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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 14, 2025 at 12:10 am
In the United States of Donald Trump, protecting the right to legitimate elections can get you investigated—if not indicted.
Case in point: Christopher Krebs, who prevented Russian trolls and hackers from sabotaging the 2020 Presidential election.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote.
And there Trump won: 304 to 227.
What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin
Putin had good reason to assist Trump: Putin wanted the United States to ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which has preserved Western Europe from Russian aggression since World War II. And Trump had often attacked America’s funding of NATO as a drain on the American economy.
As for Trump, he wanted something from Putin: He wanted to be President. For this, Putin could supply monies, Internet trolls to confuse voters with falsified news, and even the hacking of key voting centers.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020:
“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”
What Krebs could not know was that, less than five years later, his dedication to ensuring a free democratic election would put him in the crosshairs of the Justice Department.
A Justice Department under the control of the man defeated for the Presidency in 2020: Donald J. Trump.
On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., Trump) issued MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
According to Wikipedia: “Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including during his first and second terms as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.”
So it was fitting that Trump’s memorandum opened with an outright series of lies disguised as an indictment:
“The Federal Government has a constitutional duty and a moral responsibility to respect and promote the free speech rights of Americans.
“Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.
“These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector — including major social media platforms — to suppress conservative or dissenting voices and distort public opinion.
“Much of this censorship took place during a Presidential election with the apparent purpose of undermining the free exchange of ideas and debate.”
When Donald Trump makes an accusation, it is nearly always a confession of a crime he has committed or plans to commit. Thus, the above statements reflect exactly the agenda and practices of both the first Trump administration and the present one.
For example: “Elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.“
Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to purge the U.S. Naval Academy Library of books that focus on race, gender, and sexuality, and historical books on racism and white supremacy. These include books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism.
Thus, two copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf are available for checkout, while Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not.
Memorializing the Holocaust, Janet Jacob’s book on how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed, is gone. But The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. A 1973 novel which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from Third World countries, it has been embraced by white supremacists.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 11, 2025 at 12:16 am
Greed—among evil men—will always find a way.
It did in 1939.
Germany’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, had spent most of the year threatening Poland with invasion. He had even set a secret timetable—September 1—for his attack.
Yet he faced a dangerous obstacle on his road to war: The Soviet Union.
Since the early 1920s Hitler had railed against the Soviet Union as Germany’s greatest threat. He intended, in fact, to destroy it at the first opportunity.
But his still-untested army, the Wehrmacht, wasn’t ready for that yet.
Adolf Hitler
And if he attacked Poland, there was a real danger that the Soviet Union might declare war on Germany.
Hitler wanted a nonaggression treaty with England, with which he had a love/hate relationship. But the British government didn’t trust him.
The Soviet government—headed by Premier Joseph Stalin—also wanted a pact with Great Britain. But the British didn’t trust him, either.
In mid-August, 1939, with the September 1 deadline quickly approaching, Hitler made an unprecedented decision: He humbled himself before his arch-enemy, Stalin, and requested the signing of a Russia-German nonaggression pact.
To sweeten the deal, Hitler offered something that he knew the British would never give Stalin: The eastern half of Poland.
On August 23, the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Nazi Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was signed in Moscow by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbontrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
Joseph Stalin
Nine days later, World War II erupted.
In 2020, greed—among evil men—again found a way.
On November 3, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States. Donald Trump, running for a second term as President, got 74,196,153 votes.
But having repeatedly “joked” about how wonderful it would be if the United States—like China—had a “President-for-Life,” Trump wasn’t ready to concede office.
He immediately began spreading “The Big Lie”: That he had been defeated by massive voter fraud. And that this had been made possible through Dominion Voting Systems.
Donald Trump
Dominion—charged Trump and his attorneys—had rigged its vote-tabulating machines to replace votes for Trump with votes for Biden.
And soon Trump had the help of a major propaganda megaphone to carry his lie nationwide: The Fox News Network.
Just as Hitler and Stalin each had something to gain from their nonaggression pact, so did Trump and Fox.
Trump wanted at least another four unearned years in the White House. And Fox wanted to retain—if not expand—its viewing audience.
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.
Yet just as Trump couldn’t bear losing the intoxicating power of the Presidency, Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Fox, couldn’t bear losing any part of his audience.
In a March 1, 2023 opinion piece, Jack Shafer, Politico’s senior media writer, vividly describes the dilemma Murdoch faced after the 2020 election:
“In Murdoch’s own words, delivered in Dominion suit depositions, he describes himself as frightened by the power Donald Trump holds over the Fox audience….Far from being a media superpower, as his foes would describe him, Murdoch comes off as trapped by the craven choices he made to serve as Trump’s supplicant and protector.
“…The Trump-Fox feedback loop benefited both parties as Fox ran interference for Trump throughout his presidency and Trump filled Fox’s schedule with the strong meat of his persona. By July 2019, Trump had given 61 interviews to Fox channels compared to 17 for ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC/CNBC combined.”
But after Trump incited a deadly riot against the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, Murdoch feared the next Trump explosion would be aimed at Fox.
The reason: 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 by Fox host Tucker Carlson.
Putting the truth bluntly, Murdoch said in a deposition: “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.’”
Twenty days after Trump’s attempted coup—on January 26—Murdoch allowed Mike “My Pillow” Lindell to appear on the network’s Tucker Carlson Tonight Show.
Lindell was a longtime Fox advertiser—and a vocal purveyor of the lie that Dominion had enabled the Democrats to steal the 2020 election.
Two months later, in March, 2021, Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News.
The Hitler-Stalin pact ultimately ravaged the Soviet Union through German invasion and left Germany conquered and divided by Russia for 44 years.
The Trump–Fox pact ultimately left Trump enraged at Fox and left Fox facing financial ruin for its lies on Trump’s behalf.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics on April 10, 2025 at 12:13 am
At one time, Americans believed that the wholesale rewriting of history happened only in the Soviet Union.
“The problem with writing about history in the Soviet Union,” went a popular joke among Russians, “is that you never know what’s going to happen yesterday.”
A classic example of this occurred in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Lavrentiy Beria had been head of the NKVD, the dreaded predecessor to the KGB, from 1938 to 1953. On June 26, 1953, three months after the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Beria was arrested on orders of his fellow Communist Party leaders, who feared he intended to purge them.
Beria was executed on December 23.
Lavrentiy Beria
But the Great Soviet Encyclopedia had just gone to press with a long article singing Beria’s praises.
What to do?
The editors of the Encyclopedia wrote an equally long article about “the Bering Straits,” which was to be pasted over the article about Beria, and sent this off to its subscribers. An unknown number of them decided it was safer to paste accordingly.
Similarly, Joseph Stalin was depicted in Soviet “history” texts as the architect of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany during World War II.
No “historian” dared mention that Stalin’s wholesale purges of the Red Army in the 1930s had made the country vulnerable to the German attack in 1941. As had Stalin’s “nonaggression” pact with Germany in 1939, where he and Adolf Hitler secretly divided Poland between them.
Joseph Stalin
But Russians no longer have a monopoly on rewriting history.
During the 2016 Presidential election, the Republican party furiously rewrote history in a desperate attempt to win the White House.
Specifically, its members tried to convince Americans that:
- President George W. Bush “kept us safe” (excluding, of course, the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, which slaughtered 3,000 Americans); and/or
- President Bush wasn’t to blame for 9/11—it was his predecessor, Bill Clinton (who left office on January 20, eight months earlier).
on J
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
In 2015, Jeb Bush entered the “Rewriting History for Americans” sweepstakes.
On October 16, 2015, during an interview on Bloomberg TV, Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for President in 2016, dared speak (for Republicans) the unspeakable:
“When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time. He was President, OK? Blame him, or don’t blame him, but he was President. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.”
Bush was quick to respond on Twitter: “How pathetic for @realdonaldtrump to criticize the president for 9/11. We were attacked & my brother kept us safe.”
Jeb Bush
Trump replied:
“At the debate you said your brother kept us safe—I wanted to be nice & did not mention the WTC came down during his watch, 9/11.”
And: “No @JebBush, you’re pathetic for saying nothing happened during your brother’s term when the World Trade Center was attacked and came down.”
Suddenly, on February 13, another Republican Presidential candidate rushed to rewrite 9/11: Florida United States Senator Marco Rubio.
According to Rubio: “The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him.”
And on the following day, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he again made the charge: “If you’re going to ascribe blame, don’t blame George W. Bush, blame a decision that was made years earlier, not to take out bin Laden when the opportunity presented itself.”
All of which ignored such embarrassing truths as:
- During the first eight months of the Bush Presidency, Richard Clarke, the counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was not permitted to brief President Bush, despite mounting evidence of plans for a new Al-Qaeda outrage.
- From January 20 to September 11, 2001, Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, 42% of the time.
- National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice initially refused to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject of terrorism. Then she insisted that the matter be handled only by a more junior Deputy Principals meeting.
- Paul Wolfowitz, the number-two man at the Department of Defense, said: “I don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.”
- Even after Clarke outlined the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, Wolfowitz-–whose real target was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein—said: “You give bin Laden too much credit.”
- Finally, at a meeting with Rice on September 4, 2001, Clarke challenged her to “picture yourself at a moment when in the very near future Al-Qaeda has killed hundreds of Americans, and imagine asking yourself what you wish then that you had already done.”
- Seven days later, Al-Qaeda struck, and 3,000 Americans died horrifically—and needlessly.
- Neither Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz ever admitted their negligence. Nor has any of them been brought to account.
People who say the Republicans are “batshit crazy” for denying responsibility for 9/11 clearly haven’t read—or understood—George Orwell’s novel, 1984.
The unnamed Party’s slogan is: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
The same holds true for Republicans: They hope to rewrite the past, as Joseph Stalin did, to wash away their crimes and errors–and pin these on their self-declared enemies.
And thus gain—and retain—absolute power over 300 million Americans.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 9, 2025 at 12:11 am
There are literally no limits to which Donald Trump’s fanatical supporters will go to convince others he’s a heroic champion worthy of their reverence.
On Facebook and Twitter, his disciples post images of him that are not only false but laughably so.
One such image posted by “Nick Adams (Alpha Male)” showed the jowly, grotesquely overweight, 77-year-old ex-President as a muscular bodybuilder. And it came with the caption: “President Trump is a TITAN!”
Ironically, the tweet came on the same day—June 18, 2023—when news broke of the implosion of the Titan mini-sub and the loss of its five-man crew. The tragedy occurred during a dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in 1912.
Other memes have depicted Trump—a notorious draft-dodger who received no fewer than five deferments to escape the Vietnam war—as a military hero, clad in full military gear.
One even claimed he had killed Osama bin Laden—an act that occurred when Barack Obama was President and Trump was safely presiding over the TV show, “The Apprentice.”
Other propagandists for Trump have depicted him as beloved by Jesus. This despite the fact that Trump is a notorious liar, egomaniac, adulterer, thief and materialist.
Still others have tried to compare Trump to historical titans—like Winston Churchill.
On May 25, 2020, mass protests erupted across the country following the murder of George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer.
Cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City saw stores looted, vandalized and/or burned. In response, President Trump called for harsh policing, telling governors in a nationwide conference call that they must “dominate” protesters or be seen as “weak.”
Death of George Floyd
To drive home his point, on June 1, 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.
The purpose of the removal: So Trump—holding a Bible upside down—could have a photo-op in front of the church.
On June 3, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany compared Trump’s photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s visits to bombed British cities during World War II:
“Through all of time, we have seen presidents and leaders across the world who have had leadership moments and very powerful symbols that were important for a nation to see at any given time to show a message of resilience and determination.
“Like Churchill, we saw him inspecting the bombing damage. It sent a powerful message of leadership to the British people.”
Kayleigh McEnany
Comparing Trump to Churchill proved a triumph of imagination on McEnany’s part:
- Churchill was an avowed and relentless opponent of Fascism—and especially its most infamous exponent, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
- During the 1930s, as Europe’s democracies ignored or quailed before Nazi threats, Churchill demanded that England arm for the coming war against Nazi Germany.
- Trump, a Fascistic dictator by nature, tried to rule by fiat and identified with dictators—most notably Communist ones, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un.
- Throughout World War II, Churchill had only one bodyguard—Inspector Walter Thompson, of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.
Winston Churchill (testing a submachinegun); Walter Thompson (in black fedora)
- Trump was constantly protected by hundreds of Secret Service agents who were supplemented by platoons of local police.
- During bombing raids, Churchill often climbed atop London buildings to watch the bombardment—or raced to cities he had just learned were under attack.
- During the George Floyd protests, Trump ducked into the White House’s bombproof bunker.
- Trump turned the normally well-protected White House into an armed fortress. Block after block of tall, black reinforced fencing had been erected in recent days. Tan military vehicles rolled along Pennsylvania Avenue and camo-clad troops patrolled the corner where tourists once bought red, white and blue USA sweatshirts.
- As a young man, Churchill had served as a second lieutenant in the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars regiment of the British Army. He volunteered to campaign against Islamic rebels in the Swat Valley of northwest India. In Egypt, he joined the 21st Lancers and saw action in the Battle of Omdurman.
- Trump had used his father’s influence to win five draft deferments during the Vietnam war—four allowing him to complete college and one for “bone spurs.”
Donald Trump is by no means the first tyrant to be hailed as a hero.
Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler—who almost certainly never rode a horse—was depicted as an armor-clad knight holding a swastika banner while astride a spirited steed.
And the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin—whose pockmarked face, short stature and widening girth were visible to all who met him—was depicted in posters as handsome, gigantic and trim.
Tyrants pay close attention to how they are depicted. They want to be seen as forever modest, humble, wise and courageous—the embodiment of virtue and patriotism.
To depict them as they usually are—vain, arrogant, stupid, cowardly—they consider a personal affront and a challenge to their absolute rule.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 8, 2025 at 12:27 am
The first six months of Gaius Caligula’s reign as Emperor of Rome 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.”
The same could now be written about Donald Trump.
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 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 among his first acts as reelected President was to issue pardons to his 1,500-plus supporters charged in the January 6, 2021 insurrection that shook the foundation of American democracy.
Dozens of them had prior convictions or pending charges for rape, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child pornography and drug trafficking.
Donald Trump
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived enemies, including political opponents and private citizens.
To prevent this, President Joe Biden issued pre-pardons to, among others:
- Former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney;
- Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley;
- Members of the Biden family;
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases;
- Members of Congress who served on the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol.
Issuing pardons to those who had not committed crimes to protect them from a vengeance-seeking President was an act unprecedented in American history.
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.
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 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: “[Caligula] 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 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.”
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.
Since returning to the White House on January 20, Trump has ordered a massive and continuing purge of federal employees. By April 1, 2025, about 60,000 workers had been laid off or fired.
Among the purged agencies:
- Federal Aviation Administration
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Food and Drug Administration
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Department of Health and Human Services
These firings were not related to poor job performance. And those fired were not given advance notice of their coming termination.
Veterans—who comprise about 30% of the federal workforce–have been particularly hard-hit.
Even those responsible for protecting Trump have been or will be affected: Many Secret Service agents have friends or family members whose lives have been shattered by these purges.
Some of those victims have lost their livelihood. Still others may die of illnesses owing to Trump’s attacks on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It remains to be seen if Trump suffers the final fate as Caligula.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on April 7, 2025 at 12:07 am
Even many Republicans secretly believe that Donald Trump is better-suited for the role of Gaius Caligula than President of the United States. 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. 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. 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. He 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 again become President.
Caligula’s life spanned August 31, 12 A.D. to January 24, 41 A.D. His chief biographer was Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.
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 reelected President on November 5, 2024, after winning 312 electoral votes to 226 for his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
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, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 4, 2025 at 12:09 am
Southern treason, racism and ignorance have given the United States five periods of infamy.
Infamy 4: 2000 – COVID-19 pandemic.
Donald Trump’s four-year Presidency produced a legacy of unprecedented racism, criminality, abuse of power and treason.
But the crime which brought him down was his unwillingness to protect Americans from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.
Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, demands to “re-open the country,” Ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Trump quickly made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask in public—even though no vaccine was available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
On the July 21, 2021, edition of the PBS Newshour, Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart outlined the catastrophic results of Trump’s behavior: “If we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents, saying, ‘Wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine,’ we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
It took the election of Joseph R. Biden to fashion a comprehensive attack on COVID-19.
By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus.
But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.
COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one.
What had happened?
“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
David Brooks
And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.
By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri-–with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40% of all cases nationwide.
And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19.
Just as the South unleashed the Civil War on America, it had ignited a new wave of COVID-19 on America.
Infamy 5: 2024 – Backing Trump again
Donald Trump is the only American President to be impeached twice—once for trying to extort “a favor” from Ukraine and again for inciting a violent attack on Congress.
On January 6, 2021, having failed to win re-election, he incited a deadly attack on Congressional members who were counting Electoral College votes. His goal: To intimidate them into throwing out the results and allowing him to become “President-for-Life.”
As a Presidential candidate in 2024, he has constantly repeated the lie that he won in 2020 but was cheated by massive vote fraud.
He has viciously attacked immigrants—both legal and illegal. During his September 11 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he falsely charged that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
The results: In Springfield, a string of bomb threats have shut down city and school buildings. Public events have been canceled. And state troopers have been sent in to guard students going to school.
Most ominously, Trump intends to implement Project 2025, the Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a Fascistic dictatorship. Under this:
- Career civil servants will be fired en masse and replaced by fanatical Right-wingers whose only loyalty is to Trump.
- The FBI director will be personally accountable to Trump—just as the KGB director is accountable to Vladimir Putin.
- The Department of Homeland Security will be abolished.
- Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—will be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
- Abortion will be outlawed.
And, once again, it’s the South that threatens to end American democracy.
His attacks on nonwhites speak directly to Southerners’ longstanding racism. His attacks on the federal government feed into their resentment over losing the Civil War 159 years ago.
Most Southerners have abandoned democracy and lustily embraced the creation of a Right-wing dictatorship. Where they were once fiercely anti-Communist, they are now fiercely anti-liberal.
In 1776, Southerners’ fervent embrace of slavery almost aborted the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the American Republic.
In 2024, Southerners’ fervent embrace of racism, hatred and treason may signal its demise.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 3, 2025 at 12:05 am
Throughout its history the South has been a hotbed of treason, racism and ignorance.
Today, it proudly continues holding fast to these traditions—as it threatens the entire country with a Fascistic dictatorship under Donald Trump.
Infamy 1: 1860 – 1865 – The Confederate States of America.
Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865
Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
From 1860 to 1865, the South—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia—produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was increasingly unwilling to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
Lincoln—during his First Inaugural Address—bluntly said that he did not intend to “directly or indirectly…interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Abraham Lincoln
But that was not enough for Southerners.
Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.
Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.
On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
This ignited the American Civil War, costing the lives of 750,000 Americans—at a time when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.
Four years later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.
And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.
The South had paid a high price for its investment in treason.
Infamy 2: 1964 – 2024 – Racism breeds Southern Republicans.
In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress, ending more than a century of blatant discrimination against blacks.
The South—which before the Civil War had been solidly Democratic—suddenly went solidly Republican.
To understand this mammoth shift, it’s vital to realize: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives.
The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic.
Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery—and opposing the rights of freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.
When, in the early 1960s, Democrats championed the rights of blacks, Southerners bolted for the Republican party—which held to the same values that slavery/discrimination-supporting Democrats once did.
After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson told an aide: “We have just lost the South for a generation.”
Johnson was wrong: A generation lasts 20 to 30 years. It’s been 60 years since the signing of the Act, and the South is still solidly within the Republican camp.
To compete successfully in this region, Democrats would need to demand the reinstatement of segregation—if not slavery.
1968 election
Infamy 3: 2016 – Fascist racism elects Donald Trump as President.
Repeatedly, when asked why they supported Trump, his followers said: “He says what I’ve been thinking!”
And what Trump appealed to, above all else, was racist hatred.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016
BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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.”
And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President had shocked whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.
In 2016 macho, largely uneducated, anti-black Southern males couldn’t accept a woman—Hillary Clinton—occupying the White House.
They ignored reputable reports—later confirmed—that Trump’s campaign was backed by Russian oligarchs linked to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB.
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In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 2, 2025 at 12:08 am
Future historians—if there are any—may well view the administration of President Donald Trump the same way that historian Richard J. Evans analyzes the Third Reich.
To place the infamy of the Trump administration in the same context as that of the Third Reich, consider the opening paragraph from his latest bestseller: Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich.
Substitute “Republicans” for “Nazis,” “Donald Trump” for “Adolf Hitler,” and “Americans” for “Germans.”
As in the following:
“Who were the Republicans? What motivated the leaders and functionaries of the Republican movement and those who put their project into action? What had happened to their moral compass?
“Were they in some sense deviant, or deranged, or degenerate? Were they gangsters acting with criminal intent? Or were they ‘ordinary men’ (and a few women), or perhaps, more precisely, ‘ordinary Americans’? Did they come from the margins of society, were they outsiders, or were they in some sense part of American society’s mainstream?
“And how do they explain Trump’s drive to achieve dictatorial power? Was he a kind of empty shell, devoid of personal qualities and without a personal life, into which Americans poured their deepest political ambitions and desires?
“What made otherwise normal people carry out, or approve, terrible and murderous atrocities against Republicans’ real and supposed enemies? Or were they perhaps not normal at all? Beyond this, why did so many leading Americans in responsible positions, in the key institutions of society, go along with the dictatorship….?
“And what did those of them who survived….think of about their conduct during the Trump administration? Did they gain a moral perspective on it, did they repent, did they come to an understanding of what they had done?”
Americans have always considered themselves separate from—and superior to—those in other nations. Germans and Russians might fall prey to evil dictators, but Americans? Never!
Evangelical Americans believe that the United States is divinely inspired—and protected.
Thus, American TV networks have filled the airwaves with movies and doc-u-dramas about Nazi Germany such as: “Hitler: The Rise of Evil,” “The Bunker,” “Nuremberg,” “Holocaust,” “Inside the Third Reich,” “Conspiracy,” “Hitler’s SS: Portrait of Evil,” “The Plot to Kill Hitler.”
Yet American networks have been unwilling to produce films about the evil of America’s own Right-wing leaders. It’s extremely unlikely that future network executives will OK a miniseries on “Trump: The Rise of Evil.”
To date, only one film—“Tail Gunner Joe”—has been made about the rise and fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
For four years (1950-1954) McCarthy terrorized Americans with false charges of a massive Communist conspiracy, leaving broken lives and national mistrust in his wake.
And “Tail Gunner Joe” was made in 1974.
The fall of President Richard Nixon in 1974 led networks to produce such movies as “Blind Ambition” (1979) and “The Final Days” (1989). But those appeared decades ago. And no new ones have appeared since.
In 1989, CBS found the courage to run “Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North.” What made this unusual was that it appeared only three years after the story of the infamous “Iran-Contra” arms-for-hostages story broke.
But the role of former President Ronald Reagan in waging unjustified terror-war against Nicaragua was totally ignored. And no other movie has since been made on this disgraceful period in United States history.
Ronald Reagan
Americans have always been convinced of their own purity as a people—especially when compared to those supposedly corrupt, undemocratic European nations. And so, according to popular mythology, the United States is constantly losing its innocence.
Such as:
I861 – 1865: Civil War—When brother supporting slavery fought brother supporting freedom.
1898: Spanish-American War––The United States freed Cuba from the Spanish.
1917 – 1918: World War 1––When innocent American “doughboys” rushed to Europe to save immoral France and England from the Hunnish Germans.
1942 – 1945: World War II––Once again, Americans rushed to Europe to (again) save impure France and England from (again) the Hunnish Germans and end the Holocaust.
1954 – 1975: Vietnam War––The United States rushed to fight Communism on behalf of a people struggling to be free.
Lost in all these “innocent” scenarios are such unpleasant realities as:
- After the Civil War, millions of former slaves were left to fend for themselves. Although freed, blacks were left poor, despised and subject to violence at any time by the Ku Klux Klan.
- After the Spanish-American war, America seized the Philippines for itself—and relinquished them only in 1946.
- Before World War II, the United States turned away thousands of would-be Jewish immigrants, dooming them to the Holocaust. And it entered the war only after it was attacked at Pearl Harbor.
- During the Vietnam war, the United States defended an unpopular dictatorship in the South against a popular Communist one in the North.
During the 1950s, Baby Boom schoolers were spoon-fed a Disney version of American history. When they grew old enough to witness the struggles for black civil rights and against the Vietnam war, they felt they had been lied to—and reacted with anger and protest.
Generations that have been “protected” against the ugly realities of the past are ill-equipped to cope with those in their own lives.
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In Bureaucracy, EDUCATION, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 28, 2025 at 12:06 am
Sixty-one years ago, on November 22, 1963, two bullets slammed into the neck and head of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It has been said that he left his country with three great legacies:
- The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;
- The Apollo moon landing; and
- The Vietnam war.
Of these, the following can be said with certainty:
- The Test Ban Treaty has prevented atmospheric testing—and poisoning—by almost all the world’s nuclear powers.
- After reaching the moon—in 1969—Americans quickly lost interest in space and have today largely abandoned plans for manned exploration. For America, as for JFK, beating the Russians to the moon was the end-goal.
- Under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam; 153,303 were wounded; and billions of dollars were squandered in a hopeless effort to intervene in what was essentially a Vietnamese civil war.
But there was a fourth legacy—and perhaps the most important of all: The belief that mankind could overcome its greatest challenges through rationality and perseverance.
White House painting of JFK
At American University on June 10, 1963, Kennedy called upon his fellow Americans to re-examine the events and attitudes that had led to the Cold War. And he declared that the search for peace was by no means absurd:
“Our problems are man-made; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
“Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.”
Today, politicians from both parties cannot agree on solutions to even the most vital national problems.
For example: Republicans cannot agree with Democrats that the violent January 6, 2021 attempt by Donald Trump’s supporters to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election qualified as treason.
President Kennedy insisted on being well-informed. He speed-read several newspapers every morning and nourished personal relationships with the press—and not for altruistic reasons. These journalistic contacts gave Kennedy additional sources of information and perspectives on national and international issues.
During the 2012 Presidential campaign, Republican Presidential candidates celebrated their ignorance of both.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain famously said, “We need a leader, not a reader.” Thus he excused his ignorance for why President Barack Obama had intervened in Libya.
Former Texas Governor Rick Perry and Secretary of Energy showed similar pride in not knowing there are nine judges on the United States Supreme Court. He thought there were eight:
Rick Perry
“Here’s what I do know. That when I put an individual on the Supreme Court, just like I done in Texas, ah, we got nine Supreme Court justices in Texas, ah, they will be strict constructionists….”
In short, it’s the media’s fault if they ask you a question and your answer reveals your own ignorance, stupidity or criminality.
Sarah Palin rewrote history via “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”: “He warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”
In fact, Revere wasn’t warning the British about anything. Instead, he was warning his fellow Americans about an impending British attack—as his celebrated catchphrase “The British are coming!” made clear.
During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy spoke with aides about a book he had just finished: Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, about the events leading to World War 1.
He said that the book’s most important revelation was how European leaders had blindly rushed into war, without thought to the possible consequences. Kennedy told his aides he did not intend to make the same mistake—that, having read his history, he was determined to learn from it.
Republicans attacked President Obama for his Harvard education and articulate use of language. Among their taunts: “Hitler also gave good speeches.”
And they resented his having earned most of his income as a writer of two books: Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope. As if being a writer is somehow subversive.
When knowledge and literacy are attacked as “highfalutin’” arrogance, and ignorance and incoherence are embraced as sincerity, national decline lies just around the corner.
Many Americans believe that decline arrived with the 2016 election of Donald Trump. In fact, they believe it was Trump who announced it after winning the Nevada Republican primary: “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”
And as if to underscore his contempt for education, newly-reelected President Trump intends to eliminate the Department of Education. His choice to temporarily head it: Linda McMahon, best known as the former president (1980 – 2009) of World Wrestling Entertainment.
Trump wants McMahon “to put herself out of a job.”
And McMahon agrees: “I want to invite all employees to join us in this historic final mission on behalf of all students.”
In retrospect, the funeral for President Kennedy marked the death of more than a rational and optimistic human being.
It marked the death of Americans’ pride in choosing reasoning and educated citizens for their leaders.
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WHEN AL CAPONES REIGN, ELLIOT NESSES BECOME TARGETS: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 14, 2025 at 12:10 amIn the United States of Donald Trump, protecting the right to legitimate elections can get you investigated—if not indicted.
Case in point: Christopher Krebs, who prevented Russian trolls and hackers from sabotaging the 2020 Presidential election.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote.
And there Trump won: 304 to 227.
What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin
Putin had good reason to assist Trump: Putin wanted the United States to ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which has preserved Western Europe from Russian aggression since World War II. And Trump had often attacked America’s funding of NATO as a drain on the American economy.
As for Trump, he wanted something from Putin: He wanted to be President. For this, Putin could supply monies, Internet trolls to confuse voters with falsified news, and even the hacking of key voting centers.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020:
“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”
What Krebs could not know was that, less than five years later, his dedication to ensuring a free democratic election would put him in the crosshairs of the Justice Department.
A Justice Department under the control of the man defeated for the Presidency in 2020: Donald J. Trump.
On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., Trump) issued MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
According to Wikipedia: “Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including during his first and second terms as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.”
So it was fitting that Trump’s memorandum opened with an outright series of lies disguised as an indictment:
“The Federal Government has a constitutional duty and a moral responsibility to respect and promote the free speech rights of Americans.
“Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.
“These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector — including major social media platforms — to suppress conservative or dissenting voices and distort public opinion.
“Much of this censorship took place during a Presidential election with the apparent purpose of undermining the free exchange of ideas and debate.”
When Donald Trump makes an accusation, it is nearly always a confession of a crime he has committed or plans to commit. Thus, the above statements reflect exactly the agenda and practices of both the first Trump administration and the present one.
For example: “Elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.“
Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to purge the U.S. Naval Academy Library of books that focus on race, gender, and sexuality, and historical books on racism and white supremacy. These include books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism.
Thus, two copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf are available for checkout, while Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not.
Memorializing the Holocaust, Janet Jacob’s book on how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed, is gone. But The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. A 1973 novel which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from Third World countries, it has been embraced by white supremacists.
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