed the identity of someone whose entire job is keeping that president alive. If you wrote this as a movie script, the studio would reject it for being too on-the-nose.
We're not talking about some ambiguous gray area here. Federal law is crystal clear: you do not expose the identities of Secret Service agents. 18 U.S.C. § 1114 makes it a federal offense to assault, resist, or impede federal officers — and deliberately painting a target on their back by publishing their identity absolutely qualifies as impediment. You're making their job harder. You're making them vulnerable. You're putting their families at risk. And you're doing it with the full knowledge that your audience includes people who share your deranged fantasies about political assassination.
But here's the part that should make your blood boil: Kirk Bangstad isn't some anonymous troll hiding behind a VPN in his mother's basement. He's a public figure. He ran for state senate. He operates a business. He has a name, an address, and a brewery that presumably has to pass health inspections. He did this in the open because he genuinely believes there will be no consequences.
And honestly? Based on the last decade of selective prosecution in this country, can you blame him for thinking that?
We watched for four years as the Biden DOJ threw the book at grandmothers who walked through velvet ropes on January 6th. We watched them raid a former president's home over document disputes. We watched them prosecute pro-life activists under the FACE Act while actual firebombers of pregnancy centers walked free. But a guy who repeatedly celebrates assassination attempts and now doxxes the people protecting the president? Somehow that guy keeps waking up in his own bed every morning.
This is the same man — and I want to be very precise here — who after someone literally shot at Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, took to social media to essentially say "better luck next time." When Democrats finally started distancing themselves from his rhetoric, he doubled down. When his own customers told him to knock it off, he tripled down. The man has the self-preservation instincts of a lemming with a death wish.
And now he's escalated from cheerleading violence to actively enabling it.
Doxxing a Secret Service agent isn't speech. It isn't protest. It isn't "resistance." It's operational intelligence for anyone who wants to harm the people protecting the President of the United States. It tells potential attackers who to avoid, who to track, who to neutralize. Every intelligence agency on Earth understands this. Every military understands this. The only people who pretend not to understand this are progressive activists who've convinced themselves that rules don't apply when you're fighting "fascism."
So here's the question that matters: What happens now?
Because we know what would happen if the roles were reversed. If a MAGA brewery owner had doxxed a Secret Service agent protecting Biden, the FBI would've kicked in his door before the tweet finished loading. CNN would've run a 72-hour special. Congress would've held hearings. The brewery would've been shut down for "health code violations" that materialized overnight.
But this is Kirk Bangstad. He's on the "right" team. He hates the "right" people. And in the two-tiered justice system we've been living under, that has traditionally meant you get a pass.
Except here's the thing — there's a new sheriff in town. This DOJ, under President Trump, has shown a willingness to actually enforce laws equally. The same DOJ that just dropped receipts on the IRS targeting conservative pastors. The same DOJ that's been unraveling years of weaponized federal agencies. If there was ever a time for Kirk Bangstad to face actual consequences for his escalating pattern of behavior, it's now.
The man went from celebrating assassination attempts to actively compromising the security apparatus protecting the president. That's not a stable trajectory. That's a guy who keeps pushing the line because nobody has ever pushed back.
Time to push back.
We don't need thought police. We don't need speech codes. We just need the existing federal laws — the ones that say you can't doxx Secret Service agents — to be enforced equally, regardless of whether the perpetrator has a "D" or an "R" next to his name. That's not authoritarianism. That's just the law.
And Kirk? Maybe stick to brewing beer. Although based on the reviews, you're not great at that either.