On October 5, 2024, a Buffalo, New York woman Dena Diebold told Fox News she was thrilled to have driven three hours to then-former President Trump’s second rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, because she “felt safer when Trump was in office. There was peace around the world.”
“Not so much right now,” Diebold added. The prior year a Waxahachie, Texas man named Brian told the Baylor Laritat that when Trump “was in office I felt safer as a citizen. There’s so many things to list that are wrong that were right before, and I want it back like it was. That’s what it boils down to.”
A year before that in 2022 Nancy Celano of Sebastian, Florida wrote “While Donald Trump was in the Oval Office, the entire world felt safer. China knew, when Trump ordered bombings in Syria while the Chinese president was visiting him in Florida, that a new, tough, strong president had taken over the White House. Russia, North Korea, Iran and other autocratic regimes realized they now had to behave themselves… Many who hated him had to respect him for what he accomplished. And, now, dear God. we miss him,” in a March 2022 letter to the editors of the TC Palm Newspapers.
It’s not clear if any of those three are current or prospective clients of Texas-based firm Atlas Survival Shelters, whose phones are ringing off the hook these days, right wing astroturf site the Dallas Express reports, citing recent interviews with CEO Ron Hubbard. “Most shelters I do are usually for riding out the aftermath after a nuclear bomb goes off. They wouldn’t withstand a direct nuclear blast, but they are made to ride out the aftermath,” Hubbard told a Texas radio station.
Lol. Unfortunately there aren’t any pre-2024 election quotes from Hubbard on whether he had been rooting for former President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris to win in anticipation of the “Trump Slump” that would be the natural endpoint of folks like Diebold, Brian, and Celano feeling safer following his return to power last year. Instead Hubbard just detailed the range of his company’s offerings, like the starter 8×12-ft backyard bunker for $25,000 that accommodates four people. “It’s not much more than buying a tornado shelter,” Hubbard said, contrasting it with the $10 million+ options that his wealthier clientele use for “extra bedrooms, watching TV, or basically as a man cave. The larger bunkers, the ones that cost millions of dollars, have gun ranges, movie theaters with 120-inch screens, and pool tables. During peacetime, it’s the game room.”
The starter “sleeps four. More like surviving in a tent compared to the luxury models, but it works.”
Lol again.
With zero nod whatsoever to the pre-2024 election sentiments of the “felt safer under Trump” folks, the paper then writes that “Hubbard attributes the trend to a perception of greater global risk.”
“I do believe that the world is a much more dangerous place,” he said. “People see how everyone is turning their bunkers into a fun game room or extra bedrooms, and they think, ‘I’ve always wanted a bunker since I was a little kid.’ We make it seem practical, affordable, and like money well spent.”