The Tremendous Trump Thread - Etterspill (Les førstepost)

[Dragavon]

Sitat

 

I en mannsalder har Svein Melby forsket på og fulgt amerikansk politikk. Nå tar han et oppgjør med pressedekningen av USAs tidligere president Donald Trump.

- Pressen ønsker å være rettferdig og gi Trump og Joe Biden noenlunde lik behandling, men da gjør de ikke jobben sin. Det går ikke an å sidestille disse kandidatene, for de representerer to ulike styresett. Det må skinne gjennom, sier Melby til Dagbladet.

Melby mener Trump er en direkte trussel mot selve demokratiet i USA, og at man følgelig ikke bør omtale det kommende presidentvalget på ordinært vis.

 

https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/ekspert-fascistisk/81094563

[Dragavon]

Sitat

 

Ungarns statsminister besøker USA denne uka, men uten invitasjon fra Det hvite hus. I stedet møter Orban sin autoritære motpart: Donald Trump. Møtet bekymrer mange.

Mange frykter at Orban også har med seg Putin- og Russland-vennlig budskap.

- Den liberale, internasjonale orden er under kraftig angrep. Orban kommer til å lobbyere for Russland under sitt besøk, sier Peter Buda, en tidligere ungarsk etterretningsansatt til The Guardian.

- Orban er blant de mest Putin-vennlige i Europa, og denne alliansen mellom Trump og Orban lover ikke bra. Og om Trump blir president, blir det den største trusselen mot vestlig sivilisasjon siden andre verdenskrig, sier Løkke.

 

https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/storste-trussel-siden-andre-verdenskrig/81087379

[Snikpellik]

Dragavon skrev (15 minutter siden):

https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/ekspert-fascistisk/81094563

Dette er ekstremt viktig. Media har feilet i sin rolle med å dekke Trump når de forsøker å fremstille han som nærmest en likestilt og normal kandidat.

Tenk om Biden skyldte 100 millioner dollar til noen han voldtok, Jill Biden var M.I.A, 91 tiltaler hang over hodet hans, malte ansiktet sitt oransje, sier Putin skal få gjøre som han vil, satte sin egen datter til sjef for partiet, og spiste middag med en diktator hjemme i sin egen glorete countryclub.

Det ville jo ha vært annerledes.

[JK22]

Snikpellik skrev (12 timer siden):

Dette er ekstremt viktig. Media har feilet i sin rolle med å dekke Trump når de forsøker å fremstille han som nærmest en likestilt og normal kandidat.

Tenk om Biden skyldte 100 millioner dollar til noen han voldtok, Jill Biden var M.I.A, 91 tiltaler hang over hodet hans, malte ansiktet sitt oransje, sier Putin skal få gjøre som han vil, satte sin egen datter til sjef for partiet, og spiste middag med en diktator hjemme i sin egen glorete countryclub.

Det ville jo ha vært annerledes.

Her er jeg helt enig i dette, de amerikanske mediekanalene stadig tabbet seg ut omkring Trump som nå kan i sannheten skyte ned selveste Abraham Lincoln i all offentligheten, men de har et stort problem; manglende inntekter. De kan ikke lenge "selge" i konkurranse med andre medietyper, og altfor mange redaktører hadde blitt pålagte restriksjoner av sine sjefer som knapt bryr seg om annet enn profitt. Trump vil ha all publikasjon uansett om det er godt eller dårlig for ham, for å reklamere seg selv med en uhørt skamløshet som ingen kunne fatte. Dessuten er de tradisjonelle mediekanalene på vikende front, færre og færre ser på balanserte nyhetsdekning og flere og flere har begynte med å bli konspirasjonstroende i slik grad at de tror "de store" som CNN for eksempel ikke er pålitelig. 

Det som i virkeligheten fremmet den fascistiske utviklingen i det republikanske partiet er den usunne nettavhengigheten, intet folk i vestlig land ser så mye på nettrelative nyheter som amerikanerne, som svært ofte valgt bort de balanserte mediekanaler som bruker betalingsmur og deretter går dit hvor gratis tjenester er tilgjengelig. 

Det er Internett som er demokratiets sanne fiende. 

[JK22]

Trumps tidlige stabsfolk advarer nå republikanerne på det sterkeste om å ta Trump inn i varmen; Bolton sier nå rett ut at han er en trussel mot det amerikanske demokratiet. 

‘A 1939 moment’: Jim Sciutto on Russia, China and the threat of war (msn.com)

At CNN in Washington, Jim Sciutto’s dimly lit office is both man cave and shrine to a foreign correspondent who has reported from more than 50 countries. A typewriter he bought on Portobello Road during a decade in London. Photos he took in Afghanistan and Ukraine. A Vietnamese newspaper account of the time he rode over the South China Sea on a US spy plane. A corked bottle of water from his trip to the North Pole in a US nuclear submarine. A fragment of the Black Hawk helicopter destroyed in the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. “I’m not sure I should have that,” Sciutto confesses, “but I do.”

here is also an important fragment of newspaper, a gift from Sciutto’s grandfather containing a quotation from the author and journalist Eric Sevareid: “What counts most in the long haul of adult life is not brilliance or charisma or derring-do, but rather the quality the Romans called ‘gravitas’: patience, stamina and weight of judgment. The prime virtue is courage, because it makes all other virtues possible.”

When Sciutto’s father died, the quotation was on the funeral mass card.

It was during an assignment that the idea for a book came to Sciutto, 54, CNN anchor and chief national security analyst. As Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border and missiles fell on Kyiv, he sensed a clean break from the post-cold war world he grew up in. He remarked, live on air, that this was a “1939 moment”. What did he mean by those ominous words?

“You have a territorially aggressive leader in [Russian president Vladimir] Putin who’s willing to use force to change borders, and has done,” says Sciutto, who this week publishes The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War. “You have some in the west who recognise that and others who say just give him this much and it’ll be fine.

“It does have echoes of 1939 and you’ve already experimented with this where you give a little bit of Georgia, you give a little bit of Ukraine and then he calculates, ‘I can take more’ and even when he fails, he tries again. He’s trying again in Transnistria now, to take a little slice of Moldova.”

Then there is China, which also feels wronged by history and the west.

“If you look at Putin’s maps of Europe, the echo is [Chinese president] Xi [Jinping’s] maps of Asia, the nine-dash line. It’s just made up historical justifications for territorial aggression. Then on our side of it you have folks who say: ‘That’s not our war, it’s too far away, just give them a little bit, actually we can work with him.’

“There’s a bit of [1930s British prime minister] Neville Chamberlain in that. Listen, should we all understand why folks don’t want to get in a bloody war with Russia? Absolutely. Or send their sons and daughters to die? 100%. Chamberlain saw world war one and said: ‘I don’t want to have another,’ and you get that. The trouble is, can you actually have peace in your time given the track record, or are you just waiting for the next war, the next land grab?”

A strand of leftwing thought opposes the military industrial complex (a phrase coined by a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower) and points to misadventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. But now an allergy to foreign entanglements is all the rage on the populist far right, led by Donald Trump, who espouses “America first” isolationism. Keeping the US out of a third world war has become a staple of his campaign speeches as he seeks to regain the White House.

For Sciutto, there are echoes of Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated aviator who became the leading spokesperson of the America First Committee in the build-up to the second world war.

“You could quote directly from Lindbergh’s speeches and it seems almost verbatim to what you hear today,” Sciutto says.

“I get the argument that no one wants a war and, God knows, you don’t want a nuclear war with either [China or Russia]. On the flip side, there’s no intellectual consistency to that rightwing Republican view because what you’ll often hear them say is: ‘Well, Ukraine’s not our war but maybe China is.’”

Many Republicans are turning their backs on Ukraine but vowing to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. Sciutto continues: “The trouble is, China is watching the response to Ukraine. What’s the fundamental difference? If it’s about sovereignty, you have a sovereignty argument in both places.

“If it’s about trying to stand up to taking territory by force, you have it in both places. Explain to me the difference there. Or even if you relate it to Israel, there’s no intellectual consistency. What’s the argument to defend one but not the other? I suppose looking for intellectual consistency in Washington is a big ask.”

Even worse, he argues, is a false narrative about the Ukraine war.

“I’ve had these conversations on the air with some GOP lawmakers. They’ll be like: ‘Listen, there’s a lot of killing on both sides here.’ I was like: ‘Do you remember how did the war start? Who rolled across the border?’ ‘Well, if we arm them, lots of people are dying here.’ ‘You do remember how this war started and what the fundamental conflict is over?’ A lot of the arguments just don’t stand up to the facts.”

•••

Republican intransigence on Capitol Hill is having consequences on the battlefield as Russia makes territorial gains and Ukraine runs low on ammunition. The White House describes the situation as “dire”. Last month, Politico reported: “Four American senators recounted a story Ukrainian officials told them at the Munich security conference: a soldier in a muddy trench with Russian artillery exploding nearby, scrolling on his phone for signs the US House would approve military aid.”

Sciutto has been in contact with soldiers, families and others in Ukraine. “They were absolutely terrified that they’re going to be abandoned,” he says. Based on conversations with Ukrainian and European sources, he believes there is a “real danger” Ukraine will lose the war if the US cuts off funding.

Such an outcome would be followed intently in Beijing and Taipei. In his book, Sciutto writes that a war over Taiwan would look very different. Instead of tank battles, artillery barrages and trench warfare, planners foresee lightning air and sea combat, with rapid waves of missiles, anti-satellite weapons and cyberattacks. Biden has effectively abandoned strategic ambiguity by vowing to defend Taiwan with US troops.

Sciutto notes: “Biden has created, in effect, a new red line there by saying the US will defend them militarily. Not everyone believes that and I go to Taiwan and I ask people that and they’re not so sure. But it’s an open question.”

Related: The Afghanistan Papers review: superb exposé of a war built on lies

What would Trump do? In Sciutto’s book, John Bolton, formerly national security adviser, recalls a stunt Trump would perform in the Oval Office: “He would hold up the tip of his Sharpie pen and say: ‘That’s Taiwan. See this Resolute Desk, that’s China.’” His point was that Taiwan is too small to successfully defend itself and too small for the US to care.

As Biden often notes, such debates are putting US credibility on the line. Sciutto had spells in Britain and Hong Kong and was chief of staff at the US embassy in Beijing from 2011 to 2013. During the presidency of George W Bush, he spent a lot of time in Europe. What did he observe about how the world views the US?

“There’s an endless US-bashing that goes on. You’re either too weak or too strong or too involved or not involved enough, some of which just comes with being the richest country in the world and the most powerful military that talks a big game about solving all the world’s problems. To some degree, I’ve been hearing this for years, but I will say that the last decade or two hasn’t improved the US record or soft power abroad. I can say that pretty safely.”

American polarisation doesn’t help. It used to be said that politics stops at the water’s edge. The world knew more or less what to expect from Democrats and Republicans. But just as Biden and Trump radically differ on abortion, crime, guns, healthcare and immigration, so their foreign policy agendas give any foreign diplomat whiplash.

Sciutto observes: “This is the danger. Because foreign policy has become another partisan issue in the country, each election can bring a 180-degree turn in how the US behaves in the world. That has to make our partners say: ‘Right, so Joe Biden is going to abide by article five [Nato’s collective defence clause] but Trump isn’t, where does that leave me? That means we’ve got to make a plan ourselves.’ You hear that more. [The French president Emmanuel] Macron has said it out loud. Others have said it out loud: ‘We’ve got to make our own way.’”

In the week that Trump wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination, forcing his former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, to end her campaign, the stakes have been clarified. In his book, Sciutto notes that Trump has expressed admiration for Putin, Xi and even Adolf Hitler. Presidential elections are seldom decided by foreign policy considerations, but the consequences of who owns the nuclear codes could be incalculably far reaching.

“This election has a real and very defined choice for voters as to what role they want the US to play in the world and how they want to react to this great power competition,” Sciutto says, “because whatever you think of the politics, what Trump has said and done in actions during his first presidency and his positions going into this race show that he somehow envisions a friendly relationship with Xi and Putin.”

In his book, Sciutto quotes a senior US official, who served under Trump and Biden, as saying that in a second Trump term “the US will be out of Nato”. Bolton agrees: “Nato would be in real jeopardy. I think he would try to get out.”

Sciutto adds: “That’s the explicit position of the presumptive Republican nominee, which is the opposite of Biden’s approach to this. That’s a real choice. It’s not going to be a kind of subtle rebalancing. It’s going to be, we’re going to go this way or that way in terms of how we deal with Russia, China and these other places. It’s a real choice.”

•••

Sciutto is old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and the political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s prognostications on the “end of history”. Sciutto’s book leaves no one in any doubt it did not turn out that way. It reports on US concerns in 2022 about the possibility Russia was preparing to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. James Stavridis, a former Nato supreme allied commander, tells him America is already engaged in a “hybrid proxy war” with Russia.

Sciutto takes no pleasure in playing Cassandra, warning of a world that for all its 21st-century sophistication and irony is backsliding towards Greek tragedy.

“There’s a sadness about it for me personally, because I’m far from a warmonger,” he reflects. “The reason I spent the whole last chapter in the book talking to folks around the world about how to avoid open conflict is because I certainly don’t relish it.

“I don’t want my kids to fight in a war. I don’t want to live in a place where it’s not safe to go to parts of Europe or Asia, for that matter. I brought my family to Beijing for two years and they went to school there and they speak Chinese. I don’t want it to be a world that is divided along those lines, but the sad fact is that’s where we’re heading unless we find a way to navigate away from it.”

* The Return of Great Powers is published in the US by Dutton

Trump former advisers sound the alarm that he praises despots in private and on the campaign trail | CNN Politics

Former advisers sound the alarm that Trump praises despots in private and on the campaign trail

To Donald Trump, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán is “fantastic,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping is “brilliant,” North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is “an OK guy,” and, most alarmingly, he allegedly said Adolf Hitler “did some good things,” a worldview that would reverse decades-old US foreign policy in a second term should he win November’s presidential election, multiple former senior advisers told CNN.

“He thought Putin was an OK guy and Kim was an OK guy — that we had pushed North Korea into a corner,” retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, told me. “To him, it was like we were goading these guys. ‘If we didn’t have NATO, then Putin wouldn’t be doing these things.’”

Trump’s lavish praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán while hosting him at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, just days after all but sealing the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday, shows it’s a worldview he’s doubling down on.

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” Trump said, adding, “He’s the boss and he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

The former president’s admiration for autocrats has been reported on before, but in comments by Trump recounted to me for my new book, “The Return of Great Powers,” out Tuesday, Kelly and others who served under Trump give new insight into why they warn that a man who consistently praises autocratic leaders opposed to US interests is ill-suited to lead the country in the Great Power clashes that could be coming, telling me they believe that the root of his admiration for these figures is that he envies their power.

“He views himself as a big guy,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser under Trump, told me. “He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that.”

“He’s not a tough guy by any means, but in fact quite the opposite,” Kelly said. “But that’s how he envisions himself.”

Alleged praise for Hitler

Trump allegedly reserved some of his most unnerving praise for Hitler, who led Nazi Germany during World War II.

“He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly recounted. “I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”

“It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater,” Kelly told me. “But I think it’s more, again, the tough guy thing.”

Trump’s admiration for Hitler went further than the German leader’s economic policies, according to Kelly. Trump also expressed admiration for Hitler’s hold on senior Nazi officers. Trump lamented that Hitler, as Kelly recounted, maintained his senior staff’s “loyalty,” while Trump himself often did not.

“He would ask about the loyalty issues and about how, when I pointed out to him the German generals as a group were not loyal to him, and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, and he didn’t know that,” Kelly recalled. “He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal — that we would do anything he wanted us to do,” Kelly told me.

When asked to respond to the allegations from the former Trump administration officials, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not comment on the substance of what they told me but stated, “John Kelly and John Bolton have completely beclowned themselves and are suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. They need to seek professional help because their hatred is consuming their empty lives.”

In 2021, a spokeswoman for Trump denied allegations that the former president had praised Hitler.

‘Shocked that he didn’t have dictatorial-type powers’

Trump’s former advisers say he most consistently lavished praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bolton recalled a comment from Trump during the 2018 NATO summit. Following sometimes tense encounters with NATO leaders, Trump said his meeting with Putin, the leader of America’s great power adversary, “may be the easiest of them all. Who would think?”

“He says to the press as he goes out to the helicopter, ‘I think the easiest meeting might be with Vladimir Putin. Who would ever think that?’” recalled Bolton. “There’s an answer to that question. Only one person. You. You are the only person who would think that. The shrinks can make of that what they will, but I think it was ‘I’m a big guy. They’re big guys. I wish I could act like they do.’”

“My theory on why he likes the dictators so much is that’s who he is,” Kelly said. “Every incoming president is shocked that they actually have so little power without going to the Congress, which is a good thing. It’s Civics 101, separation of powers, three equal branches of government. But in his case, he was shocked that he didn’t have dictatorial-type powers to send US forces places or to move money around within the budget. And he looked at Putin and Xi and that nutcase in North Korea as people who were like him in terms of being a tough guy.”

“Trump believed in the power of his personal charisma and diplomacy,” recalled Matthew Pottinger, his deputy national security adviser, who was deeply involved in Trump’s meetings with North Korean leader Kim and Chinese President Xi. “He had almost unlimited faith in it. That was as true with Kim as it was with Xi — but also with allies too.”

Trump has continued to praise authoritarians in his 2024 presidential campaign.

At a town hall organized by Fox News in July 2023, Trump said, “Think of President Xi: central casting, brilliant guy. When I say he’s brilliant, everyone says, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist: smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There is nobody in Hollywood like this guy.”

In an interview with Fox that same month, Trump lavished praise on Putin as well, describing him as smarter than President Joe Biden. “These are smart people, including Macron of France. I could go through the whole list of people, including Putin .… These people are sharp, tough, and generally vicious,” Trump said. “They’re vicious, and they’re at the top of their game. We have a man that has no clue what’s happening. It’s the most dangerous time in the history of our country.”

Trump’s affinity for authoritarians represents a defining issue for the US as the 2024 election approaches. Several of his own former advisers believe, in a second term, he would bring a fundamental shift in the US’ vision of itself and its role in the world, including potentially pulling the US out of NATO and reducing the US’ commitment to other defense alliances.

“NATO would be in real jeopardy,” Bolton told me. “I think he would try to get out.”

Many veterans of the Trump administration have a similar warning for Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion. “US support for Ukraine would end,” said a senior US official who served under Trump and Biden.

“The point is, he saw absolutely no point in NATO,” Kelly said. “He was just dead set against having troops in South Korea, again, a deterrent force, or having troops in Japan, a deterrent force.”

Jeg tror republikanerne gjør en meget grusom feiltagelse ved å ville skifte om fra Europa - som ligger innenfor den europeiske sfæren som USA tross alt er en del av som et land for europeiskættede immigranter - til Øst-Asia som har for forskjellig kulturelle og mentale preferanser i sammenligning; motivet synes å ligge i en feilslått storhetsstolthet man mente hadde kommet under angrep av suksessrike rivaler fra et meget fjerntliggende kontinent. USAs politikk i Øst-Asia var todelt; kolonisering og markedstilgang, men dette er for lengst utdatert fordi det forutså allianseforpliktelser siden 1945; Koreakrigen og Vietnamkrigen skyldes behovet for å hjelpe sine allierte. Alt tyder på at Trump vil ikke ha slike forpliktelser - det var mye bråk mellom ham og sørkoreanerne, og japanerne var småfrustrert samtidig som Filippinene var i ferd med å bli en alliert av Kina. 

Republikanerne forstår ikke at det er alliansesystemet som gir USA fotfeste i Øst-Asia hvor de ikke engangs har territorier utover en enslig øy meget langt østover på det store Stillehavet. Hvis de miste det, risikere de da at østasiatene vil vende seg bort fra dem. Sør-Korea og Japan trenger ikke USAs våpen. Taiwan kunne finne på å kapitulere for Kina i verste fall. Hele Sørøst-Asia kan svikte USA til fordel for Kina i slutten; det som gjør at kineserne sliter er fordi regimet i Beijing ikke ennå evnet å fatte at deres kultursjåvinistiske holdninger og Xis aggressivitet gjør dem meget uattraktive. 

Men hva om Trump klarer å gjøre USA enda mer uattraktiv enn Kina? 

[Selfuniverse]

14 hours ago, qualbeen said:

En skandale at nasjonen ikke har noen bedre president-kandidater, enn de to eldgamle karene!

Jeg tror folket kan velge Robert F. Kennedy hvis de vil. Internet snakker om det ihvertfall.

[JK22]

The GOP can't leave MAGA — "Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party" (msn.com)

Norm Ornstein:

" - Of course, it is increasingly obvious that Trump is facing significant mental decline. And we know from those who were close to him but are no longer, that this is not a new problem. But that issue is eclipsed by the other reality: this is a narcissistic sociopath who will stop at nothing to create a vicious, dictatorship built on retribution, racism, corruption, and sadism.

He doesn’t cushion it, or try to hide his motives, and neither do those he will clearly rely on if he were to assume the presidency. Invoke the Insurrection Act to put down demonstrations against him with violence and brutality. Blow up the federal government by firing tens of thousands of civil servants and replacing them with obedient flunkies. Create concentration camps to house millions before deporting them. Weaponize the Department Of Justice (DOJ), including the FBI, to go after his enemies and critics. Blow up every alliance and replace it with ties to the most vicious dictators in the world. What is especially unsettling, though, is how are key, mainstream, journalistic outlets, like the New York Times and the networks, shrug their shoulders at all of this, and treat him like he is a normal presidential candidate. It is no wonder that so many voters have no idea what a monster he is.

If this were a healthy democracy, we would have a healthy Supreme Court. We don’t. It is corrupt and not to be trusted when it comes to Trump. If this were a healthy democracy, we would have a press corps that would put a spotlight on what is real and not “both sides” everything while focusing on the horse race instead of the consequences of the election. President Biden needs to use the power of his bully pulpit to focus, over and over and over again, on the consequences of electing this monster for our democracy and the fundamental health of our country.

That the media are focused on Biden‘s age, while ignoring Trump’s infirmities is absolutely maddening. As James Fallows pointed out, in the New York Times there were headlines on Super Tuesday’s outcomes that Trump romped and Biden has trouble while Biden got a significantly higher percentage of votes than did Trump, which tells us all too much about media bias. Mainstream media may not consciously want Trump to win, but you wouldn’t know it from the frame of the coverage - ".

Darrin Bell:

" - Trump seems to be deteriorating quickly. I’m old enough to have seen several loved ones overcome with dementia at around his age, and it seems obvious he’s in the throes of that. The stress of the campaign, the court cases, and the civil judgments against him are compounding to make him a person dangerously unfit for office. Apparent dementia, plus sociopathy, plus a cult-like following, combined with vindictiveness, a persecution complex, a love of autocracy, and an entire far-right ecosystem bent on turning America into one, is a formula for the end of our democratic republic. That might sound hyperbolic if his cohorts hadn’t been inviting right-wing dictators to the Conservative Political Action Conference and issuing a manifesto called Project 2025 that details their plans to turn us into something akin to Russia or Hungary.

If we were a healthy democracy and society, Congress would impeach Clarence Thomas, and impeach (for lying under oath) every Supreme Court justice who said Roe v. Wade was settled law or a “super precedent,” and then voted to overturn it. The DOJ would prosecute at least three Supreme Court justices for bribery and corruption, for accepting lavish gifts and vacations from billionaires, some of whom had business before the court. Gini Thomas and several members of the House would be indicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The courts would declare gerrymandering to be unconstitutional.

We’d pass an amendment declaring “the right to vote shall not be abridged,” and throw everyone involved in voter purging schemes in prison. We’d pass a federal law against book banning in libraries and school districts, we’d make organizing to silence minority authors a hate crime, we’d pass laws rescinding federal funding from any school district that whitewashes the history of race in this country, or that eliminates civics courses.

President Biden and the Democratic Senate would read the damn Constitution and, upon learning that it says nothing about Congress being allowed to set the size of the Supreme Court and nothing about the limit being nine (it doesn’t even specify that a vacancy has to occur before a president can appoint a new justice), they would expand the Supreme Court to 15 members and appoint six new justices. We would eliminate every weakness in our system that contributed to the ability of an unhinged con man ever being in a position to overthrow our system of government. But because we’re NOT a healthy democracy and society, that’s not at all what WILL happen.

The Supreme Court and Judge Cannon will delay two of the most consequential trials until after the election, and Republicans in Georgia may use the travesty we just witnessed in a Georgia courtroom to remove Fulton County DA Fani Willis from the Georgia case whether the judge does or not — and replace her with a MAGA DA who’ll drop the charges or cut Trump a deal, avoiding a criminal conviction. Republicans will be energized, Democrats will be demoralized, some independents will begin to believe the lack of convictions means Democrats WERE persecuting Trump without good cause, and enough Democrats may stay home to hand Trump the election in November. At which point the insurrection and the documents cases will vanish, and Trump’s transition team will prepare for Inauguration Day, where they’ll be able to do what they’ve promised to do: use their power to punish everyone who’s “wronged” Donald Trump, from prosecutors to politicians to his critics in the media.

Eight years ago, Les Moonves said of Trump’s run, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS.” Mainstream media is focused on Biden’s age for two reasons: The race being a dead heat is good for ratings, and they have a fetish for bothsidesism. That fetish often leads them to exaggerate Democratic politicians’ foibles and minimize or normalize Republicans’ treasonous or downright crazy behavior. The Republican Party has been committing treason on a regular basis ever since Richard Nixon persuaded the South Vietnamese to walk away from the Paris Peace talks, so he could prolong the Vietnam War in order to harm Democrats politically. The party’s been systematically denying Black people the vote for decades now, to maintain their power. They’ve bent the knee to a would-be tyrant with dementia, facilitated an attempted coup, became accomplices after the fact when they refused to convict Trump during his second impeachment and then promoted his Big Lie, and now they’re actively sabotaging Ukraine in its war against a tyrant they love, who’s clearly trying to win now a Cold War we thought his nation had lost generations ago.

The Republican Party is doing all that, yet the media continues to cover them as if they’re a political party and not an organized crime syndicate infested with fifth columnists that poses an existential threat not just to our democracy, but to the entire Western world. “But Biden is old” is a quick and easy way to make sure the polls remain as tight as possible and their ratings remain as high as possible, because if they were to honestly cover what’s going on, the race wouldn’t even be close. 4. As always anything else you would like to add given your specific concerns. If the left stays home and lets Donald Trump win because we’re unhappy with Biden’s failures, just wait until we see Donald Trump’s version of “successes.- ".

Rich Logis:

" - The presidential election in November is near-literally life-or-death for Trump. The mythology of business genius he has cultivated for decades is unraveling, and he knows that attaining 270 electoral votes could be the difference between remaining a free man or dying in prison.

We are observing with Trump, in real-time, how life-or-death duress accelerates one’s mental decline, and pushes one further into a “nothing to lose” corner.

Trump (allegedly) did what he did, on January 6, in Georgia and the purloining of classified information because he never (or minimally) feared legal consequences. He hedged a bet and lost; to keep up mythology appearances, he must continue to lie that he is innocent, has absolute immunity and, of course, that he’s being persecuted by President Biden and Fani Willis—which means it’s MAGA Americans who are being persecuted. Trump dismisses his legal problems because it is how he compensates for the sheer quantity of self-inflicted stress—stress that even the strongest-willed human being would rapidly wilt under.

Does Trump actually believe all this? Probably not. His lawyers are no legal eagles, but even they must know that their defenses are more than absurd. Deep down, Trump is more petrified than he’s ever been; I’m not qualified to make that assessment, admittedly, but I’m virtually certain of it. Why? Because if I was guilty of the crimes he’s alleged to have committed, my brain would overheat and go haywire, too; confusing Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, middle-of-the-night rage tweets and continually delving deeper into conspiracy abysses are symptomatic of his life-or-death realization.

As an ex-MAGA activist, my team and I are building a community for the Trump remorseful, or are having doubts, called Leaving MAGA. I respect that some may disagree, but both parties share culpability in creating the opening for MAGA and Trump (although, the GOP is far more responsible); and I continue to emphasize that frustration with our two-party system, and sentiments of being left behind, were valid reasons for originally getting behind Trump’s campaign. Those reasons, however, are no longer valid.

MAGA Americans are responsible for their own thoughts and actions; it would also behoove us to acknowledge that many of them have been exploited and manipulated into believing that Trump’s “last stand” is also theirs. Trump and MAGA continue to politically traumatize millions into states of desperation and panic—that Trump is all who stands between losing, or preserving, their/our country. This is a toxic martyrdom unlike any seen in American history.

The majority of MAGA Americans are good people, who have allowed themselves to be led astray. I don’t want to see them sacrifice themselves at the altar of the Trump golden calf. I try to avoid hyperbole; but when my personal and political epiphany resulted in leaving MAGA, I concluded that I permitted myself to become someone I’m truly not. Trump would burn down our nation to rule over her ashes because that outcome is preferable to a jailed twilight of his life.

For all the public debates and discourse over whether Trump should be barred from running for office, what has, somewhat surprisingly, been overlooked is that it’s the GOP that should have barred Trump from appearing on the ballot. As a private entity, the Republican Party can prohibit anyone from receiving the nomination.

The potential constitutional crisis facing the nation—a likely-imprisoned felon elected president who pardons himself, like a monarch, and is, possibly, affirmed in his decision by our U.S. Supreme Court—is a quagmire that the GOP is solely responsible for.

The Democratic Party would be well-served to ask—not tell—the American people if a convicted felon president will put their careers, businesses, children’s education, economic mobility, quality of life and future entitlements on upward trajectories. And do you think the political party who nominates that convicted felon has your, and your family’s, best interests in mind? People are moved and motivated by issues that affect their lives; MAGA is antithetical to a bruised and battered — but, I believe —still alive American dream. The health of our democracy is gauged by how many of our fellow countrymen and women feel invested in it; the fewer, the likelier Trump is re-elected.

The “liberal media” mythology is gospel in MAGA. I believed it until I left MAGA; and everyone I knew in MAGA did, too. We also used to mock polls. Pollsters and our national press—incestuous in their relationships—will never recover from the shock of so egregiously missing the 2016 grassroots appeal of Trump. Now that the national press has (as usual) been bullied by the right-wing into running myriad “Biden’s age” reports and punditry, the media is in its own sunk-cost fallacy, and will only intensify efforts to cast doubts on Biden’s ability to serve, with a well-meaning, but delusional, obsessive yearning to save the GOP. Stories about Trump’s age and cognitive confusion are far fewer and between, compared to Biden stories.

Polls are as useless as a winning lotto ticket on a deserted island; but a quick glance of the “liberal media” will show that the press and pollsters have a vested interest in reactionary, horse-race coverage. While in MAGA, I knew well a paid political director for the 2016 Trump campaign. On many occasions, we discussed that polls were political pablum, buttressed by the press to shape public perception, drive traffic to news and opinion sites and generate contributions to political parties. This was true then and is true now. If Trump were to be re-elected, the national press would say that it listened more to Trump voters than in 2016 and 2020. To the credit of The New York Times, they ran a piece earlier this week that featured Biden voters’ reasons for supporting him. 

In the five stages of GOP grief, anti-Trump Republicans are in bargaining/depression; soon they’ll be at acceptance—the final stage. At acceptance, the vast majority of Nikki Haley voters will shuffle right back to Trump once he’s nominated. Maybe, then, our national press will, finally, resign itself to the fact that there is no messiah arriving to salvage the GOP. I pay for much of the media I critique because I believe it still produces a net-positive. But the wish to be liked by those who refer to them as the “enemedia” needs to be retired.

The U.S. is undergoing another historical transformation. We’ve undergone several in our history, ranging from our earliest days; our Civil War; women’s suffrage; World War 2; the 1950s and 60s; Sept. 11; former President Obama’s election and re-election; and, now, MAGA. The question is whether we continue our liberal democracy progress—the continued perfection of our Union—or, whether we regress illiberally. A second Trump presidency will irreparably damage our democracy; it will mean the right-wing has won. And reversing their win will not be so easy to do, democratically; I am not advocating for political violence, but right-wing tyranny has never, in world history, been diplomatically, and peacefully, resolved.

Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party; not because we should desire a one-party nation, but because one of America’s two major parties will nominate someone who helped orchestrate a coup d'état against the Constitution—which Trump swore to defend and protect—and the American people—whom he swore to defend and protect—to remain in power. Yes, I admit: I’m catastrophizing. I also did so in 2016, when I thought the Democrats and Hillary Clinton posed existential threats to our nation, and to my family, my livelihood and I. Ignorant I was; now, I’m clearer-minded, and acutely understand MAGA because I actually lived it.

No civic savior is coming; we are the stewards of our republic.

Det er ikke bare Melby som er sint på de amerikanske mediekanalene. 

[superrhino]

Litt offtopic, men jeg lurer på om det finnes et lag med norske politikere som er skrudd sammen til å lede Norge i en eventuell verden der liberaldemokratiet havner i hardt vær og splittes. Jeg ser ikke for meg at dagens generasjon er slike typer… Da må vi ha langt mer realistiske, kalde og kyniske frontmenn.

[JK22]

MAGA Devours the GOP

With the election of Lara Trump and Michael Whatley to the Republican National Committee, the MAGA movement now has significant control of the Republican Party, according to multiple commentators.

The former president's daughter-in-law was elected co-chair of the RNC on Friday alongside long-time Donald Trump supporter Whatley.

The changes came after Ronna McDaniel, who was backed by Trump to lead the RNC in 2017, resigned after being blamed for a series of funding issues. She was also criticized for the Republicans losing multiple elections since 2020.

Since then, according to Politico, which cited two unnamed people close to the Trump campaign and the RNC, more than 60 RNC staffers who work across the political, communications and data departments are being asked to resign.

The website reported that in a letter to some political and data team staff, Sean Cairncross, the RNC's new chief operating officer, said that the incoming leadership was "in the process of evaluating the organization and staff to ensure the building is aligned" with its vision. "During this process, certain staff are being asked to resign and reapply for a position on the team," the communication read, per Politico.

Meanwhile, according to one source quoted by The New York Times, the party only had about 200 people on the payroll at the end of last month.

Newsweek was not able to verify this independently and contacted an RNC representative by email to comment on this story.

Speaking to Newsmax on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. celebrated MAGA's strength within the GOP.

He said: "I think the RNC is going to be a bit more of that old-school establishment, that Republican Party frankly no longer exists outside of the D.C. beltway, but it takes a little while to make that transition.

"But again, I think the moves that happened today, I think that's the final blow, people have to understand that America first. The MAGA movement is the new Republican Party, that is conservatism today."

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, political commentator Richard Hanania said the changes to the RNC showed the "MAGA night of the long knives."

Turning Point founder and political commentator Charlie Kirk called reports of the layoffs a "bloodbath" in a post on X.

"This is excellent," Kirk added. "The anti-Trump sleeper cells all have to go. The RNC is getting ready to win."

Former Trump aide Olivia Troye urged Republicans on Saturday to "stop donating" to the RNC, alleging that it was becoming a "Trump legal defense fund."

Adam Kinzinger, a former GOP Illinois representative and a vocal critic of Trump, said changes to the Republican governing body showed it was becoming "Trump's toilet."

"The RNC, in deciding to become Trumps toilet and slush fund, is going to do real damage to down ballot races," he wrote on X. "They deserve it for capitulating... how far they have fallen."

MAGA Devours the GOP (msn.com)

The Freedom Caucus Has Been Wreaking Havoc On Washington. Now It’s Exporting the Chaos to the States.

Since its founding in 2015, the hardline House Freedom Caucus has been a polarizing presence, using confrontational and obstructionist tactics to push Congress, and the Republican Party, to the right on a variety of issues. In the process, the group ousted a Republican House speaker and became a far-right conservative power center of its own.

But it’s come at considerable cost to the House as a legislative body, and created an even more factionalized and dysfunctional chamber.

Now, those same issues are surfacing in statehouses across the nation where in recent years the Freedom Caucus has exported its model. Many of the 11 legislatures with state-based Freedom Caucuses have seen their Republican majorities splinter and descend into bitter conflict with the application of the Congress-honed tactics.

“It’s the same kind of battles that are going on with the Freedom Caucus in Washington, D.C.,” said South Carolina state Rep. Jay Kilmartin, who has been a member of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus since 2022. “We ran because we got frustrated with what we were getting out of our state Republican Party for so long.”

Few states have experienced as much intraparty turmoil as South Carolina, where state Freedom Caucus members and more mainstream GOP leaders have clashed over a wide variety of issues, leading to litigation and sparking numerous primary challenges. Freedom Caucus members have used the state budgeting process to bring up social issues like diversity initiatives within universities, spoken out against what they call government handouts to private companies and pushed for more restrictive bans on gender-affirming care.

“They are a ‘let’s govern by bumper sticker’ entity,” said South Carolina state Rep. Micah Caskey, a Republican who is an outspoken critic of the caucus. “I have a general contempt for what I see as the lack of integrity and honesty with which they approach legislating.”

Freedom Caucus-aligned legislators who spoke with Nightly said that their support came from grassroots activists, but they also receive significant help from the State Freedom Caucus Network, a D.C.-based group that is helping the upstart caucuses go toe-to-toe with the established GOP order. The network pays the salaries of state directors who help legislators read bills, do policy analysis and act as a kind of connective tissue for ideologically similar lawmakers across the nation.

That organization launched in December of 2021 in connection with the Conservative Partnership Institute, a rapidly growing conservative group tied to former Donald Trump chief of staff and Freedom Caucus co-founder Mark Meadows.

Andy Roth, the network’s president, said that the idea for the network came from state lawmakers who were interested in pursuing the “business model” of the D.C.-based House Freedom Caucus in their own states.

Roth said the eventual goal for the group is to have Freedom Caucuses in all 50 states.

“State lawmakers are often part-time, they don’t have an office, and they have very little when it comes to support to help read bills and do policy analysis,” Roth said. “We basically just provide another set of eyes and ears to help these lawmakers.”

The effect, however, has been to sow the seeds of division in places like Wyoming and Missouri, where there’s already bad blood with a Freedom Caucus outpost that was only officially formed in January. Missouri Republican leaders were so frustrated by the caucus’ tactics that they stripped members of committee assignments and even certain choice parking spots.

“The year started off with the Freedom Caucus being attacked before we even stepped foot in the building,” said Freedom Caucus member state Sen. Nick Schroer.

Schroer was the one behind an attention-grabbing draft rule change in January that would have permitted dueling between state lawmakers to settle disputes. He said that he circulated the rule to make a point about the incivility that had taken over the chamber.

Caskey, the South Carolina Republican, laments that the Freedom Caucus tactics are stunts that, in the end, don’t enable lawmakers to pass more conservative legislation.

“They are an emotional annoyance and a nuisance more than anything,” he said. “But they all stay on message, and that has allowed their insurgency to metastasize.”

The Freedom Caucus Has Been Wreaking Havoc On Washington. Now It's Exporting the Chaos to the States. - POLITICO

De to artikler avslører at det er borgerkrig innad i GOP for tiden mellom de konservative republikanerne og MAGA fanatikere som er i full gang med å ta kontroll gjennom finansielle støtteordninger til dise "Freedom Caucus" i 11 delstater, og i RNC er det kommet signaler om at de vil deretter bare støtte "lojalister" gjennom noe som kalles "election integrity division" som skal settes inn i alle komiteer over hele USA. Dette er noe som skremmer mange i USA, fordi i 2020 hadde Trump prøvd å overstyre republikanerne etter han klarte å ta kontroll over RNC som valgt å samarbeide med ham i forkanten av valgene i november 2020 - for å avverge disse som ikke er i samsvar med hans lojalitetskrav fra å søke politiske stillinger. Siden januar 2021 hadde Trump arbeidet med å ta kontroll over valgstøtteordningene. 

Republican Party Co-Chair Lara Trump: RNC's "Election Integrity Division" Seeking Volunteers To Prevent Cheating In 2024 | Video | RealClearPolitics

Newly installed RNC co-chair Lara Trump (wife of Eric) speaks with FNC's Maria Bartiromo about her plans to lead the party into the 2024 election.

"I can guarantee you that, over the next eight months, you are going to see things happen at the Republican National Committee unlike you have ever seen before, because this is a must-win election," she told Bartiromo on FNC's "Sunday Morning Futures."

"We're going to expand all of it -- a nationwide network of volunteers, whether it's poll watchers, trained poll workers. These are people who can physically go in, count ballots that are coming in, know how many are coming in, how many are going out. Volunteer and paid attorneys. If you are an attorney who wants to volunteer, we want you."

Trump har stjålet til seg GOP, nå er han i full gang med å ødelegge partiets integritet. McConnell hadde prøvd å nærmere seg Trump, som den typiske feigingen han er, men angrepet på Johnson tyder på at han også har sett skriften på veggen; at partiet han er så lojal mot, er i ferd med å gå under. 

[Medlem]

Biden og Trump har sikret seg president­kandidaturene
Natt til onsdag har både Joe Biden og Donald Trump sikret seg nok delegater til å representere hvert sitt parti i presidentvalget i november

https://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/i/151gvQ/medier-biden-har-sikret-seg-presidentnominasjonen

Endret 13. mars av Medlem

[JK22]

To artikler som burde leses; 

Seriously, how dumb is Trump? - Alternet.org

Seriously, how dumb is Trump?

My definition of stupidity is continuing to do something that has so far cost you a minimum of $91 million because you won’t stop doing it.

In recent days, Trump has again publicly charged that E. Jean Carroll’s allegation of sexual abuse, for which he has been found liable in court, is “false.”

When a jury last year found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, Trump responded at a CNN town hall by defaming Carroll again.

So when it came time earlier this year for another jury to decide what Trump owed Carroll in the second defamation lawsuit, her attorneys asked jurors to make sure it was enough to “make him stop.”

The second jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million (which, with interest added in, is $91 million). But it apparently is still not enough to make Trump stop.

Trump has just renewed his attacks on Carroll in much the same terms as before — claiming that she “made up” the story and that he had “never heard” of her.

Unsurprisingly, Carroll’s attorney now suggests there could be a third lawsuit, because the previous verdict was obviously not enough to dissuade him from more defamation.

I have to wonder why the mainstream media isn’t discussing Trump’s extraordinary stupidity.

The media continues to discuss Trump’s criminal indictments, and is — finally! — noticing that Trump is becoming less and less coherent. But why isn’t it reporting on something almost every lawmaker and journalist in official Washington knows — that Trump is remarkably stupid?

I don’t mean just run-of-the-mill stupid. I mean extraordinarily, off-the-charts, stupifyingly stupid.

n December, Trump said his comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America were not inspired by similar statements made by Adolf Hitler about Jewish people, because Trump “didn’t know anything” about Hitler.

In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump explained that “I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works. They say that he said something about blood, he didn’t say it the way I said it either, by the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.”

The media interpreted this as Trump trying to backpedal from his Hitler-ish remark. But what if Trump in fact doesn’t know anything about Adolf Hitler?

After all, he recently claimed that magnets don’t work in water, that the Civil War was unnecessary because it should have been “negotiated,” and that no one would know who Lincoln was if he hadn’t gone to war.

Still don’t believe Trump is stupid?

Consider the views of the people who worked most closely with him during his presidency. Anyone remember when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “f—---- moron?”

Or when National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called him a “dope?” And Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and even Rupert Murdoch all referred to Trump as an “idiot?” (Technically, Murdoch called him a “f—---- idiot.”)

Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn described Trump as “dumb as s---,” explaining that “Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

When one of Trump’s campaign aides tried to educate him about the Constitution, Trump couldn’t focus. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment,” the aide recalled, “before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”

Of course, Trump doesn’t think he’s stupid. “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” he tweeted. As he recounted, “I went to an Ivy League college … I did very well. I’m a very intelligent person.”

Trump wasn’t exactly an academic star, however. One of his professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and Finance purportedly called Trump “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”

Trump biographer Gwenda Blair wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer who had known Trump’s older brother.

But hold on. I ask myself: How could Trump have become president, and now clinch the Republican nomination for the presidency for a third time, if he doesn’t have something in the brain bank? Even if Trump doesn’t read, can’t follow a logical argument, and has the attention span of a fruit fly, I keep believing he must have some intelligence.

Well, it turns out there’s another form of intelligence, called “emotional intelligence.”

Emotional intelligence is a concept developed by two psychologists, John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire and Yale’s Peter Salovey, and popularized by Dan Goleman in his 1996 book of the same name.

Mayer and Salovey define emotional intelligence as the ability to do two things: “understand and manage our own emotions,” and “recognize and influence the emotions of others.”

True, Trump hasn’t displayed much capacity for the first. He’s thin-skinned, narcissistic, and vindictive. As dozens of Republican foreign policy experts have put it: “He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate criticism."

Okay, but what about Mayer and Salovey’s second aspect of emotional intelligence — influencing the emotions of others?

This is where Trump’s brain outperforms the brains of ordinary mortals. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities — their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires — and use them for his own purposes.

To put it another way, Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman.

I believe he’s always been a conman. He conned hundreds of young people and their parents into paying to attend his nearly worthless Trump University. He conned banks into lending him more money even after he repeatedly failed to pay them. He conned contractors to work for him even with a well-deserved reputation for stiffing them. He’s been an even greater political conman.

In November 2016, he conned 62,979,879 Americans into voting for him, getting them to believe his lies about Mexicans, Muslims, African Americans, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the “wonderful,” “beautiful” things he’d do for the people who’d support him.

And now he’s conned most Republican voters into believing his utterly baseless claim that he won the 2020 election. Political conning is Trump’s genius.

This genius — combined with utter stupidity in every other dimension — poses the clearest and most terrifying danger to America and the world.

Trump sneakers and the MAGA uniform: Merchandising fascism to the mainstream (msn.com)

Trump sneakers and the MAGA uniform: Merchandising fascism to the mainstream

Donald Trump is basically a political cult leader. His MAGA followers are his flock.

A cult has the following features: It is a collective unhealthy relationship where individuals lose their sense of self to the larger group and where those new relationships supersede the other, presumably, more healthy relationships in a person’s life. In essence, the former person is replaced by the new cult identity. In this model, the cult leader exerts undue and harmful influence over the members. They, in turn, sacrifice their well-being and autonomy in service to the leader's wants and needs. In addition to emotional and psychological abuse, the cult leader usually engages in physical violence (including sexual abuse) and financial exploitation.

Donald Trump has apparently directly engaged in or encouraged all these behaviors to varying degrees. In a 2020 conversation with me here at Salon, Steven Hassan, who is a leading authority on the psychology of cults explained:

* Donald Trump fits the stereotypical profile of all destructive cults. These traits include malignant narcissism. Trump can easily be compared to Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, and other cult leaders. Trump always had a cult of personality around him in terms of his businesses and his social interactions with people. But once Trump attained the presidency, he took over the Republican Party and instituted a fiefdom where he rewards loyalty and punishes anyone who displeases him.

* As for definitions, a "destructive cult" is an authoritarian pyramid-structured group with someone at the top who claims to know all things and says God is working through him or her. Trump does that as well. Donald Trump is also trying to control people's behavior, the information they have access to, and their thoughts and emotions, to make them dependent and obedient and under his control. Consider the novel coronavirus pandemic and how Trump has all these followers who do not trust real experts and only take what Trump says to be true. Trump's followers also don't believe in science and medicine.

For decades, Donald Trump has shown himself to be especially adept and skilled at financially exploiting his followers and public through fraud and other such criminal behavior. In keeping with how he is a type of professional wrestling “heel” (villain), Trump is a type of confidence man huckster right out of “carnie” culture.

This “Trump merchandise industrial complex” has proven to be very lucrative and likely worth many millions of dollars. The Trump merchandise empire is part of a larger fundraising operation where the corrupt ex-president’s followers have given him many tens of millions of dollars. Trump, who claims to be a billionaire, is soliciting his MAGA people to give him money that will be used for his legal defense and fines in his civil case (that at this point now total almost 500 million dollars).

There is even a GoFundMe started by one of Trump’s loyalists to aid in his legal defense.

On an almost daily basis, Donald Trump and his campaign send out emails – sometimes several emails in one day – announcing the newest Trump merchandise, which his followers are encouraged to buy as a show of love for the Dear Leader. Like any fake “collectibles” business model, the goal is to produce an endless supply of items so that there is always something new, valuable, and more exclusive than the previous item.

For example, on Tuesday, Trump sent out an email proudly announcing a new “limited edition gold MAGA hat!”. The day before, Trump announced a new “exclusive” membership card:

" - I wanted to reach out to you personally to let you know that I’ve launched a prestigious membership program.

This membership is exclusive and spots are running out…

My Official Trump Gold Card is the key to unlocking your membership.

It's METAL! - "

The Trump merchandise machine is infinite. On Thursday, as I was writing this essay, I received an email announcing a new "limited edition" Trump MAGA hat — this time in black and white.

Trump is always selling special and “exclusive” trips to visit him at his Mar-a-Lago headquarters, as well as special “top secret” videos for his most loyal followers. And as though he is some type of saint or other holy man, Trump, who has declared himself “chosen by God” and a type of fascist messiah and prophet whose quest to take back the White House is preordained, is even selling pieces of the suit he wore during one of his criminal arraignments. 

And, of course, there are the Donald Trump sneakers, cologne, flags, stickers, NFT superhero trading cards and a seemingly endless variety of other merchandise.

Those outside of the MAGAverse and TrumpWorld laugh at Trump’s followers for being “stupid” because they give him money for such “junk”. Moreover, that the MAGA people would do such a thing is more proof of how “gullible” they are. The liberal schadenfreude in the Age of Trump knows no limits; liberal schadenfreude may feel good for those who bask in it, but it does and has done little to nothing to stop Donald Trump and the American neofascists and their assaults on democracy and freedom. If anything, Donald Trump and his MAGA people and the other neofascists feed off the disapproval and condemnation.

This signals a large failing of too many Democrats, liberals, progressives, and especially the professional centrists and hope peddlers in the mainstream news media and political class, even after more than seven years of experience in the Trumpocene. Too many still do not understand the power of emotion and identity in fascism and other forms of fake right-wing populism. These are political movements and belief systems – and in the case of Trump and the MAGA movement, they are best understood as charismatic personality cults – that exist outside of normal politics and its idealized assumptions about rational voters who act out of material self-interest. 

Trumpism, like fascism more broadly, is first and foremost a type of corrupt power. Fascism is not an ideology per se. It is an imagination based upon rage, anger, hatred, and where violence and destruction are viewed as legitimate if not preferred means of getting and keeping revolutionary power. Sadopolitics, necropolitics, the cult of personality and the will to power cohere the fascist imagination. In total, fascism is a force that gives its followers a sense of personal and collective meaning as they engage in violence and other forms of harm and suffering against “the enemy.” In many ways, fascism and other such political projects are “identity” politics in some of its worst forms.

Donald Trump and his MAGA merchandise and assorted regalia are a way of creating meaning and a sense of belonging – and of identifying one’s place in the hierarchy of that fascist movement and subculture relative to the Dear Leader and his or her own inner circle. In that way, the MAGA merchandise functions as a type of fascist uniform.

Are Trump’s sneakers “ugly” and an offense to the sneaker collecting subculture? Sure. But Trump’s MAGA people don’t care. Trump’s sneakers sold out almost immediately upon their release.

Trump’s hats and other clothing have been mocked as being “cheap looking” and “tacky.” OK. But again, Trump’s MAGA people don’t care. The MAGA people continue to buy these things because they make them feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves.

Are the MAGA people who purchased “Trump Bucks” because they thought they were real money and an “investment” gullible and apparently not very bright? Absolutely. But they will remain loyal to Donald Trump even though they were defrauded online by people who took advantage of their love for him. Business Insider provides these details:

Supporters of former President Donald Trump are reportedly being scammed out of thousands of dollars through the sale of commemorative "Trump Bucks" that fraudsters say can be exchanged for real cash.

Several companies are allegedly using advertising tactics including creating AI-generated videos of Trump…. to claim the worthless "Trump Bucks" will make them rich, according to a new report from NBC News.

Some of the people who bought the Trump memorabilia have attempted to exchange it for real US dollars at banks, and told NBC News that bank employees are reporting it as a growing issue. Several companies have been identified for marketing and selling the false currency, NBC News reported, including a number of businesses seemingly based in Colorado with names like Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future, and USA Patriots.

"President Trump wants you to finally open your eyes and believe in his power for a better tomorrow!" reads a banner message on one of the sites advertising a "TRB Black Card," which sells as a single card for $90 or packs of up to 10 cards for $500.

As we try to escape the Trumpocene, fortunately, there are a few sharp voices and guides who correctly understand the power of emotion and identity and its role in the Trump MAGA fascist subculture and larger American (and global) fascist movement. We should listen very closely to these guides. In a very insightful essay at the Conversation, anthropologist Alexander Hinton traveled to this year’s CPAC event to better understand the enduring (and alluring) power (and dangers) of Trumpism and the MAGA subculture:

"- Everywhere I turned, people wore MAGA regalia – hats, pins, logos and patches, many with Trump's likeness. I spent breaks in the exhibition hall, which featured a Jan. 6 insurrection-themed pinball machine featuring "Stop the Steal," "Political Prisoners" and "Babbitt Murder" rally modes and a bus emblazoned with Trump's face. Admirers scribbled messages on the bus such as, "We have your back" and "You are anointed and appointed by God to be the President."

Those on the left who dismiss the CPAC as a gathering of MAGA crazies and racists who support a wannabe dictator do not understand that, from this far-right perspective, there are compelling and even urgent reasons to support Trump. Indeed, they believe, as conservative politician Tulsi Gabbard stated in her CPAC speech on Feb. 22, that the left's claims about Trump's authoritarianism are "laughable." This is because CPAC attendees falsely perceive President Joe Biden as the one who is attacking democracy. -"

At the New York Times, Vanessa Friedman locates Trump’s “Never Surrender sneakers” and other such merchandise relative to late-stage capitalism (what philosopher Nany Fraser has brilliantly described as “cannibal capitalism”), criminogenic politics, an American pathocracy, and a culture experiencing a deep crisis of meaning, community, and shared values that is “amusing itself to death”:

'' - [T]he $399 Never Surrender sneakers unveiled over the weekend at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia? They are like a road map to Mr. Trump’s value system and electoral strategy in sartorial form.

Gilded hightops as shiny as the chandeliers at Mar-a-Lago, they have an American flag wrapping the ankle like the forest of flags that spring up behind Mr. Trump whenever he takes a stage. They have red soles made to match his trademark red ties (and the flag) and perhaps as a sly nod to Christian Louboutins and the semiology of luxury footwear. Also, there’s a large embossed “T” on the side and on the tongue.

While they are “bold, gold and tough, just like President Trump,” according to the Trump sneakers website, allowing potential owners to “be a part of history,” they boast zero technical performance attributes. While they have a shape similar to Nike Air Force 1s (get it? Air Force One!), they are unabashed imitations of the original….

Yet the merching of the moment is more dangerous than it may initially appear.

There has been a lot of eye-rolling since the sneakers’ debut, and jokes about the fact that, given the millions of dollars in penalties levied on Mr. Trump in his various civil cases, he has to make more money somewhere. And there was a lot of focus on the boos that met his appearance at Sneaker Con. (To be fair, the sneakerhead community is not the market for the kicks since there’s nothing original about them; it’s the MAGA market.)

It’s easy to get distracted by the sheer absurdity of it all — a former president, selling sneakers! - "

Friedman concludes:

" - Despite the fact that, as of Sunday, the website claimed that the 1,000 pairs of numbered Never Surrender sneakers had sold out, leaving the somewhat less exciting T-Red cherry knit sneaks and Potus 45 white knit sneaks available at $199 each, it’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which the shoes provide any meaningful source of income.

What they offer is something else.

Like Mr. Trump’s tendency to turn every courtroom appearance into a form of entertainment that can be used as a campaign op, his effort to commoditize his legal jeopardy is a long-term strategic play. In reducing his indictments to a slogan on a consumer good, he is reducing their gravity.

It’s a form of insidious trivialization, the sort of tactic that plays perfectly in the landscape of late-stage capitalism in which everything is a product for sale. Oh, those old federal charges? They’re not serious; they’re a style choice. He’s transforming indictments into accessories, a language everyone speaks. The more product he sells, the more he makes a mockery of his situation. That’s where the real profit lies. - "

Writing at the Nation, Chris Lehmann uses President Biden’s State of the Union address and the Trump regalia worn by some of the Republicans in attendance as a way of assessing the power of the MAGA movement:

- The stable of imagery associated with the right-wing Trump insurgency is showing signs of wear and tear. Where Trump-branded messaging and merchandise once had the power to upend establishment mores and expectations, they now feel like the political equivalent of a rock ensemble’s county fair tour: a purely formalist effort to satisfy the nostalgic longings of a diminishing fan base.

What was most telling about Greene’s stunt wardrobe was the date on the hat: Instead of being minted for the looming 2024 general election, it came from Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, which—despite the lies of Trump, Greene, and other MAGA leaders— he lost decisively. And make no mistake: Greene, a perfect specimen of do-nothing right-wing congressional service, lives for these camera-ready moments of political theater. She certainly didn’t descend to the same level of sartorial carelessness back when she dressed as a Chinese spy balloon.

Amazingly, Greene’s get-up wasn’t even the most outlandish clothes-themed show of MAGA sympathies in the chamber. That honor fell to Texas Representative Troy Nehls, who wore a “Never Surrender” T-shirt featuring Trump’s mugshot and displayed a Laken Riley badge of his own on his lapel. To pull the look together, he sported an American flag bow tie. The outfit didn’t evoke a fearless mustering of Real American patriots so much as a Chippendale dancer gone to seed. -

Lehman continues:

- “Liberal commentators were put off by the vulgar display—which, of course, was part of the point. Democratic detractors of the hat typically fixated on the hypocrisy of its manufacture—like other Trump gear, it was made at least in part from materials sourced in China, the great bogeyman of Trumpian trade tirades and economic-nationalist appeals. But such caviling overlooked the broader, and pointedly inclusive, nature of the Trump campaign’s iconography. Where liberal critics read MAGA regalia as divisive and insular, it actually represented a welcoming gesture from the leaders of a right-wing movement who formerly telegraphed their ideological purity, during the Tea Party’s heyday, by cosplaying as colonial revolutionaries.

But just as Trumpism itself has curdled into a brackish series of glosses on its founding resentments, the MAGA aesthetic has gone sour.” -

Donald Trump is 77 years old. He will not be the leader of the MAGA movement and the American neofascist cause forever. But in their obsessive focus on Donald Trump the man and the leader, the mainstream news media and the country’s mainstream political class have overlooked how he represents a force, a type of permission structure for authoritarianism and other antidemocratic values and beliefs that will far outlive him. The Trump merchandise empire will inevitably end but that energy will be transferred to the next Great Leader. At this point, MAGA is a brand, and like most lucrative brands, there will be someone waiting to leverage it for their own purposes.

Disse to artikler forteller hvor farlig Trump er, og at han har framskapt noe meget farefullt som må nøytraliseres. Ettersom Trump er 77 år gammel, har man allerede sett at flere har begynte med å manøvrere seg inn i plassen etter ham - en av disse er James David Vance (JD Vance) som en Politico-artikkel har avslørt er enda mer radikalt. 

Is There Something More Radical than MAGA? J.D. Vance Is Dreaming It. - POLITICO

“For me, this is not a limited-government thing — this is a democracy thing. Like, you need the bureaucracy to be responsive to the elected branches of government,” he said. “The counterargument is, you know, ‘Aren’t you promoting a constitutional crisis?’ And my response is no — I’m recognizing a constitutional crisis. If the elected president says, ‘I get to control the staff of my own government,’ and the Supreme Court steps in and says, ‘You’re not allowed to do that’ — like, that is the constitutional crisis. It’s not whatever Trump or whoever else does in response. When the Supreme Court tells the president he can’t control the government anymore, we need to be honest about what’s actually going on.”

There is a lot that the country still doesn’t know about J.D. Vance, but as I walked away from our final conversation, I realized that Vance had just told me what kind of leader he aspires to be. Charles de Gaulle was prepared to transform his country’s entire constitutional system to preserve what he believed to be the essence of his beloved nation. So is J.D. Vance.

Det aller siste USA trenger er en mann som sier "Amerika, det er meg!" i de Gaulle-tradisjon. Vance her avslørt at man aktet å bryte 1789-konstitusjonen "for å redde Amerika". 

[Reg2000]

.

Endret 16. mars av Reg2000

[sedsberg]

Stemmer dette, eller er det fake? Har sett denne flere ganger forskjellige steder.

Legger den skjult siden det godt kan være ren løgn.

Spoiler

 

Endret 20. mars av sedsberg

[Everket]

Hørte dere den siste talen hans?  If I'm not elected it's going to be a bloodbath. Fyren er gal.

Endret 21. mars av Everket

[sedsberg]

Nå har jeg ikke sett talen, og skal ikke prøve å forsvare Trumper'n men "bloodbath" blir veldig ofte brukt metaforisk.

[Dragavon]

Sitat

 

Trumps advokater har sagt at den tidligere presidenten har «uoverkommelige problemer» med å å stille pant for 464 millioner dollar, som han skylder etter at han ble dømt i en bedragerisak i New York.

464 millioner dollar utgjør rundt 4,9 milliarder norske kroner.

- Det er vanskelig for ham nå. Det er jo enormt mye penger, det kan true med å ruinere ham fullstendig, sier USA-ekspert Eirik Løkke i Civita til Dagbladet.

 

https://borsen.dagbladet.no/nyheter/ma-betale-milliardbot-kan-ruinere-ham/81150384

[sedsberg]

Kan han ikke bare tigge litt mer penger av velgerne sine som han pleier? Musk kan sikkert sponse med noen doller.

[Dragavon]

Sitat

 

Fredag avviste imidlertid Trump selv all form for økonomiske utfordringer i kjølvannet av dommen.

- Gjennom hardt arbeid, talent og flaks har jeg 500 millioner dollar i cash. En betydelig mengde som jeg har intensjoner om å bruke i valgkampanjen, skrev han i en oppdatering på sine egen sosiale medier-plattform, Truth Social.

Uttalelsen fikk umiddelbart oppmerksomhet, men var ikke nødvendigvis særlig gjennomtenkt, ifølge den anerkjente New York-advokaten Nick Akerman.

- Det er det dummeste han kunne gjort. Dette er jo en direkte innrømmelse - han sier at han har pengene, sier Akerman til CNN, og viser til det økonomiske kravet som fulgte med dommen.

 

https://borsen.dagbladet.no/nyheter/det-dummeste-han-kunne-gjort/81166119

[Enceladus]

On 20.3.2024 at 9:28 PM, Everket said:

Hørte dere den siste talen hans?  If I'm not elected it's going to be a bloodbath. Fyren er gal.

Ja.

On 20.3.2024 at 9:39 PM, sedsberg said:

Nå har jeg ikke sett talen, og skal ikke prøve å forsvare Trumper'n men "bloodbath" blir veldig ofte brukt metaforisk.

Og så blir det opp til hver enkelt å tolke det dit hen en vill, er en oppildnet og gal nok så tas det bokstavelig. Og så ender vi opp med slikt som stormingen av kongressen.

Sykt at det han sier og gjør ikke får større konsekvenser. Han burde jo vært fengslet for lengst. For en hvilken som helst annen personen så ville det vært slutt på karrieren.

 

 

[Everket]

Du bet på ja. Viss du hørte talen så vett du også konteksten og det var selvfølgelig økonomien han snakket om. Men som ventet har du kun lest overskrifter. Og blodbath er et veldig vanlig ord som blir brukt når man snakker om økonomien. De avisene i usa som lyver og forteller dere hvor gal talen var, har selv brukt ordet bloodbath om økonomien utallige ganger. Kudos til sedsberg som til tross for å lide av tds klarte å tenke seg om før han uttalte seg bastant.

 

At du mener ord skal gi fengselstraff er jo helt spinnvilt i seg selv.

Endret 23. mars av Everket