…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
Trump boasted that he “never” settled cases out of court. But New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressed fraud claims against the real estate mogul’s counterfeit Trump University—and Trump settled the case out of court rather than take the stand.
On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller to investigate links between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
Upon learning of his appointment, Trump wailed: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”
Throughout Mueller’s probe, Trump hurled repeated insults at him via Twitter and press conferences. His shills within Fox News and the Republican party attacked Mueller’s integrity and investigative methods. But Trump didn’t risk firing him, fearing impeachment.
Robert Mueller
When “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani declared his candidacy for New York City mayor on October 23, 2024, Trump viciously and repeatedly attacked him as a “communist.” He even threatened to cut off Federal aid to New York City.
Mamdami’s “communist” goals included support for universal child care and constructing 200,000 new affordable housing units.
When Mamdani overwhelmingly won election on November 4, he sannounced “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”
Trump responded the next day: “I hope it works out for New York. We’ll help him a little bit, maybe.”
Perhaps the key to Trump’s innermost fear can be found in a work of fiction—in this case, the 1996 historical novel, The Friends of Pancho Villa, by James Carlos Blake.
The book depicts the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) and its most famous revolutionary, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. it’s told from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Fierro, Villa’s most feared executioner. In one day, for example, Fierro—using two revolvers—executed 300 captured Federale soldiers.
As in history, Blake’s Fierro presides over the execution of David Berlanga, a journalist who had dared criticize the often loutish behavior of Villa’s men.
On Villa’s command, Fierro approaches Berlanga in a Mexico City restaurant and orders: “Come with me.”
Standing against a barracks wall, Berlanga lights a cigar and requests permission to finish it. He then proceeds to smoke it with such a steady hand that its unbroken ash extends almost four inches.
The cigar finished, the ash still unbroken, Berlanga drops the butt to the ground and says calmly: “I’m ready.”
Then the assembled firing squad does its work.
Later, Fierro is so shaken by Berlanga’s sheer fearlessness that he seeks an explanation for it. Sitting in a cantina, he lights a cigar and tries to duplicate Berlanga’s four-inch length.
But the best he can do is less than three inches. He concludes that Berlanga used a trick—but he can’t figure it out.
Rodolfo Fierro
It had to be a trick, Fierro insists, because, if it wasn’t, there were only two other explanations for such a calm demeanor in the face of impending death.
The first was insanity. But Fierro rules this out: He had studied Berlanga’s eyes and found no madness there.
That leaves only one other explanation (other than a trick): Sheer courage.
And Fierro can’t accept this, either—because it’s disturbing.
“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill….No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men’s lack of courage.
“There is even less courage in this world than there is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
“But a man brave enough to control his fear of being killed, control it so well that no tremor reaches his fingers and no sign shows in his eyes…well. Such a man cannot be ruled, he can only be killed.”
Throughout his life, Trump has relied on bribery and intimidation. He well understands the power of greed and fear over most people.
What he doesn’t understand—and truly fears—is that some people cannot be bought or frightened.
Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Like Robert Mueller. And like Zohran Mamdani.
There’s a reason why Donald Trump loves tariffs—and it has nothing to do with economics.
It has everything to do with fear.
On January 20, 2025, his first day in office, he announced that he would impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting February 1.
He could have opened well-intentioned negotiations with Canada and Mexico over what he considered an unfair trade imbalance. But he sees conciliation as a sign of weakness.
Exactly as Adolf Hitler did.
Robert Payne, author of the bestselling biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), described Hitler’s—and Trump’s—“negotiating” style thus:
“He was incapable of bargaining. He was like a man who goes up to a fruit peddler and threatens to blow his brains out if he does not sell his applies at the lowest possible price.”
A similar example of his aggressiveness occurred during his first administration.
On July 14, 2019, Trump unleashed a brutal Twitter attack on four Democratic members of the House of Representatives who had harshly criticized his anti-immigration policies:
The Democrats—all female, and all non-white—were:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York;
Rashida Tlaib of Michigan;
Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and
Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Of the Congresswomen that Trump singled out:
Cortez was born in New York City.
Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan.
Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Only Omar was born outside the United States—in Somalia. And she became an American citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.
Critics assailed Trump as racist for implying that these women were not United States citizens.
Moreover, as members of Congress, they had a legal right to declare “how our government is to be run.” House and Senate Republicans had vigorously—and often viciously—asserted that right during the Presidency of Barack Obama.
Donald Trump
Ocasio-Cortez quickly struck back on Twitter on the same day: “You are angry because you don’t believe in an America where I represent New York 14, where the good people of Minnesota elected@IlhanMN, where@RashidaTlaibfights for Michigan families, where@AyannaPressleychampions little girls in Boston.
“You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.
“You won’t accept a nation that sees healthcare as a right or education as a #1 priority, especially where we’re the ones fighting for it. Yet here we are.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
But then followed the most significant part of Cortez’ reply:
“But you know what’s the rub of it all, Mr. President? On top of not accepting an America that elected us, you cannot accept that we don’t fear you, either.
“You can’t accept that we will call your bluff & offer a positive vision for this country. And that’s what makes you seethe.”
For all his adult life, Donald Trump—as a businessman, Presidential candidate and twice-elected President—has trafficked in bribery and coercion. First bribery:
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (now United States Attorney General) personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who says he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons.
Paxton’s office issued a cease and desist letter to former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens after he made public copies of a 14-page internal summary of the state’s case against Donald Trump for scamming millions from students of his now-defunct real estate seminar.
After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Now coercion:
Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump forced his employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, threatening them with lawsuits if they revealed secrets of his greed and/or criminality.
In 2016. USA Today found that Trump was involved in over 3,500 lawsuits during the previous 30 years: “At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings” were from contractors claiming they got stiffed.
On March 16, 2016, as a Republican Presidential candidate, Trump warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there. Shame if something happened to it.'”
Speaking with Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter, Trump confessed: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
During his Presidential campaign he encouraged Right-wing thugs to attack dissenters at his rallies, even claiming he would pay their legal expenses (which he didn’t).
But when he has confronted men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, Trump has reacted with rage and desperation.
On October 18, more than seven million Americans protested the dictatorial policies of President Donald J. Trump.
It was the second nationwide “No Kings” series of protest marches since he took office on January 20.
The first marches, on June 14, had drawn about five million people.
Republicans, knowing the marches were coming, tried to pre-empt their “I Hate Dictators” message with one of their own: That the intended marchers hated America.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: “You’re gonna bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat party.”
Mike Johnson
Other Republicans quickly joined his chorus.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “This crazy No Kings rally this weekend, which is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest-core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party, which is a big title.”
Kansas Senator Roger Marshall warned that the protests would turn violent and have to be stopped by the national guard.
Attorney general Pam Bondi claimed, without proof, that the protests were an organized effort with dedicated funding: “You’re seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match, pre-bought, pre-put together. They are organized, and someone is funding it.”
Pam Bondi
But, according to an October 19 opinion piece in The New Republic, such slanders were proven wrong:
“The atmosphere was extremely energetic and family friendly for both young and old.
“People walked slowly, often with kids in tow. Countless attendees wore large inflatable costumes, inspired by the Portland frog. There was live music, tabling, and speeches by Bill Nye, Mehdi Hasan, and Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy, among others.”
The greatest threat posed to the Trump administration didn’t come from the “No Kings” rallies. It came from no less a figure than President Donald J. Trump.
To show his utter contempt for those who oppose his policies and dictatorial rule, he posted an AI-generated video on his Truth Social account. It showed him wearing a crown and flying a jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps feces on protesters.
It’s set to the music of the 1986 Top Gun film song, “Danger Zone,” by Kenny Loggiins.
Loggins responded on NPR: “This is an unauthorized use of my performance of ‘Danger Zone.’ Nobody asked me for my permission, which I would have denied, and I request that my recording on this video is removed immediately.
“I can’t imagine why anybody would want their music used or associated with something created with the sole purpose of dividing us. Too many people are trying to tear us apart, and we need to find new ways to come together. We’re all Americans, and we’re all patriotic.
“There is no ‘us and them’ – that’s not who we are, nor is it what we should be. It’s all of us. We’re in this together, and it is my hope that we can embrace music as a way of celebrating and uniting each and every one of us.”
Owing to Logginis’ demand, many YouTube versions of this video don’t contain that music.
NPR contacted to the White House for a response to Loggins’ reaction.
White House spokesman Davis R. Ingle ignored NPR’s questions but contemptuously replied with an image from Top Gun of stars Tom Cruise and the late Val Kilmer, captioned: “I FEEL THE NEED FOR SPEED.”
Loggins could file a copyright infringement suit against Trump.
The Internet erupted with outrage:
“Can’t believe that’s a president of a country.”
“It tells you everything you need to know about what he thinks about the people of America who are, in fact, America.”
“Just to be clear, Americans, this is what Donald Trump thinks of you if you oppose him, protest, or simply ask questions.”
“Trump’s AI fantasy of crowning himself King & dumping shit from a fighter jet is the most honest thing he’s ever posted. He’s literally shitting on Americans because he doesn’t give a fuck about them. And the MAGA stupids will cheer it, calling it “patriotism.”
But these were tame compared to the warning issued by Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman, more than 500 years ago.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In his best-known work, The Prince, he advised rulers to “mingle with [citizens] from time to time, and give them an example of his humanity and munificence, always upholding, however, the majesty of his dignity, which must never be allowed to fail in anything whatever.”
“…A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed. But when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody.
“….For whoever conspires always believes that he will satisfy the people by the death of the prince.
“…[The Roman Emperor Commodus], being of a cruel and bestial disposition, in order to…exercise his rapacity on the people, he sought to favor the soldiers and render them licentious. On the other hand, by not maintaining his dignity, by often descending into the theater to fight with gladiators and committing other contemptible actions…he became despicable in the eyes of the soldiers. And being hated on the one hand and despised on the other, he was conspired against and killed.”
Legitimate similarities abound between the tactics—and often the goals—of yesterday’s Nazis and today’s Republicans.
One of these is the need for martyrs by both parties.
The Nazis found theirs in Horst Wessel(October 9, 1907 – February 23, 1930).
As a teenager growing up in the Weimar Republic of Germany, he joined the Viking Liga (“Viking League”), a Right-wing paramilitary group. Its goal, wrote Wessel, was “the “establishment of a national dictatorship.”
Wesselsoon became a local leader, engaging in street battles with rival Leftist groups such as the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD). In 1926, he joined the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (“Storm Detachment” or SA)of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party.
His unit had a reputation as “a band of thugs, a brutal squad.” One of his men described the way they fought against the Communists: “Horstmade Adolf Hitler’s principle his own: Terror can be destroyed only by counterterror.”
In September 1929, Wesselmet Erna Jänicke, a 23-year-old ex-prostitute, in a tavern. Some sources claim Wessel acted as Jänicke’s pimp. She soon moved into his room.
Wessel’slandlady, Elisabeth Salm, wanted Jänicke to leave. But Jänicke refused to do so.
Salm appealed to Communist friends of her late husband to evict Jänicke, They agreed to beat Wesselup and evict him from Salm’s flat.
On February 23, 1930, Albrecht Höhler, an armed pimp and petty criminal, knocked at Wessel’s door. When Wessel opened it, Höhler shot him dead.
He was 22 when he died.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbelsquickly turned Wessel into a Nazimartyr.Wessel had written the lyrics for a new Nazi fight song: “The Unknown SA-Man.” It later became known as “Raise the Flag” and finally the “Horst Wessel Lied.”
Its opening stanza.
Raise the flag! The ranks tightly closed!
The SA marches with calm, steady step.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks.
“The Horst Wessel Lied” became the official anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 to 1945.
Fast forward to September 10, 2025—when the Republican Partygot its own martyr: Charlie Kirk.
Kirk(October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025) was an American Right-wing political activist, entrepreneur and media personality.
He co-founded the organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA)in 2012 and was its executive director. He published a range of books and hosted a talk radio program, The Charlie Kirk Show.
Kirkopposed gun control, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and abortion. Asked if he would support abortion for his 10-year-old daughter if she were raped, he said: “The baby would be delivered.”
Kirkspread misinformation about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, masks, lockdowns, and related public health measures during the pandemic. As a result, he was at least partially responsible for untold numbers of the 400,000 Americans who died of COVID during 2020, Trump’sfinal year in office.
He was a major promoter of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory—that white populations in Western countries are being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants, with the complicity of liberal governments.
Kirkaccepted wholesale Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him by massive voter fraud. And he played a pivotal role in re-electing the 34-times convicted felon in 2024.
Donald Trump
On September 10, 2025, Kirkwas shot by a sniper while speaking at a Turning Point USA public debate event on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah.
The Republican party responded with outrage comparable to that expressed by the Nazis upon the assassination of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrichon May 27, 1042.
In an Oval Office address the same day as the shooting, Trumpblamed the “radical Left,” even as the killer’s identity and motivation remained unknown. Totally ignored in his speech was his own role in fomenting politically motivated violence.
Trump’shigh-ranking political appointees uttered similar threatening statements:
On September 15, his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, vowed to attack those who engaged in “hate speech” following Kirk’sassassination:“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie—in our society.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that is across the aisle.”
Pam Bondi
On September 15—five days after Kirk’sdeath–-Vice President J.D. Vancehosted Kirk’spodcast: “So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Millervowed to use law enforcement to go after Americans who mocked Kirk’s death, calling that domestic terrorism:
“We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law to take away your freedom.”
Donald Trumpis clearly seeking to turn Charlie Kirk’s murder into the equivalent of that of Horst Wessel.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be pre-empted indefinitely,”an ABC spokesperson said in a brief statement to media outlets on the evening of September 17.
This followed criticism by Republicans of on-air comments Kimmel had made after the September 10 shooting of Right-wing propagandist Charlie Kirk.
Early that day, Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, called Kimmel’s remarks “truly sick”in an interview with Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson. And he said the Disney-owned network should hold Kimmel accountable or face punishment.
Speaking like a Mafioso in Goodfellas, Carr added: “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Brendan Carr
During his monologue on September 15, Kimmel said that President Donald Trump’s supporters were trying to “score political points”by portraying Kirk’s accused killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, as a left-wing radical.
He did not attack Kirk or praise his assassination.
This is what Kimmel said:
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.”
Jimmy Kimmel
Kimmel then showed a clip of a reporter asking Trump how he was holding up in the wake of Kirk’s death.
“I think very good. And by the way, right there where you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years, and it’s gonna be a beauty.”
“Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction,” Kimmel said. “Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
Donald Trump
In fact, everything that Kimmel said about “the MAGA gang….doing everything they can to score political points”was absolutely true.
Since Kirk’s death, Trump and his Republican allies have threatened retribution (“consequences”) for people who speak unflatteringly about him.
On September 15—five days after Kirk’s death—Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast: “So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”
J.D. Vance
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, wrote: “It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller vowed to use law enforcement to go after Americans who mocked Kirk’s death, calling that domestic terrorism:
“We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law to take away your freedom.”
On September 15, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Katie Miller, the former DOGE aide, on her podcast: “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie—in our society. We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Pam Bondi
At Kirk’s funeral on September 22, Trump gave his own example of hate speech: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry.”
Meanwhile, Kirk’s critics have accused him—both in life and death—of being the real exploiter of hate speech.
At a 2024 Trump election rally in Georgia: Democrats “stand for everything God hates.”
He promoted Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged”against him by a vast Democratic conspiracy.
On January 5, 2021, the day before Trump’s followers attacked the United States Capitol, Kirk wrote on Twitter that his Turning Point Action group and Students for Trump were sending more than 80 “buses of patriots to D.C. to fight for this President.”
Afterward, Kirk said that the attack on the Capitol wasn’t an insurrection and did not represent mainstream Trump supporters.
On civil rights, Kirk said: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
On race: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”
Speaking of the July 4 Texas flood along the Guadalupe River in the Hill Country: “You are not being told by the media anywhere, is that the death toll likely would not have been so high if it wasn’t for DEI.”
He attacked New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as “a self-righteous, narcissistic parasite on New York City and should be expelled from politics.”
The difference between Kirk and his opponents: Kirk didn’t face “retribution” from a powerful, Right-wing government for his speech.
On September 10, 2025, Donald Trump discovered hate speech.
It had been a long time coming.
As both a Presidential candidate and President, Donald Trump repeatedly used Twitter (now X) to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his first Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them. Among his targets:
Hillary Clinton
President Barack Obama
Actress Meryl Streep
Singer Neil Young
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Comedian John Oliver
News organizations
The State of New Jersey
Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
Women
Blacks
Hispanics
Asians
Muslims
The disabled
Prisoners-of-war
Perhaps his most slanderous insult came when he accused Rafael Cruz, the father of his campaign rival, Senator Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz, of being a potential part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
As a Presidential candidate and President, he has shown outright hatred for President Barack Obama. Starting in 2011, he slandered Obama as a Kenyan-born alien who had no right to hold the Presidency.
Barack Obama
Only on the eve of the first Presidential debate with Hillary Clinton—in September, 2016—did he finally admit that Obama had been born in the United States. He did so to desperately court support among black voters, who saw his attacks on Obama as attacks on them.
Then, on March 4, 2017, in a series of unhinged tweets, Trump accused Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election:
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Both the FBI and Justice Department vigorously refuted this slander.
According to The Washington Post Fact Checker database: Trump’s false or misleading claims totaled over 30,573 during his first presidency. Many of these claims were directed at political opponents, media figures, and other individuals.
Trump reserved some of his most insulting speech for political opponents:
“Crooked Hillary” Clinton
“Crazy Bernie”Sanders
“Lyin’ Ted” Cruz
To blunt the influence of the news media’s influence with the public, Trump labeled them “Fake News”and “The enemy of the American people.”
Then, on September 10, 2025, Right-wing propagandist Charlie Kirk was shot by a sniper while speaking at a Turning Point USA public debate event on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah.
That was when Trump discovered the evils of hate speech. And on September 16, he offered his own definition of it.
On September 15, his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, had vowed to go after those who engaged in “hate speech” following Kirk’s assassination:“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie—in our society.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that is across the aisle.”
Pam Bondi
On September 16, ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl asked Trump about Bondi’s threat, noting: “A lot of your allies say that hate speech is free speech.”
Trump replied:
“She’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly, You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they will come after ABC. ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech. Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they will have to go after you.”
In short: Any speech that displeases Trump automatically becomes “hate speech”—and is subject to federal prosecution
Writing about Alexander the Great more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian and biographer Plutarch noted:
“And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.”
Another ancient writer to cast light on the mentality behind Trump’s remark was Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. As private secretary to the Roman Emperor Hadrian, he gained access to the imperial archives. It was from these that he obtained the material for The Twelve Caesars, his chronicle of debauchery from Julius Caesar to Domitian.
His chapter on Gaius Caligula is especially pornographic. It was Caligula who summed up the underlying goal of all the Caesars—and its effects on countless Romans and non-Romans.
Speaking to a critic, Caligula said: “Bear in mind that I can treat anyone exactly as I please.”
On February 27, 1933, a lone arsonist set fire to the German parliament building, the Reichstag, gutting most of the structure.
The next day, at the request of newly-installed Chancellor Adolf Hitler, President Paul von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree into law. This suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including:
Freedom of speech, press, association and public assembly;
Habeas corpus; and
Secrecy of the mails and telephone.
Donald Trump is clearly seeking to turn Charlie Kirk’s murder into the equivalent of the Reichstag fire.
Donald Trump, upon taking office as President, appointed Elon Musk the head of a newly-created government agency called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Its stated goal: Eliminating inefficiency and waste within the federal bureaucracy.
DOGE’s activities included shuttering government agencies, defunding programs and firing up to 100,000 federal employees.
Musk initially claimed he would save taxpayers $2 trillion. But financial records now indicate a savings of $175 billion.
Musk’s tenure with DOGE officially ended on May 29.
Musk donated $288 million to Trump’s 2024 Presidential campaign. He repeatedly praised Trump: “This election, I think, is going to decide the fate of America, and along with the fate of America, the fate of Western civilization.”
And Trump praised Musk: “Only Elon can do this,” Trump said of a SpaceX launch. “That’s why I love you, Elon.”
But that lovefest has brutally ended. On June 3, 2025, Musk blasted the massive tax-and-spending bill backed by Trump.
Dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” by Trump—and thus by House and Senate Republicans—the legislation will:
Extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts, keeping taxes low on the richest Americans;
Hurt millions of Americans by slashing $600 billion from Medicaid;
Cost millions some or all of their food stamp benefits;
Leave nine to 14 million people without health insurance by 2034;
Add $3.1 trillion to the nation’s debt.
Having narrowly passed the House of Representatives by one vote, the bill passed the Senate on July 4, as Trump had demanded.
Elon Musk vigorously dissented. In a post on X, his social media site, he wrote: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
In a follow-up post, he added: “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
Even worse for Republicans, Musk wrote on X: “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” suggesting that he would fund campaigns in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections to remove those who voted for the bill.
Many Republicans were expecting Musk to fund their midterm campaigns against Democrats—and their own primary challengers.
Donald Trump
Trump has loudly proclaimed his belief in taking vengeance on those who cross him: “If someone screws you, screw them back 10 times harder,”he told business leaders during a 2005 speech in Colorado.
Trump is an alpha male who enjoys dominating others. So is Musk. As Dan McAdams, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, told Newsweek:
“Two alphas can probably get along well enough as long as they don’t interfere with each other’s respective domain.
“Musk is certainly a narcissist but his self-worth is caught up in what he achieves. He really cares about building electric cars, sending people into space, and so on.
“Trump does not care about anything except himself. His entire self worth depends on others adoring him and fearing him.”
Musk is the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $314 billion as of November 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He owns Tesla, Inc., X (formerly Twitter), Space X and xAI, an artificial intelligence startup that he founded in 2023.
He commands unlimited resources in money, attorneys and the ability to reach millions through X. He’s received billions of dollars in Federal contracts—among them $733.5 million for the Space Development Agency (SDA) and two for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
But Trump commands the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service. He’s already turned that machinery on former federal officials he hates—such as Chris Krebs, the former director for cybersecurity.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s appointment for Attorney General, has proven her reliability. As Florida Attorney General, she solicited a political contribution from Trump while her office deliberated investigating alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, Trump wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
And Trump has already started his attack on Musk: On July 1, when reporters asked him if he would deport South Africa-born Musk, Trump said: “We’ll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon.”
And on July 3, The New Republic published that Trump was responsible for rumors about Elon Musk’s rampant White House ketamine use: “‘Actually, we dropped a dime to The New York Times….on Elon’s drug taking,’” said Trump, according to his biographer Michael Wolff,
Musk could easily be indicted for corruption—even if it’s totally unwarranted. At the very least, many—if not all—of Musk’s government contracts could be cancelled. At the worst, Musk could find himself locked in combat with Federal prosecutors for the length of Trump’s term and facing huge fines—if not imprisonment.
Ernst Rohm felt invulnerable at the start of 1934. After leaving government with an effusive send-off from Trump, Elon Musk may have felt the same.
Like Rohm, Musk may live to regret the devotion he’s lavished on his choice for Fuhrer.
On June 30, 1934, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered a massive purge of his private army, the S.A., (Sturmabteilungor). It was carried out by Hitler’s elite army-within-an-army, the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS.
The Brownshirts (also known as “Storm Troopers”) had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. They had violently intimidated political opponents (especially Communists) and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party.
But after Hitler reached the pinnacle of power, they became a liability.
Ernst Rohm, their commander, had served as a tough army officer during World War 1. He was one of the few men allowed to use “du,” the personal form of “you” in German, when addressing Hitler.
Rohm urged Hitler to disband the regular German army, the Reichswehr, and replace it with his own undisciplined paramilitary legions as the nation’s defense force.
By 1934, the Storm Troopers numbered approximately three million. By contrast, about 100,000 soldiers served in the Reichswehr, owing to restrictions imposed by the 1919 Versailles Treaty which ended World War 1.
Ernst Rohm
Frightened by Rohm’s ambitions, the generals of the Reichswehr gave Hitler an ultimatum: Get rid of Rohm—or they would get rid of him.
Hitler didn’t hesitate. Backed by armed thugs, he stormed into Rohm’s apartment, catching him in bed with a young S.A. Storm Trooper.
Accusing his onetime friend of treasonously plotting to overthrow him, Hitler screamed: “You’re going to be shot!”
Rohm was not plotting a coup. But the generals had the whip hand—and, for Hitler, that was enough to literally sign Rohm’s death warrant.
Hours later, sitting in a prison cell, Rohm was offered a pistol with a single bullet.
“Adolf himself should do the dirty work,” said Rohm, adding: “All revolutions devour their own children.”
One hour later, Rohm died in a hail of SS bullets.
Earlier throughout that day, so had several hundred of his longtime S.A. cronies. Many of them yelled “Heil Hitler!” as they stood against barracks walls waiting to be shot.
SS soldiers marching
Thirteen days later, addressing the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, Hitler justified his purge in a nationally broadcast speech:
“If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the Supreme Judge of the German people!
“I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterize down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life.
“Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
Ninety-one years after Adolf Hitler declared himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people,” the United States faces the same fate under re-elected President Donald J. Trump.
And his Number One victim may turn out to be Elon Musk, the man who played a pivotal role in sending him back to the White House.
Musk, the leader of Space X Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), had donated tens of millions of dollars to pro-Trump super PACs, jumped around the stage behind Trump during campaign rallies, and turned X into a Right-wing cheering squad for Trump.
Trump, upon taking office, appointed Musk the head of a fictional government agency called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Its official goal: Eliminating inefficiency and waste within the federal bureaucracy.
But some—like former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen—had a warning for Musk: “Donald Trump is loyal to one person and one person only…himself.
“The moment Elon steps an inch out of Trump’s line, despite all he might have done for him, Donald will cut him off, disparage and denigrate him. Elon is no different than me or anyone else similarly situated. It’s just a matter of when.”
Cohen speaks from bitter personal experience.
A longtime executive of the Trump Organization, Cohen told ABC news in 2011:“If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit.”
In April 2018, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York began investigating Cohen. Charges reportedly included bank fraud, wire fraud and violations of campaign finance law.
On April 9, 2018, the FBI, executing a federal search warrant, raided Cohen’s office at the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs, as well as at his home and his room in the Loews Regency Hotel in New York City.
Agents seized emails, tax and business records and recordings of phone conversations that Cohen had made.
Trump’s response: “Michael Cohen only handled a tiny, tiny fraction of my legal work.”
Thus Trump undermined the argument of Cohen’s lawyers that he was the President’s personal attorney—and therefore everything Cohen did was protected by attorney-client privilege.
On July 3, Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski cast the deciding vote on Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” that:
Extends President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts;
Funds his immigration crackdown;
Imposes work requirements on social safety net programs;, and
Cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid and Medicare.
The United States population is estimated to be between 341 and 347 million. But Murkowski wasn’t concerned about them.
What she cared about were the 740,133 people she represented in Alaska.
Murkowski was upset at Trump’s plan to cut federal funding for wind and solar projects. So, in return for selling out the rest of the country, she demanded that Congress agree to protect Alaskan wind, hydropower and solar projects.
Congress agreed.
After her vote, Trump issued an executive order to limit solar and wind project awards. Insisting that renewables are unreliable, the executive order endorses polluting options such as oil, natural gas and hydropower.
Now Murkowski feels betrayed: “Do I feel like the administration was not being up-front with us? Yes.”
Murkowski would have done well to study Trump’s past behavior:
On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller to investigate links between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
Throughout Mueller’s probe, Trump repeatedly insulted him via Twitter and press conferences.
But aides convinced him that firing Mueller would be rightly seen as obstruction of justice—and thus grounds for impeachment. So he never dared go that far.
Robert Mueller
In March, 2023, Trump threatened “death and destruction” if he were criminally charged in New York for making “hush money” payments to porn “actress” Stormy Daniels. Trump shared an image of himself threatening Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with a baseball bat on his Truth Social platform.
The trial proceeded—and Trump was convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying New York business records in order to conceal his illegal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.
Lisa Murkowski’s betrayal and humiliation holds an important warning for Paramount Globe Class B: Trump’s “word” is worthless.
Consider: Paramount is worth $9.25 billion. Nevertheless it wanted to merge with Skydance Media, whose worth is valued at $4.75 billion.
Paramount is the parent company of CBS Network, which hosts The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Colbert, who has hosted the show since 2015, has been a fierce Trump critic ever since the former real estate developer announced his first run for President. And Trump, notoriously thin-skinned, equates any criticism—especially when it’s wrapped in humor—as literally treason.
Stephen Colbert
For example: At Christmastime, 2018, “Saturday Night Live” aired a parody of the classic movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Its title: “It’s a Wonderful Trump.”
In it, Trump (portrayed by actor Alec Baldwin) discovers what the United States would be like if he had never become President: A great deal better-off.
As usual, Trump expressed his resentment through Twitter: The Justice Department should stop investigating his administration (for his collusion with Russia during the 2016 Presidential election) and go after the real enemy: “SNL.”
Paramount had recently paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit he had brought against the CBS news show, 60 Minutes. He claimed that it had misleadingly edited a pre-election interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris to boost her election chances in 2024.
CBS initially called the lawsuit “completely without merit.” The network’s attorneys and a number of legal experts said that the lawsuit was without merit.
But Paramount was in the midst of an $8 billion sale to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media. For this, it needed the regulatory permission of the Federal Communications Commission of the Trump administration.
So it’s easy to draw a straight line from Paramount to CBS to Late Night With Stephen Colbert to see how easy it was for Paramount/CBS to cancel the highest-rated late-night show on television with 2.4 million nightly viewers. It has also been nominated for 33 Emmys.
Which it did on July 17.
In a statement, Paramount/CBS called the cancellation a purely financial decision: “It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
On July 14, after returning from a multi-week break, Colbert said: “While I was on vacation, my parent corporation, Paramount, paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over his ‘60 Minutes’ lawsuit.
“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company, but just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.
“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles—it’s big fat bribe.”
Addressing his in-house and television audience on July 17, Colbert announced: “I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May.
“It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
A frequent theme of the classic CBS show, The Twilight Zone, was: Deal with the Devil—and you’ll get burned.
Paramount may well prove as disappointed as Lisa Murkowski.
For all his adult life, Donald Trump—as a businessman, Presidential candidate, President and now re-elected President—has trafficked in bribery and coercion. First bribery:
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (and now United States Attorney General) personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who said he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons.
Paxton’s office issued a cease and desist letter to former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens after he made public copies of a 14-page internal summary of the state’s case against Donald Trump for scamming millions from students of his now-defunct real estate seminar.
After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Now coercion:
Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump forced his employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, threatening them with lawsuits if they revealed secrets of his greed and/or criminality.
In 2016. USA Today found that Trump was involved in over 3,500 lawsuits during the previous 30 years: “At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings” were from contractors claiming they got stiffed.
On March 16, 2016, as a Republican Presidential candidate, Trump warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there. Shame if something happened to it.'”
Speaking with Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter, Trump confessed: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
During his Presidential campaign he encouraged Right-wing thugs to attack dissenters at his rallies, even claiming he would pay their legal expenses.
Donald Trump
But when he has confronted men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, Trump has reacted with rage and desperation.
Alaska’s Republican United States Senator Lisa Murkowski should have kept those truths in mind before she sacrificed access to healthcare for millions of Americans.
On July 3, Murkowski cast the deciding vote on Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” that extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, funds his immigration crackdown, imposes work requirements on social safety net programs, and cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid.
The largest cuts come from Medicaid work reporting requirements ($326 billion; limits on state provider tax arrangements ($191 billion); and restrictions on state-directed Medicaid payments ($149 billion).
The United States population is estimated to be between 341 and 347 million. But Murkowski wasn’t concerned about them.
Lisa Murkowski
What she cared about were the 740,133 people she represented in Alaska.
Murkowski was upset at Trump’s plan to cut federal funding for wind and solar projects. So, in return for selling out the rest of the country, she demanded that Congress agree to protect Alaskan wind, hydropower and solar projects.
Murkowski believed that Trump administration officials understood how local wind and solar projects could offset the costly diesel fuel that many Alaskan rural communities must import by barge to provide electricity for their homes and businesses.
She also thought she’d negotiated an agreement to protect a 12-month window for solar and wind projects to continue to receive tax credits.
“It’s not everything that I wanted,” she explained then, “but it’s going to keep some of our projects alive, and that’s important.”
After her vote, Trump issued an executive order to limit solar and wind project awards. Continuing to insist that renewables provide only unreliable power, the executive order also gives a nod of approval to polluting options such as oil, natural gas, and hydropower.
Suddenly, Murkowski feels betrayed.
“To me, it’s just reckless by the administration. Do I feel like the administration was not being up-front with us? Yes.”
Murkowski would have done well to study Trump’s past behavior.
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
Trump boasted that he “never” settled cases out of court. But New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressed fraud claims against the real estate mogul’s counterfeit Trump University—and Trump settled the case out of court rather than take the stand.
“Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump,” said Schneiderman on November 18, 2016, “and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”
On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller to investigate links between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
Upon learning of his appointment, Trump wailed: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”
Steffen White’s Email: Sparta480@aol.com Former reporter, legal investigator and troubleshooter. Columnist at Bureaucracybuster.com. Fighting political and bureaucratic arrogance, incompetence and/or indifference.
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WHEN THREATS AND BRIBES FAIL: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 18, 2025 at 12:10 am…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
Robert Mueller
Perhaps the key to Trump’s innermost fear can be found in a work of fiction—in this case, the 1996 historical novel, The Friends of Pancho Villa, by James Carlos Blake.
The book depicts the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) and its most famous revolutionary, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. it’s told from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Fierro, Villa’s most feared executioner. In one day, for example, Fierro—using two revolvers—executed 300 captured Federale soldiers.
As in history, Blake’s Fierro presides over the execution of David Berlanga, a journalist who had dared criticize the often loutish behavior of Villa’s men.
On Villa’s command, Fierro approaches Berlanga in a Mexico City restaurant and orders: “Come with me.”
Standing against a barracks wall, Berlanga lights a cigar and requests permission to finish it. He then proceeds to smoke it with such a steady hand that its unbroken ash extends almost four inches.
The cigar finished, the ash still unbroken, Berlanga drops the butt to the ground and says calmly: “I’m ready.”
Then the assembled firing squad does its work.
Later, Fierro is so shaken by Berlanga’s sheer fearlessness that he seeks an explanation for it. Sitting in a cantina, he lights a cigar and tries to duplicate Berlanga’s four-inch length.
But the best he can do is less than three inches. He concludes that Berlanga used a trick—but he can’t figure it out.
Rodolfo Fierro
It had to be a trick, Fierro insists, because, if it wasn’t, there were only two other explanations for such a calm demeanor in the face of impending death.
The first was insanity. But Fierro rules this out: He had studied Berlanga’s eyes and found no madness there.
That leaves only one other explanation (other than a trick): Sheer courage.
And Fierro can’t accept this, either—because it’s disturbing.
“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill….No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men’s lack of courage.
“There is even less courage in this world than there is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
“But a man brave enough to control his fear of being killed, control it so well that no tremor reaches his fingers and no sign shows in his eyes…well. Such a man cannot be ruled, he can only be killed.”
Throughout his life, Trump has relied on bribery and intimidation. He well understands the power of greed and fear over most people.
What he doesn’t understand—and truly fears—is that some people cannot be bought or frightened.
Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Like Robert Mueller. And like Zohran Mamdani.
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