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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 3, 2025 at 12:13 am
Eighty-six years after Adolf Hitler declared himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people,” the United States faced the same fate under President Donald J. Trump.
On June 1, 2020, Trump declared: ”I am your President of law and order, and an ally of all peaceful protesters.”
But on that same evening, Trump ordered police, Secret Service agents and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
They were protesting the murder of George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25.
The purpose of the removal: To allow Trump to have a photo op outside the church.
Donald Trump at St. John’s Church
On September 2, Trump sent a memo to Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Attorney General William P. Barr. Its message: Find ways to cut funding to several cities controlled by Democrats.
Trump singled out four cities for defunding: Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Seattle, Washington; and New York City.
Trump gave his official reason for this move: “Anarchy has recently beset some of our states and cities. My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.”
He blamed rising crime rates on Black Lives Matter protesters and blacks who had looted and burned stores during nationwide protests against police brutality. And he claimed that only he could save America from a civil war ignited by such protesters.
At the same time, he totally ignored—or defended—armed white militias who had faced off with Black Lives Matter protesters.
The memo seemed especially aimed at New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio and the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, had been highly critical of Trump’s failure to stem the Coronavirus pandemic.
On Twitter, Cuomo accused Trump of trying to strip funding that cities and states need to recover from Coronavirus: “He is not a king. He cannot ‘defund’ NYC. It’s an illegal stunt.”
Andrew Cuomo
Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for de Blasio, tweeted: “As much as Donald Trump wants New York City to drop dead, we will never let this stand. This has nothing to do with ‘law and order’. This is a racist campaign stunt out of the Oval Office to attack millions of people of color.”
Trump’s order was never implemented—and was officially revoked on February 24, 2021, by the Justice Department of President Joe Biden.
As for his claim of being “your President of law and order”:
Trump is only the third United States President—after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—to be impeached. And not once but twice.
He is also the only President to be:
- Convicted of sexually assaulting columnist E. Jean Carroll;
- Convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn actress;
- Repeatedly and falsely claiming voter fraud cheated him of re-election in 2020, thus undermining the legitimacy of the electoral system;
- Falsely claiming that Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” of Ohio residents.
In addition, Trump waged all-out war on the following institutions:
- The FBI: When FBI Director James Comey dared to pursue a probe into Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election on Trump’s behalf, Trump fired him without warning on May 9, 2017.
- The Press: Viciously attacking the nation’s free press to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people”—a phrase used by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
- The Justice Department: Trump repeatedly attacked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from agents pursuing the Russia investigation. On November 7, 2018, the day after Democrats won a majority of House seats, Trump fired Sessions.
- The Judiciary: On October 20, 2018, Trump attacked U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar as an “Obama judge.” Tigar had ruled that the administration must consider asylum claims no matter where migrants cross the U.S. border.
- The Department of Health and Human Services: By lying about the dangers of the COVID-19 virus and promoting quack cures, he caused the deaths of 400,000 Americans by the time he left office.
- The Electoral Process: On September 2, 2020 Trump urged residents in the critical political battleground of North Carolina to try to vote twice in the November 3 election, once by mail and once in person—a totally illegal act.
On the private-sector front:
- On December 10, 2019, Trump paid $2 million to eight charities as part of a settlement where he admitted to misusing funds raised by the Donald J. Trump Foundation. These had been used to promote his presidential bid and pay off business debts. He was forced to close the charity as a result.
- Legal action also forced Trump to shut down his unaccredited Trump University, which the conservative magazine National Review described as a “massive scam.” Although he boasted that he never settled lawsuits, he settled this one in November, 2016, for a reported $25 million rather than go to trial.
When Donald Trump calls himself a “law and order President,” he means: “My order is your law.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 2, 2025 at 12:17 am
On June 30, 1934, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered a massive purge of his private army, the S.A., or Brownshirts. It was carried out by Hitler’s elite army-within-an-army, the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS.
The Brownshirts (also known as “Stiormtroopers”) had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. They had intimidated political opponents (especially Communists) and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party.
But after Hitler reached the pinnacle of power, they became a liability.
Ernst Rohm, their commander, had served as a tough army officer during World War 1. He was one of the few men allowed to use “du,” the personal form of “you” in German, when addressing Hitler.
Rohm urged Hitler to disband the regular German army, the Reichswehr, and replace it with his own undisciplined paramilitary legions as the nation’s defense force.
Ernst Rohm
Frightened by Rohm’s ambitions, the generals of the Reichswehr gave Hitler an ultimatum: Get rid of Rohm—or they would get rid of him.
Hitler didn’t hesitate. Backed by armed thugs, he stormed into Rohm’s apartment, catching him in bed with a young S.A. Stormtrooper.
Accusing his onetime friend of treasonously plotting to overthrow him, Hitler screamed: “You’re going to be shot!”
Rohm was not plotting a coup. But the generals had the whip hand—and, for Hitler, that was enough to literally sign Rohm’s death warrant.
Hours later, sitting in a prison cell, Rohm was offered a pistol with a single bullet.
“Adolf himself should do the dirty work,” said Rohm, adding: “All revolutions devour their own children.”
One hour later, Rohm died in a hail of SS bullets.
Earlier throughout that day, so had several hundred of his longtime S.A. cronies. Many of them yelled “Heil Hitler!” as they stood against barracks walls waiting to be shot.
SS firing squad
Thirteen days later, addressing the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, Hitler justified his purge in a nationally broadcast speech: “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the Supreme Judge of the German people!
“I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterize down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life.
“Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
Adolf Hitler addressing parliament
Eighty-six years after Adolf Hitler declared himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people,” the United States faces the same fate under President Donald J. Trump.
On September 2, Trump sent a memo to Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Attorney General William P. Barr. Its title: “Reviewing Funding to State and Local Government Recipients That Are Permitting Anarchy, Violence and Destruction in American Cities.”
Both officials were ordered to find ways to cut funding to several cities controlled by Democrats.
Donald Trump
Accusing local and state officials of abdicating their duties, Trump wrote: “Anarchy has recently beset some of our states and cities. My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.”
In his memo, Trump ordered Vought to issue guidance in 30 days “to the heads of agencies on restricting eligibility of or otherwise disfavoring, to the maximum extent permitted by law, anarchist jurisdictions in the receipt of Federal grants.”
And he gave Barr 14 days to identify “anarchist jurisdictions” that “permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures” to restore order.
Trump singled out four cities for defunding: Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Seattle, Washington; and New York City.
The move threatened billions of dollars for many of the country’s largest urban cities.
But protecting American citizens from crime was not the real reason for this effort.
Polls showed Trump trailing his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. As a result, Trump was resorting to the classic Republican tactics of smear and fear.
He wanted to shift public attention from his failure to halt the escalating Coronavirus pandemic—which had already killed more than 189,000 Americans and left 25 million unemployed.
He also wanted to turn Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality into white counter-protest at the ballot box.
Trump had long relied on divide-and-rule tactics to gain and hold power. He hoped to persuade suburban whites that he was the only thing standing between them and a black crime wave about to engulf them.
The hatred that millions of older whites—especially rural ones—felt for most of their fellow Americans gave Trump the White House in 2016. Trump hoped that such hatred—combined with fear—would do it again in 2020.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 4, 2024 at 12:11 am
During the 2024 Presidential election, the two most important issues—for voters—were immigration and inflation.
In short: “Get rid of the spics!” and “Give us cheaper eggs!”
Repeatedly, Vice President Kamala Harris warned that Donald Trump’s return to the Presidency would result in a Fascistic dictatorship:
“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly [Trump’s former chief of staff] would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions….
“He wants a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States.”
Reputable media warned that he intended to turn the FBI into his private Gestapo and use the Justice Department to attack his political rivals.
Kamala Harris
But Americans didn’t care.
Instead, 76.9 million voters chose to overturn the democratic traditions that had guided American life since 1788, when the United States Constitution was ratified.
Appeals to their hatred, racism and greed proved far more seductive.
Throughout Trump’s Presidency—2017 to 2021—those who opposed his agenda took solace in a series of expected saviors.
- On May 9, 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for daring to investigate his proven ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then appointed Robert Meuller as special counsel to investigate that firing—and Trump’s ties to Russia.
Mueller had a sterling reputation for integrity as a former prosecutor and FBI director. But he allowed himself to be intimidated by the Presidential aura—and refused to directly interview Trump.
His subsequent official report contained no impeachment-worthy evidence.
- On July 25, 2019, Trump threatened to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine—which faced increasing aggression from Russia—unless its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, did him “a favor”: Investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden. Unless Zelensky found this, the promised aid would be withheld.
The House of Representatives tried Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The evidence against him was overwhelming—including a transcript of the extortionate phone call.
Donald Trump
But the Republican Senate refused to convict.
Had this happened, Trump would have been legally barred from running again for President.
- On January 6, 2021, Trump incited a violent attack on the United States Capitol to stop the counting of Electoral College votes—which would prove that he had lost the 2020 Presidential election to former Vice President Joseph Biden.
As a result, five people died and 174 police officers were injured. The Capitol Building—the symbol of American democracy—suffered about $2.7 billion in damages.
Evidence of Trump’s guilt was overwhelming—including video of his incitement.
But, once again, the Republican-dominated Senate refused to convict.
Stormtrumpers attacking the Capitol Building
Tyler Merbler from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Trump’s opponents had placed their hopes in Special Counsel Robert Mueller and (twice) the United States Congress to address the brazen criminality of Donald Trump.
The results: Anger and disappointment.
Yet one last hope remained:
That the 2024 Presidential election would send Joseph Biden, and then, after he dropped out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris—to the White House.
Harris waged what was widely descripted as “a campaign of joy,” promising to be “the President of all Americans,” including those who voted against her. Repeatedly, she warned that, if re-elected, Trump would pursue a vengeance-fueled agenda against anyone who had dared cross him.
Trump ran a campaign based on hatred—of Hispanics, of liberals, of those who had served in his administration and now disowned him. During his single debate with Harris, he falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were “eating the dogs….they’re eating the cats” of local citizens.
On one occasion, he appeared to emulate performing a ‘sex act’ on a microphone stand during a rally after experiencing technical difficulties.
Most ominously, credible news reports circulated that, if Trump were re-elected, he would implement a radical, Right-wing plan—Project 2025—to completely reshape the federal government.
At its heart: The mass firings of politically neutral civil service officials and their replacement with thousands of political hacks.
This would arm Republicans with the power to establish an absolute dictatorship under the next Republican president.
Yet, in the end, none of this mattered.
His supporters included:
- Hispanics: 54%—despite being repeatedly vilified by Trump and slated for mass deportation;
- White women: 52%—despite his destroying abortion rights and being convicted for raping columnist E. Jean Carroll;
- Blacks: 21%—giving Harris fewer votes than they gave Biden in 2020.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler rose to dictatorial power through backroom intrigues and appointment as Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg.
On November 5, 2024, Trump rose to dictatorial power when Americans voted to ignore his past crimes and the ones he boasted he intended to commit.
John Adams predicted this long ago: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on December 3, 2024 at 12:13 am
On April 27, 2020, Joe Scarborough offered an important insight about why most Americans ignored President Donald Trump’s crimes and outrages for so long:
“Back in January Joe Biden wrote an Op-Ed that the President was not prepared for this coming pandemic, and things were going to get worse. And he said ‘Let your doctors talk. Let your scientists talk. Follow their lead.’
“…And it’s been one scam idea after another, that people then promoted on other networks, scam doctors promoting these scam solutions, claiming that everybody who had taken this malaria drug had been cured in certain hospitals. This is just the sort of thing that catches up to Donald Trump.
“I’ve said from the very beginning: You can lie about independent counsels, people won’t listen. You can lie about former FBI directors—“
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: “It doesn’t impact their lives.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “They’re still going to work, the kids are doing fine, they’ve got enough money to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, You can even lie about the Ukraine call—they don’t really care.
“But all of these lies, all of these [COVID-19] scams that he’s been pushing…have been revealed as lies—not by the people on cable news, but by their doctors. By nurses they know. If you’ve got a doctor who’s been treating your family for 20-25 years, you’re going to believe that person more than a scam artist that’s pushing propaganda for Donald Trump on talk radio.“
On August 23, 2018, Trump, appearing on “Fox and Friends,” said: “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
Donald Trump
Thus, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
Then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders bragged, on June 4, 2018:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.”
Many Congressional Republicans echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
For eight years, Nazi Germany underwent such an epoch. Germans called it “The Happy Time.”
It began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor—and lasted until June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
Germans knew about the Nazis’ cruelty to the Jews, the conquests of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, the mass arrests and concentration camps.
They didn’t care.
Frenzied Germans greet Adolf Hitler
The Gestapo didn’t have to watch everyone: German “patriots” gladly reported their fellow citizens—especially Jews—to the secret police.
As far as everyday Germans were concerned:
- The streets were clean and peaceful.
- Employment was high.
- The trouble-making unions were gone.
- Germany was once again “taking its rightful place” among ruling nations, after its catastrophic defeat in World War 1.
The height of “The Happy Time” came in June, 1940. In just six weeks, the Wehrmacht accomplished what the German army hadn’t in four years during World War 1: The total defeat of its longtime enemy, France.
Suddenly, French clothes, perfumes, delicacies, paintings and other “fortunes of war” came pouring into the Fatherland.
Most Germans believed der Krieg—“the war”—was over, and only good times lay ahead.
Then, on June 22, 1941, three million Wehrmacht soldiers slashed their way into the Soviet Union. The Third Reich was now locked in a death-struggle with a nation even more powerful than itself.
German soldiers in the Soviet Union
And then, on December 11, 1941—four days after Germany’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor—Hitler declared war on the United States.
“The Happy Time” for Germans was over. Only prolonged disaster lay ahead.
Donald Trump has spent his life appealing to the greed or fear of those around him. For example:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case against Trump, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign.
- According to an April 14, 2019 story by ABC News, a nationwide review uncovered at least 36 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
- In nine cases, attackers hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting victims.
- In 10 more cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others.
- And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant’s violent or threatening behavior.
But starting in January, 2020, Trump faced an enemy—to his re-election—that he couldn’t bribe or intimidate.
The deadly COVID-19 virus didn’t accept bribe-monies or grovel before a raging tyrant. As a result, 400,000 Americans died by the time Trump left office.
The Germans made a devil’s-bargain with Adolf Hitler—and paid dearly for it.
Millions of greedy Americans made a similar bargain with Donald Trump—and paid almost as dearly.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 29, 2024 at 12:57 am
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator.
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims….
“If he answered their suppressed desires, it was not because he shared them, but because he could make use of them. He despised the German people, for they were merely the instruments of his will.”
On November 8, 2016, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.
Yet, in some ways, Americans had fewer excuses for turning to a Fascistic style of government than the Germans did.
Adolf Hitler, joined the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party in 1919—the year after World War 1 ended.
Adolf Hitler
In 1923, he staged a coup attempt in Bavaria—which was quickly and brutally put down by police. He was arrested and sentenced to less than a year in prison.
After that, Hitler decided that winning power through violence was no longer an option. He must win it through election—or appointment.
When the 1929 Depression struck Germany, the fortunes of Hitler’s Nazi party rose as the life savings of ordinary Germans fell. Streets echoed with bloody clashes between members of Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers and those of the German Communist Party.
Germans desperately looked for a leader—a Fuhrer—who could somehow deliver them from the threat of financial ruin and Communist takeover.
In early 1933, members of his own cabinet persuaded aging German president, Paul von Hindenburg, that only Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor could do this.
Paul von Hindenburg
Hindenburg was reluctant to do so. He considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he let himself be convinced that he could “box in” and control Hitler by putting him in the Cabinet.
So, on January 30, 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor (the equivalent of Attorney General) of Germany.
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died. Hitler immediately assumed the titles—and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President. His rise to total power was complete.
It had taken him 14 years to do so.
In 2015, Donald Trump declared his candidacy for President.
Now, consider this:
- America was technically at war in the Middle East—but its fate was not truly threatened, as it had been during the Civil War.
- Government loans from President Barack Obama had saved American capitalism from its own excesses during the George W. Bush administration.
- Employment was up.
- No scandals had plagued the Obama Presidency—unlike the Reagan one.
- There been no large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil—such as 9/11 under George W. Bush.
Yet—not 17 months after announcing his candidacy for President—enough Americans fervently embraced Donald Trump to give him the most powerful position in the country and the world.
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Donald Trump
Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Trump rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”
Birthrates among nonwhites were rising. By 2045, whites would make up less than 50 percent of the American population.
The 2008 election of the first black President had shocked whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.
Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might actually be followed by a woman: Hillary Clinton.
During Trump’s four years in office, he:
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
- Attacked Federal judges whose rulings displeased him.
- Repeatedly and enthusiastically defended Vladimir Putin, the dictator of Russia, America’s mortal enemy.
- Installed three Right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to once again outlaw abortion.
- Attacked and alienated America’s oldest allies, such as Canada and Great Britain.
- Shut down the United States Government, imperiling the lives of 800,000 Federal employees, to extort money from Congress for a worthless wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
- Attacked the free press as “the enemy of the people.”
- Repeatedly lied about the dangers of COVID-19 while attacking governors who supported mask-wearing and social distancing; 400,000 Americans died.
- Refused to accept his loss in the 2020 Presidential election and spread “The Big Lie” that he had been cheated of victory by massive voter fraud.
- Incited a deadly attack on Congress to stop the counting of Electoral College votes—proving that Joe Biden had won the 2020 Presidential election—so he could remain in office as “President-for-Life.”
On November 5, 2024, 76,414,580 ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans eagerly voted to again install him as their Fuhrer.
Imagine that, four years after World War II, Germans had voted to replace their “colorless” chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, with the one who had ignited World War II and slaughtered six million Jews: Adolf Hitler.
All of this should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 14, 2024 at 12:14 am
After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, many people feared he would embark on a radical Right-wing agenda. But others hoped that the Washington bureaucracy would “box him in.”
The same sentiments echoed throughout Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.
The 1983 TV mini-series, The Winds of War, offered a dramatic example of how honorable men can be overwhelmed by a ruthless dictator.
Based on the bestselling 1971 historical novel by Herman Wouk, the mini-series factually re-created the major historical events of World War II.
One of those events took place on November 5, 1939.
General Walther von Brauchitsch is summoned to the Chancellery in Berlin to meet with Adolf Hitler. He carries a memorandum signed by all the leaders of the German Wehrmacht asserting that Case Yellow—Hitler’s planned attack against France—is impossible.
Meanwhile, at the German army headquarters at Zossen, in Berlin, the Wehrmacht’s top command wait for word from von Brauchitsch.
CHANCELLERY:
Von Brauchitsch hands the memorandum to Hitler, who reads it.
Adolf Hitler (slamming down the memorandum): So—what is new in all this?
Gunter Meisner as Adolf Hitler in “The Winds of War”
Walther Von Brauchitsch: Fuhrer, it is the army’s final position that Case Yellow cannot proceed.
Hitler: Why not?
Von Brauchitsch: Because of the military fundamentals as stated. The meteorologists predict continuous soaking rains for weeks.
Hitler: It rains on the enemy, too.
ZOSSEN:
Brigadier General Armin Von Roon: The conspiracy has been going on that long—since Czechoslovakia [1938)?
Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder: If the British had not caved in at Munich [where France and Britain sold out their ally, Czechoslovakia]—perhaps. But they did. And ever then, ever since his big triumph, it has been hopeless. Hopeless.
Von Roon: Empty talk, talk, talk. I am staggered.
Halder: A hundred times I myself could have shot the man. I can still at any time. But what would be the result? Chaos. The people are for him. He has unified the country. We must stick to our posts and save him from making military mistakes.
CHANCELLERY:
Von Brauchitsch: Fuhrer, even the supply of artillery shells is totally inadequate.
Wolfgang Preiss as Walter von Brauchitsch in “The Winds of War”
Hitler: Do you know how many artillery shells of all calibers we have in the staging areas—right this minute?
Von Brauchitsch: No.
Hitler: How many we have in the reserve dumps in the West? What the monthly annual production of shells is? What the projected rise in production of the next six months is, month by month?
Von Brauchitsch: Who keeps such figures in his head?
Hitler: I do! The supply is adequate. I tell you so. And I’m a field soldier who depended on artillery for four years to protect his life. [He hands von Brauchitsch a sheaf of armaments figures.] Check with your staff. if one of those figures is wrong, you can postpone Case Yellow. Otherwise—you march! And next time you come to see me, know what you’re talking about!
Von Brauchitsch: The morale of the army was low, even in the Polish campaign.
Hitler: Back up this monstrous assertion! In what units was morale low? What action was taken? How many death sentences were handed out for cowardice? Speak up! I’ll fly to the front and pass the death sentences myself. Name one specific instance.
Von Brauchitsch: It was common knowledge—
Hitler: Common knowledge? What is common knowledge is that army headquarters at Zossen crawls with cowards. You opposed me in rearming the Rhineland. You opposed me on the [union] with Austria. You opposed me on Czechoslovakia, until the British came crawling to me. You dirtied in your trousers, you heroes at Zossen, at the idea of marching into Poland. Well, have I once been wrong? Have you once been right? Answer me!
Von Brauchitsch: Mein Fuhrer—
Hitler: Tell everyone who signed this insubordinate Zossen rubbish to beware! I will ruthlessly crush everybody up to the rank of a Field Marshal who dares to oppose me. You don’t have to understand. You only have to obey. The German people understand me. I am Germany.
President Donald Trump:
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
- Attacked the integrity of the American Intelligence community.
- Attacked the free press as “the enemy of the American people.”
- Tried to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, his presumed Democratic opponent in the 2020 Presidential election.
- Repeatedly lied about the dangers posed by the COVID-19 virus, thus enabling it to ravage the country and kill 400,000 by the time Trump left office.
- Incited his followers to violently attack the United States Capitol Building to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election and prevent Joe Biden, the winner, from taking office.
Fast forward 79 years from Adolf Hitler’s stormy confrontation with Walter von Brauchitsch to January 6, 2021.
Like Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump could truthfully say: I am America.
And that was before the United States Supreme Court declared that a President has absolute immunity for his official acts—including criminal ones.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on November 8, 2024 at 12:11 am
Fox News has spent two years peddling “The Big Lie”—that President Donald J. Trump was cheated of electoral victory in 2020.
But now the truth is coming to light.
On the March 3 edition of The PBS Newshour, political commentators David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart explored the explosive revelations emerging from a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News.
Host Amna Nawaz opened:
And, at CPAC today, [Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for President Trump] went after Fox, saying they’re not pro-Trump enough.
But, just this week, we did see a huge admission in that—the latest filings and the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, that admission from Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch. He conceded under oath Fox hosts lied about the 2020 election, and he chose not to stop them. What are the implications of that?
David Brooks
New York Times Columnist David Brooks: Rupert Murdoch started a paper called The Australian a long time ago. He was a journalist, an actual journalist. And now he’s gotten to the point where you can lie on camera if—as long as your ratings are OK.
Those people who lied didn’t lie over little things. They lied about the election results of a presidential election, kind of a major deal. And we now know—as we all suspected—they all knew what was happening.
And Murdoch is sitting there atop this organization sort of blithely pretending it’s not really his problem. And so he can say it, and he has power over the corporation today. He owns it. He could fire Tucker [Carlson]. He could fire all the people—all the people who were in on this and whose journalistic integrity has been exposed as zero.
And yet he’s still trying to blithely rise above it. And so it’s amazing that we have a major news organization that is inaccurate about a presidential election.
Jonathan Capehart
Washington Post Associated Editor Jonathan Capehart: Oh, it’s huge. And it was confirmation of something that folks on the left and just folks paying attention kind of suspected: That Fox News, the “news” is in quotes, that they’re out there blatantly telling lies.
But then to see in black and white as part of this case that not only…they would say lies on television, but then, behind the scenes, they knew the truth.
And what that says to me is, Rupert Murdoch and his anchors, those people who are peddling in lies, they are insulated from the effect of the lies that they tell. When you see someone saying, “Oh, our ratings are going down, and that’s going to affect the stock price.” So there’s no concern….
Rupert Murdoch
Hudson Institute, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
So that means you’re more concerned about your bottom line than the corrosive impact on our democracy and political discourse in this country. That, to me, was what’s really disturbing.
And what’s even more disturbing is that Fox News isn’t even really covering this lawsuit, which means that their audience, who should know about what’s being said about them and about the programming for them, they will never—they might not ever know….that what they’re being told is just a big bunch of lies.
Amna Nawaz: I go back to the impact again, though, because their audience, which is in the millions, right……if you’re a loyal Fox watcher prone to distrust any other information source anyway, does any of this make an impact?
Jonathan Capehart: Well, that’s the point I was trying to make. We don’t even know if they will even know about this case, as a result. And even if they do find out, either they might not trust it, or maybe they just don’t care. I don’t know.
David Brooks: Well, they’re losing some viewers to the further right, the Bannons of the world. So they are — they are definitely losing viewers.
But my colleague David French made the core point about Fox. If you’re in red America or in rural America, Fox is not just a news organization. It’s your community center. It’s an organization that—that news organization that pays intense attention, that lots of good news stories about cops and soldiers.
A lot of things that happen in red America that don’t get much coverage in the coastal media get a lot of attention in Fox. And so the loyalty there is not only about politics, and it’s not only about news coverage. It’s just about where people see themselves reflected.
* * * * *
A Twitter user recently asked: “Are critical thinkers being vastly outnumbered in the USA because secondary education is just so damn expensive? It’s no wonder Republican states are among the most poorly educated.”
The answer is: No.
You don’t have to accept propaganda.
You can question the official version of any story.
You can seek out multiple sources.
You don’t have to seek out only those sources that confirm your long-held prejudices.
And you don’t need a college education to do so.
If Right-wingers—who make up the audience for Fox News—are ignorant, it’s because they want to be ignorant.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on November 7, 2024 at 12:12 am
Reputable news organizations believe they’re hurt when a reporter gets his facts wrong—or, worse, invents a story for sensationalistic attention.
For Fox News Network, getting hurt means that some of its own reporters have told the truth. And, as a result, many of its viewers are turning to other Right-wing propaganda outlets.
In a series of email exchanges, Fox Network executives revealed they were not simply loyal to President Donald Trump but mortally afraid of him.
Star Host Tucker Carlson said that Trump was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Nor was Carlson the only one. The fear started at the very top—with Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch: “Nobody wants Trump as an enemy. We all know that Trump has a big following. If he says, ‘Don’t watch Fox News, maybe some don’t.”
Up to January 26, 2021, Murdoch allowed Fox advertiser Mike “My Pillow” Lindell to appear on the Tucker Carlson Tonight Show to lie that Trump had been cheated of victory by massive voter fraud.
Questioned as to why he allowed it, Murdoch agreed with the statement, “It is not red or blue, it is green.”
Rupert Murdoch
In short: Lust for money, not ideology, motivated Fox’s slant on politics.
And, as with all Fox News commentary, truth played no role in the decision to air it.
With unapologetic hypocrisy, Fox stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham brutally mocked the lies being peddled by Trump—and their own network.
In a text to Ingraham, Carlson said that Sidney Powell, an attorney who was representing the Trump campaign, was “lying” and that he had “caught her” doing so.
Ingraham: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].”
Hannity said Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and Ingraham described him as “an idiot.”
And Hannity said: “That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second.”
Sean Hannity
How do we know all this? Certainly not because some outraged Fox whistleblower made these exchanges public.
It’s because Fox’s chief victim, Dominion Voting Systems, decided to strike back.
The Denver-based company produces and sells electronic voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators, in Canada and the United States.
Dominion, claimed Fox, had criminally enabled Democrats to steal the election for Joe Biden by programming its machines to throw out votes meant for Trump.
Its reputation unfairly tarnished, its employees threatened with violence by Trump’s Fascistic supporters, Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in March, 2021.
Dominion charged Fox News with pushing false conspiracy theories about the company to win back dissatisfied viewers upset with its coverage of Trump’s defeat.
Libel lawsuits are typically centered around one falsehood. But Dominion cites a lengthy list of Fox hosts making false claims even though they were known to be untrue.
According to an almost 200–page document Dominion filed in the lawsuit:
“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS.’ Yet despite knowing the truth—or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth—Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as ‘crazy,’ ‘absurd,’ and ‘shockingly reckless.’
“As a result of the false accusations broadcast by Fox into millions of American homes, Dominion has suffered unprecedented harm and its employees’ lives have been put in danger,” Dominion’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
Backing up its assertions: A treasury of emails, texts, testimony, and other private communications from Fox News personnel contradicting the network’s claims that Dominion’s voting machines had rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor.
These had all been obtained through the discovery process.
While Fox was echoing Trump’s claims of “massive voter fraud,” its executives and commentators knew that he—and they themselves—were lying.
In mid-November 2020, Carlson texted one of his producers that “there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election.
Later, Carlson said that Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s attorneys and a prominent accuser of election fraud, “is lying.”
Dana Perino, an anchor, called allegations of voter fraud against Dominion “total bs,” “insane,” and “nonsense.”
Murdoch told an executive on November 6, 2020 that “if Trump becomes a sore loser we should watch Sean [Hannity] especially and others don’t sound the same.”
And on January 5, 2021, Murdoch wrote to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott:
“It’s been suggested our prime time three [Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham] should independently or together say something like, ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won.’ It would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election [was] stolen.”
But Fox never aired such a statement.
Fox has repeatedly tried to get the case dismissed, but Superior Court Judge Eric Davis has refused to do so. A trial is slated to begin on April 17.
There is a difference between journalism and Fascistic propaganda. And Fox News Network routinely provides examples of the latter.
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In Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on November 6, 2024 at 12:04 am
In the beginning was the audience. And the audience was filled with Fascistic hate and prejudice, and sought always to have its beliefs confirmed.
And then came Fox News Network, which sought to capture that audience—and, with it, huge ratings and profits.
At the center of both Fox and its audience stood Donald Trump—first as a Presidential candidate, then as President.
In him, Right-wingers found their ideal representative: He promised to destroy all those groups they hated.
Among these: Blacks, Asians, “uppity” women, Muslims, liberals, Hispanics, Democrats.
Donald Trump
So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election—by 81,284,666 votes for former Vice President Joe Biden versus 74,224,319 for Trump-–the Right was devastated. And furious.
Unlike its defeats in past Presidential elections, this time the Right refused to accept the will of the electorate.
Trump had often “joked” about how wonderful it would be for the United States to have a “President-for-Life”—as was the case in China.
This time the Right intended to make that a reality.
Central to making that happen was the Fox News Network.
In 2022, for its seventh consecutive year, Fox News stood as the top-rated cable news network in the United States. Fox averaged 1.4 million total day viewers.
By contrast, 733,000 watched MSNBC and 568,000 watched CNN.
In prime time, Fox came in first with an average of 2.3 million viewers in 2022.
MSNBC came in second with 1.2 million and CNN ranked third with an average of 730,000.
As for profits: Fox’s net income for the twelve months ending December 31, 2022 was $1.507B, a 4.94% increase year-over-year.
In 2015, Trump launched his campaign for President. His chances for success seemed impossible at the time—even to many mainstream Republicans.
But as he won victory after victory in Republican primaries, Fox News stuck with him. And stayed with him through the four years of his Presidency.
Fox was Trump’s favorite network. It gave him unstinting praise and sought to put a favorable spin on everything he did. As a result, Trump rarely gave interviews to CBS, NBC or ABC News.
In turn, Fox profited hugely as its audience—and advertisers—eagerly tuned in.
So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election, he and Fox decided they must get him back into the Oval Office.
Trump did his best—or worst—by filing about 60 lawsuits to overturn the results of the election. But none of his attorneys could prove their claims that widespread fraud had robbed him of victory. The suits were dismissed by judges or withdrawn by Trump’s own attorneys.
Fox News couldn’t file fraudulent cases on Trump’s behalf. But it could poison the public mind by claiming—endlessly and falsely—that Trump had been cheated by massive voter fraud.
Fox didn’t even wait for the final results of the 2020 election to be called before it intervened on the side of what would soon be dubbed “The Big Lie.”
On Election Night, Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of Fox News Channel. was the first to project Biden’s victory in Arizona. This turned out to be right—and brought a furious attack upon Stirewalt.
Tucker Carlson
“We worked really hard to build what we have,” Fox host Tucker Carlson texted his producer, Alex Pfeiffer. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”
For Carlson, credibility didn’t mean ensuring integrity in news reporting. It meant telling Fox’s Right-wing audience what it wanted to hear—whether the “news” was true or not.
Carlson added that he had spoken with fellow primetime commentators Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity minutes earlier and that they were “highly upset.”
In a January 26 Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, Stirewalt wrote: “Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally. The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact.”
Stirewalt was fired from Fox News in January, 2021.
Trump was furious about the Arizona call. After the election, he attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax.
Which many of them did, costing Fox a big chunk of its audience.
For Fox, this was the ultimate catastrophe. The company began cracking down on its employees who had dared tell the truth on Election Night.
One case involved White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. Her sin was fact-checking a Trump tweet accusing Dominion Voting Systems of election fraud.
Heinrich wrote that top election officials had determined “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
“Please get her fired,” Star host Tucker Carlson texted his fellow told host Sean Hannity: “Seriously….what the fuck? I’m actually shocked….It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Hannity replied that he had already spoken to Suzanne Scott, the network’s chief executive. The next morning, Heinrich’s tweet had been deleted.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 30, 2024 at 12:09 am
In a November 14, 2019 column, “Republicans Can’t Abandon Trump Now Because They’re All Guilty,” freelance journalist Joel Mathis warned: “Trump’s abuses of power mirror those of the GOP as a whole. Republicans can’t turn on him, because doing so would be to indict their party’s entire approach to politics.”
For example:
- At the state level, GOP legislatures have passed numerous voter ID laws over the last decade. Officially, the reason has been to prevent non-citizens from voting. In reality, the motive is to depress turnout among Democratic constituencies.
- When Democrats have won elections, Republicans have tried to block them from carrying out their policies. In Utah, voters approved Medicaid expansion at the ballot box—but Republicans nullified this.
- In North Carolina, Republican legislators prevented voters from choosing their representatives. Instead, Republican representatives chose voters through partisan sorting. In September, 2019, the state’s Supreme Court ruled the legislative gerrymandered district map unconstitutional.
The upshot of all this, wrote Mathis: “The president and his party are united in the belief that their entitlement to power allows them to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes….The president and today’s GOP share the same sins. It will be difficult for them to abandon each other.”
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted 74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
In the Electoral College—where Presidential elections are actually decided—Biden won by a margin of 306 to 232 votes for Trump.
Trump refused to accept that verdict. For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud. Specifically:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
- Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, 61 cases were filed by Trump and his allies in state and federal courts—in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia, challenging the election results.
All were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in were unconstitutional.
The Court’s order read, “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice [Samuel] Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.” Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.
Legal scholars almost unanimously agreed the Court’s action quashed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results through the courts.
The Supreme Court
On December 8, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Missouri United States Senator Roy Blunt joined House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy in blocking a resolution asserting that Biden is the President-elect of the United States.
Still, Trump pressed on. On December 9, he asked the Supreme Court to block millions of Biden votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The request came in a filing with the court in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The Court refused.
* * * * *
The United States has indeed become a polarized country. But it’s not the polarization between Republicans and Democrats, or between conservatives and liberals.
It’s the polarization between Right-wing fanatics intent on enslaving everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their Fascistic beliefs and agenda—and those who resist being enslaved.
Those who hoped that Republicans would choose patriotism over partisanship got their answer on February 5. That was when the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Donald Trump on both impeachment articles.
It’s natural to regret that the United States has become a sharply divided nation. CNN has taken the lead in hand-wringing with a weepy-voiced PSA:
“Our trust has been broken—in our leaders, in our institutions and even some of our friends. And we are hurting, Now more than ever we need each other to listen, to learn from one another, and to rebuild those bonds. Because trust shows we believe in the good in each other. It’s what makes us human. And when we can trust one another, that is when we can truly achieve great things.”
But those who insist on the truth should realize there is only one choice:
Either non-Fascist Americans will destroy the Republican party and its voters that threaten to enslave them—or they will be enslaved by Republicans and their voters who believe they are entitled to manipulate and destroy the country’s democratic processes.
There is no middle ground.
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AMERICA’S FUHRER AS “YOUR LAW AND ORDER PRESIDENT”: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 3, 2025 at 12:13 amEighty-six years after Adolf Hitler declared himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people,” the United States faced the same fate under President Donald J. Trump.
On June 1, 2020, Trump declared: ”I am your President of law and order, and an ally of all peaceful protesters.”
But on that same evening, Trump ordered police, Secret Service agents and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
They were protesting the murder of George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25.
The purpose of the removal: To allow Trump to have a photo op outside the church.
Donald Trump at St. John’s Church
On September 2, Trump sent a memo to Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Attorney General William P. Barr. Its message: Find ways to cut funding to several cities controlled by Democrats.
Trump singled out four cities for defunding: Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Seattle, Washington; and New York City.
Trump gave his official reason for this move: “Anarchy has recently beset some of our states and cities. My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.”
He blamed rising crime rates on Black Lives Matter protesters and blacks who had looted and burned stores during nationwide protests against police brutality. And he claimed that only he could save America from a civil war ignited by such protesters.
At the same time, he totally ignored—or defended—armed white militias who had faced off with Black Lives Matter protesters.
The memo seemed especially aimed at New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio and the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, had been highly critical of Trump’s failure to stem the Coronavirus pandemic.
On Twitter, Cuomo accused Trump of trying to strip funding that cities and states need to recover from Coronavirus: “He is not a king. He cannot ‘defund’ NYC. It’s an illegal stunt.”
Andrew Cuomo
Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for de Blasio, tweeted: “As much as Donald Trump wants New York City to drop dead, we will never let this stand. This has nothing to do with ‘law and order’. This is a racist campaign stunt out of the Oval Office to attack millions of people of color.”
Trump’s order was never implemented—and was officially revoked on February 24, 2021, by the Justice Department of President Joe Biden.
As for his claim of being “your President of law and order”:
Trump is only the third United States President—after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—to be impeached. And not once but twice.
He is also the only President to be:
In addition, Trump waged all-out war on the following institutions:
On the private-sector front:
When Donald Trump calls himself a “law and order President,” he means: “My order is your law.”
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