Posts Tagged ‘2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE’
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 22, 2017 at 12:31 am
Robert Payne, author of the bestselling biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), described Hitler’s “negotiating” style thusly:
“He was incapable of bargaining. He was like a man who goes up to a fruit peddler and threatens to blow his brains out if he does not sell his applies at the lowest possible price.”
What was true for Adolf Hitler was equally true for Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican nominee for President of the United States.
Trump’s vindictive streak was evident on October 9, 2016p, during his second Presidential debate with Hillary Clinton: “If I win I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation–there has never been so many lies and so much deception.”
This played well with Trump’s essentially Fascistic followers, but even conservatives like political columnist Charles Krauthammer disagreed with it:
“I’m one of those who thinks there was a miscarriage of justice in not indicting her. But the problem here is the pattern from Trump.
“He has spoken about using the powers of the government to go after other opponents like the publisher of The Washington Post.
“Do we want to invest in him all the powers of the government if he acts where he seems to want to carry out vendettas?”
Charles Krauthammer
But making threats against anyone who has dared to cross him or has merely roused his ire is a longtime Trump characteristic.
In 2010, Tarla Makaeff, a former customer of Trump’s real-estate seminar business, filed a fraud lawsuit against now-defunct Trump University.
Trump retaliated by filing a defamation suit against her. The case was dismissed by a judge. But Trump continued to attack her during his Presidential candidacy.
During a campaign rally he assailed her as a “horrible, horrible witness,” and then posted on Twitter that she was “Disgraceful!”
Makaeff ultimately persuaded the judge presiding over the Trump University case to let her remove her name as a plaintiff.
Trump has long employed a series of hardball tactics against anyone who threatens his ego:
- Countersuits, threats and personal insults against outsiders; and
- Stringent confidentiality agreements against employees, business partners, his former spouses and now his campaign staffers.
As an authoritarian who demands the right to craft his own image. Trump furiously denies others the right to dissent from it.
In February, 2016, Trump said that he was “gonna open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
After the New York Times published pages from his 1995 tax return, Trump tweeted that his lawyers “want to sue the failing @nytimes so badly for irresponsible intent. I said no (for now), but they are watching. Really disgusting.”
Trump is a master of “dog whistle” threats. On August 9, 2016, he falsely told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.
“If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Hillary Clinton
“Don’t treat this as a political misstep,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, who has called for stiffer gun laws, wrote on Twitter. “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.”
Trump–and his apologists–claimed he was simply “joking.”
But Trump was not done with making threats against Hillary Clinton–and her husband, Bill.
Donald Trump
On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post leaked a video of Donald Trump making sexually predatory comments about women (“I don’t even wait. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”).
The remarks came during a 2005 exchange with Billy Bush, then the host of Access Hollywood.
The admissions ignited a firestorm against Trump, even among many Republicans.
Rather than accept responsibility for his actions, Trump blamed the Clintons–who had nothing to do with the release.
Speaking before a rally in Pennsylvania on October 10, Trump threatened: “If they wanna release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we’ll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things. There are so many of them, folks.”
Since being elected President, Trump has continued to lash out at a wide range of people, organizations and even countries.
Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern politics, offered a still-timely warning to those inclined to gratuitously hand out insults and threats:
“I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one.
“For neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy–but the one makes him more cautions, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.”
And for those who expect Trump to stop constantly picking fights, Machiavelli has an equally stern warning:
“No man can be found so prudent as to be able to [adopt his mode of operating to changing circumstances] either because he cannot deviate from that to which his nature disposes him, or else because, having always prospered by walking in one path, he cannot persuade himself that it is well to leave it….”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 30, 2017 at 12:19 am
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks appear every Friday on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
On March 25, 2016, Shields–a liberal, and Brooks, a conservative–came to some disturbingly similar conclusions about Donald Trump.
Eerily, their conclusions echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
Heinz Guderian
Guderian thus enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
On the PBS Newshour, moderator Judy Woodruff noted that “polls show Trump’s standing with women voters had worsened in recent months.”
Judy Woodruff
David Brooks said that Trump had displayed “a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat. It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent.”
MARK SHIELDS: “She just asked him tough questions and was totally fair, by everybody else’s standards.”
Donald Trump
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Once in power, Hitler quickly–and violently–eliminated his opposition. He make no attempt to disguise this aspect of his character, because the opposition was weak and divided and soon collapsed after the first violent attack. This allowed Hitler to pass laws which destroyed the safeguards enacted by the Weimar Republic against the the dangers of dictatorship.
MARK SHIELDS: “And I don’t know at what point it becomes…politically, he’s still leading. And I would have to say he’s the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler promised to “make Germany great again” both domestically and internationally. And this won him many followers. In time he controlled the largest party in the land and this allowed him, by democratic procedure, to assume power.
DAVID BROOKS: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: [Hitler] was isolated as a human being. He had no real friend. There was nobody who was really close to him.
Adolf Hitler
There was nobody he could talk to freely and openly. And just as he never found a true friend, he was denied the ability to deeply love a woman.
DAVID BROOKS: “And [Trump’s] relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Everything on this earth that casts a glow of warmth over our life as mortals–friendship with fine men, the pure love for a wife, affection for one’s own children–all this was and forever remained unknown to him.
DAVID BROOKS: “And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude towards women.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: He lived alone, cherishing his loneliness, with only his gigantic plans for company. His relationship with Eva Braun may seem to contradict what I have written. But it is obvious that she could not have had any influence over him. And this is unfortunate, for it could only have been a softening one.
* * * * *
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.”
On November 8, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans catapulted Donald Trump–a man with an “odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity”–into the Presidency.
And so this man–“who received no love, can give no love”–came to assume all the awesome powers that go with that office.
Future historians–if there are any–will similarly and harshly condemn those Americans who, like “good Germans,” joyfully embraced a regime dedicated to celebrating Trump’s egomania, depriving America’s poor of their only source of healthcare, and further enriching the ultra-wealthy.
A regime based on lies (“alternative facts”), censorship and threats of force against those who desired to live as citizens in a republic, instead of a dictatorship.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 27, 2017 at 12:31 am
Less than one week since Donald Trump became President of the United States, many of those who voted for him have come to regret their decision.
So many, in fact, that a new Twitter account has emerged to voice their rage and disappointment: Trump_Regrets. At present, it has accrued almost 60,000 followers.
Yet many of the behaviors attacked–Trump’s egomania, his plans to gut the Affordable Care Act and give tax breaks to the wealthy–were known long before the election.
Among those who discussed them: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks, who appear every Friday on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
On March 25, 2016, Shields–a liberal, and Brooks, a conservative–came to some disturbingly similar conclusions about the character of Trump, then the Republican Presidential front-runner.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
Eerily, their conclusions echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about the character of German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
As a result, Guderian enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
Heinz Guderian
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-139-1112-17 / Knobloch, Ludwig / CC-BY-SA [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Moderator Judy Woodruff opened the discussion by alluding to the blood feud then raging between Trump and his fellow Republican, Texas U.S. Senator Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz.
Both were seeking their party’s Presidential nomination–and both were ruthlessly determined to attain it.
Cruz accused Trump of being behind a recent National Enquirer story charging him with having a series of extramarital affairs.
An anti-Trump Super PAC posted on Facebook a photo of a scantily-clad Melania Trump–his wife. The photo had been taken 16 years ago when, as a model, she posed for British GQ. Its publication came just ahead of the primary caucuses in sexually conservative Utah, which Cruz won.
Trump quickly responded on Twitter, accusing the Cruz campaign of leaking the photo, warning Cruz: “Be careful or I will spill the beans on your wife.”
Cruz struck back, defending his wife, Heidi, and calling Trump a coward. The next day, Trump retweeted an unflattering image of Mrs. Cruz.
This “war of the wives” had cost Trump dearly in his standing with American women. In March, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 64% of women felt highly unfavorably disposed toward him.
DAVID BROOKS: “The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat.
Donald Trump
“It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent. And so we have seen a bit of that show up again.
“But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his–even his misogyny is a childish misogyny….
“He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: As Hitler’s self-confidence grew, and as his power became more firmly established both inside and outside Germany, he became overbearing and arrogant. Everyone appeared to him unimportant compared to himself.
Previously, Hitler had been open to practical considerations, and willing to discuss matters with others. But now he became increasingly autocratic.
Judy Woodruff asked Mark Shields if the uproar over Donald Trump’s disdain for women could really hurt his candidacy.
MARK SHIELDS: The ad featuring a scantily-clad Melania Trump “elicited from Donald Trump the worst of his personality, the bullying, the misogyny, as David has said, brought it out.
“But I think it’s more than childish and juvenile and adolescent. There is something creepy about this, his attitude toward women.
“Take Megyn Kelly of FOX News, who he just has an absolute obsession about, and he’s constantly writing about, you know, how awful she is and no talent and this and that.
Megyn Kelly
“And I don’t know if he’s just never had women–strong, independent women in his life who have spoken to him. It doesn’t seem that way….
“She just asked him tough questions and was totally fair, by everybody else’s standards.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler’s most outstanding quality was his will power. It was by this that he compelled men to follow him. When Hitler spoke to a small group he closely observed each person to determine how his words were affecting each man present.
If he noticed that some member of the group was not being swayed by his speech, he spoke directly to that person until he believed he had won him over. But if the target of his persuasive effort still remained obstinate, Hitler would exclaim: “I haven’t convinced that man!”
His immediate reaction was to get rid of such people. As he grew increasingly successful, he grew increasingly intolerant.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on January 25, 2017 at 8:15 am
The first six months of Gaius Caligula’s reign were successful and popular.
After that, wrote his biographer, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus: “So much for Caligula as emperor; we must now tell of his career as a monster.”
Gaius Caligula
Among his litany of crimes, according to Suetonius:
“He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death, and trying to rouse him to gaiety and jesting by a great show of affability.
“He had the manager of his gladiatorial shows and beast-baitings beaten with chains in his presence for several successive days, and would not kill him until he was disgusted at the stench of his putrefied brain.”
Donald Trump has never been charged with murder. But during his second Presidential debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he previewed the dangers of a Trump Justice Department: “If I win I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.”
Donald Trump
Nor did he limit himself to making threats against Democrats. On March 16, 2016, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
That Republicans clearly saw this as a threat is undeniable. Paul Ryan, their Speaker of the House, said: “Nobody should say such things in my opinion because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable.”
Caligula’s egomania soon reached psychotic heights.
- He gave himself several surnames: “Pious,” “Child of the Camp,” “Father of the Armies,” and “Greatest and Best of Caesars.”
- Flattered that he had risen higher than princes and kings, he began to believe himself a god.
- He appeared at the temple of Castor and Pollux to be worshiped as Jupiter Latiaris.
- He also set up a special temple to his own godhead.
Trump’s egomania is literally stamped on his properties. Of the 515 entities he owns, 268 of them–52%–bear his last name. He often refers to his properties as “the swankiest,” “the most beautiful.”
Among the references he’s made to himself:
- “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”
- “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”
- “My Twitter has become so powerful that I can actually make my enemies tell the truth.”
- “My IQ is one of the highest–and you all know it.”
When Caligula wasn’t ordering wholesale Stalin-like purges–ranging from Roman aristocrats to slaves–he was setting new records for debauchery.
According to the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus: “He lived in habitual incest with all his [three] sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above. Of these he is believed to have violated Drusilla when he was still a minor.”
Trump has never been charged with incest, but he’s repeatedly made sexually inappropriate comments about his daughter, Ivanka:
- “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father …”
- When Trump appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, he was joined on stage by Ivanka. After they kissed, Dr. Oz said: “It’s nice to see a dad kiss his daughter.” Trump: “I kiss her every chance I get.” The remark was edited before the show aired.
- When asked how he would react if Ivanka, a former teen model, posed for Playboy, Trump replied: “I don’t think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
- “You know who’s one of the great beauties of the world, according to everybody? And I helped create her. Ivanka. My daughter, Ivanka. She’s 6 feet tall, she’s got the best body.”
I
Ivanka Trump
For all his cruelty and egomania, the trait that finally destroyed Caligula was his joy in humiliating others.
His fatal mistake was to taunt Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Among the groups Trump gratuitously insulted during the 2016 Presidential race:
- Latinos
- Asians
- Muslims
- Blacks
- The Disabled
- Women
- Prisoners-of-War
- Journalists
- Celebrities
- Ordinary citizens
The number of people, places and institutions Trump has insulted is so extensive The New York Times compiled a list of 273 of them.
Before taking office as President, Trump added to this list the United States Secret Service. He did so by keeping his longtime private security force, and combining its members with the elite federal agency.
By marginalizing the Secret Service, he clearly sent the message: You’re not good enough, and I don’t trust you.
It remains to be seen if Trump suffers the final fate of Caligula.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 24, 2017 at 12:40 pm
Donald Trump is now officially the 45th President of the United States.
But even many Republicans secretly believe he’s better-suited for the role of Gaius Caligula. It was Caligula who, as the mad emperor of Rome, once said: “Bear in mind that I can treat anyone exactly as I please.”
Gaius Caligula
On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post leaked a video of Donald Trump making sexually predatory comments about women.
The remarks came during a 2005 exchange with Billy Bush, then the host of Access Hollywood (and now host of Today).
The two were traveling in an Access Hollywood bus to the set of the soap opera Days of Our Lives, where Trump was to make a cameo appearance.
Neither Trump nor Bush could be seen during the exchange–the video focuses entirely on the bus. But the audio came in clearly–and, for Trump, damningly:
Donald Trump: You know and I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach.
Unknown: She used to be great. She’s still very beautiful.
Trump: I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married.
Unknown: That’s huge news.
Trump: No, no, Nancy. No this was—and I moved on her very heavily, in fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.
I took her out furniture. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.
[At that point, they spot Adrianne Zucker, the starring actress in Days in Our Lives.]
Donald Trump
Bush: Sheesh, your girl’s hot as shit. In the purple.
Various: Whoa! Yes! Whoa!
Bush: Yes! The Donald has scored. Whoa, my man!
Trump: Look at you. You are a pussy. Maybe it’s a different one.
Bush: It better not be the publicist. No, it’s her. It’s—
Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.
Bush: Whatever you want.
Trump: Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.
When the Washington Post broke the story on October 7, the reaction was immediate–and explosive.
This was not a testosterone-fueled teenager fantasizing about making love with a girl he adored.
This was a 70-year-old man bragging about having used deceit to try to lure a married woman into bed.
And about having used his celebrity status to force himself on women: I moved on her very heavily. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.
Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.
Gaius Caligula himself couldn’t have said it better.
Gaius Caligula lived 29 years and ruled Rome three years, 10 months and eight days. When he died, his reign of depravity and terror died with him.
Today, millions of Americans fear a similar fate will sweep their country now that Donald Trump has become President.
Caligula’s life spanned August 31, 12 A.D. to January 24, 41 A.D. His chief biographer was Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.
Trump was born on June 14, 1946.
Caligula became Emperor in 37 A.D. after succeeding the Emperor Tiberius, his uncle who had adopted him as a son after his father died.
Trump was elected President on November 8, after winning 304 electoral votes to 227 for his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump began his real estate career at his father’s real estate and construction company. He rose to wealth and fame after his father, Fred, gave him control of the business in 1971.
Caligula’s reign began well—and popularly. He gave Tiberius a magnificent funeral—then recalled to Rome all those whom Tiberius had banished, and ignored all charges that Tiberius had leveled against them.
He gave bonuses to the military and destroyed lists of those Tiberius had declared traitors. He allowed the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to himself.
Similarly, soon after acquiring the family business, Trump set out to build his own empire–hotels, golf courses, casinos, skyscrapers across North and South America, Europe and Asia. He named many of them after himself.
He appeared at the Miss USA pageants, which he owned from 1996 to 2015. He hosted and co-produced The Apprentice, an NBC reality television series from 2004 to 2015.
The ancient historians describe Caligula as a noble and enlightened ruler during the first six months of his reign. But in October 37 A.D. he fell seriously ill or perhaps was poisoned.
Caligula soon recovered but emerged a changed man. He began laying claim to divine majesty, and killing or exiling anyone he saw as a threat. He ordered a tribune to murder his brother Tiberius, and drove his father-in‑law Silanus to cut his throat with a razor.
He favorite method of execution was to have a victim tortured with many slight wounds. His infamous order for this: “Strike so that he may feel that he is dying.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 23, 2017 at 1:21 am
On January 21, Donald Trump–on his first full day as President–visited the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Officially, he was there to pay tribute to the men and women who serve on the front lines of America’s Intelligence community.
The men and women who dedicate their lives to finding out when and where America’s enemies are planning to strike. And to countering those threats.
Unofficially, Trump was there for a reason he would never admit: To make amends for a smear campaign he had waged since November against the CIA in particular and the Intelligence community in general.
The reason: He had been enraged at the unanimous findings by the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency that Russian President Vladimir Putin had intervened in the 2016 Presidential election to ensure the defeat of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
And now Trump was appearing before what, to CIA employees, was the agency’s most sacred site: The star-studded memorial wall honoring the 117 CIA officers who had fallen in the line of duty.
Donald Trump at the CIA
So what did Trump spend much of his time talking about?
Himself, of course.
Here are the major excerpts:
….You know, when I was young and when I was — of course, I feel young. I feel like I’m 30, 35, 39. Somebody said, are you young? I said, I think I’m young. You know, I was stopping — when we were in the final month of that campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops. Speeches, speeches, in front of 25,000, 30,000 people, 15,000, 19,000 from stop to stop. I feel young….
When I was young, we were always winning things in this country. We’d win with trade. We’d win with wars….We don’t win anymore. The old expression, “to the victor belong the spoils” — you remember.
I always used to say, keep the oil. I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said, in addition to that, keep the oil….
Now, I said it for economic reasons. But if you think about it….if we kept the oil you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil. But okay. Maybe you’ll have another chance….
And the reason you’re my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.
And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite — exactly. And they understand that, too.
And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday at the speech. Did everybody like the speech? I’ve been given good reviews. But we had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field.
I say, wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, the field was — it looked like a million, million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there.
Crowds at Trump and Obama Inaugurals
And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.
In fact, when I first started, I said, oh, no. The first line, I got hit by a couple of drops. And I said, oh, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it. But the truth is that it stopped immediately.
It was amazing. And then it became really sunny. And then I walked off and it poured right after I left. It poured. But, you know, we have something that’s amazing because we had — it looked — honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was, it was….
We had 250,000 people literally around — you know, in the little bowl that we constructed. That was 250,000 people. The rest of the 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington Monument, was packed. So we caught them, and we caught them in a beauty. And I think they’re going to pay a big price.
So a reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on there cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time Magazine.
I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record….that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that? What do you think?
* * * * *
At least one former CIA director, John Brennan, thought Trump’s remarks were “despicable.”
“Former CIA Director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes. Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself,” Nick Shapiro, Brennan’s former deputy chief of staff, said in a tweeted statement.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 20, 2017 at 12:06 am
For five years, Donald Trump, more than anyone else, popularized the slander that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya–and was therefore not an American citizen.
For more than a year during his 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump continued doing so.
Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity steadily fell among blacks–to 1%, compared to the 91% of black voters who backed Hillary Clinton.
Even the managers of Trump’s campaign urged him to put the “birther” issue behind him.
And so, on September 16, 2016–10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton–Trump made his version of a reversal.
Donald Trump: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
He did so in about seven seconds and 40 words–after spending a half hour paying tribute to the military and promoting his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C.:
“Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.
“I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
His tone made it clear that he felt uneasy making that statement–and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.
He refused to take questions from reporters covering the event. Nor did he apologize for his five-year campaign of slander.
Nor did any Republican apologize for the eight-year campaign of slander and obstruction their party had waged against the Nation’s first black President.
President Barack Obama
Among its highlights:
- In September, 2009, Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled “You lie!” during Obama’s health care speech to Congress.
- In January, 2010, an effigy of President Barack Obama was found hanging from a building in Plains, Georgia.
- In December, 2011, Brent Bozell, who runs the right-wing Media Research Center, called Obama to “a skinny, ghetto crackhead.”
- In December, 2011, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), said of Michelle Obama: “She lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.”
- In January, 2012, Mitt Romney’s son, Matt, said his father might release his tax returns “as soon as President Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things.”
- In February, 2012, right-wing columnist Ann Coulter offered: “Voters with forty years of politically correct education are ecstatic to have the first Black president. They just love the idea even if we did get Flavor Flav instead of Thomas Sowell.”
- In May, 2012, a flatbed truck drove through new York holding a trailer with eight mannequin-like bodies hanging on nooses. One of the figures resembled President Obama, with a sign on the truck reading: “Obama Is Onboard, Find Out Why. Visit YouTube.com And Search Keyword PatriotPhipps.”
- In May, 2012, Patrick Lanzo, a bar owner in Paulding County, Georgia, posted a sign reading: “I do not support the nigger in the White House.” In 2009 he posted a sign that read, “Obama’s plan for health-care: nigger rig it.” Lanzo advertises his establishment as a “Klan bar.”
- Throughout the 2012 Presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich repeatedly called Obama “the greatest food stamp President in American history.”
- Obama has been portrayed as a shoeshine man, an Islamic terrorist and a chimp. The image of his altered face has been shown on a product called Obama Waffles in the manner of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. He has been repeatedly depicted with a Hitler forelock and mustache.
- Among the protest signs they have brandished by Tea Party members: “Obama’s Plan: White Slavery,” “The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s Ovens,” and “Obama was Not Bowing [to the Saudi King] He was Sucking Saudi Jewels.”
- Other Tea Party posters: “Imam Obama Wants to Ban Pork” and “The Zoo Has An African Lion, and the White House Has a Lyin’ African.”
- Tea Partiers have chanted at Obama: “Bye, bye, Blackbird” and “Kenyan go home!”
- During the Republican-imposed government shutdown–October 1-17, 2013–Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) told Obama: “I cannot even stand to look at you,” The incident occurred when Obama met with lawmakers to try to find a resolution to the shutdown.
- On October 1, 2013, Congressional Republicans shut down the government in an attempt to force President Barack Obama to de-fund his signature achievement: The Affordable Care Act (ACA). President Obama refused, and 800,000 federal workers were furloughed.
- On October 14, while Republicans were threatening to drive the nation into bankruptcy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin posted on Facebook her “secret plan” to impeach President Obama:
- “It’s time for the president to be honest with the American people for a change. Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense.”
- In short: If the Republicans force the country into default, Obama should be impeached. And if the President finds a way to avoid default, he should be impeached.
* * * * *
When Republicans say, “We need to support our President,” they don’t mean every President.
They mean: Every Republican President. And only every Republican President.
For Republicans, Presidents elected by Democrats are usurpers: They are to be obstructed as often as possible–and impeached whenever possible.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 19, 2017 at 3:46 pm
Reince Priebus, the incoming White House Chief of Staff for soon-to-be President Donald J. Trump, is furious.
There are three reasons for his outrage.
First, millions of Americans are questioning whether Trump was legitimately elected. Their suspicions are based on solid evidence, supplied by the American Intelligence community, that Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 Presidential election to help him defeat Hillary Clinton.
Second, among those Americans are members of the United States Congress–such as Georgia Democratic Representative John Lewis.
On the January 15 edition of “Meet the Press,” Lewis was asked by host Chuck Todd: “Do you plan on trying to forge a relationship with Donald Trump?”
“No,” said Lewis. “I believe forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be very difficult. I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president.”
John Lewis
“You do not consider him a legitimate president. Why is that?”
“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”
And the third reason Priebus is outraged: He believes–or at least claims to believe–that President Barack Obama should vouch for Trump’s legitimacy.
“I think President Obama should step up,” Priebus said January 15 on ABC’s “This Week.” “We’ve had a great relationship with the White House….I think the administration can do a lot of good by telling folks that are on the Republican side of the aisle, look, we may have lost the election on the Democratic side, but it’s time to come together.”
Reince Priebus
“You didn’t have Republicans questioning whether or not Obama legitimately beat John McCain in 2008,” Priebus added.
“This Week” host George Stephanopoulos replied that Trump had questioned Obama’s legitimacy as an American citizen until almost the end of the 2016 Presidential race.
“But look, George, that’s not the point!” Priebus said, visibly agitated. “The point is not where Barack Obama was born! The point is that we’ve got congressmen on the Democratic side of the aisle that are questioning the legitimacy of President-elect Trump.”
In short: Let’s ignore Trump’s five-year slander campaign against the legitimacy of President Obama. What’s important is that people are questioning the legitimacy of a Republican elected with the help of Russian Communists.
In 2011, Trump, then-host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” was thinking of running for President against Obama.
Seeking to gain popularity among America’s Right-wing, Trump almost singlehandedly created the popular fiction that the President was born in Kenya–and was not an American citizen.
His motive: To convince Americans that Obama was an illegitimate President.
Donald Trump
Among the statements Trump made:
February 10, 2011: “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”
March 23, 2011: “I want him to show his birth certificate. I want him to show his birth certificate. … There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”
March 28, 2011: “I am really concerned” [that Obama wasn’t born in the United States]. He said that the birth announcement for Obama in a Hawaii newspaper could have been planted “for whatever reason.”
March 30, 2011: “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was. … He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”
April 7, 2011: “I have people that have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding. You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. Right now I have real doubts.”
April 25, 2011: “I’ve been told very recently…that the birth certificate is missing. I’ve been told that it’s not there or it doesn’t exist. And if that’s the case, it’s a big problem.”
On April 27, President Obama released his original, long-form Hawiian birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” said Obama at a press conference, speaking as a father might to a roomful of spiteful children. “We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.
“We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other…if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.”
Trump responded with a series of tweets on Twitter–all of them attacking the legitimacy of the birth certificate that President Obama had released.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 23, 2016 at 12:09 am
Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump are furious at Starbucks.
For starters, the company’s CEO, Howard Schultz, endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.
Then, Starbucks “declared war on Christmas” by issuing a “less-festive” holiday paper drinking cup.
Starbucks releases its traditional red holiday cup each November. Past designs have included imagery such as snowflakes, snowmen and Christmas trees.
But in 2015, the company issued a plain red cup minus imagery, triggering a backlash among image-obsessed Christians, who saw it as an “attack” on Christmas.
[The Bible doesn’t give even a generalized date for Jesus’ birth. Nor did Jesus command his followers to celebrate his birth. At the Last Supper, he did command them to honor his death by taking the sacrament.
[Most of the traditions now associated with Christmas can be traced directly to the ancient Roman festival, Saturnalia, which celebrated the deity Saturn. These included feasting, drinking, gift-giving, hanging wreaths and decorating trees—which were not brought indoors.]
When Trump—then running for President—learned of the change in Starbucks cups, he was outraged.
“Did you read about Starbucks?” Trump asked supporters during a rally in Springfield, Ill. “No more ‘Merry Christmas’ at Starbucks. No more. Maybe we should boycott Starbucks.
“If I become president, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” Trump told the crowd—as if, by becoming President, he could issue such an order. “That I can tell you. That I can tell you! Unbelievable.”
Donald Trump
Now that Trump is about to become President, his legions of Trumpsters aren’t waiting for an official order.
On November 17, a Trumpster using the screen name Baked Alaska came up with a new idea to intimidate Starbucks.
Going on Twitter, he advised fellow Trumpsters to proceed with “Operation #TrumpCup.” All they had to do was:
- “Go to Starbucks & tell them your name is Trump
- “If they refuse take video
- “Pls share & spread the word”
One Trumpster subsequently posted on Twitter the following: “I got my Starbucks with Trump name. he yelled Trump get your drink #TrumpCup“
Another one proudly tweeted: “@bakedalaska did this today. They didn’t want to, said it was too political. I reminded her the campaign was over & he’s our president now. pic.twitter.com/LHgi7Vqexh“
This may seem wonderful to Trumpsters, but there are five serious flaws with it:
- By taking on the name of the man they idolize, they are obliterating their own identities.
- They are trying to impose their idol’s name on others, whether they admire him or not.
- This is exactly what the fanatical followers of all tyrants do.
- If there’s more than one Trumpster in a Starbucks, how will each one know which “Trump” is being summoned to get his drink?
- This is actually the opposite of a boycott. They’re making a “statement”—but they’re also putting money into Starbucks’ pocket while doing so.
Baked Alaska, however, intends to stick to his campaign. “We have a culture war to win,” he said in a Periscope video. He claimed that Twitter was suspending accounts of “alt-Right” [i.e., Fascist] users and that liberals were making whites—especially men—feel guilty.
Baked Alaska with his Trump cup
Starbucks reacted by emailing the following statement: “Over the years, writing customer names on cups and calling out their names has been a fun ritual in our stores. Rarely has it been abused or taken advantage of. We hope and trust that our customers will continue to honor that tradition. We don’t require our partners to write or call out names.”
What’s past often turns out to be prologue.
Throughout the 2016 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump relied on threats and insults. He used them against Republicans in the primaries, and against Democrats in the general election.
On March 16, he warned his fellow Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination at the convention in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen.”
After Trump got the nomination, his surrogates continued to raise the specter of violence. Roger Stone, one of his advisers, told the Right-wing Breitbart News website:
“I think he’s [Trump] gotta put [Democrats] on notice that their inauguration will be a rhetorical and when I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath….We will not stand for it.”
If Clinton had won, Trump’s followers would have remained—waiting for the next champion to voice their hatred and call on their votes. Meanwhile, they would have lost their energy as a social and political force.
But Trump did win, and now they feel emboldened. And they will continue to draw encouragement from a steady stream of attacks by Trump and his surrogates.
During the general election, many Trump supporters openly threatened to wage armed rebellion against the government if Clinton won.
What will they do after Trump becomes President—and starts blasting tweets at those who have offended his fragile ego?
Will they stand in front of Starbucks shops and refuse entry to customers–as Adolf Hitler’s brown-shirted Stormtroopers blocked customers from entering Jewish stores?
And will intimidated local police stand by and allow it—as they did in Hitler’s Germany?
“Operation TrumpCup” is only the beginning.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 18, 2016 at 10:22 am
Donald Trump owes his victory to a wide range of circumstances. Among these:
#10 Hillary Clinton gave only one memorable speech during the campaign–and then she quashed any benefits that might have come from it.
This was the “basket of deplorables” speech, delivered at a New York fundraiser on September 9. It was the only Clinton speech to be widely quoted by Democrats and Republicans.
She divided Donald Trump’s supporters into two groups. The first group were the “deplorables,” for whom she showed open contempt:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic –you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.
“He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people–now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
Hillary Clinton (Gage Skidmore photo)
But the second group, she said, consisted of poor, alienated Americans who rightly felt abandoned by their employers and their government:
“But the other basket–and I know this because I see friends from all over America here….but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.
“They don’t buy everything [Trump] says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
After giving this speech, Clinton threw away the good it might well have done her.
First, the day after making the speech, she apologized for it: “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’–that was wrong.”
Many of Trump’s followers were racists, sexists and xenophobes–who deserved condemnation, not apologies. By apologizing, she looked weak, indecisive.
Second, having eloquently reached out to many of the men and women who were a prime constituency for Donald Trump, she made no effort to follow up.
She could have used this moment to offer an economic package that would quickly and effectively address their vital needs for jobs and medical care.
But that would have required her to put one together long ago. And all she had to offer now was boilerplate rhetoric, such as: “Education is the answer.”
Worst of all, Trump turned her speech against her, tweeting: “Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!”
It did.
#11 Neither the Democrats nor the TV networks dared reveal the full intensity of hatred and violence that were hallmarks of Trump’s rallies–and campaign.
Three New York Times reporters who covered Trump’s rallies for over one year routinely witnessed his supporters hurl vulgar taunts such as:
At Hillary Clinton: “Trump that bitch!” “Kill her!” “Lock her up!” “Hillary is a whore!” “Hang the bitch!”
At protesters: “Get out of here, you fag!” “Get him!” “Get the fuck out of here!”
At Latinos: “Build a wall–kill them all!” “Fuck those dirty beaners!” “Send them bastards back. I’m sure that paperwork comes in Spanish.”
At Muslims: “Fuck Islam!” “Islam is not a religion, partner. It’s an ideology.” “You don’t come and talk about America when you’re supporting Muslims.”
At President Barack Obama: “Fuck that nigger!”
H. Allen Scott, a reporter for Fusion, attended a Trump rally and overheard conversations that startled him.
In one, a man marked Arabs as the enemy: “Those sand niggers are out to get us. We need to bomb the hell out of them.”
In the other, the supposed threat came from a different source: “The Donald will get all those Jews out of Washington.”
When protesters were ejected, Trump supporters went wild–and usually turned violent. Protesters were beaten and kicked–often with Trump’s encouragement.
Protesters and supporters duke it out at a Donald Trump rally
Audiences at Trump rallies were overwhelmingly white. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.” Confederate flags were commonly displayed.
TV news networks and the Hillary Clinton campaign could have aired–repeatedly–such footage. Had they done so, Americans would have gotten a brutal, firsthand look at the anger and racism inherent in Trump’s candidacy–and followers.
Instead, Trump was allowed to appear on late-night shows like Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show where he was treated with kid gloves for fun and laughs.
Thus, it is pointless to blame any one person (such as Hillary Clinton) or group (such as those who voted for third-party candidates) for Clinton’s loss. Many factors played a part–including some that, to keep this series at a reasonable length, could not be mentioned.
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THREATS PAST AND FUTURE
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 22, 2017 at 12:31 amRobert Payne, author of the bestselling biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), described Hitler’s “negotiating” style thusly:
“He was incapable of bargaining. He was like a man who goes up to a fruit peddler and threatens to blow his brains out if he does not sell his applies at the lowest possible price.”
What was true for Adolf Hitler was equally true for Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican nominee for President of the United States.
Trump’s vindictive streak was evident on October 9, 2016p, during his second Presidential debate with Hillary Clinton: “If I win I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation–there has never been so many lies and so much deception.”
This played well with Trump’s essentially Fascistic followers, but even conservatives like political columnist Charles Krauthammer disagreed with it:
“I’m one of those who thinks there was a miscarriage of justice in not indicting her. But the problem here is the pattern from Trump.
“He has spoken about using the powers of the government to go after other opponents like the publisher of The Washington Post.
“Do we want to invest in him all the powers of the government if he acts where he seems to want to carry out vendettas?”
Charles Krauthammer
But making threats against anyone who has dared to cross him or has merely roused his ire is a longtime Trump characteristic.
In 2010, Tarla Makaeff, a former customer of Trump’s real-estate seminar business, filed a fraud lawsuit against now-defunct Trump University.
Trump retaliated by filing a defamation suit against her. The case was dismissed by a judge. But Trump continued to attack her during his Presidential candidacy.
During a campaign rally he assailed her as a “horrible, horrible witness,” and then posted on Twitter that she was “Disgraceful!”
Makaeff ultimately persuaded the judge presiding over the Trump University case to let her remove her name as a plaintiff.
Trump has long employed a series of hardball tactics against anyone who threatens his ego:
As an authoritarian who demands the right to craft his own image. Trump furiously denies others the right to dissent from it.
In February, 2016, Trump said that he was “gonna open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
After the New York Times published pages from his 1995 tax return, Trump tweeted that his lawyers “want to sue the failing @nytimes so badly for irresponsible intent. I said no (for now), but they are watching. Really disgusting.”
Trump is a master of “dog whistle” threats. On August 9, 2016, he falsely told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.
“If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Hillary Clinton
“Don’t treat this as a political misstep,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, who has called for stiffer gun laws, wrote on Twitter. “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.”
Trump–and his apologists–claimed he was simply “joking.”
But Trump was not done with making threats against Hillary Clinton–and her husband, Bill.
Donald Trump
On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post leaked a video of Donald Trump making sexually predatory comments about women (“I don’t even wait. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”).
The remarks came during a 2005 exchange with Billy Bush, then the host of Access Hollywood.
The admissions ignited a firestorm against Trump, even among many Republicans.
Rather than accept responsibility for his actions, Trump blamed the Clintons–who had nothing to do with the release.
Speaking before a rally in Pennsylvania on October 10, Trump threatened: “If they wanna release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we’ll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things. There are so many of them, folks.”
Since being elected President, Trump has continued to lash out at a wide range of people, organizations and even countries.
Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern politics, offered a still-timely warning to those inclined to gratuitously hand out insults and threats:
“I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one.
“For neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy–but the one makes him more cautions, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.”
And for those who expect Trump to stop constantly picking fights, Machiavelli has an equally stern warning:
“No man can be found so prudent as to be able to [adopt his mode of operating to changing circumstances] either because he cannot deviate from that to which his nature disposes him, or else because, having always prospered by walking in one path, he cannot persuade himself that it is well to leave it….”
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