Posts Tagged ‘BOB WOODWARD’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 18, 2025 at 12:10 am
…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
- Trump boasted that he “never” settled cases out of court. But New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressed fraud claims against the real estate mogul’s counterfeit Trump University—and Trump settled the case out of court rather than take the stand.
- On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller to investigate links between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
- Upon learning of his appointment, Trump wailed: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”
- Throughout Mueller’s probe, Trump hurled repeated insults at him via Twitter and press conferences. His shills within Fox News and the Republican party attacked Mueller’s integrity and investigative methods. But Trump didn’t risk firing him, fearing impeachment.
Robert Mueller
- When “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani declared his candidacy for New York City mayor on October 23, 2024, Trump viciously and repeatedly attacked him as a “communist.” He even threatened to cut off Federal aid to New York City.
- Mamdami’s “communist” goals included support for universal child care and constructing 200,000 new affordable housing units.
- When Mamdani overwhelmingly won election on November 4, he sannounced “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”
- Trump responded the next day: “I hope it works out for New York. We’ll help him a little bit, maybe.”
Perhaps the key to Trump’s innermost fear can be found in a work of fiction—in this case, the 1996 historical novel, The Friends of Pancho Villa, by James Carlos Blake.
The book depicts the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) and its most famous revolutionary, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. it’s told from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Fierro, Villa’s most feared executioner. In one day, for example, Fierro—using two revolvers—executed 300 captured Federale soldiers.
As in history, Blake’s Fierro presides over the execution of David Berlanga, a journalist who had dared criticize the often loutish behavior of Villa’s men.
On Villa’s command, Fierro approaches Berlanga in a Mexico City restaurant and orders: “Come with me.”
Standing against a barracks wall, Berlanga lights a cigar and requests permission to finish it. He then proceeds to smoke it with such a steady hand that its unbroken ash extends almost four inches.
The cigar finished, the ash still unbroken, Berlanga drops the butt to the ground and says calmly: “I’m ready.”
Then the assembled firing squad does its work.
Later, Fierro is so shaken by Berlanga’s sheer fearlessness that he seeks an explanation for it. Sitting in a cantina, he lights a cigar and tries to duplicate Berlanga’s four-inch length.
But the best he can do is less than three inches. He concludes that Berlanga used a trick—but he can’t figure it out.
Rodolfo Fierro
It had to be a trick, Fierro insists, because, if it wasn’t, there were only two other explanations for such a calm demeanor in the face of impending death.
The first was insanity. But Fierro rules this out: He had studied Berlanga’s eyes and found no madness there.
That leaves only one other explanation (other than a trick): Sheer courage.
And Fierro can’t accept this, either—because it’s disturbing.
“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill….No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men’s lack of courage.
“There is even less courage in this world than there is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
“But a man brave enough to control his fear of being killed, control it so well that no tremor reaches his fingers and no sign shows in his eyes…well. Such a man cannot be ruled, he can only be killed.”
Throughout his life, Trump has relied on bribery and intimidation. He well understands the power of greed and fear over most people.
What he doesn’t understand—and truly fears—is that some people cannot be bought or frightened.
Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Like Robert Mueller. And like Zohran Mamdani.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 17, 2025 at 12:10 am
There’s a reason why Donald Trump loves tariffs—and it has nothing to do with economics.
It has everything to do with fear.
On January 20, 2025, his first day in office, he announced that he would impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting February 1.
He could have opened well-intentioned negotiations with Canada and Mexico over what he considered an unfair trade imbalance. But he sees conciliation as a sign of weakness.
Exactly as Adolf Hitler did.
Robert Payne, author of the bestselling biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), described Hitler’s—and Trump’s—“negotiating” style thus:
“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.”
A similar example of his aggressiveness occurred during his first administration.
On July 14, 2019, Trump unleashed a brutal Twitter attack on four Democratic members of the House of Representatives who had harshly criticized his anti-immigration policies:
The Democrats—all female, and all non-white—were:
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York;
- Rashida Tlaib of Michigan;
- Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and
- Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Of the Congresswomen that Trump singled out:
- Cortez was born in New York City.
- Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan.
- Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Only Omar was born outside the United States—in Somalia. And she became an American citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.
Critics assailed Trump as racist for implying that these women were not United States citizens.
Moreover, as members of Congress, they had a legal right to declare “how our government is to be run.” House and Senate Republicans had vigorously—and often viciously—asserted that right during the Presidency of Barack Obama.
Donald Trump
Ocasio-Cortez quickly struck back on Twitter on the same day: “You are angry because you don’t believe in an America where I represent New York 14, where the good people of Minnesota elected , where fights for Michigan families, where champions little girls in Boston.
“You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.
“You won’t accept a nation that sees healthcare as a right or education as a #1 priority, especially where we’re the ones fighting for it. Yet here we are.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
But then followed the most significant part of Cortez’ reply:
“But you know what’s the rub of it all, Mr. President? On top of not accepting an America that elected us, you cannot accept that we don’t fear you, either.
“You can’t accept that we will call your bluff & offer a positive vision for this country. And that’s what makes you seethe.”
For all his adult life, Donald Trump—as a businessman, Presidential candidate and twice-elected President—has trafficked in bribery and coercion. First bribery:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (now United States Attorney General) personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
- Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who says he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons.
- Paxton’s office issued a cease and desist letter to former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens after he made public copies of a 14-page internal summary of the state’s case against Donald Trump for scamming millions from students of his now-defunct real estate seminar.
- After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Now coercion:
- Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump forced his employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, threatening them with lawsuits if they revealed secrets of his greed and/or criminality.
- In 2016. USA Today found that Trump was involved in over 3,500 lawsuits during the previous 30 years: “At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings” were from contractors claiming they got stiffed.
- On March 16, 2016, as a Republican Presidential candidate, Trump 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.”
- An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there. Shame if something happened to it.'”
- Speaking with Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter, Trump confessed: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
- During his Presidential campaign he encouraged Right-wing thugs to attack dissenters at his rallies, even claiming he would pay their legal expenses (which he didn’t).
But when he has confronted men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, Trump has reacted with rage and desperation.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 4, 2025 at 12:10 am
“Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
Thus Donald Trump—then a 2016 Presidential candidate—revealed guiding philosophy on rule to legendary journalist Bob Woodward.
It also serves as the thesis of Woodward’s 2018 bestseller: Fear: Trump in the White House, which chronicles the first two years of Trump’s first term as President.
Throughout that term, he showed no interest in compromise: “Do what I want—or I’ll destroy you” proved his go-to method of “negotiation.” And it has remained so during the first nine months of his second term.
On July 4, he signed into law the Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” which gives huge tax breaks to billionaires—by gutting Medicare and the Affordable Care Act for the poor and middle-class.
When Democrats refused to sign on, he shut down the government on October 1, saying openly he intended to punish them—and their constituents—for their refusal to bow to his will.
The Federal Government remains closed as of this writing.
But there are humane ways to wield power—and these usually leave feelings of lasting gratitude—if not reverence—for those who do.
Two examples follow.
Lesson #!: In Book Three, Chapter 22 of his classic masterwork, The Discourses, Niccolo Machiavelli offers the following: “An Act of Humanity Prevailed More With the Falacians Than All the Power of Rome.”
Marcus Furius Camillus, a Roman general, was besieging the city of the Faliscians, and had surrounded it. A teacher charged with educating the children of some of the city’s noblest families decided to ingratiate himself with Camillus by leading them into the Roman camp.
As Roman hostages, they could be used to compel the city to surrender.
Camillus not only declined the offer but went one step further. He ordered the teacher stripped and his hands tied behind his back. Then Camillus had a rod put into the hands of each of the children and directed them to whip the teacher all the way back to the city.
Upon learning this, the citizens of Faliscia were so much touched by the humanity and integrity of Camillus, that they surrendered the place to him without any further defense.
Summing up the meaning of this, Machiavelli writes: “This example shows that an act of humanity and benevolence will at all times have more influence over the minds of men than violence and ferocity. It also proves that provinces and cities which no armies…could conquer, have yielded to an act of humanity, benevolence, chastity or generosity.
“…History also shows us how much the people desire to find such virtues in great men, and how much they are extolled by historians and biographers of princes….Amongst these, Xenophon takes great pains to show how many victories, how much honor and fame, Cyrus gained by his humanity and affability, and by his not having exhibited a single instance of pride, cruelty or luxuriousness, nor of any of the other vices that are apt to stain the lives of men.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
This lesson—recorded by a master political scientist and practitioner of Realpolitik—remains highly relevant today.
Lesson #2: On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Chauvin kept his knee on the right side of Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Cities across the United States erupted in mass protests over Floyd’s death—and police killings of black victims generally. Most of these demonstrations proved peaceful.
But cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City saw stores looted, vandalized and/or burned.
In response, President Donald Trump called for harsh policing, telling governors in a nationwide conference call that they must “dominate” protesters or be seen as “weak.”
To drive home his point, Trump ordered police 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: To allow Trump to have a photo opportunity outside the church.
“I imposed a curfew at 7pm,” tweeted Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. “A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult. Shameful!”
Contrast that with the example of Sheriff Christopher Swanson of Genesee County, Michigan.
Sheriff Christopher Swanson
Confronting a mass of aroused demonstrators in Flint Township on May 30, Swanson responded: “We want to be with you all for real.”
So Swanson took his helmet off. His deputies laid their batons down.
“I want to make this a parade, not a protest. So, you tell us what you need to do.”
“Walk with us!” the protesters shouted.
“Let’s walk, let’s walk,” said Swanson.
Cheering and applause resounded.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Swanson said as he and the cheering crowd proceeded. “Where do you want to walk? We’ll walk all night.”
And Swanson and his fellow officers walked in sympathy with the protesters.
No rioting followed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 10, 2025 at 12:21 am
After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, many people feared he would embark on a radical Right-wing agenda. But others hoped that the Washington bureaucracy would “box him in.”
The same sentiments echoed throughout Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.
The 1983 TV mini-series, The Winds of War, offered a dramatic example of how honorable men can be overwhelmed by a ruthless dictator.
Based on the bestselling 1971 historical novel by Herman Wouk, the mini-series factually re-created the major historical events of World War II.
One of those events took place on November 5, 1939.
General Walther von Brauchitsch is summoned to the Chancellery in Berlin to meet with Adolf Hitler. He carries a memorandum signed by all the leaders of the German Wehrmacht asserting that Case Yellow—Hitler’s planned attack against France—is impossible.
Meanwhile, at the German army headquarters at Zossen, in Berlin, the Wehrmacht’s top command wait for word from von Brauchitsch.
ZOSSEN:
Brigadier General Armin von Roon: I must confide in you on a very serious matter. I have been approached by certain army personages of the loftiest rank and prestige with a frightening proposal.
Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder: What did you reply?
Von Roon: That they were talking high treason.
Gunter Meisner as Adolf Hitler in “The Winds of War”
THE WHITE HOUSE:
Fast forward 79 years from Adolf Hitler’s stormy confrontation with Walter von Brauchitsch to September 5, 2018.
On September 5, 2018, The New York Times publishes an anonymous Op-Ed essay by “a senior official in the Trump administration.” This spotlights massive dysfunction within the White House—and put the blame squarely on the President.
Among the revelations:
- “Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
- “On Russia…the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain….But his national security team knew better—such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.”
ZOSSEN:
Von Roon: The conspiracy has been going on that long—since Czechoslovakia [1938)?
Halder: If the British had not caved in at Munich [where France and Britain sold out their ally, Czechoslovakia]—perhaps. But they did. And ever then, ever since his big triumph, it has been hopeless. Hopeless.
Von Roon: Empty talk, talk, talk. I am staggered.
Halder: A hundred times I myself could have shot the man. I can still at any time. But what would be the result? Chaos. The people are for him. He has unified the country. We must stick to our posts and save him from making military mistakes.
THE WHITE HOUSE:
On September 11, 2018, legendary investigative reporter Bob Woodward publishes a devastating take on the Trump administration: Fear: Trump in the White House. The text features explosive revelations about the President’s ignorance and mistreatment of staffers:
- Trump was about to sign a letter canceling a free-trade agreement with South Korea. To prevent this, Eric Cohn, his national economic council director, swiped it from Trump’s desk. Trump didn’t notice it missing.
- Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, convinced the President that he shouldn’t testify to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The reason: He would commit perjury—and end up in “an orange jumpsuit.”
- Trump referred to Alabaman Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, as “a dumb southerner” and “mentally retarded.”
General Walther von Brauchitsch fails to convince Hitler to postpone “Case Yellow”—the invasion of France. Hitler insists that it commence in seven days—on November 12.
And he issues a warning to the entire German General staff: “I will ruthlessly crush everybody up to the rank of a Field Marshal who dares to oppose me. You don’t have to understand. You only have to obey. The German people understand me. I am Germany.”
Due to foul weather, Hitler is forced to postpone the invasion of France until June, 1940. But the German General staff can’t ultimately put off the war that will destroy them—and Germany.
THE WHITE HOUSE:
Since re-taking office as President, Donald Trump has:
- Ordered massive purges of the federal workforce—especially in agencies responsible for national security and health.
- Signed 26 executive orders that: Reversed climate change initiatives; eliminated DEI programs; and changed the federal designation for the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
- Turned America’s longtime allies—like Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama and the European Union—into mortal enemies.
- Ordered illegal prosecutions of officials who have offended him—such as former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
- Deployed National Guardsmen and into Democratic states Turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into his private secret police force and
- Appointed incompetents to office—like alcoholic Pete Hegseth Secretary of Defense and 14-year heroin addict Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Like Hitler, he can truthfully say: I am the destiny of America.
History has yet to record if Trump’s subordinates will prove more successful than Hitler’s at preserving “our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 7, 2025 at 12:10 am
On October 1, President Donald Trump shut down the Federal government.
On July 4, Trump had signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which impacts Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and is projected to cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage.
The bill includes the largest cuts in Medicaid’s history, reducing funding by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.
Or, as Trump and Republicans might say: “What are the lives of Americans but so many chickens?”
Democratic senators refused to support a temporary spending bill to fund the government unless it included an extension of these subsidies, which keep health care plans affordable for many Americans.
Trump—and Congressional Republicans—refused to do this. In addition, both falsely claimed that Democrats wanted to give health coverage to illegal aliens.
For Trump, winning—not truth—is all that matters. During his first term as President, he told 30,573 lies.
Donald Trump
Congress failed to pass the annual appropriations bills required to fund government agencies before the new fiscal year began on October 1, 2025. As a result, federal agencies must cease all “non-essential” functions until funding is approved.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 750,000 employees will be furloughed on the average day. That’s $400 million in salary each day that the government will ultimately pay, but will not get work for.
Trump had threatened to use a shutdown to permanently reduce the size of the federal workforce.
“We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want and they’d be Democrat things,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “They just don’t learn. So we have no choice. I have to do that for the country.
“When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people. They’re going to be Democrats.”
This is the language—and “negotiating” style—of Adolf Hitler.
Robert Payne, author of the bestselling biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), described Hitler’s “negotiating” style thus:
“Although Hitler prized his own talents as a negotiator, a man always capable of striking a good bargain, he was totally lacking in finesse.
“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.”
Like Hitler, Trump relies on insults and anger to put his victims on the defense.
On September 29, Trump posted an AI-generated video on social media depicting House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and curly mustache as mariachi music plays in the background.
After Jeffries condemned the video as racist and bigoted, on September 30 Trump posted another deepfake video mocking his reaction.
On October 1, Vice President J.D. Vance called the videos “funny,” adding, “The president’s joking, and we’re having a good time.”
Yet Trump has raged when late-night comedians like Jimmy Kimmel have joked about him.
Like Hitler, Trump relies on fear: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear,” he told journalist Bob Woodward in March 2016 when still a Presidential candidate.
On the October 3 edition of Washington Week with the Atlantic, Ashley Parker, a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine, said:
“[Trump] likes threatening Democrats, right, saying, we’re going to do what Project 2025 promised. We’re going to fire all these workers. We’re going to figure out what agencies we can just eliminate forever. It’s a fun thing to say. That’s for him. That’s why I say it’s trolling, but it’s not quite clear that that’s actually what he wants to do.”
Federal agencies began explicitly blaming Democrats for the government shutdown—even before it happened.
On September 30, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s website posted: “The radical left are going to shut down the government.”
For Trump, everyone who opposes him is a “radical leftist”-–even though he boasted that he and Communist North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un “fell in love.”
Democrats fear they will be blamed for the shutdown. Yet they might triumph if they remember that what worked against Hitler will most likely work against Trump.
Rule #1: Refuse to placate a brutal dictator. Such men see any concessions as weakness—and make only greater demands. Hitler, for example, demanded only a part of Czechoslovakia—and then seized the whole country.
Rule #2: When Hitler found himself facing an opponent who couldn’t be bribed or cowed—such as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill or Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—he raged and/or sulked.
When Trump has faced an opponent he can’t buy or intimidate—such as Special Counsels Robert Mueller and Jack Smith—he has done the same.
Rule #3: Don’t sell out an ally or make concessions to an insatiable dictator—and believe he can be trusted to keep his word. Trump has repeatedly proven his word can’t be trusted.
Far more than a government shutdown is at stake.
If Democrats fall victim to their usual cowardice and disunity in the face of Right-wing threats and attacks, they will:
- End their relevance as a political party; and
- Condemn to death millions of Americans who cannot obtain life-saving medical care while billionaires gain huge tax cuts.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 6, 2025 at 12:46 am
It was the night of March 5, 1836. For the roughly 200 men inside the surrounded Alamo, death lay only hours away.
Inside a house in San Antonio, Texas, Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was holding a council of war with his generals.
For 12 days, his army had bombarded the old mission. Still, the Texians—whose numbers included the legendary bear hunter and Congressman David Crockett and knife fighter James Bowie—held out.
Now Santa Anna was in a hurry to take the makeshift fortress. Once its defenders were dead, he could march on to sweep all American settlers from Texas.
One of his generals, Manuel Castrillón, urged Santa Anna to wait just a few more days. By then, far bigger cannon would be available. When the Alamo’s three-feet-thick walls had been knocked down, the defenders would be forced to surrender.
The lives of countless Mexican soldiers would thus be spared.
Santa Anna was eating a late-night chicken dinner. He held up a chicken leg and said: “What are the lives of soldiers but those of so many chickens?”
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
Santa Anna ordered his generals to prepare an all-out attack on the Alamo, to be launched the next morning—March 6, 1836—at 5 a.m.
Hours later, the attack went forward. Within 90 minutes, every Alamo defender was dead—and so were at least 600 Mexican soldiers.
“What are the lives of Americans but those of so many chickens?”
That could well be the slogan of President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans during the October 1 shutdown of the Federal government.
On July 4, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which enacts significant cuts to federal health programs to help pay for tax reductions.
The law primarily impacts Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and is projected to cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage. The bill includes the largest cuts in Medicaid’s history, reducing funding by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.
Democrats had demanded a bill that reversed cuts to Medicaid and prevented health insurance premiums from rising at the end of the year. Republicans had refused.
Trump had threatened to use a shutdown to permanently reduce the size of the federal work force:
“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”
Donald Trump
And Trump’s Congressional supporters quickly issued threats of their own:
“We have never had Democrats that are so insane as this,” said Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH), “because this is going to last a long—if they shut down the government tonight, my prediction is it will go on for a long, long time.”
“Far-left interest groups and far-left Democrat members wanted to show down with the president, and so Senate Democrats have sacrificed the American people to Democrats’ partisan interests,” Senate majority leader John Thune said.
Republicans control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Yet they are blaming the shutdown on the party that doesn’t control any of these institutions.
And they are using a Trump lie to justify it: “One of the things [Democrats] want to do is, they want to give incredible Medicare, Cadillac, the Cadillac Medicare, to illegal immigrants. And what that does is, it keeps them coming into our country like they do in California. And no country can afford that, no country.”
On the September 30 edition of The PBS News Hour, Liz Landers, the News Hour’s White House correspondent, said: “Undocumented immigrants are not allowed to be enrolled in federally funded health care coverage in this country. That includes Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, the child health care program, and even some of those Affordable Care Act subsidies.”
This is the first government shutdown since December 22, 2018, during Trump’s first term. Angered that Democrats refused his demands for border wall funding, Trump declared the government closed.
About 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay.
The shutdown lasted 35 days—December 22, 2018 to January 25, 2019. It ended only when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to open the House of Representatives for Trump’s annual State of the Union message.
The effects of the shutdown quickly became evident:
- For weeks, hundreds of thousands of government workers missed paychecks.
- Trash piled up in national parks.
- Increasing numbers of employees of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA)—which provides security against airline terrorism—began refusing to come to work, claiming to be sick.
- At the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) many air traffic controllers called in “sick.” Those who showed up to work without pay grew increasingly frazzled as they feared being evicted for being unable to make rent or house payments.
- Due to the shortage of air traffic controllers, many planes weren’t able to land safely at places like New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
- Many Federal employees—such as FBI agents—were forced to rely on soup kitchens to feed their families.
- Celebrity chef Jose Andres launched ChefsForFeds, which offered free hot meals for government employees and their families at restaurants across the country.
- Many workers tried to bring in money by babysitting or driving for Uber.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 13, 2025 at 12:05 am
On July 3, Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski cast the deciding vote on Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” that:
- Extends President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts;
- Funds his immigration crackdown;
- Imposes work requirements on social safety net programs;, and
- Cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid and Medicare.
The United States population is estimated to be between 341 and 347 million. But Murkowski wasn’t concerned about them.
What she cared about were the 740,133 people she represented in Alaska.
Murkowski was upset at Trump’s plan to cut federal funding for wind and solar projects. So, in return for selling out the rest of the country, she demanded that Congress agree to protect Alaskan wind, hydropower and solar projects.
Congress agreed.
After her vote, Trump issued an executive order to limit solar and wind project awards. Insisting that renewables are unreliable, the executive order endorses polluting options such as oil, natural gas and hydropower.
Now Murkowski feels betrayed: “Do I feel like the administration was not being up-front with us? Yes.”
Murkowski would have done well to study Trump’s past behavior:
- On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller to investigate links between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
- Throughout Mueller’s probe, Trump repeatedly insulted him via Twitter and press conferences.
- But aides convinced him that firing Mueller would be rightly seen as obstruction of justice—and thus grounds for impeachment. So he never dared go that far.
Robert Mueller
- In March, 2023, Trump threatened “death and destruction” if he were criminally charged in New York for making “hush money” payments to porn “actress” Stormy Daniels. Trump shared an image of himself threatening Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with a baseball bat on his Truth Social platform.
- The trial proceeded—and Trump was convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying New York business records in order to conceal his illegal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.
Lisa Murkowski’s betrayal and humiliation holds an important warning for Paramount Globe Class B: Trump’s “word” is worthless.
Consider: Paramount is worth $9.25 billion. Nevertheless it wanted to merge with Skydance Media, whose worth is valued at $4.75 billion.
Paramount is the parent company of CBS Network, which hosts The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Colbert, who has hosted the show since 2015, has been a fierce Trump critic ever since the former real estate developer announced his first run for President. And Trump, notoriously thin-skinned, equates any criticism—especially when it’s wrapped in humor—as literally treason.
Stephen Colbert
For example: At Christmastime, 2018, “Saturday Night Live” aired a parody of the classic movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Its title: “It’s a Wonderful Trump.”
In it, Trump (portrayed by actor Alec Baldwin) discovers what the United States would be like if he had never become President: A great deal better-off.
As usual, Trump expressed his resentment through Twitter: The Justice Department should stop investigating his administration (for his collusion with Russia during the 2016 Presidential election) and go after the real enemy: “SNL.”
Paramount had recently paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit he had brought against the CBS news show, 60 Minutes. He claimed that it had misleadingly edited a pre-election interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris to boost her election chances in 2024.
CBS initially called the lawsuit “completely without merit.” The network’s attorneys and a number of legal experts said that the lawsuit was without merit.
But Paramount was in the midst of an $8 billion sale to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media. For this, it needed the regulatory permission of the Federal Communications Commission of the Trump administration.
So it’s easy to draw a straight line from Paramount to CBS to Late Night With Stephen Colbert to see how easy it was for Paramount/CBS to cancel the highest-rated late-night show on television with 2.4 million nightly viewers. It has also been nominated for 33 Emmys.
Which it did on July 17.
In a statement, Paramount/CBS called the cancellation a purely financial decision: “It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
On July 14, after returning from a multi-week break, Colbert said: “While I was on vacation, my parent corporation, Paramount, paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over his ‘60 Minutes’ lawsuit.
“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company, but just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.
“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles—it’s big fat bribe.”
Addressing his in-house and television audience on July 17, Colbert announced: “I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May.
“It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
A frequent theme of the classic CBS show, The Twilight Zone, was: Deal with the Devil—and you’ll get burned.
Paramount may well prove as disappointed as Lisa Murkowski.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2025 at 12:07 am
For all his adult life, Donald Trump—as a businessman, Presidential candidate, President and now re-elected President—has trafficked in bribery and coercion. First bribery:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (and now United States Attorney General) personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
- Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who said he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons.
- Paxton’s office issued a cease and desist letter to former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens after he made public copies of a 14-page internal summary of the state’s case against Donald Trump for scamming millions from students of his now-defunct real estate seminar.
- After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Now coercion:
- Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump forced his employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, threatening them with lawsuits if they revealed secrets of his greed and/or criminality.
- In 2016. USA Today found that Trump was involved in over 3,500 lawsuits during the previous 30 years: “At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings” were from contractors claiming they got stiffed.
- On March 16, 2016, as a Republican Presidential candidate, Trump 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.”
- An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there. Shame if something happened to it.'”
- Speaking with Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter, Trump confessed: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
- During his Presidential campaign he encouraged Right-wing thugs to attack dissenters at his rallies, even claiming he would pay their legal expenses.
Donald Trump
But when he has confronted men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, Trump has reacted with rage and desperation.
Alaska’s Republican United States Senator Lisa Murkowski should have kept those truths in mind before she sacrificed access to healthcare for millions of Americans.
On July 3, Murkowski cast the deciding vote on Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” that extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, funds his immigration crackdown, imposes work requirements on social safety net programs, and cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid.
The largest cuts come from Medicaid work reporting requirements ($326 billion; limits on state provider tax arrangements ($191 billion); and restrictions on state-directed Medicaid payments ($149 billion).
The United States population is estimated to be between 341 and 347 million. But Murkowski wasn’t concerned about them.
Lisa Murkowski
What she cared about were the 740,133 people she represented in Alaska.
Murkowski was upset at Trump’s plan to cut federal funding for wind and solar projects. So, in return for selling out the rest of the country, she demanded that Congress agree to protect Alaskan wind, hydropower and solar projects.
Murkowski believed that Trump administration officials understood how local wind and solar projects could offset the costly diesel fuel that many Alaskan rural communities must import by barge to provide electricity for their homes and businesses.
She also thought she’d negotiated an agreement to protect a 12-month window for solar and wind projects to continue to receive tax credits.
“It’s not everything that I wanted,” she explained then, “but it’s going to keep some of our projects alive, and that’s important.”
After her vote, Trump issued an executive order to limit solar and wind project awards. Continuing to insist that renewables provide only unreliable power, the executive order also gives a nod of approval to polluting options such as oil, natural gas, and hydropower.
Suddenly, Murkowski feels betrayed.
“To me, it’s just reckless by the administration. Do I feel like the administration was not being up-front with us? Yes.”
Murkowski would have done well to study Trump’s past behavior.
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
- Trump boasted that he “never” settled cases out of court. But New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressed fraud claims against the real estate mogul’s counterfeit Trump University—and Trump settled the case out of court rather than take the stand.
- “Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump,” said Schneiderman on November 18, 2016, “and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”
- On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller to investigate links between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
- Upon learning of his appointment, Trump wailed: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 13, 2025 at 12:13 am
In January, 2018, the White House banned the use of personal cell phones in the West Wing. The official reason: National security.
The real reason: To prevent staffers from leaking to reporters.
More ominously, well-suited men roamed the halls of the West Wing, carrying devices that pick up signals from phones that aren’t government-issued.
“Did someone forget to put their phone away?” one of the men would ask if such a device was detected. If no one said they had a phone, the detection team started searching the room.
Phone detector
The devices can tell which type of phone is in the room.
This is the sort of behavior Americans have traditionally—and correctly—associated with dictatorships
In his memo outlining the policy, then-Chief of Staff John Kelly warned that anyone who violated the phone ban could be punished, including “being indefinitely prohibited from entering the White House complex.”
Yet even these draconian methods did not end White House leaks.
White House officials still spoke with reporters throughout the day and often aired their grievances, whether about annoying colleagues or competing policy priorities.
Aides with private offices sometimes called reporters on their desk phones. Others got their cell phones and called or texted reporters during lunch breaks.
According to an anonymous White House source: “The cellphone ban is for when people are inside the West Wing, so it really doesn’t do all that much to prevent leaks. If they banned all personal cellphones from the entire [White House] grounds, all that would do is make reporters stay up later because they couldn’t talk to their sources until after 6:30 pm.”
Other sources believed that leaks wouldn’t end unless Trump started firing staffers. But there was always the risk of firing the wrong people. Thus, to protect themselves, those who leaked might well accuse tight-lipped co-workers.
Within the Soviet Union (especially during the reign of Joseph Stalin) fear of secret police surveillance was widespread—and absolutely justified.
Among the methods used to keep conversations secret:
- Turning on the TV or radio to full volume.
- Turning on a water faucet at full blast.
- Turning the dial of a rotary phone to the end—and sticking a pencil in one of the small holes for numbers.
- Standing six to nine feet away from the hung-up receiver.
- Going for “a walk in the woods.”
- Saying nothing sensitive on the phone.
The secret police (known as the Cheka, the NKVD, the MGB, the KGB, and now the FSB) operated on seven working principles:
- Your enemy is hiding.
- Start from the usual suspects.
- Study the young.
- Stop the laughing.
- Rebellion spreads like wildfire.
- Stamp out every spark.
- Order is created by appearance.
Trump has always ruled through bribery and fear. He’s bought off (or tried to) those who might cause him trouble—like porn actress Stormy Daniels. And he’s threatened or filed lawsuits against those he couldn’t or didn’t want to bribe—such as contractors who have worked on various Trump properties.
But Trump couldn’t buy the loyalty of employees working in an atmosphere of hostility—which breeds resentment and fear. And some of them took revenge by sharing with reporters the latest crimes and follies of the Trump administration.
The more Trump waged war on the “cowards and traitors” who worked most closely with him, the more some of them found opportunities to strike back. This inflamed Trump even more—and led him to seek even more repressive methods against his own staffers.
This proved a no-win situation for Trump.
The results were twofold:
- Constant turnovers of staffers—with their replacements having to undergo lengthy background checks before coming on; and
- Continued leaking of embarrassing secrets by resentful employees who stayed.
**********
As host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” Trump became infamous for booting off contestants with the phrase: “You’re fired.” In fact, he so delighted in using this that, in 2004, he tried to gain trademark ownership of it.
But the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected his application. American copyright law explicitly prohibits copyright protections for short phrases or sayings.
Upon taking office as President, Trump bullied and insulted even White House officials and his own handpicked Cabinet officers. This resulted in an avalanche of firings and resignations.
The first two years of Trump’s White House saw more firings, resignations, and reassignments of top staffers than any other first-term administration in modern history. His Cabinet turnover exceeded that of any other administration in the last 100 years.
In 1934, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion in 1941.
No one was safe from execution—not even the men who slaughtered as many as 20 to 60 million.
Fittingly, for all the fear he inspired, Stalin was plagued by paranoia. He lived in constant fear of assassination. Although surrounded by bodyguards, he distrusted even them.
Thus Stalin, who had turned the Soviet Union into a vast prison, became its leading prisoner.
Similarly, Donald Trump daily proved the accuracy of the age-old warning: “You can build a throne of bayonets, but you can’t sit on it.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 12, 2025 at 12:20 am
Donald Trump has often been compared to Adolf Hitler. But his reign bears far more resemblance to that of Joseph Stalin.
Germany’s Fuhrer, for all his brutality, maintained a relatively stable government by keeping the same men in office—from the day he took power on January 30, 1933, to the day he blew out his brains on April 30, 1945.
Adolf Hitler
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1990-048-29A / CC-BY-SA 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D
Heinrich Himmler, a former chicken farmer, remained head of the dreaded, black-uniformed Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads, known as the SS, from 1929 until his suicide in 1945.
In April, 1934, Himmler was appointed assistant chief of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) in Prussia, and from that position he extended his control over the police forces of the whole Reich.
Hermann Goering, an ace fighter pilot in World War 1, served as Reich commissioner for aviation and head of the newly developed Luftwaffe, the German air force, from 1935 to 1945.
And Albert Speer, Hitler’s favorite architect, held that position from 1933 until 1942, when Hitler appointed him Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. He held that position until the Third Reich collapsed in April, 1945.
Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, by contrast, purged his ministers constantly. For example: From 1934 to 1953, Stalin had no fewer than three chiefs of his secret police, then named the NKVD:
- Genrikh Yagoda – (July 10, 1934 – September 26, 1936)
- Nikolai Yezhov (September 26, 1936 – November 25, 1938) and
- Lavrenty Beria (November, 1938 – March, 1953).
Stalin purged Yagoda and Yezhov, with both men executed after their arrest.
Joseph Stalin
He reportedly wanted to purge Beria, too, but the latter may have acted first. There has been speculation that Beria slipped warfarin, a blood-thinner often used to kill rats, into Stalin’s drink, causing him to die of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Stalin’s record for slaughter far eclipses that of Hitler.
For almost 30 years, through purges and starvation caused by enforced collections of farmers’ crops, Stalin slaughtered 20 to 60 million people.
The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion in 1941.
An example of Stalin’s paranoia occurred one day while the dictator walked through the Kremlin corridors with Admiral Ivan Isakov. Officers of the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) stood guard at every corner.
“Every time I walk down the corridors,” said Stalin, “I think: Which one of them is it? If it’s this one, he will shoot me in the back. But if I turn the corner, the next one can shoot me in the face.”
Another Russian-installed tyrant who has sought to rule by fear: President Donald J. Trump.
In fact, he admitted as much to journalist Bob Woodward during the 2016 Presidential race: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
Donald Trump
As a Presidential candidate, Trump repeatedly used Twitter to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
As President, he continued to insult virtually everyone, verbally and on Twitter. His targets included Democrats, Republicans, the media, foreign leaders and even members of his Cabinet.
In Russian, the word for “purge” is “chistka,” for “cleansing.” Among the victims of Trump’s recurring chistkas:
- Sally Yates – Assistant United States Attorney General
- James Comey – FBI Director
- Andrew McCabe – FBI Deputy Director
- Jeff Sessions – United States Attorney General
- Rachel Brand – Associate United States Attorney General
- Randolph “Tex” Alles – Director of the United States Secret Service
- Krisjen Nielsen – Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
In his infamous political treatise, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman, asked: “Is it is better to be loved or feared?”
And he answered it thus:
“The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
“For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours….
“And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined….
“And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
But Machiavelli warned about relying primarily on fear: “Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred, for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together.”
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Donald Trump has violated that counsel throughout his life. He not only makes enemies, he revels in doing so—and in the fury he has aroused.
Filled with a poisonous hatred that encompasses almost everyone, Trump, as Presidential candidate and President, repeatedly played to the hatreds of his Right-wing base.
As first-mate Starbuck said of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick: “He is a champion of darkness.”
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WHEN THREATS AND BRIBES FAIL: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 18, 2025 at 12:10 am…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
Robert Mueller
Perhaps the key to Trump’s innermost fear can be found in a work of fiction—in this case, the 1996 historical novel, The Friends of Pancho Villa, by James Carlos Blake.
The book depicts the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) and its most famous revolutionary, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. it’s told from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Fierro, Villa’s most feared executioner. In one day, for example, Fierro—using two revolvers—executed 300 captured Federale soldiers.
As in history, Blake’s Fierro presides over the execution of David Berlanga, a journalist who had dared criticize the often loutish behavior of Villa’s men.
On Villa’s command, Fierro approaches Berlanga in a Mexico City restaurant and orders: “Come with me.”
Standing against a barracks wall, Berlanga lights a cigar and requests permission to finish it. He then proceeds to smoke it with such a steady hand that its unbroken ash extends almost four inches.
The cigar finished, the ash still unbroken, Berlanga drops the butt to the ground and says calmly: “I’m ready.”
Then the assembled firing squad does its work.
Later, Fierro is so shaken by Berlanga’s sheer fearlessness that he seeks an explanation for it. Sitting in a cantina, he lights a cigar and tries to duplicate Berlanga’s four-inch length.
But the best he can do is less than three inches. He concludes that Berlanga used a trick—but he can’t figure it out.
Rodolfo Fierro
It had to be a trick, Fierro insists, because, if it wasn’t, there were only two other explanations for such a calm demeanor in the face of impending death.
The first was insanity. But Fierro rules this out: He had studied Berlanga’s eyes and found no madness there.
That leaves only one other explanation (other than a trick): Sheer courage.
And Fierro can’t accept this, either—because it’s disturbing.
“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill….No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men’s lack of courage.
“There is even less courage in this world than there is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
“But a man brave enough to control his fear of being killed, control it so well that no tremor reaches his fingers and no sign shows in his eyes…well. Such a man cannot be ruled, he can only be killed.”
Throughout his life, Trump has relied on bribery and intimidation. He well understands the power of greed and fear over most people.
What he doesn’t understand—and truly fears—is that some people cannot be bought or frightened.
Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Like Robert Mueller. And like Zohran Mamdani.
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