Posts Tagged ‘JEFF SESSIONS’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 21, 2024 at 12:13 am
Donald Trump’s ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.
This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants.
Under Project 2025:
- Republicans consider federal employees to be subversives who comprise the “deep state.”
- Replacing tenured civil servants with thousands of political hacks will arm Republicans with the power to establish an absolute dictatorship under the next Republican president.
- Republicans believe the Department of Justice has “forfeited the trust” of the American people by investigating Donald Trump’s proven collaboration with Russia to win the 2016 Presidential election.
- As a result, the DOJ must be thoroughly “reformed” and tightly overseen by the White House.
- The director of the FBI must be personally accountable to the President—just as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Vladimir Putin.
Seal of the Justice Department
- Federal employees could be instantly fired for not obeying illegal orders, or on mere whim—including the whim of the President.
- The Department of Homeland Security would be abolished.
- The Environmental Protection Agency would be stripped of its authority to protect the air, water and soil.
- States would be prevented from adopting stricter regulations on vehicular emissions, like California has done.
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which the project calls “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” would be abolished.
- Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—would be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
- Federal funding for all public transit systems across the country would be eliminated.
- Traditionally independent federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would be placed under Presidential control.
- The wealthiest 1% would receive massive tax cuts at the expense of the poor and middle class.
- Conception would be designated as the point where life begins.
- Abortion would be outlawed.
- Access to birth control would be sharply restricted, if not banned.
- Christianity would be designated as the official religion of the United States.
- The use of capital punishment would be revived and expanded—and the right of appeals sharply restricted.
Trump has prospered by slandering Democrats as “Marxists,” “Socialists” and “Communists.” And other Republicans have also deployed the terms. Yet he has repeatedly expressed admiration for such brutal Communist dictators as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and China’s Xi Jinping.
In a closed-door speech to Republican donors on March 3, 2018, then-President Trump had revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
He praised China’s President, Xi Jinping, for recently assuming full dictatorial powers: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
The statement was greeted with cheers and laughter by Republican donors.
He has lavishly praised Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, such as during his appearance on the December 18, 2015 edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”:
“He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country”—-a reference to then-President Barack Obama.
During a February, 2017 interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Trump defended Putin’s killing of political opponents.
O’Reilly: “But he’s a killer.”
Trump: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
Another Communist dictator he has lavishly praised is North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un. Asked by a Fox News reporter why he did so, he replied:
“He’s a tough guy. Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, tough people, and you take it over from your father…If you could do that at 27 years old, I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that.”
in short: Kim must be doing something right, because he’s in power. And it doesn’t matter how he came to power—or the price his country is paying for it.
Asked about his relationship with Kim, Trump infamously said: “[Kim] wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
Upon taking office as the Nation’s 45th President, Donald Trump attacked or undermined one public or private institution after another.
Among these:
- American law enforcement agencies: Trump repeatedly attacked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from agents pursuing the Russia investigation.
- On November 8, 2018, Trump abruptly fired him, following Democrats’ winning control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections.
- He threatened to fire Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who oversaw Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
- He intended to fire Mueller during the summer of 2017, but was talked out of it by aides fearful that it would set off calls for his impeachment.
- When FBI Director James Comey dared to pursue a probe into “the Russia thing,” Trump fired him without warning.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 20, 2024 at 12:10 am
“I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.”
—Tony Montana, “Scarface”
“Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”
On July 26, former President Donald Trump confirmed—intentionally or unintentionally—that the fears of his enemies were correct. If he won office for a second time, he would act as the all-powerful dictator he has long lusted to be.
And which he nearly became in 2020, after refusing to accept the outcome of a legitimate Presidential election where former Vice President Joe Biden got more votes than he did.
The site of his confession was the Turning Point Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida. To his audience of evangelical Christians, Trump announced:
“You gotta get out and vote. Just this time. In four years you don’t have to vote, OK? In four years don’t vote, I don’t care. But we’ll have it all straightened out, so it’ll be much different.
“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine! You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians! I’m a Christian.
“I love you, you got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”
Why would they not have to vote again? Because there won’t be any more elections for President because Trump would be President until he died.
Donald Trump at Turning Point Believers’ Summit
From the moment Trump declared his candidacy for the Presidency on June 15, 2015, throughout his four years in office and the almost eight months the Presidential campaign of 2024, much of the mainstream media has repeatedly ignored the threats he poses.
But Trump’s comments at the Turning Point Believers’ Summit have grabbed attention from the nation’s most important news media. Among these:
- MSN Metro
- Reuters
- CBS News
- The New York Times
- Mother Jones
- News Nation
- USA Today
- Newsweek
- The Hill
- CNN
- National Public Radio
- The Washington Post
Democrats pounced on Trump’s statements. Vice President Kamala Harris released a statement of her own: “When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) who had presided over Trump’s first impeachment trial, wrote: “This year democracy is on the ballot, and if we are to save it, we must vote against authoritarianism.”
Naturally Trump’s campaign disagreed: “President Trump was talking about the importance of faith, uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt.”
In fact, it has been Donald Trump who created “the divisive political environment.” On July 31 he appeared at the National Association of Black Journalists—to falsely accuse Kamala Harris of misleading voters about her race:
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
As for the motives for Thomas Matthew Crooks’ July 13 assassination attempt on Trump: A vigorous FBI investigation has revealed him as an intelligent loner with few friends, a thin social media presence and no strong political beliefs offering a motive for his action.
If Trump wins a second term in the White House, he can—by law—serve only four years. But Trump has spent his entire life defying the law—including when he was President.
His most egregious offense came after he lost the 2020 Presidential election: He refused to accept his defeat, refused to leave office, tried to pressure states to “find” non-existent Electoral College votes for him, and finally incited a violent riot against Congress to stop the Electoral Vote count.
Stormtrumpers attacking the Capitol Building
Tyler Merbler from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
In May, 2024, speaking at a National Rifle Association gathering, Trump “joked” about serving more than two terms as president.
He referred to the four-term, 12-year Presidency of Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was the only president to serve more than two terms. The two-term limit was added after Roosevelt’s death.
“You know, FDR, 16 years—almost 16 years—he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?”
By raising the question of “three terms,” Trump was resurrecting The Big Lie: That he won the 2020 Presidential campaign but was cheated of victory by massive voter fraud.
In fact, Trump’s ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.
This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 15, 2024 at 12:14 am
On September 2, 1964, the FBI launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Ku Klux Klan—COINTELPRO—WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.
A Ku Klux Klan meeting
“The FBI dangled small fortunes before potential Klan informers, offered outright bribes to Klansmen who could serve as double agents inside state and local police forces, planted bugs and wiretaps in Klaverns, carried out black bag jobs to steal membership lists….”
Other tactics included:
- Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders;
- Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them;
- Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.”
William C. Sullivan
According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:
“A Klan Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was created to counter the FBI, and its members placed the wives and children of agents under surveillance, harassing them with taunts and anonymous phone calls,” wrote Welch in his memoir, Inside Hoover’s FBI.
“It was a serious miscalculation. The most dangerous members of the KBI were systematically identified and assigned to agents selected solely because they were comparatively dangerous. The agents had full discretion.
“During the next few months, a number of men previously involved in Klan violence around the state seemed, by remarkable coincidence, to experience misfortune. Some disappeared from the area. Some were forced to leave Mississippi for health reasons. A few took unplanned trips to places like Mexico and seemed to lose all interest in the Klan upon their return.”
A similar effort, focusing on Right-wing terrorism, could include the following:
- The FBI’s designating Right-wing political and terrorist groups as the Nation’s #1 enemy.
- Reviving the FBI’s legendary COINTELPRO (“Counterintelligence Program”) that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1960s. Among the methods that can be used:
- Turning the Bureau’s powerful arsenal—bugs, wiretaps, informants, SWAT teams—on them.
- Buying the cooperation of informants within Right-wing organizations.
- Conducting “black bag jobs” to steal membership lists of of Right-wing organizations.
- Breaking up the marriages of prominent Right-wingers by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
- Informing the employers of known Right-wing terrorists of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them.
- Contacting the news media to publicize the arrests of prominent Right-wing leaders.
- When Right-wing terrorists target Federal law enforcement agents and/or their families for harassment or worse, they can be targeted for similar intimidation or removal.
FBI SWAT member
A revised COINTELPRO could be supplemented by the following:
- Creating tip hotlines for reporting illegal Right-wing activities—and offering rewards for information that leads to arrests.
- Prosecuting militia groups for violating Federal firearms laws.
- Treating calls for the murder of members of Congress—as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has done-–as felonies punishable by lengthy imprisonment.
- Prosecuting Right-wing leaders involved in the treasonous assault on the United States Capitol Building.
- Prosecuting as “accessories to treason” all those Republican members of Congress who stoked Right-wing anger by lying that the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, although every objective news source proved he had lost.
- Directing the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) at fundamentalist Christian churches that finance Right-wing terrorism—just as it halts the financing of Islamic terrorist groups by Islamic organizations.
- Using drones, planes and/or helicopters to provide security against similar Right-wing terror demonstrations—especially in Washington, D.C.
- Using the Federal Communications Commission to ban Fox News—the Nation’s #1 Right-wing propaganda network—from representing itself as a legitimate news network, and requiring that its stories carry labels warning viewers: “This is Right-wing propaganda, NOT news.”
- Encouraging victims of Right-wing hate-speech to file libel/slander lawsuits against their abusers—such as the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School successfully did against Alex Jones.
- Using Federal anti-terrorist laws to arrest, prosecute and imprison Right-wingers who openly carry firearms and threaten violence, even if states allow such display of firearms.
- Seizing the assets of individuals and organizations found guilty of Right-wing terrorism offenses.
When you are constantly looking over your shoulder, your enemies are winning. When your enemies are constantly looking over their shoulder, you are winning.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 14, 2024 at 12:10 am
Donald Trump’s followers are doing what even the Mafia has never dared: Threatening the lives of FBI agents and openly challenging the authority of the Justice Department.
On August 8, 2022, the FBI, under a search warrant issued by the Justice Department, seized 11 sets of classified documents from the former President’s home at Mar-a-Lago. These included four sets that were classified as “top secret,” according to the unsealed search warrant.
Since then, Trump’s legions of fanatical Right-wing followers have vented their fury at a wide range of their self-declared enemies: President Joe Biden, Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department—-and especially the FBI.
On August 12, 2022, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security [DHS] issued a joint Intelligence bulletin warning of the increased threats aimed at federal law enforcement agencies.
FBI seal
“Since 8 August 2022, the FBI and DHS have identified multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant.
“The FBI and DHS have also observed the personal identifying information of possible targets of violence, such as home addresses and identification of family members, disseminated online as additional targets.”
“These threats are occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites, web forums, video sharing platforms, and image boards. The FBI and DHS would like to ensure that law enforcement, court, and government personnel are aware of the range of threats and criminal and violent incidents.
“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion.'”
Even the Mafia—with one or two exceptions—has never threatened the lives of FBI agents. And when individual mobsters did, they found the consequences frightening.
In April, 1963, four New York mobsters knocked FBI agent John Foley to the ground, and then severely beat and kicked him. Foley had been conducting surveillance at the Brooklyn funeral of Carmine “The Doctor” Lombardozzi, a capo in the Gambino Mafia Family.
The FBI retaliated by launching an all-out war against the Gambinos. Agents leaned on the cartel’s boss, underboss, counselor and lieutenants. The Bureau also intensified the use of illegal electronic surveillance (wiretaps and hidden microphones) against the mobsters.
Map of Mafia families
Angelo Bruno, the boss of the Philadelphia crime syndicate, unwittingly informed a hidden microphone about how the FBI brutally drove home the message to “boss of all bosses” Carlo Gambino:
BRUNO: “They [the FBI] went to Carlo and named all his capos [lieutenants] to him. The FBI asked him: “Did you change the laws in your family, that you could hit FBI men, punch and kick them? Well, this is the test—that if you change the laws, and now you are going to hit FBI men, every time we pick up one of your people we are going to break their heads for them.’
“And, really, they picked up our guy, they almost killed him, the FBI. They don’t do that, you know. But they picked up one of his fellows and crippled him. They said, ‘This is an example. Now, the next time anyone lays a hand on an FBI man, that’s just a warning. There’s nothing else we have got to tell you.'”
Word traveled quickly through the nationwide organized crime network—and its leaders decreed there should be no further assaults on FBI agents.
The FBI may be gearing up to declare war on the radical Right. And it could be done the same way the FBI destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1960s.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI, and ordered an all-out investigation: “I want you to have the same kind of Intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
Poster for missing civil rights workers
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, no President had been willing to give him the order to do so. But now a President had given him such an order.
In August, the FBI uncovered the bodies of the three missing civil rights activists—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.
On September 2, 1964, the Bureau launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Klan—COINTELPRO—WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 13, 2024 at 1:22 am
After taking office as President, Donald Trump openly waged war on his own Justice Department—and especially its chief investigative agency, the FBI.
FBI headquarters
Among his attacks on federal law enforcers:
- Fired James Comey, the FBI director pursuing an investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 Presidential race to ensure Trump’s election.
- Threatened to fire Independent Counsel Robert Mueller, who continued that investigation after he fired Comey.
- Repeatedly attacked—verbally and on Twitter—his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.
- (Sessions did so after the press revealed that, during the 2016 race, he twice met secretly with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.)
- Repeatedly attacked the integrity of the FBI, raising the possibility of his firing more of its senior leadership for investigating his ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
- Forced House Republicans to release a memo falsely accusing the FBI of pursuing a vendetta against him.
But the FBI could have refused to meekly accept such assaults.
A February 2, 2022 episode of the popular CBS police drama, “Blue Bloods,” offered a vivid lesson on bureaucratic self-defense against tyrants.
A shootout erupts in a crowded pub between a gunman and NYPD officers. Results: One dead gunman and one wounded bystander.
Problem: The bystander is an aide to New York Governor Martin Mendez.
Mendez visits One Police Plaze, NYPD headquarters, for a private chat with Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck). From the outset, he’s aggressive, rude and threatening.
MENDEZ: I know you guys like to whitewash officer-involved shootings.
REAGAN: I do not.
MENDEZ: That’s not going to happen here. I want the cop who shot my guy fired and charged.
REAGAN: If the grand jury indicts, my officer could be terminated.
MENDEZ: We all want to protect our people, but mine come first.
Governor Mendez leaves Commissioner Reagan’s office. Later, he returns:
MENDEZ: We’ve got a serious problem.
REAGAN: Why? The grand jury declined to indict my officer.
MENDEZ: Your cop fired into a crowded room.
REAGAN: She returned fire, took out the shooter and likely saved lives.
MENDEZ: What are you going to do?
REAGAN: Our Internal Affairs investigation supports the grand jury’s finding, so the case is closed.
MENDEZ: Either you fire this cop, or I’ll order the Attorney General to investigate every questionable police shooting in the past 10 years and hold public hearings out loud and lights up.
REAGAN: Everybody loves a circus.
MENDEZ: Except the guy who’s got to shovel up afterwards.
At the end of the episode, a third—and final—meeting occurs in a restaurant between Reagan and Mendez.
MENDEZ: Have you dumped the cop who shot my guy?
REAGAN: No.
MENDEZ: Bad news.
REAGAN: Depends on what you compare it to. It turns out that your aide wasn’t drinking alone the night he was shot.
MENDEZ: So what? He’s single.
REAGAN: He was with a married woman.
MENDEZ: That’s on her, not on him.
REAGAN: Except she is married to his boss, your Chief of Staff.
MENDEZ: Sheesh!
REAGAN: Turns out this has been going on for over a year.
MENDEZ: So what are we doing?
REAGAN: If this gets out, the circus comes to Albany [where the governor has his office].
MENDEZ: Who else knows?
REAGAN: Right now it’s safe in the notebook of my lead detective. Whether or not it finds its way into an arrest report that’s subject to a Freedom of Information Act request—that’s a judgment call.
MENDEZ: Your judgment?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: And if my investigation goes away?
REAGAN: Neither of us is shoveling up after the circus.
MENDEZ: I have your word on that?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: You have a good evening, Commissioner.
J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director, used Realpolitik to ensure his reign for 48 years.
J. Edgar Hoover
As William C. Sullivan, the onetime director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, revealed after Hoover’s death in 1972:
“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator, he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.
“‘But we wanted you to know this. We realize you’d want to know it.’ Well, Jesus, what does that tell the senator? From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”
Donald Trump has long pursued a strategy of intimidation. But when people have refused to be cowed by his threats, he’s backed off.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct, ranging from inappropriate comments to assault.
Trump responded: “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
Yet he didn’t file a single slander suit.
Similarly, when New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump for running a fraudulent university, Trump initially said he would fight the charge.
Instead, he settled the case by paying $25 million to compensate the 3,700 students Trump University had defrauded.
“You never have to frame anyone,” says Governor Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 novel, All the King’s Men. “Because the truth is always sufficient.”
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In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 9, 2024 at 12:12 am
To understand Donald Trump’s hold on American hopes—and fears—imagine the following:
German dictator Adolf Hitler loses the war he had started. But instead of committing suicide, he succumbs to pressure to resign as Fuhrer.
Despite overwhelming evidence against him, he is never brought to trial for:
- Conspiring to seize power during the Weimar Republic.
- Suppressing opposition political parties, freedom of speech, press and basic civil rights.
- Starting World War II.
- Waging aggressive war.
- Ordering the German Army to commit systematic and premeditated acts of brutality against the civilian populations of Europe.
- Being responsible for the deaths of 50 million men, women and children (including those slaughtered by his allies Italy and Japan).
- Having ordered the annihilation of the Jews, resulting in six million deaths by murder or starvation.
Adolf Hitler
Instead of facing prosecution for his crimes, he is:
- Given a lavish pension.
- Round-the-clock protection by elite bodyguards.
- Allowed to once again become a candidate for the highest elected office in the country.
- Allowed, in campaigning for that office, to slander and/or threaten everyone he believes poses the slightest threat to his candidacy.
Now, consider the case of Donald J. Trump. During his four-year Presidency, he:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacked the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people”—a phrase popularized by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
- Publicly sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
- Used his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
- Attacked and alienated America’s oldest allies, such as Canada and Great Britain.
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump—and turn the FBI into Trump’s personal Gestapo.
James Comey
- Repeatedly attacked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from agents pursuing the Russia investigation—and fired him on November 7, 2018, the day after Democrats won a majority of House seats.
- Shut down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay.
- Gave highly classified CIA Intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Specifically: How Islamic State terrorists planned to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
Donald Trump
- Identified with and coddled such ruthless dictators as China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
- Repeatedly attacked Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer—after she had been targeted for kidnapping and execution by Trump’s Right-wing followers.
- Allowed the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, infecting and killing more than 400,000 Americans.
- Attacked the medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves from COVID-19.
- Urged his followers to illegally vote twice for him in the 2020 Presidential election.
- Fired Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, for rejecting Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election.
- Refused to accept the will of 80,117,438 voters who had made former Vice President Joe Biden President-elect of the United States.
- Illegally tried to pressure state legislatures and governors to stop the certification of the vote that had made Biden the President-elect.
- Incited his followers to violently attack the Capitol Building where Senators and Representatives were meeting on January 6, 2021, to count the Electoral Votes won by himself and Biden. His objective: Stop the count, which he knew would prove him the loser.
After the Third Reich collapsed in May, 1945, Germans didn’t allow surviving Nazis to try to revive it. Yet that is precisely the situation the United States now faces.
Donald Trump was twice impeached. In 2019, he faced two charges:
- Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
And in 2021, he was charged with:
- Incitement of insurrection.
In both cases, the evidence against him was overwhelming. And, in both cases, Right-wing Republicans ignored it and acquitted him.
Had he been convicted in either case, he would have lost:
- His Presidential pension
- His Secret Service protection
- His legal right to hold office again
But Republican Senators—out of lust for power and/or fear of opposing Trump—unleashed on the United States a man dedicated only to his own greed, egomania and vindictiveness.
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) typified their desire to appear “law and order” tough. Immediately after Trump incited his followers to attack Congress on January 6, 2021, he said: “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.”
Then he voted for acquittal.
And, on March 6, 2024, after Trump won a series of Republican Presidential primaries, McConnell said: “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”
The democratic Weimar Republic of Germany (1919 – 1933) found itself menaced by ruthless Fascists, betrayed by its supposed allies, and defended by liberals unwilling to forcefully defeat its enemies.
The same combination of forces are now on full display in the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 19, 2024 at 1:27 am
“And the most glorious episodes 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.”
So warned the ancient historian, Plutarch, in the introduction to his biography of Alexander the Great.
It’s well to keep this warning in mind when recalling the story of 17-year-old Tyler Linfesty, now known as “Plaid Shirt Guy.”
On September 6, 2018, Linfesty, a high school senior, attended President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Billings, Montana. He had wanted to see the President of the United States speak in his home state.
And, much to his surprise, he was randomly chosen by the Trump campaign for “VIP status.” He would be seated directly behind Trump.
But this came with a warning: “You have to be enthusiastic, you have to be clapping, you have to be cheering for Donald Trump.”
Before he attended the rally, Trump staffers urged him to wear a “Make America Great Again” cap, but he refused.
Owing to his varied facial expressions and his plaid shirt, he quickly became known on the Internet as “Plaid-Shirt Guy.”
Tyler Linfesty
Then, while the rally was still going, Linfesty was approached by a Trump minion who said: “I’m gonna replace you.”
He hadn’t been heckling Trump. Nor had he held up an anti-Trump sign.
So why was he suddenly ejected?
Without being given a reason, Linfesty was forced to come up with one himself. And his best guess: He didn’t cheer when Trump made statements he disagreed with.
He had applauded those parts of Trump’s speech he did agree with—such as opposition to NAFTA. He also agreed with Trump’s claim that the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination was stolen from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
But there were parts of Trump’s speech he disagreed with—such as Trump’s claim that his “tax reform law” benefits the middle class.
(It doesn’t—its foremost beneficiaries comprise the top 1%.)
Thus, Linfesty looked skeptical when Trump said it was harder to win the Electoral College than the popular vote.
(It isn’t. A candidate need only win those states with the most electoral votes. He needn’t win the popular vote—just as Trump failed to win it against Hillary Clinton by nearly three million votes.)
Donald Trump
And when Trump said he could have won the popular vote, Linfesty turned to several people near him and mouthed “What?”
As Linfesty explained to CNN’s Don Lemon: “I had to be real with myself. I’m not going to pretend to support something I don’t support.”
Apparently this was too much for those staging the rally.
“I saw this woman walking toward me on the left,” Linfesty told the Billings Gazette. “She just said to me, ‘I’m going to replace you.’ I just walked off. I knew I was getting out for not being enthusiastic enough, but I decided not to fight it.”
But being removed from the Trump speech was not the end for Linfesty.
He was then detained by the United States Secret Service.
“Some Secret Service guys escorted me into this backroom area, and they just sat me down for 10 minutes,” said Linfesty. The agents looked at his ID, then released him—and told him not to return.
The Secret Service is charged with protecting the President (and, in a lesser-known duty, protecting the national currency). It is not charged with regulating the free speech rights of Americans.
It is, in short, not supposed to operate as the dreaded, black-uniformed SS of Nazi Germany.
![]()
Ironically, earlier that morning, Trump had tweeted a thank-you to North Korea’s brutal dictator Kim Jong-Un.
The reason: Kim had said he had “unwavering faith in President Trump.”
Thus, a dictator who flatters Trump gets treated to praise, while an American exercising his right to free speech faces possible arrest.
Speaking to the Gazette, Linfesty said: “I didn’t really have a plan. I was just going to clap for things I agreed with and not clap for things I didn’t agree with.”
And he insisted to CNN’s Don Lemon that his facial expressions had been honest: “I would have made those faces if anyone were to say that to me. I was not trying to protest, those were just my actual, honest reactions.
“Each time I see one of these rallies I see somebody behind Donald Trump clapping and cheering and being super enthusiastic and I’ve always wondered myself, ‘Are those people being really genuine?’”
Two months to the day after Linfesty’s ordeal, Democrats recaptured the House of Representatives, but failed to win a majority in the Senate.
The next day, Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Since May, 2017, Trump had brutally insulted Sessions for refusing to suppress Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
It is no accident that Donald Trump praises brutal dictators like Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. They embody the type of all-powerful strongman that he aspires to be.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 16, 2024 at 12:10 am
…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
- Trump boasted that he “never” settled cases out of court. But New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressed fraud claims against the real estate mogul’s counterfeit Trump University—and Trump settled the case out of court rather than take the stand.
- “Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump,” said Schneiderman on November 18, 2016, “and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”
- On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller to investigate links between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
- Upon learning of his appointment, Trump wailed: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”
- “How could you let this happen, Jeff?” Trump demanded of Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General. “You were supposed to protect me. Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels, it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
- Throughout Mueller’s probe, Trump hurled repeated insults at him via Twitter and press conferences. He also called on his shills within Fox News and the Republican party to attack Mueller’s integrity and investigative methods.
- 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
Perhaps the key to Trump’s innermost fear can be found in a work of fiction—in this case, the 1996 historical novel, The Friends of Pancho Villa, by James Carlos Blake.
The book depicts the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and its most famous revolutionary, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. it’s told from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Fierro, Villa’s most feared executioner. In one day, for example, Fierro—using two revolvers—executed 300 captured Federale soldiers.
As in history, Blake’s Fierro presides over the execution of David Berlanga, a journalist who had dared criticize the often loutish behavior of Villa’s men.
On Villa’s command, Fierro approaches Berlanga in a Mexico City restaurant and orders: “Come with me.”
Standing against a barracks wall, Berlanga lights a cigar and requests permission to finish it. He then proceeds to smoke it with such a steady hand that its unbroken ash extends four inches.
The cigar finished, the ash still unbroken, Berlanga drops the butt to the ground and says calmly: “I’m ready.”
Then the assembled firing squad does its work.
Later, Fierro is so shaken by Berlanga’s sheer fearlessness that he seeks an explanation for it. Sitting in a cantina, he lights a cigar and tries to duplicate Berlanga’s four-inch length.
But the best he can do is less than three inches. He concludes that Berlanga used a trick—but he can’t figure it out.
Rodolfo Fierro
It had to be a trick, Fierro insists, because, if it wasn’t, there were only two other explanations for such a calm demeanor in the face of impending death.
The first was insanity. But Fierro rules this out: He had studied Berlanga’s eyes and found no madness there.
That leaves only one other explanation (other than a trick): Sheer courage.
And Fierro can’t accept this, either—because it’s disturbing.
“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill….No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men’s lack of courage.
“There is even less courage in this world than there is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
“But a man brave enough to control his fear of being killed, control it so well that no tremor reaches his fingers and no sign shows in his eyes…well. Such a man cannot be ruled, he can only be killed.”
Throughout his life, Trump has relied on bribery and intimidation. He well understands the power of greed and fear over most people.
What he doesn’t understand—and truly fears—is that some people cannot be bought or frightened.
People like Elliot Ness. Like Robert Mueller. And like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 15, 2024 at 12:11 am
On July 14, 2019, President Donald Trump unleashed a brutal Twitter attack on four Democratic members of the House of Representatives who had harshly criticized his anti-immigration policies:
“So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……
“….and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….
“….it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
Donald Trump
The Democrats—all female, and all non-white—were:
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York;
- Rashida Tlaib of Michigan;
- Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and
- Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Of the Congresswomen that Trump singled out:
- Cortez was born in New York City.
- Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan.
- Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Only Omar was born outside the United States—in Somalia. And she became an American citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.
Critics have assailed Trump as racist for implying that these women were not United States citizens.
Moreover, as members of Congress, they had a legal right to declare “how our government is to be run.” Republicans in the House and Senate vigorously—and often viciously—asserted that right during the Presidency of Barack Obama.
Ocasio-Cortez quickly struck back on Twitter on the same day: “You are angry because you don’t believe in an America where I represent New York 14, where the good people of Minnesota elected , where fights for Michigan families, where champions little girls in Boston.
“You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.
“You won’t accept a nation that sees healthcare as a right or education as a #1 priority, especially where we’re the ones fighting for it. Yet here we are.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
But then followed the most significant part of Cortez’ reply:
“But you know what’s the rub of it all, Mr. President? On top of not accepting an America that elected us, you cannot accept that we don’t fear you, either.
“You can’t accept that we will call your bluff & offer a positive vision for this country. And that’s what makes you seethe.”
“You cannot accept that we don’t fear you, either.”
For all his adult life, Donald Trump—as a businessman, Presidential candidate and now President—has trafficked in bribery and coercion.
First bribery:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
- Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who says he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons.
- Paxton’s office issued a cease and desist letter to former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens after he made public copies of a 14-page internal summary of the state’s case against Donald Trump for scamming millions from students of his now-defunct real estate seminar.
- After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Now coercion:
- Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump forced his employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, threatening them with lawsuits if they revealed secrets of his greed and/or criminality.
- In 2016. USA Today found that Trump was involved in over 3,500 lawsuits during the previous 30 years: “At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings” were from contractors claiming they got stiffed.
- On March 16, 2016, as a Republican Presidential candidate, Trump warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
- An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there. Shame if something happened to it.'”
- Speaking with Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter, Trump confessed: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
- During his Presidential campaign he encouraged Right-wing thugs to attack dissenters at his rallies, even claiming he would pay their legal expenses.
But when he has confronted men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, Trump has reacted with rage and desperation.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 19, 2024 at 12:11 am
Throughout his Presidency, Republicans have continued to support Donald Trump despite a series of actions that would have normally resulted in impeachment.
Forgiven Crime #19: After being acquitted of impeachable offenses by the Senate, Trump fired the Inspectors General (IG) of five cabinet departments in six weeks. Among these:
- Michael K. Atkinson – The IG of the Intelligence Community. The reason: Atkinson had forwarded the whistleblower complaint which led to Trump’s impeachment.
- Glenn Fine – Appointed to oversee funds voted by Congress to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the United States. His dismissal ensured that Trump–who had admitted to defrauding students at his notorious “Trump University”–could spend the $2 trillion in relief monies any way he wished.
Glenn Fine
- Christi Grimm – As IG at the Department of Health and Human Services, she outraged Trump by contradicting him by agreeing—accurately—that the nation’s hospitals were suffering from severe shortages of personal protective equipment and testing supplies for COVID-19.
Forgiven Crime #20: After losing the Presidential election on November 3, 2020, Trump became the first American President to refuse to accept the verdict.
Forgiven Crime #21: From November 3 to December 14, 2020, Trump and his allies challenged the election results, filing—and losing—59 cases in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges.
Forgiven Crime #22: On December 5, 2021, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Brian Kemp
Forgiven Crime 23: On January 6, 2021, Trump ordered his assembled followers to attack the Capitol Building where House and Senate members were counting Electoral Votes—that were certain to certify Joseph R. Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 Presidential election.
Their goal: To stop the counting of those votes—and enable Trump to serve as “President-for-Life.”
Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized. One Capitol police officer was killed and 114 others were injured.
This was, in effect, a treasonous coup attempt.
On February 13, 2021, the Republican-dominated Senate once again acquitted Trump—of “incitement of insurrection” against the United States government.
Forgiven Crime 24: In 2022, Trump became the first ex-President to be indicted for crimes committed during his four-year administration: 2017-2021. He faces 91 criminal charges across four jurisdictions: Georgia, Florida, New York and the District of Columbia.
Yet even as he viciously attacks his rivals for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination, all but one—former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie—refuse to condemn him as an indicted criminal.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley have promised to pardon Trump if he is convicted and either one of them is elected President.
Forgiven Crime 25: Trump has echoed Adolf Hitler in attacking immigrants: “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world.”
Republicans have refused to condemn those remarks—or the original source—Mein Kampf-–of those remarks.
* * * * *
Why have Republicans almost unanimously stood by Donald Trump despite the wreckage he made of American foreign and domestic policy?
Fear—that they will lose their privileged positions in Congress if they don’t.
This could happen by:
- Their being voted out of Congress by Trump’s fanatical base; or
- Their being voted out of Congress by anti-Trump voters fed up with Trump’s appalling behavior.
House and Senate Republicans’ support for Trump hinges on one question: “Can I hold onto my power and all the privileges that accompany it by sticking—or breaking—with him?”
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.”
Like Hitler, Trump offered his Republican voters and Congressional allies intoxicating dreams: “I will enrich all of you. And I will humiliate and destroy those Americans you most hate.”
For his white, Fascistic, largely elderly audience, those enemies included blacks, atheists, Hispanics, non-Christians, Muslims, liberals, “uppity” women, Asians.
For most of the first three years of his Presidency, he faced little opposition. What cost Trump the White House wasn’t Democratic or Republican courage but a deadly disease—COVID-19—which Trump refused to take seriously.
Democrats cowered before Trump’s slanders—thereby ensuring more assaults.
Most of the press quailed before Trump. Only a few media outlets—notably the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post-–dared investigate his crimes and blunders.
In 1960, the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko, published “Conversation With an American Writer”—a stinging indictment of the cowardly opportunists who had supported the brutal tyranny of Joseph Stalin:
“You have courage,” they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
Too many Republicans know all-too-well how it feels to stoop to the cowardice of their colleagues for a transitory hold on power and privilege.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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LOVE THY DICTATOR: PART TWO (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 21, 2024 at 12:13 amDonald Trump’s ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.
This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants.
Under Project 2025:
Seal of the Justice Department
Trump has prospered by slandering Democrats as “Marxists,” “Socialists” and “Communists.” And other Republicans have also deployed the terms. Yet he has repeatedly expressed admiration for such brutal Communist dictators as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and China’s Xi Jinping.
In a closed-door speech to Republican donors on March 3, 2018, then-President Trump had revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
He praised China’s President, Xi Jinping, for recently assuming full dictatorial powers: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
The statement was greeted with cheers and laughter by Republican donors.
He has lavishly praised Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, such as during his appearance on the December 18, 2015 edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”:
“He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country”—-a reference to then-President Barack Obama.
During a February, 2017 interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Trump defended Putin’s killing of political opponents.
O’Reilly: “But he’s a killer.”
Trump: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
Another Communist dictator he has lavishly praised is North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un. Asked by a Fox News reporter why he did so, he replied:
“He’s a tough guy. Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, tough people, and you take it over from your father…If you could do that at 27 years old, I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that.”
in short: Kim must be doing something right, because he’s in power. And it doesn’t matter how he came to power—or the price his country is paying for it.
Asked about his relationship with Kim, Trump infamously said: “[Kim] wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
Upon taking office as the Nation’s 45th President, Donald Trump attacked or undermined one public or private institution after another.
Among these:
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