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DONALD TRUMP: THE MIND OF A PSYCHOPATH COMES TO VIDEO: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 1, 2024 at 12:09 am

After taking office as President on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump continued to hurl threats of violence against those he hates.           

“Trump’s language of violence started with immigrants when he launched his presidential campaign in 2015,” wrote Washington Post Reporter Eugene Scott.There is a direct line from his language to real violence against immigrants and other innocent Americans caught in the maniacal mass shootings of the past year.

“And this cancer is spreading: to Congress, to the media, to the intelligence community, to foreign allies. There is no end in sight as Trump becomes increasingly unhinged and the GOP remains frozen in abject silence.”

On October 2, 2019, Journalist Nina Burleigh wrote: “Since 2015, TV-watching Americans have been subject to the deimatic spectacle of more than 400 rallies (at least 80 since his election) in which Trump sometimes openly and more often coyly urged supporters to violence. These spectacles have conditioned many Americans to fear him and his more enthusiastic supporters.” 

Image result for Images of people giving the "Sieg heil" salute to Trump

Supporters giving the “Seig Heil” salute to Donald Trump

“Over the last few days, the President’s rhetoric of violence and hate has spread,” stated an October 3, 2019 press release by America’s Voice, a liberal immigration group.

“As Jamelle Bouie noted yesterday, ‘Over the weekend, in a rage over impeachment, President Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of ‘treason,’ promised ‘Big Consequences’ for the whistle-blower who sounded the alarm about his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and shared a warning — from a Baptist pastor in Dallas — that impeachment ‘will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.’” 

Trump’s opponents have good reason to fear. And not simply the public demonstrations by the President’s fanatical base. They should fear the secret fantasies of the Right. 

Those secret fantasies have been revealed in a series of Right-wing videos featuring graphic acts of violence against those whom the Right—and Trump—hate.

From October 10 to 12, 2019, attendees of the American Priority Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami resort enjoyed many of those videos.

One of these, “The Trumpsman,” featured a digitized Trump shooting, stabbing and setting fire to such liberals—and even conservatives—as: 

  • Former President Bill Clinton
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden
  • Former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
  • Former President Barack Obama
  • Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders
  • Utah Senator Mitt Romney
  • The late Arizona Senator John McCain 

And legitimate news media—such as CBS, BBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times and The  Washington Post—were also depicted as among Trump’s victims.

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The video was produced by Rightists who believed it reflected what Donald Trump would do to his enemies if only he could get away with it. And given his near-constant calls for violence against his critics, they were absolutely correct.  

But the video’s critics were wrong to call for its suppression.

On the contrary—it should have bene widely seen for what it was: The Mein Kampf of Donald Trump and his fanatical followers, in and outside the Republican party.

Like Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, it depicted the future America can expect if the Right gains the power to live out its murderous fantasies. And the fantasy Right-wingers prize most: The brutal extermination of everyone who refuses to submit to their Fascistic tyranny.

“The Trumpsman” is part of a growing genre of pro-Trump memes that routinely earn thousands of views on sites like YouTube and Twitter. Many superimpose the faces of Trump and his chief supporters slaughtering Democrats, liberal celebrities and/or members of the media.

The event’s organizer, Alex Phillips, hurriedly claimed that the “unauthorized video” was shown “in a side room” at the American Priority Conference.

But there was an upside to this exercise in Right-wing porn. Democrats could have run TV ads showing limited clips from “The Trumpsman” video.

Unfortunately, the majority of Democrats lack the courage to attack their Right-wing enemies with the same ruthlessness used against them. That’s why they lost most Presidential elections of the 20th century.

Americans should be constantly warned: These videos were not made by liberals to parody the values and goals of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.

These videos were made by Right-wingers—and reflect the true values and intentions of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters

The boiler-plate rhetoric that gushes out of Republican conventions—about love of family, God and flag—is the public mask of the Right.

The videos that depict Right-wingers ruthlessly slaughtering anyone who dares to disagree with them reflect the real face of the Right.

Of course, most Americans never imagined that a President would:

  • Refuse to accept the results of a legitimate Presidential election;
  • Spend four years lying that he had lost through massive voter fraud; 
  • Incite a mob to attack Congress while it counted Electoral College votes—which he knew proved he had lost in 2020.

Trump’s opponents should stop deluding themselves that: “Surely he’ll never do that.”

Whatever they fear he will do, he will do.

Like all predators, he will stop only when he meets a stronger opponent.

Germans—and the rest of the world—learned that about Adolf Hitler. But only when it was too late.

DONALD TRUMP: THE MIND OF A PSYCHOPATH COMES TO VIDEO: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 31, 2024 at 12:14 am

On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.            

About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen. 

Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.

Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.

At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Of this he served only nine months before being released.

Hitler used his time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria, to write his infamous book, Mein Kampf“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—for a revitalized Germany and the conquest of other nations.

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Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924

Published in 1925, it was long ignored by all but the most fanatical Nazis. But as Hitler gained increasing numbers of votes in a series of elections, many people—inside and outside Germany—began paying attention to its contents.

By 1939 it had sold 5,200,000 copies and had been translated into 11 languages.

Most of those who bought the book never read it. Its style was bombastic, repetitious and illogical. The first edition contained grammatical errors, reflecting a self-educated man.

Few who read it took Hitler’s intentions seriously. Comedians portrayed him as a wildly gesturing  crank who screamed constantly.

Hitler made no effort to hide his program for Germany under his rule. His candor led many people to believe he was a lunatic who could be safely ignored. 

He was especially insistent on the need for eliminating world Jewry and conquering the Soviet Union. 

On the former topic he wrote: “The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated. 

“If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.”

A mere 17 years later, Hitler’s “Thousand-Year Reich” would translate those words into horrific action in a series of extermination camps equipped with gas chambers.

Mein Kampf(german Language Edition) (German Edition)

Hitler was equally insistent that Germany needed to find Lebensraum“Living space”-–in the east. And by “east” he meant “Russia.” 

Specifically: “And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago.

“We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.

“If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.” 

Hitler finally attained power on January 30, 1933. He realized that Germany was not yet strong enough to impose its will on other nations. So he set out on a secret crash program to make Germany the strongest military power in Europe.

In 1936, he set out on his “mission of Providence”:

  • March, 1936: Ordering German troops to reoccupy the demilitarised zone between France and Germany (the Rhineland), in violation of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War 1.
  • July, 1936: Sending troops to Spain to support the Fascist army of General Francisco Franco.
  • March 12, 1938: Occupying Austria and “unifying” it with Germany (the “Anschluss“).
  • September 29, 1938: Bullying British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain into surrendering Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland districts to Germany.
  • September 1, 1939: Ordering the invasion of Poland, which unintentionally launched World War II.
  • June 22, 1941: Ordering the invasion of the Soviet Union. 
  • 1941: Secretly ordering “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” resulting in the extermination of at least six million Jews.

Only after Hitler set out to conquer, first Europe, then the Soviet Union, did his victims and intended victims realize that Mein Kampf had given them a deadly warning. A warning too many of them had refused to heed.

By the time World War II ended:

  • Fifty million men, women and children were died—most of them dying in agony.
  • The Soviet Union, having crushed Nazi Germany, become a world power.
  • Poland and eastern Europe—once captives of Nazi Germany—now found themselves captives of the Soviet Union.
  • The United States, untouched by the war, emerged as the world’s superpower—and the only country strong enough to contain the Soviet Union.

But Adolf Hitler isn’t the only would-be dictator to give ample warning of his murderous intentions.

And, like most Germans in the Weimar Republic, which preceded Nazi Germany, most Americans refuse to take that warning seriously. 

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY PC HALLOWEEN–OR ELSE

In Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 28, 2024 at 12:12 am

Halloween isn’t just for kids anymore.

In 2024, more than 70% of Americans are planning to celebrate Halloween. They are expected to spend $11.6 billion: 

  • $3.8 billion on costumes;
  • $3.8 billion on decorations;
  • $3.5 billion on Halloween candy;
  • $500 million on greeting cards.

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Those putting out this avalanche of money will, of course, be adults. And a lot of those costumes will be worn by adults at parties across the nation.

This will be especially true in San Francisco.

In 1979, Halloween in its Castro District shifted from being a children’s event to a celebration among homosexuals.

The massive crowds quickly overwhelmed the streets, mass transit and due to the Castro’s location along two major transport corridors, disrupted traffic flow well outside the neighborhood.

In 2002, 500,000 people celebrated Halloween in the Castro and four people were stabbed.

It continued to grow into a massive annual street party until 2006, when a shooting wounded nine people and prompted the city to call off the event.

In 2007, 600 police were deployed in the Castro on HalloweenBy 2010, San Francisco had banned the event in the Castro, directing celebrants to various balls and parties elsewhere.

But there’s another force working to suppress Halloween joy among its participants: Political Correctness.

A number of articles highlight a series of costumes it’s now Politically Incorrect to wear on Halloween.  As a result, it’s now virtually impossible to enjoy this occasion without fearing that you’ll hurt the Politically Correct sensitivities of almost every group imaginable.

For example:

Adolf Hitler: PC types damn it as offensive and upsetting to many people—such as Jews generally and Holocaust survivors in particular. (The same could be said for any actor who portrays Hitler in a movie, such as Downfall or The Bunker.)

Homeless Persons: Such costumes will hurt the feelings of bums who won’t be attending Halloween parties anyway.

Illegal Alien: It’s not nice to spotlight people who constantly violate the immigration laws of the United States.

Terrorist: You might upset Islamics, who make up the vast majority of the world’s terrorists.

Others on the list of groups that uber-liberals believes it’s Politically Incorrect to dress up as include:

  • Blacks (if you’re white).
  • Naughty priests: It’s offensive to mock religious hypocrites who violate the bodies of children.
  • Caitlyn Jenner: It’s cruel to make fun of a man who, as a man, won gold medals as an Olympic athlete—and then had sophisticated surgery to make himself look like a woman. 
  • Mexicans (such as a woman wearing a mariachi outfit or a man sporting a sombrero, serape and drooping moustache).
  • Pimp: It’s offensive to blacks—especially those who make their living through the sale of women’s bodies. 
  • Sexy nurse: Because nursing is a serious profession—and everybody knows that nurses never enter into romances with doctors. 
  • Fat costumes: It will hurt the feelings of people who can barely fit into an airplane seat—many of them because they simply eat too much. 
  • Crazed Killer: Because it’s not fair to make fun of psychopathic murderers who prey on innocent men, women and children. 
  • Sexy Convict/Prison Guard: You could be accused of “trivializing” the United States prison system.  
  • The Wall: Wearing an imitation brick wall reminds people that millions of Hispanics have illegally violated America’s immigration laws—and millions more intend to.
  • Arab Sheik: It’s not nice to dress like a terrorism-bankrolling OPEC board member wearing a long flowing robe and headdress.   
  • Sexy Harem Slave: Consider this the flip side of “Arab Sheik.”  It’s uncool to remind people that women throughout the Islamic world are treated like chattel. 
  • “Droopers”: An obvious parody of the “Hooters” outfit, this features a fake pair of drooping breasts, thus winning it dual charges of “ageism” and “sexism.”
  • Geisha: You could be accused of “cultural appropriation.” 
  • Hillary in Prison: Depicting a woman who often skirted the law as paying the price for it is anti-feminist. 
  • Robert E. Lee: Once a Southern icon of the Civil War, he is now damned as a racist defender of slavery.
  • Escaped Mental Patient: Wearing an imitation straitjacket makes fun of real-life whackjobs who need to be restrained—for their own safety and that of others.
  • Indian Snake Charmer: This costume supposedly appropriates Middle Eastern culture and has “disturbing sexual undertones”—if you equate snakes with penises. 

If you follow the guidelines of these articles, you might as well skip Halloween altogether.

Yet no one objects to children—or adults—dressing up as pirates like Blackbeard, who once terrorized the oceans as modern-day terrorists menace the world.

Blackbeard - Wikipedia

Blackbeard

No one objects to those who dress up like skeletons—when almost everyone has lost a friend or family member to death.

No one objects to those who dress up as witches, who have been associated with evil for hundreds of years.

No one objects to those who dress up as Satan—the literal personification of evil for millions of Christians, Jews and Muslims.

The whole idea of Halloween is to momentarily step into a character that’s utterly different from you.

So if you are a terrorist, try dressing up at Halloween as Dr. Albert Schweitzer or Florence Nightingale.

“AMBUSHED AT CREDIBILITY GAP”: PART FOUR (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 21, 2024 at 12:10 am

After being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, Meryl Streep criticized Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s mocking of disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.          

Kovaleski suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.  

At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from an article he had written four years earlier.

Trump had earlier said the article proved that New Jersey Muslims had celebrated the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Kovaleski had insisted there was no credible proof of such celebrations.  

Angered at being contradicted, Trump mocked Kovaleski: He flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.'”

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Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right

At the Golden Globe Awards on January 8, Streep denounced this behavior that “broke my heart.”

“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. 

“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”

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Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes

Streep’s words outraged Trump’s supporters—especially his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway. 

Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts. 

“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”

Conway didn’t say what common ground Streep should find with Trump. Perhaps agreeing on mocking the disabled? 

Kellyanne Conway by Gage Skidmore 3.jpg

Kelleyanne Conway

Then Conway visited CNN’s “New Day,” where she offered a “black-is-white” defense for Trump’s videotaped ridiculing of Kovaleski: It didn’t happen.  

The host, Chris Cuomo, having seen the video, wasn’t buying it.

CUOMO: But is [Streep] wrong? Is she wrong that it was wrong for Trump to make gestures like that about a man with disabilities?  

CONWAY: He didn’t—but that is not what he did and he has said that a thousand times. As he tweeted out today—

CUOMO: He can say it a million. Look at the video.

CONWAY: Why can’t you—wait, excuse me. Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt the way the benefit of the doubt was given to CNN’s polling, all of its analysts?

CUOMO: Because he’s making a disgusting gesture on video talking about Serge.

CONWAY: Not about that reporter and that’s just a fact. That is what he’s said. You should give him—

CUOMO: But how is it not about the reporter?

CONWAY: —the deference and respect if he says that it was—he was not mocking, he was mocking the groveling. He said it again this morning. He has three tweets out about it.

CUOMO: But he’s doing a gesture that goes right to the guy’s vulnerability.

CONWAY: You’re saying you don’t believe him. You’re calling him a liar and you shouldn’t.

CUOMO: Look, Kellyanne, to me that’s like you’re trying to scare me off the point and we both know it’s a waste of time.

CONWAY: I’m not going to scare you off anything.

CUOMO: He’s making a gesture that is so keenly tuned to what Serge’s vulnerability is. 

CONWAY: And now you’re giving oxygen to what Meryl Streep said.

CUOMO: Forget about Meryl Streep. This happened before her. If our kids did that, could you imagine what we would say to them?  

Conway said she would not bring her children into the discussion.

CUOMO: I will. If my kid did something like that, it’d be a really tough day.

CONWAY: You have to listen to what the president has said about that. Why don’t you believe him? 

Conway tried to change the subject to Hillary Clinton: “She was given the benefit of the doubt here constantly.”  

When Cuomo asked for specifics, she refused to give them. Then she returned to claiming that Trump had never mocked Kovaleski:

CONWAY: You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this, when he’s telling you what was in his heart? You always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth, rather than look at what’s in his heart.  

* * * * *

Previously, politicians had defended themselves with arguments like: “You can see right here on the tape, I did (or, I didn’t)….”  

Trump has cast aside that logic—and the taped evidence—by demanding: “Believe what I’m telling you, not what you’ve just seen.”

By that rationale, if a security camera shows Trump robbing a bank at gunpoint, we’re supposed to believe him if he says: “No, I didn’t rob that bank. I was simply checking my bank balance.”

Such “logic” holds appeal for paid shills like Kelleyanne Conway. But most people will continue to judge by the evidence.

“AMBUSHED AT CREDIBILITY GAP”: PART THREE (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 18, 2024 at 12:22 am

For five years, Donald Trump, more than anyone else, popularized the slander that Barack Obama was born in Kenya—and was therefore an illegitimate President.      

For more than a year during his 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump continued doing so. 

As his popularity fell to less than 1% among blacks, the managers of his campaign urged: Put the “birther” issue behind you.

So, on September 16, 2016—10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—Trump made his version of a reversal.  

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Donald Trump: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”

He did so in about seven seconds and 40 words—after spending a half hour paying tribute to the military and promoting his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C.:

“Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.

“I finished it.  I finished it.  You know what I mean.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”  

His tone made it clear that he felt uneasy making that statement–and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.

He refused to take questions from reporters covering the event. Nor did he apologize for his five-year campaign of slander.  

On the evening of September 16, Hillary Clinton strongly responded to Trump’s comments: 

“For five years, he has led the birther movement to de-legitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history.”  

And First Lady Michelle Obama slammed Trump for his “birther” claims: 

“Then, of course, there were those who questioned, and who continue to question for the past eight years, and up to this very day, whether my husband was even born in this country.

“Well, during his time in office, I think Barack has answered those questions with the examples he set, by going high when they go low. And he’s answered these questions with the progress we’ve achieved together.” 

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Michelle Obama

But perhaps the best perspective on this event was provided by syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Each Friday they appear on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events. 

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David Brooks and Mark Shields

On September 16, 2016, Shields (a liberal) and Brooks (a conservative) addressed Trump’s about-face on birtherism.    

MARK SHIELDS: “I think it’s important to establish right at the outset that [Trump] wasn’t only the loudest and the highest-profile and the most persistent and the most well-publicized birther, he, Donald Trump. He lied. He lied consistently and persistently.

“And, today, without explanation or excuse, he just changed his position and tried to absolutely falsely shift the blame onto Hillary Clinton.

“And this was an appeal to—he debased democracy. He debased the national debate. He appealed to that which is most ignoble or least noble in all of us.”

DAVID BROOKS: “Usually, there’s some tangential relationship to the truth, but a corroding relationship to the truth, frankly, as politics has gone on over the years.

“But now we’re in a reverse, Orwellian inversion of the truth with this. And so we have a team of staffers and then the candidate himself who have taken the normal spin and smashed all the rules.

“And so we are really in Orwell land. We are in 1984. And it’s interesting that an authoritarian personality type comes in at the same time with a complete disrespect for even tangential relationship to the truth that words are unmoored.

“And so I do think this statement sort of shocked me with the purification of a lot of terrible trends that have been happening. And so what’s white is black, and what is up is down, what is down is up. And that really is something new in politics.

“And the fact that there is no penalty for it, apparently—he’s doing fantastic in the last two weeks in the polls–is just somehow where we have gotten.”  

Less than two months later, Trump won the Presidency.  

Since then, Trump has continued to inhabit what David Brooks called “Orwell land.”

The most recent example of this occurred on January 9, 2017.  

The night before, Meryl Streep had enraged Trump and his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway, at the Golden Globes Awards ceremony.

While being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, she had criticized Trump’s mocking, on November 25, 2015, of disabled New York Times reporter Serve Kovaleski:  

“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. 

“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.” 

“AMBUSHED AT CREDIBILITY GAP”: PART TWO (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 17, 2024 at 12:12 am

In 2011, Donald Trump, host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” was thinking of running for President against Barack Obama.     

Seeking to gain popularity among America’s Right-wing, Trump almost singlehandedly created the popular fiction that the President was born in Kenya—and was not an American citizen.

His motive: To convince Americans that Obama was an illegitimate President.

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Donald Trump

Among the statements Trump made:

February 10, 2011: “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”

March 23, 2011: “I want him to show his birth certificate. I want him to show his birth certificate. … There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”

March 28, 2011: “I am really concerned” [that Obama wasn’t born in the United States]. He said that the birth announcement for Obama in a Hawaii newspaper could have been planted “for whatever reason.”

March 30, 2011: “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was. … He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”

April 7, 2011: “I have people that have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding. You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. Right now I have real doubts.”

April 25, 2011: “I’ve been told very recently…that the birth certificate is missing. I’ve been told that it’s not there or it doesn’t exist. And if that’s the case, it’s a big problem.”

On April 27, President Obama released his original, long-form Hawiian birth certificate.

The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate 

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” said Obama at a press conference, speaking as a father might to a roomful of spiteful children. “We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.

“We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other…if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.”

And on May 1, he announced the solving of one of those “big problems”: Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had been tracked down and shot dead by elite U.S. Navy SEALS in Pakistan.

SEALS attacking bin Laden’s compound in the 2012 movie, “Zero Dark Thirty”

And how did Trump respond?  With the following series of Tweets on Twitter:

May 18, 2012:  “Let’s take a closer look at that birth certificate.@BarackObama was described in 2003 as being “born in Kenya.” http://bit.ly/Klc9Uu

August 6, 2012: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama‘s birth certificate is a fraud.”

August 27, 2012: “Why do the Republicans keep apologizing on the so called “birther” issue? No more apologies—take the offensive!”

September 13, 2012: “Wake Up America! See article: “Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake” 

June 30, 2013: @davidrhythmguit: @realDonaldTrump @Chuffman48 Mark Cuban accepts the fact that the President of the United States was born here. Doubt it”

August 22, 2013: “Why are people upset w/ me over Pres Obama’s birth certificate? I got him to release it, or whatever it was, when nobody else could!”

December 12, 2013:  “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived”

November 23, 2014: “@futureicon: @pinksugar61 Obama also fabricated his own birth certificate after being pressured to produce one by @realDonaldTrump

Even after declaring his candidacy for President on June 16, 2015, Trump continued to insist that Barack Obama was an illegitimate President.

Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity among blacks had steadily fallen. In June, 2016, a Quinnipiac poll revealed that Trump had 1% of support from black voters. By comparison, 91% of black voters backed Hillary Clinton.

Among the reasons for this:

  • His enthusiastic support by racist white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.
  • His “birther” attacks on President Obama as a non-citizen from Kenya—and thus ineligible to hold the Presidency.
  • His attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and calling on his supporters at rallies to rough up minority protesters.

Even the managers of Trump’s campaign urged him to put the “birther” issue behind him.

And so, on September 16—10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—Trump made his version of a reversal.

In doing so, he entered into what conservative New York Times political columnist David Brooks called “Orwell land.”

“AMBUSHED AT CREDIBILITY GAP”: PART ONE (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 16, 2024 at 12:26 am

“Credibility gap” is a term that came into use during the mid-1960s to describe public and journalistic distrust of President Lyndon B. Johnson. In particular, the term was applied to his administration’s conduct of the Vietnam war.      

It was, in short, a euphemism for accusing government officials of outright lying.

An example of the credibility gap in full swing appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1987 Vietnam war movie, Full Metal Jacket

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Vietnam was a war where military and political officials spewed a gung-ho version of constant American progress against a tough enemy.

And where civilian reporters like David Halberstam and Walter Cronkite saw—and labeled—the war as a brutal, wasteful and ultimately doomed effort. 

Midway through the film, there’s an editorial meeting of The Sea Tiger, the official Marine newspaper.

Lieutenant Lockhart is presiding–and he is determined to give his superiors an endless stream of “all-systems-go” propaganda reports. He reads a series of stories that have been published:

Story #1: DIPLOMATS IN DUNGAREES—MARINE ENGINEERS LEND A HELPING HAND REBUILDING DONG PHUC VILLAGES.

LOCKHART: “Chili, “if we move Vietnamese, they are evacuees. If they come to us to be evacuated, they are refugees.”

Story #2: N.V.A. SOLDIER DESERTS AFTER READING PAMPHLETS.

LOCKHART: “A young North Vietnamese Army regular, who realized his side could not win the war, deserted from his unit after reading Open Arms program pamphlets.”

Story #3: NOT WHILE WE’RE EATING: N.V.A. LEARN MARINES ON A SEARCH AND DESTROY MISSION DON’T LIKE TO BE INTERRUPTED WHILE EATING CHOW.

LOCKHART: “‘Search and destroy.’  Uh, we have a new directive on this. In the future, in place of ‘search and destroy,’ substitute the phrase ‘sweep and clear.’ Got it?” 

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Lt. Lockhart, editor of The Sea Tiger 

LOCKHART:  “And, Joker—where’s the weenie?”

JOKER:  “Sir?”

LOCKHART  “The Kill, Joker. I mean, all that fire, the grunts must’ve hit something.”

JOKER:  “Didn’t see ’em.”

LOCKHART:  “Joker, I’ve told you, we run two basic stories here: Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants—winning of hearts and Minds—okay? And combat action that results in a kill—Winning the War. Now you must have seen blood trails … drag marks?”

JOKER:  “It was raining, sir.”

LOCKHART:  “Well, that’s why God passed the law of probability. Now rewrite it and give it a happy ending–say, uh, one kill. Make it a sapper or an officer. Grunts like reading about dead officers.”

JOKER:  “Okay, an officer. How about a general?”

LOCKHART:  “Joker, maybe you’d like our guys to read the paper and feel bad. I mean, in case you didn’t know it, this is not a particularly popular war. Now, it is our job to report the news that these why-are-we-here civilian newsmen ignore.”

So great became the divide between truth and lies during military “press briefings” that reporters started calling them “The Five O’clock Follies.” And even some soldiers took to wearing buttons that said: “Ambushed at Credibility Gap.”

Reporters who dared to write truthfully about the military’s crimes and failures—like David Halberstam of the New York Times and Peter Arnett of the Associated Press—were regarded as traitors by military and political officials.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy became enraged by Halberstam’s reporting on the corruption of the South Vietnamese government. He pressured New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger to transfer Halberstam to another locale. Sulzberger politely refused—and then, to send a message to Kennedy, extended Halberstam’s stay in Vietnam another six months.

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David Halberstam

In 1965, when CBS Correspondent Morley Safer filmed Marines setting fire to the village of Cam Ne with Zippo lighters, President Lyndon B. Johnson was similarly outraged.

He placed an early-morning call to CBS News President Frank Stanton and shouted: “Your boys shat on the American flag!”

The trail of deceit and attempted censorship continued right up to the end of the war—in April, 1975. That was when North Vietnamese forces invaded the South and quickly overwhelmed the incompetent defenses arrayed against them.

And while America was still bogged down in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal erupted on June 17, 1972.

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Watergate Hotel

Members of the Nixon administration’s secret “Plumbers Unit” burglarized the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel.

Obsessed with re-electing Richard Nixon, they sought incriminating information to discredit U.S. Senator George McGovern, the Democrats’ nominee for President.

When the burglars were caught, President Richard M. Nixon and his topmost officials lied and stonewalled both reporters and investigators seeking the truth.

Nixon’s press secretary, Ronald Ziegler, repeatedly slandered the integrity of The Washington Post for its coverage of the mushrooming Watergate scandal. He called the Watergate break-in “a third-rate burglary” and attacked the Post for “shabby journalism.”

Finally, on April 17, 1973, Ziegler, announced at a press conference: “This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”

In short: We’ve been lying to you for the last 10 months.  But now we’re telling the truth.

Like Vietnam, the Watergate scandal destroyed the reputations of many of its chief architects. Forty government officials were indicted or jailed.

Vietnam and Watergate were seminal events for Americans coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They taught an entire generation: Don’t trust the government. Its officials routinely lie, and their lies can be deadly

GERMANS ONCE BACKED A FASCIST DICTATOR; NOW IT’S AMERICA’S TURN

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 8, 2024 at 12:07 am

In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator. 

“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims….

“If he answered their suppressed desires, it was not because he shared them, but because he could make use of them. He despised the German people, for they were merely the instruments of his will.”

On November 8, 2016, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.

Yet, in some ways, Americans had fewer excuses for turning to a Fascistic style of government than the Germans did.

Adolf Hitler joined the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party in 1919—the year after World War 1 ended.

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Adolf Hitler

In 1923, he staged a coup attempt in Bavaria—which was quickly and brutally put down by police. He was arrested and sentenced to less than a year in prison.

After that, Hitler decided that winning power through violence was no longer an option. He must win it through election—or appointment.

When the 1929 Depression struck Germany, the fortunes of Hitler’s Nazi party rose as the life savings of ordinary Germans fell. Streets echoed with bloody clashes between members of Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers and those of the German Communist Party.

Germans desperately looked for a leader—a Fuhrer—who could somehow deliver them from the threat of financial ruin and Communist takeover.

In early 1933, members of his own cabinet persuaded aging German president, Paul von Hindenburg, that only Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor could do this.

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Paul von Hindenburg

Hindenburg was reluctant to do so. He considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he let himself be convinced that he could “box in” and control Hitler by putting him in the Cabinet.

So, on January 30, 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor (the equivalent of Attorney General) of Germany.

On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died. Hitler immediately assumed the titles—and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President. His rise to total power was complete.

It had taken him 14 years to do so.

In 2015, Donald Trump declared his candidacy for President.

Now, consider this:

  • The country was technically at war in the Middle East—but the fate of the United States was not truly threatened, as it had been during the Civil War.
  • There was no draft; if you didn’t know someone in the military, you didn’t care about the casualties taking place.
  • Nor were these conflicts—in Iraq and Afghanistan—imposing domestic shortages on Americans, as World War II had.
  • Thanks to government loans from President Barack Obama, American capitalism had been saved from its own excesses during the George W. Bush administration.
  • Employment was up. CEOs were doing extremely well.
  • While corruption had plagued the administration of Ronald Reagan, there had been none during the Obama Presidency.
  • Nor had there been any large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil—as there had on 9/11 under President George W. Bush.

Yet—not 17 months after announcing his candidacy for President—enough Americans fervently embraced Donald Trump to give him the most powerful position in the country and the world.

Image result for images of Donald Trump

Donald Trump

The slogan of Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign had been: “Yes, We Can!”

That of Donald Trump’s campaign might well have been: “No, You Can’t!”

Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Trump rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”

Birthrates among non-whites were rising. By 2045, whites would make up less than 50 percent of the American population.

The 2008 election of the first black President had shocked whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.

Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might actually be followed by a woman: Hillary Clinton.

After became President, he:

  • Fired an FBI director for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
  • Attacked Federal judges whose rulings displeased him.
  • So tyrannized his staffers that 43% of them have abandoned him.
  • Repeatedly defended Communist dictators Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Un.
  • Attacked America’s oldest allies, such as Canada and Great Britain.
  • Shut down the United States Government, imperiling the lives of 800,000 Federal employees, to extort money from Congress for a worthless wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • Attacked the free press as “the enemy of the people.” 
  • Used his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
  • Refused to accept the results of the 2020 Presidential election and continues to lie he was cheated by vote fraud.
  • Incited a deadly riot against Congress to stop the counting of Electoral College votes so he could become “President-for-Life.”

As Election Day 2024 rapidly approaches, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans again lust to send Donald Trump back to the White House.

All of this should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler.

FIVE MAPS TO SOUTHERN INFAMY: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on October 3, 2024 at 12:12 am

Southern treason, racism and ignorance have given the United States five periods of infamy. 

Infamy 4: 2000 – COVID-19 pandemic.   

Donald Trump’s four-year Presidency produced a legacy of unprecedented racism, criminality, abuse of power and treason. 

But the crime which brought him down was his unwillingness to protect Americans from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.

Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, demands to “re-open the country,” Ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”). 

Trump quickly made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask in public—even though no vaccine was available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus. 

On the July 21, 2021, edition of the PBS Newshour, Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart outlined the catastrophic results of Trump’s behavior: “If we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents, saying, ‘Wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine,’ we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”

PBS NewsHour | Brooks and Capehart on voting and gun violence legislation | Season 2021 | PBS

Jonathan Capehart

But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”

It took the election of Joseph R. Biden to fashion a comprehensive attack on COVID-19.

By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus. 

But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.

Covid-19 Vaccination Map of USA.png

COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021

George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one.

What had happened?

“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021. 

Shields and Brooks on Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis and the debate | PBS NewsHour

David Brooks

And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.

By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri-–with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40% of all cases nationwide.

And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19.

Just as the South unleashed the Civil War on America, it had ignited a new wave of COVID-19 on America. 

Infamy 5: 2024 – Backing Trump again 

Donald Trump is the only American President to be impeached twice—once for trying to extort “a favor” from Ukraine and again for inciting a violent attack on Congress.

On January 6, 2021, having failed to win re-election, he incited a deadly attack on Congressional members who were counting Electoral College votes. His goal: To intimidate them into throwing out the results and allowing him to become “President-for-Life.”

As a Presidential candidate in 2024, he has constantly repeated the lie that he won in 2020 but was cheated by massive vote fraud. 

He has viciously attacked immigrants—both legal and illegal. During his September 11 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he falsely charged that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” 

The results: In Springfield, a string of bomb threats have shut down city and school buildings. Public events have been canceled. And state troopers have been sent in to guard students going to school.

Most ominously, Trump intends to implement Project 2025, the Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a Fascistic dictatorship. Under this:

  • Career civil servants will be fired en masse and replaced by fanatical Right-wingers whose only loyalty is to Trump.
  • The FBI director will be personally accountable to Trump—just as the KGB director is accountable to Vladimir Putin.
  • The Department of Homeland Security will be abolished.
  • Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—will be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
  • Abortion will be outlawed.

And, once again, it’s the South that threatens to end American democracy. 

His attacks on nonwhites speak directly to Southerners’ longstanding racism. His attacks on the federal government feed into their resentment over losing the Civil War 159 years ago.

Most Southerners have abandoned democracy and lustily embraced the creation of a Right-wing dictatorship. Where they were once fiercely anti-Communist, they are now fiercely anti-liberal.

In 1776, Southerners’ fervent embrace of slavery almost aborted the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the American Republic. 

In 2024, Southerners’ fervent embrace of racism, hatred and treason may signal its demise.

FIVE MAPS TO SOUTHERN INFAMY: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on October 2, 2024 at 12:08 am

Throughout its history the South has been a hotbed of treason, racism and ignorance.  

Today, it proudly continues holding fast to these traditions—as it threatens the entire country with a Fascistic dictatorship under Donald Trump.

Infamy 1: 1860 – 1865 – The Confederate States of America.

Map of U.S. showing two kinds of Union states, two phases of secession and territories

Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865

Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

From 1860 to 1865, the SouthTexas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia—produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.

According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”

“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.

“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.

It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was increasingly unwilling to do. 

Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.

Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country. 

Southerners found all of this intolerable.

Lincoln—during his First Inaugural Address—bluntly said that he did not intend to “directly or indirectly…interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

An iconic photograph of a bearded Abraham Lincoln showing his head and shoulders.

Abraham Lincoln

But that was not enough for Southerners. 

Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.

Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.

On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

This ignited the American Civil War, costing the lives of 750,000 Americans—at a time when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.

Four years later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.

Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.

And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.

The South had paid a high price for its investment in treason.

Infamy 2: 1964 – 2024 – Racism breeds Southern Republicans.

In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress, ending more than a century of blatant discrimination against blacks.

The South—which before the Civil War had been solidly Democratic—suddenly went solidly Republican.

To understand this mammoth shift, it’s vital to realize: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives

The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic. 

Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery—and opposing the rights of freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.

When, in the early 1960s, Democrats championed the rights of blacks, Southerners bolted for the Republican party—which held to the same values that slavery/discrimination-supporting Democrats once did.  

After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson told an aide: “We have just lost the South for a generation.”   

Johnson was wrong: A generation lasts 20 to 30 years. It’s been 60 years since the signing of the Act, and the South is still solidly within the Republican camp.

1968 United States presidential election - Wikipedia

 1968 election 

Infamy 3: 2016 – Fascist racism elects Donald Trump as President.

Repeatedly, when asked why they supported Trump, his followers said: “He says what I’ve been thinking!” 

And what Trump appealed to, above all else, was racist hatred.  

From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him. 

Donald Trump

The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them. 

Among his targets:

  • Women
  • Blacks
  • Hispanics
  • Asians
  • Muslims
  • The disabled
  • Prisoners-of-war

Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016

BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Trump rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”

And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South

The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President had shocked whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.

In 2016 macho, largely uneducated, anti-black Southern males couldn’t accept a woman—Hillary Clinton—occupying the White House.

They ignored reputable reports—later confirmed—that Trump’s campaign was backed by Russian oligarchs linked to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB.