Posts Tagged ‘FBI’
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In Uncategorized on October 8, 2025 at 12:13 am
To hear Right-wingers tell it, you might believe that Washington, D.C. is:
- The capitol of an enemy nation;
- A cesspool of corrupt, power-hungry men and women slavering to gain dictatorial control over the life of every American;
- A center of lethal contagion which, like ancient Carthage, should be burned to the ground and its inhabitants destroyed or scattered.
According to Republicans, they are all that prevents “Washington” from gaining absolute power over a defenseless citizenry.
This does not stop Republicans from lusting to rule it—and enable a Constitution-violating Donald Trump to serve as “President-for-Life.”
But others who live or work in Washington, D.C. take a far different view of their city and the duties they perform.
These men and women will never call a press conference or rake in millions in “political contributions” (i.e., legalized bribes) for promising special privileges to special interests.
Many of them work for the National Park Service. Every national monument—and Washington is speckled with monuments—has several of these employees assigned to it. Their duties are to protect the monuments and offer historical commentary to the public.
One such employee regularly addresses visitors to Ford’s Theater—known worldwide as the scene of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
George (a pseudonym) opens his lecture by raising the question every member of the audience wants answered: How much of Ford’s Theater remains intact from the night of Lincoln’s murder—April 14, 1865?
And the answer is: Only the exterior of the building.
Ford’s Theater
After Lincoln’s assassination, enraged Union soldiers converted the interior of the building into a military command center. That meant ripping out all the seats for spectators and the stage for actors.
The stage and seats—even the “Presidential Box” where Lincoln sat—have all been reproduced for a modern audience.
As George talks, you can tell that, for him, this is no typical day job. He realizes that, renovated or not, Ford’s Theater remains saturated with history. And he clearly feels privileged to share that history with others.
George explains that Presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth did not sneak into the theater. He didn’t have to—as a celebrity actor, he received the sort of favored treatment now accorded Brad Pitt.
Another monument where you will find Park Ranger guides is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Completed in 1982, it receives about three million visitors a year. Adorning the Wall, in columns that seem to reach endlessly to the sky, are the names of the 58,195 soldiers who gave their lives during the Vietnam War.
That struggle—from 1961 to 1975—proved the most divisive American conflict since the Civil War.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall
On the day I visited the memorial, groups of elementary schoolchildren passed by. They were jabbering loudly, seemingly oblivious to the terrible sacrifice the Wall was meant to commemorate.
But their adult chaperones realized its significance, and ordered the children to quiet down. I asked a nearby Park Ranger: “Do you feel people now respond differently to the Wall, as we get further away from the Vietnam war?”
“No,” he answered. He felt that today’s visitors showed the same reverence for the monument and for the losses it had been created to honor as those who had first come in the early 1980s.
And it may well be true: I saw many tiny American flags and wreaths of flowers left at various points along the Wall, which stretches across 250 feet of land on the Mall.
When thinking about “Washington,” it’s essential to remember that this city—along with New York City—remains at the top of Al Qaeda’s target list. Those who choose to live and/or work here do so in the potential shadow of violent death.
Anytime you enter a Federal building, be prepared to undergo a security check.
In most agencies—such as the Department of Agriculture—you simply place your bags or purses into an X-ray machine similar to those found at airports, and walk through a magnetometer. If no alarms sound, you collect your valuables and pass on through.
Such machines are, of course, manned by armed security guards. And they stand sentinel at every conceivable Federal building—such as the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, the Smithsonian Museum, the Pentagon and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
These men and women must daily inspect the bodies and handbags of the 15 million people who visit Washington, D.C. annually, generating $5.24 billion dollars in revenues.
This means repeating the same screening gestures countless times—looking through X-ray machines at bags or coats, and running an electronic “wand” up and down those people whose clothing gives off signs of metallic objects.
It also means knowing that any one of these ordinary-looking visitors could be the next terrorist intent on killing as many people as possible.
It also means projecting a smiling, friendly demeanor towards those same people—many of whom are in a rush and/or resent being electronically sniffed over.
And every security guard knows this: It’s only a matter of time before the next terrorist shows up.
On June 10, 2009, just that happened at the United States Holocaust Memorial.
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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, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on September 22, 2025 at 12:05 am
During his 1992 Presidential campaign, Bill Clinton had “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” as his mantra for staying focused on the issue that recession-suffering Americans most cared about.
Donald Trump’s mantra—as Presidential candidate and President—could be summed up as: “It’s the Hatred, Stupid.”
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his first Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him— in politics, journalism, TV and films.
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
- News organizations
- The disabled
- POWs
And his base is equally motivated by hatred—of the same persons and organizations whom Trump regularly attacks. During the 2016 campaign, countless such voters told interviewers: “He says what I’ve long been thinking!”
Trump didn’t implant hatred in them—he simply gave it legitimacy. And they love him for it.
And since coming to power once again as President on January 20, Trump has given his lust for hatred free reign.
- Issued pardons to about 1,500 of his followers who violently tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Move than 250 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting police.
- Withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
- Suspended all foreign aid for at least three months.
- Withdrew from the Paris climate agreement.
- Through his appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has declared all-out war on established medical institutions.
- Ordered the dismissal of 5,000 FBI agents who investigated his incitement of the January 6 riot and his own hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
- Declared “a national emergency” targeting migrants—legal and illegal.
- Sought to cancel automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children, known as birthright, and enshrined within the United States Constitution.
- Withdrew the security detail assigned to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley for rightly criticizing him as a wannabe dictator.
- Cancelled travel to the United States for refugees, including those who had been approved to resettle within the country.
- Withdrew the security detail assigned to Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Fauci’s crime: Contradicting Trump’s lies about the dangers of COVID-19.
- Ordered all Federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility offices, positions, plans, actions, initiatives or programs to be scrapped within 60 days.
- Through his Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Brenden Carr, forced CBS to cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”—a fierce Trump critic.
Upon being named Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler ruthlessly moved to make himself absolute dictator.
During his first eight months since again taking office on January 20, Donald Trump has ruthlessly moved to make himself absolute dictator
* * * * * * * * * *
As non- and anti-Fascist Americans have watched Trump’s behavior with fear and morbid fascination, many of them have asked: “What makes him do the things he does?”
It’s a question asked—and answered—in the 1993 Western, Tombstone. And the answer given in that movie may just hold the answer to the question so many Americans are now asking about Trump.
Tombstone recounts the legendary blood feud between the Ike Clanton outlaw gang and the Earp brothers—Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil—in the famous gold-mining town in 1880s Arizona.
Wyatt Earp has been challenged to a gunfight by quick-trigger gunman Johnny Ringo. Although he impulsively accepted the challenge, Wyatt now realizes he’s certain to be killed. Thus follows this exchange with his longtime friend, the pistol-packing dentist, John H. “Doc” Holliday:
WYATT EARP: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?
JOHN H. “DOC” HOLLIDAY: A man like Ringo’s got a great empty hole right through the middle of him. He can never kill enough or steal enough or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.
EARP: What does he need?
HOLLIDAY: Revenge.
EARP: For what?
HOLLIDAY: Bein’ born.
Donald Trump was born into a world of wealth and privilege. His father gave him $200 million, which he channeled into a real estate empire. He has claimed to be worth a billion dollars.
He has been linked—often by his own boasts—to some of the most beautiful women in the world. He has been a major force on TV through his “reality show,” The Apprentice. He has literally stamped his name on hundreds of buildings.
And now he holds the Presidency of the United States, the most powerful office in the Western world.
Yet he remains filled with a poisonous hatred that encompasses almost everyone.
Since taking office, he has offered nothing positive in his agenda. Instead, he has focused his efforts on what he can take from others. At the top of his list: Declaring war on millions of illegal immigrants—many of whom hold menial jobs most other Americans refuse to take.
As first-mate Starbuck says of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick: “He is a champion of darkness.”
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In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 17, 2025 at 12:10 am
On September 10, 2025, Donald Trump discovered hate speech.
It had been a long time coming.
As both a Presidential candidate and President, Donald Trump repeatedly used Twitter (now X) to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his first 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:
- Hillary Clinton
- President Barack Obama
- Actress Meryl Streep
- Singer Neil Young
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Comedian John Oliver
- News organizations
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
Perhaps his most slanderous insult came when he accused Rafael Cruz, the father of his campaign rival, Senator Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz, of being a potential part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
As a Presidential candidate and President, he has shown outright hatred for President Barack Obama. Starting in 2011, he slandered Obama as a Kenyan-born alien who had no right to hold the Presidency.
Barack Obama
Only on the eve of the first Presidential debate with Hillary Clinton—in September, 2016—did he finally admit that Obama had been born in the United States. He did so to desperately court support among black voters, who saw his attacks on Obama as attacks on them.
Then, on March 4, 2017, in a series of unhinged tweets, Trump accused Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election:
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Both the FBI and Justice Department vigorously refuted this slander.
According to The Washington Post Fact Checker database: Trump’s false or misleading claims totaled over 30,573 during his first presidency. Many of these claims were directed at political opponents, media figures, and other individuals.
Trump reserved some of his most insulting speech for political opponents:
- “Crooked Hillary” Clinton
- “Crazy Bernie” Sanders
- “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz
To blunt the influence of the news media’s influence with the public, Trump labeled them “Fake News” and “The enemy of the American people.”
Then, on September 10, 2025, Right-wing propagandist Charlie Kirk was shot by a sniper while speaking at a Turning Point USA public debate event on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah.
That was when Trump discovered the evils of hate speech. And on September 16, he offered his own definition of it.
On September 15, his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, had vowed to go after those who engaged in “hate speech” following Kirk’s assassination: “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie—in our society.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that is across the aisle.”
Pam Bondi
On September 16, ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl asked Trump about Bondi’s threat, noting: “A lot of your allies say that hate speech is free speech.”
Trump replied:
“She’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly, You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they will come after ABC. ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech. Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they will have to go after you.”
In short: Any speech that displeases Trump automatically becomes “hate speech”—and is subject to federal prosecution
Writing about Alexander the Great more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian and biographer Plutarch noted:
“And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.”
Another ancient writer to cast light on the mentality behind Trump’s remark was Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. As private secretary to the Roman Emperor Hadrian, he gained access to the imperial archives. It was from these that he obtained the material for The Twelve Caesars, his chronicle of debauchery from Julius Caesar to Domitian.
His chapter on Gaius Caligula is especially pornographic. It was Caligula who summed up the underlying goal of all the Caesars—and its effects on countless Romans and non-Romans.
Speaking to a critic, Caligula said: “Bear in mind that I can treat anyone exactly as I please.”
On February 27, 1933, a lone arsonist set fire to the German parliament building, the Reichstag, gutting most of the structure.
The next day, at the request of newly-installed Chancellor Adolf Hitler, President Paul von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree into law. This suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including:
- Freedom of speech, press, association and public assembly;
- Habeas corpus; and
- Secrecy of the mails and telephone.
Donald Trump is clearly seeking to turn Charlie Kirk’s murder into the equivalent of the Reichstag fire.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 4, 2025 at 12:09 am
“The Holocaust never happened.”
“The Sandy Hook massacre never happened.”
“The MAGAbomber is a Democrat who’s mailing letter-bombs to make Republicans look bad.”
These are among the lies regularly hurled by “lunatic fringe” Right-wingers—and, more importantly, “mainstream” Republicans.
Many liberals believe Right-wingers simply lack correct information.
They assume that, if only Right-wingers knew the truth about such matters as:
- The millions slaughtered during the Holocaust;
- The horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School; and
- The pro-Trump motives of the MAGAbomber
they would be telling the truth.
There are two motives behind such blatant lying—and mere ignorance is not one of them.
Motive #1: Right-wingers don’t want to admit the truth about events most people instinctively believe are evil.
Right-wingers intuitively know that:
- Shoving huge numbers of naked men, women and children into gas chambers
- Spraying scores of bullets into scores of helpless men, women and children in churches, nightclubs and schools; and
- Sending bombs through the mail to murder people
are indefensible examples of pure evil.
They know they can’t convince decent people that such atrocities are really acts of humanity. So it’s easier (for them) to simply deny that they actually happened.
The tobacco industry paved the way for such arguments.
The Tobacco Institute—a trade association created in 1958 to pose as a “smoking research” center—cast doubt on scientific studies linking smoking with lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease.
Tobacco Institute ad
Its premise: “We really don’t know if smoking causes cancer. We need more studies to make certain.”
And, for the Tobacco Institute, there could never be enough studies to prove that smoking was a thoroughly deadly habit—that reaped billions of dollars every year for the tobacco industry.
The longer they could convince the public of their lies, the less likely they were to be regulated.
Motive #2: Right-wingers claim Right-wing atrocities didn’t happen to put the victims of such atrocities on the defensive.
This, too, was a major aim of the tobacco industry. By constantly demanding “Prove to us that smoking is deadly” and then arrogantly dismissing all evidence put forward, tobacco executives put the onus on their opponents.
From October 22 to November 1, 2018, Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe-bombs to 10 prominent Democrats—including former President Barack Obama, then-former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
After Sayoc was arrested and his van was found plastered with pro-Donald Trump stickers, Right-wingers reflexively seized on a series of lies to “cleanse” themselves:
- “He’s a liberal put up to it by other liberals.”
- “The bombs were fake, to stir up sympathy for liberals before the November elections.”
- Right-wing talk-show host Rush Limbaugh: “Would it make a lot of sense for a Democrat operative or Democrat-inculcated lunatic to do it? Because things are not working out the way they thought.”
- Right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza: “I hear the FBI squeezed lemon juice on the suspicious packages and a very faint lettering revealed a single word: DEMOCRATS.”
Totally ignored was that FBI Director Christopher Wray—a Trump appointee after the firing of James Comey in May, 2017—publicly stated that the bombs were real: “Though we’re still analyzing these devices in our laboratory, these were not hoax devices.”
Christopher Wray
So how did Right-wingers react to Wray’s no-nonsense rebuttal of Right-wing conspiracy lies?
They attacked the FBI as part of the “deep state” determined to thwart and, if possible, impeach Donald Trump.
According to one Rightist theory: The FBI made the bombs and sent them out to implicate some poor Trump supporter—if not the President himself.
So how can such liars be defeated? Lawsuits based on the truth.
On August 1, 2018, families of four students and two educators who died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre filed a defamation lawsuit against Right-wing broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Jones hosts The Alex Jones Show from Austin, Texas. He had claimed the mass shooting was fake.
Twenty children and six adults were killed in the December 14, 2012, attack by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.
On his program in January, 2015, Jones said: “Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors.”
Alex Jones
Michael Zimmermann [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
According to the complaint filed against Jones:
“The Jones defendants concoct elaborate and false paranoia-tinged conspiracy theories because it moves product and they make money. Not because they truly believe what they are saying, but rather because it increases profits.”
Thus, a reasonable person would understand that Jones meant the massacre was staged and the deaths were fabricated.
So Jones responded with another lie: “This is all out of context….And it’s not even what I said or my intent. I’m not going to get into the real defects of this, I’m going to wait until it’s thrown out with prejudice.”
Jones’ lies did him no good. On August 4, 2022, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay two plaintiffs $4.1 million in compensatory damages. The following day, he was ordered to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages.
Other trials are pending.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 28, 2025 at 12:10 am
Donald Trump, upon taking office as President, appointed Elon Musk the head of a newly-created government agency called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Its stated goal: Eliminating inefficiency and waste within the federal bureaucracy.
DOGE’s activities included shuttering government agencies, defunding programs and firing up to 100,000 federal employees.
Musk initially claimed he would save taxpayers $2 trillion. But financial records now indicate a savings of $175 billion.
Musk’s tenure with DOGE officially ended on May 29.
Elon Musk
The Royal Society, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Musk donated $288 million to Trump’s 2024 Presidential campaign. He repeatedly praised Trump: “This election, I think, is going to decide the fate of America, and along with the fate of America, the fate of Western civilization.”
And Trump praised Musk: “Only Elon can do this,” Trump said of a SpaceX launch. “That’s why I love you, Elon.”
But that lovefest has brutally ended. On June 3, 2025, Musk blasted the massive tax-and-spending bill backed by Trump.
Dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” by Trump—and thus by House and Senate Republicans—the legislation will:
- Extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts, keeping taxes low on the richest Americans;
- Hurt millions of Americans by slashing $600 billion from Medicaid;
- Cost millions some or all of their food stamp benefits;
- Leave nine to 14 million people without health insurance by 2034;
- Add $3.1 trillion to the nation’s debt.
Having narrowly passed the House of Representatives by one vote, the bill passed the Senate on July 4, as Trump had demanded.
Elon Musk vigorously dissented. In a post on X, his social media site, he wrote: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
In a follow-up post, he added: “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
Tesla headquarters
Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Even worse for Republicans, Musk wrote on X: “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” suggesting that he would fund campaigns in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections to remove those who voted for the bill.
Many Republicans were expecting Musk to fund their midterm campaigns against Democrats—and their own primary challengers.
Donald Trump
Trump has loudly proclaimed his belief in taking vengeance on those who cross him: “If someone screws you, screw them back 10 times harder,” he told business leaders during a 2005 speech in Colorado.
Trump is an alpha male who enjoys dominating others. So is Musk. As Dan McAdams, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, told Newsweek:
“Two alphas can probably get along well enough as long as they don’t interfere with each other’s respective domain.
“Musk is certainly a narcissist but his self-worth is caught up in what he achieves. He really cares about building electric cars, sending people into space, and so on.
“Trump does not care about anything except himself. His entire self worth depends on others adoring him and fearing him.”
Musk is the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $314 billion as of November 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He owns Tesla, Inc., X (formerly Twitter), Space X and xAI, an artificial intelligence startup that he founded in 2023.
He commands unlimited resources in money, attorneys and the ability to reach millions through X. He’s received billions of dollars in Federal contracts—among them $733.5 million for the Space Development Agency (SDA) and two for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
But Trump commands the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service. He’s already turned that machinery on former federal officials he hates—such as Chris Krebs, the former director for cybersecurity.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s appointment for Attorney General, has proven her reliability. As Florida Attorney General, she solicited a political contribution from Trump while her office deliberated investigating alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, Trump wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
And Trump has already started his attack on Musk: On July 1, when reporters asked him if he would deport South Africa-born Musk, Trump said: “We’ll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon.”
And on July 3, The New Republic published that Trump was responsible for rumors about Elon Musk’s rampant White House ketamine use: “‘Actually, we dropped a dime to The New York Times….on Elon’s drug taking,’” said Trump, according to his biographer Michael Wolff,
Musk could easily be indicted for corruption—even if it’s totally unwarranted. At the very least, many—if not all—of Musk’s government contracts could be cancelled. At the worst, Musk could find himself locked in combat with Federal prosecutors for the length of Trump’s term and facing huge fines—if not imprisonment.
Ernst Rohm felt invulnerable at the start of 1934. After leaving government with an effusive send-off from Trump, Elon Musk may have felt the same.
Like Rohm, Musk may live to regret the devotion he’s lavished on his choice for Fuhrer.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 27, 2025 at 12:18 am
On June 30, 1934, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered a massive purge of his private army, the S.A., (Sturmabteilungor). It was carried out by Hitler’s elite army-within-an-army, the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS.
The Brownshirts (also known as “Storm Troopers”) had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. They had violently intimidated political opponents (especially Communists) and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party.
But after Hitler reached the pinnacle of power, they became a liability.
Ernst Rohm, their commander, had served as a tough army officer during World War 1. He was one of the few men allowed to use “du,” the personal form of “you” in German, when addressing Hitler.
Rohm urged Hitler to disband the regular German army, the Reichswehr, and replace it with his own undisciplined paramilitary legions as the nation’s defense force.
By 1934, the Storm Troopers numbered approximately three million. By contrast, about 100,000 soldiers served in the Reichswehr, owing to restrictions imposed by the 1919 Versailles Treaty which ended World War 1.
Ernst Rohm
Frightened by Rohm’s ambitions, the generals of the Reichswehr gave Hitler an ultimatum: Get rid of Rohm—or they would get rid of him.
Hitler didn’t hesitate. Backed by armed thugs, he stormed into Rohm’s apartment, catching him in bed with a young S.A. Storm Trooper.
Accusing his onetime friend of treasonously plotting to overthrow him, Hitler screamed: “You’re going to be shot!”
Rohm was not plotting a coup. But the generals had the whip hand—and, for Hitler, that was enough to literally sign Rohm’s death warrant.
Hours later, sitting in a prison cell, Rohm was offered a pistol with a single bullet.
“Adolf himself should do the dirty work,” said Rohm, adding: “All revolutions devour their own children.”
One hour later, Rohm died in a hail of SS bullets.
Earlier throughout that day, so had several hundred of his longtime S.A. cronies. Many of them yelled “Heil Hitler!” as they stood against barracks walls waiting to be shot.
SS soldiers marching
Thirteen days later, addressing the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, Hitler justified his purge in a nationally broadcast speech:
“If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the Supreme Judge of the German people!
“I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterize down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life.
“Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
Adolf Hitler addressing parliament
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-E11354 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Ninety-one years after Adolf Hitler declared himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people,” the United States faces the same fate under re-elected President Donald J. Trump.
And his Number One victim may turn out to be Elon Musk, the man who played a pivotal role in sending him back to the White House.
Musk, the leader of Space X Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), had donated tens of millions of dollars to pro-Trump super PACs, jumped around the stage behind Trump during campaign rallies, and turned X into a Right-wing cheering squad for Trump.
Trump, upon taking office, appointed Musk the head of a fictional government agency called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Its official goal: Eliminating inefficiency and waste within the federal bureaucracy.
But some—like former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen—had a warning for Musk: “Donald Trump is loyal to one person and one person only…himself.
“The moment Elon steps an inch out of Trump’s line, despite all he might have done for him, Donald will cut him off, disparage and denigrate him. Elon is no different than me or anyone else similarly situated. It’s just a matter of when.”
Cohen speaks from bitter personal experience.
A longtime executive of the Trump Organization, Cohen told ABC news in 2011: “If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit.”
In April 2018, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York began investigating Cohen. Charges reportedly included bank fraud, wire fraud and violations of campaign finance law.
Michael Cohen
By IowaPolitics.com (Trump executive Michael Cohen 012) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
On April 9, 2018, the FBI, executing a federal search warrant, raided Cohen’s office at the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs, as well as at his home and his room in the Loews Regency Hotel in New York City.
Agents seized emails, tax and business records and recordings of phone conversations that Cohen had made.
Trump’s response: “Michael Cohen only handled a tiny, tiny fraction of my legal work.”
Thus Trump undermined the argument of Cohen’s lawyers that he was the President’s personal attorney—and therefore everything Cohen did was protected by attorney-client privilege.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 26, 2025 at 12:06 am
On August 22, the PBS Newshour website carried the following headline: HEGSETH FIRES GENERAL WHOSE AGENCY’S INTEL ASSESSMENT OF U.S. STRIKES ON IRAN ANGERED TRUMP.
The story opened: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from U.S. strikes angered President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.”
“Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
“The firing is the latest upheaval in military leadership and in the country’s intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the U.S. strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Donald Trump
After the June 21 strikes, Hegseth attacked the press, claiming that it had an anti-military bias . But he refused to provide evidence that proved the nuclear sites had been wiped out.
Since re-taking office on January 20, Trump has fired more than 10 senior military leaders. Critics have called this an unprecedented purge of the Pentagon.
Among those fired:
- General Charles “CQ” Brown Jr.: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brown was the nation’s highest-ranking military officer.
- Admiral Lisa Franchetti: The Chief of Naval Operations and the first woman to lead the U.S. Navy.
- General James Slife: The Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force was fired along with Brown and Franchetti.
- General Timothy Haugh: The head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency (NSA)
- Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield: The U.S. military representative to NATO.
- Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse: The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Trump’s determination to remake the armed forces in his own image reflects he mindset of an earlier dictator whose rage and egotism carried him—and his country—to ruin: Adolf Hitler.
Bevin Alexander provides an overall—but colorful—view of Hitler’s generalship in How Hitler Could have Won World War II.
Among the fatal military mistakes that led to the defeat of the Third Reich:
- Wasting hundreds of Luftwaffe [air force] pilots, fighters and bombers in a halfhearted attempt to conquer England.
- Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which would have given Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
- Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
- Turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies.
- Needlessly declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on defeating Japan.)
- Refusing to negotiate a separate peace with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin—thus granting Germany a large portion of captured Russian territory in exchange for letting Stalin remain in power.
- Insisting on a “not-one-step-back” military “strategy” that led to the needless surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.
As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking.
He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. This, in turn, led to astonishing and unnecessary losses among their ranks.
On June 6, 1944, General Gerd von Rundstedt insisted that Panzer tanks be released to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct orders of the Fuehrer.
Panzer tank
Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rundstedt: The Fuhrer was asleep-–and was not to be awakened. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.
Nor could Hitler accept responsibility for the policies that were leading Germany to certain defeat. He blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.
Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German Panzer corps—and responsible for the blitzkreig victory against France in 1940.
Heinz Guderian
Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks—which Germany had failed to do during four years of World War 1.
Erich von Manstein
Finally, on April 29, 1945—with the Russians only blocks from his underground Berlin bunker—Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”
Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that ultimately consumed 50 million lives:
“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.”
Hitler had launched the invasion of Poland—and World War II—with a lie: That Poland had attacked Germany.
Fittingly, he closed the war—and his life—with a final lie.
The ancient Greeks believed that “a man’s character is his destiny.”
For Adolf Hitler—and the nations he ravaged—that proved fatally true.
It remains to be seen whether the same will prove true for Donald Trump—and the United States.
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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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THE LIVES OF CHICKENS–AND AMERICANS: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 7, 2025 at 12:10 amOn 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:
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