Posts Tagged ‘UNITED STATES SENATE’
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 60 MINUTES, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BALLOTS, BBC, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHRIS KREBS, CIA, CNN, CRIMINALITY, CROOKS AND LIARS, CYBERSECURITY INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA), DAILY KOZ, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE CYBER COMMAND, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS), DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE REPORT, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION, ELECTION SECURITY, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HACKING, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HUFFINGTON POST, JOE BIDEN, Kamala Harris, MEDIA MATTERS, MICROSOFT, MIKE PENCE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, POPULAR VOTE, PROPAGANDA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RUSSIA, SALON, SCOTT PELLEY, SEATTLE TIMES, Secret Service, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TIME MAGAZINE, TIME MAGAZINIE’S PERSON OF THE YEAR, TREASON, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WONKETTE, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 29, 2025 at 12:14 am
As a result of the vast increase in election security, President Donald Trump failed to get the help he expected from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
The result: He lost the 2020 Presidential election.
Thus, Joe Biden won the popular vote by 81,268,924 to 74,216,154 for Trump—and the Electoral College by 306 to 232.
Two days later, Trump claimed: “And this is a case where they’re trying to steal an election, they’re trying to rig an election.”
Chris Krebs was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And the man most responsible for ensuring election security.
Chris Krebs
On November 12, to counter the growing chorus of lies from Trump and his Right-wing allies, he put out the following statement:
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet more lies:
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more.
“Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”
Donald Trump
Asked by “60 Minutes'” Scott Pelley if he was surprised to be fired, Krebs replied: “I don’t know if I was necessarily surprised. It’s not how I wanted to go out. The thing that upsets me the most about that is I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to my team.
“And I’d worked with them for three and a half years, in the trenches. Building an agency, putting CISA on the national stage. And I love that team. And I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, so that’s what I’m most upset about.”
Krebs was no dyed-in-the-wool Democrat but a lifelong Republican. He gave up a lucrative job as Microsoft’s head of cybersecurity policy to join the Trump administration. He wanted to serve his country by creating a dedicated cybersecurity agency for the first time.
Still, he had his reservations about taking the job. As he told the Financial Times: “The flaws of this man [Trump] were obvious to everybody that was willing to pay attention. [But] to do your job, you have to be able to compartmentalize. I was willing to do that.
“Over time, it eats away at you. It eats away at you, the other parts of the department that were doing stuff that just seemed so inhumane. I was never involved in any of those policy conversations.”
On April 9, 2025, re-elected President Donald Trump issued a “Memorandum For the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies.” Its second paragraph read in part:
“Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority. Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic.”
In short: Krebs prevented Russia from interfering with the 2020 Presidential election and dared warn Americans about the dangers of COVID-19.
Trump had counted on Russian interference and repeatedly lied about the dangers of COVID while promoting quack “cures” such as shining UV light up a patient’s anus.
Trump’s accusing lies continued in the Memorandum:
“Krebs, through CISA, promoted the censorship of election information, including known risks associated with certain voting practices.
“Similarly, Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”
Trump then ordered:
- “I hereby direct the heads of executive department and agencies (agencies) to immediately take steps consistent with existing law to revoke any active security clearance held by Christopher Krebs.
- “I further direct the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and all other relevant agencies to immediately take all action as necessary and consistent with existing law to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at entities associated with Krebs.
- “I further direct the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with any other agency head, to take all appropriate action to review Krebs’ activities as a Government employee, including his leadership of CISA.”
Clearly, Trump seeks to find any plausibly legal excuse to destroy the man who dared come between him and his Russian backers in 2020—and who contradicted his lies about COVID and the election.
Two key goals of Project 2025-–which Trump supported, while claiming he didn’t–were:
- The DOJ must be thoroughly “reformed” and tightly overseen by the White House; and
- 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.
Americans are about to discover what it meant to live in Joseph Stalin’s Russia—where truth was punished and lies were rewarded.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 60 MINUTES, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BALLOTS, BBC, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHRIS KREBS, CIA, CNN, CRIMINALITY, CROOKS AND LIARS, CYBERSECURITY INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA), DAILY KOZ, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE CYBER COMMAND, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS), DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE REPORT, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION, ELECTION SECURITY, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HACKING, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HUFFINGTON POST, JOE BIDEN, Kamala Harris, MEDIA MATTERS, MICROSOFT, MIKE PENCE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, POPULAR VOTE, PROPAGANDA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RUSSIA, SALON, SCOTT PELLEY, SEATTLE TIMES, Secret Service, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TIME MAGAZINE, TIME MAGAZINIE’S PERSON OF THE YEAR, TREASON, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WONKETTE, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 28, 2025 at 12:05 am
TIME’s Person of the Year for 2020 proved to be two people: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
On the surface, choosing Biden and Harris made sense: “Joe Biden was elected President of the United States in the midst of an existential debate over what reality we inhabit. Perhaps the only thing Americans agree on right now is that the future of the country is at stake, even as they fiercely disagree about why.”
As for the shared legacy of Biden and Harris: “If Donald Trump was a force for disruption and division over the past four years, Biden and Harris show where the nation is heading: a blend of ethnicities, lived experiences and worldviews that must find a way forward together if the American experiment is to survive.”
Yet a lesser-known but far more consequential choice for “Person of the Year” would have been Chris Krebs.
Because, without Chris Krebs, there would not have been a Biden Presidency.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote.
And there Trump won: 304 to 227.
What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Putin had good reason to assist Trump: Putin wanted the United States to ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which has preserved Western Europe from Russian aggression since World War II. And Trump had often attacked America’s funding of NATO as a drain on the American economy.
As for Trump, he wanted something from Putin: He wanted to be President. For this, Putin could supply monies, Internet trolls to confuse voters with falsified news, and even the hacking of key voting centers.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020:
“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”
Krebs’ to-do list included paper ballots:
“Paper ballots give you the ability to audit, to go back and check the tape and make sure that you got the count right. And that’s really one of the keys to success for a secure 2020 election. Ninety-five percent of the ballots cast in the 2020 election had a paper record associated with it. Compared to 2016, about 82%.
“That gives you the ability to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote, and just look at what happened in Georgia. Georgia has machines that tabulate the vote. They then held a hand recount and the outcome was consistent with the machine vote.”
Krebs’ duties included:
- Sharing intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
- Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
- Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.
At his command lay the resources of a series of powerful Federal investigative agencies:
“We had the Department of Defense Cyber Command. We had the National Security Agency. We had the FBI. We had the Secret Service. We also had representatives from the Election Assistance Commission, which is the federal independent agency that supports the actual administration of elections.
“We had representatives from some of the election equipment vendors. And they’re critical because they’re the ones out there that know what’s going on on the ground if there’s any sort of issue with some of their systems. And we had representatives from state and local governments.”
Misinformation led CISA to create a new “Rumor Control” website ahead of the 2020 election. Its main goal was to debunk rumors surrounding the 2020 election that had been spreading throughout the country.
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Donald Trump’s—the November 3, 2020 election went very smoothly.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ABUSE OF POWER, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ASSASSINATION, AXIOS, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BIRD FLU, BLACKS, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHINA, CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DANIEL CASSINO, DEMOCRACY, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FBI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FUEL PRICES, GALLUP POLL, GAZA, GLOBAL CONFLICT, GROCERY PRICES, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HISPANICS, HITLER: ASCENT (BOOK), HUFFINGTON POST, HUNTER BIDEN, illegal immigration, IMPEACHMENT, INFLATION, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, ISRAEL, JACK SMITH, JAMAL KHASHOOGI, JAMES COMER, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JARED KUSHNER, JIMMY HOFFA, JOHN ADAMS, JOSEPH BIDEN, Kamala Harris, KEVIN MCCARTHY, KIM JONG-UN, LATINOS, LOW INFORMATION VOTERS, MAR-A-LAGO, MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, MASCULINITY, MEDIA MATTERS, MEIN KAMPF, MERRICK GARLAND, MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIMS, NAZI GERMANY, NAZIS, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NORTH KORREA, NPR, OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SUPERMAN, TALKING POINTS MEMO, TERRORISM, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS, TIME, TRANSPORTATION COSTS, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. BORDER PATROL, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLKER ULLRICH, VOLODMYR ZELENSKY, VOX, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, WORLD WAR 11, X, XI JINPING
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 20, 2025 at 12:14 am
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.
Case #12: Democrats expected to receive support from their traditional allies—such as blacks and Hispanics. But that didn’t happen.
Despite Donald Trump’s overt racism, blacks deserted Vice President Kamala Harris in droves. About three in 10 back men under age 45 went for Trump, roughly double the share he got in 2020.
A clear majority of young black voters described the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” compared with about half of older black voters.
Similarly, in 2024, Trump made “mass deportations” the signature issue of his campaign. The vast majority of those slated for such removal were Hispanics.
But numerous Hispanics, when interviewed, said they didn’t feel threatened. They felt certain that Trump would deport “only the bad people.”
Young Latinos, particularly young Latino men, were more supportive to Trump than in 2020. Roughly half of young Latino men voted for Harris, compared with about six in 10 who went for Trump.
Majorities of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy was in bad shape. They wanted a bigger paycheck. And they were willing to re-elect a man who despised them in hopes of getting it.
Case #13: Muslims—especially those living in Dearborn, Michigan—played a losing blackmail game with the Biden administration
On October 7, 2023, under the cover of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza, Hamas terrorists slaughtered an estimated 1,139 men, women and children in Israeli streets, houses, kibbutz communities and at a rave music festival.
About 250 others were kidnapped and taken into Gaza.
Israel responded by declaring a state of war—pounding Gaza with bombs, missiles. tanks and soldiers. Palestinian health authorities claim that Israel’s ground and air campaign has killed more than 46,600 people,
Palestinians celebrating the attack on Israel
Terrorism-sympathizing Islamics—especially in Michigan—demanded that the Biden administration stop sending military equipment to Israel—and force Israelis to stop their military campaign to free the hostages. They threatened: “If you don’t do what we want, we won’t vote for Kamala Harris.”
Biden and Harris rejected their demands—and Islamics voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all.
The end result: Harris lost—and was replaced with a Right-wing administration so pro-Israel that it made the Biden one seem pro-Palestinian by comparison.
Case 14: Ignorance of and/or contempt for history.
“Low information voters” is a euphemism for people dangerously ignorant of the issues affecting their lives.
After World War II ended in 1945, the United States proved a force for worldwide stability. Its “nuclear umbrella” prevented a Russian takeover of Europe and a Chinese takeover of Asia.
But voters ignored Trump’s “bromance” with Communist dictators Vladimir Putin (Russia), Xi Jinping (China) and Kim Jong-Un (North Korea). They also ignored his proven disdain for the leaders of democratic nations—such as Canada and Great Britain.
As a result, Canada and Mexico, America’s biggest trading partners, are now treated—by Trump—as enemies. Meanwhile, he cozies up to Putin against Ukraine’s legally-elected President, Vododmyr Zelensky.
* * * * *
Countless historians have tried to answer the question: “Was the rise of Adolf Hitler—and the catastrophe he unleashed—inevitable?”
Future historians will ask the same question about Donald Trump—and the almost certain disaster of a second Trump Presidency.
Competent historians will conclude that no one factor was responsible, but a combination of otherwise unrelated ones. Among these:
- Republicans: Who feared that Trump’s Fascistic supporters would deprive them of political office if they didn’t abase themselves to a lifelong criminal and would-be dictator.
- Republican judges: Who bent and/or broke the law to enable Trump to escape justice.
- Justice Department prosecutors: Whose awe of the Presidency allowed Trump to slander and threaten federal prosecutors and judges.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland: Whose cowardice prevented him from appointing Jack Smith Special Counsel until November 18, 2022—giving Trump time to delay justice and again win the Presidency.
- Democrats: Whose cowardice toward Trump encouraged Republicans to ever more extreme measures.
- Hispanics: Like the Jews in Hitler’s Germany, who couldn’t believe that Trump would carry out his threats to imprison and/or deport them.
- The Biden administration: Which refused to stem the tide of illegal aliens invading America—and thus enraged millions of law-abiding Americans into supporting Trump.
- American voters: Whose misogynistic attitudes toward women led them to reject a former local and state prosecutor for a 34-times convicted felon.
- American voters: Whose hatred of Hispanic illegal aliens and inflationary grocery prices led them to ignore overwhelming evidence of Trump’s intent to overturn the democratic process and make himself absolute dictator.
As John Adams, second President of the United States, observed:
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence and cruelty.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ABUSE OF POWER, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ASSASSINATION, AXIOS, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BIRD FLU, BLACKS, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHINA, CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DANIEL CASSINO, DEMOCRACY, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FBI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FUEL PRICES, GALLUP POLL, GAZA, GLOBAL CONFLICT, GROCERY PRICES, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HISPANICS, HITLER: ASCENT (BOOK), HUFFINGTON POST, HUNTER BIDEN, illegal immigration, IMPEACHMENT, INFLATION, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, ISRAEL, JACK SMITH, JAMAL KHASHOOGI, JAMES COMER, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JARED KUSHNER, JIMMY HOFFA, JOHN ADAMS, JOSEPH BIDEN, Kamala Harris, KEVIN MCCARTHY, KIM JONG-UN, LATINOS, LOW INFORMATION VOTERS, MAR-A-LAGO, MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, MASCULINITY, MEDIA MATTERS, MEIN KAMPF, MERRICK GARLAND, MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIMS, NAZI GERMANY, NAZIS, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NORTH KORREA, NPR, OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SUPERMAN, TALKING POINTS MEMO, TERRORISM, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS, TIME, TRANSPORTATION COSTS, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. BORDER PATROL, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLKER ULLRICH, VOLODMYR ZELENSKY, VOX, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, WORLD WAR 11, X, XI JINPING
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Social commentary on March 19, 2025 at 12:08 am
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.
Case #9: Americans had become increasingly worried and angry about surging numbers of illegal aliens pouring into the country. But the Biden administration refused—until its closing months—to dramatically address this issue.
A Vox story, dated July 12, 2024, warned: “According to Gallup, 2024 is the first time since 2005 that most of the public have wanted less immigration, and this year marks the largest share of Americans feeling resistant to immigration since 58 percent said so in 2001….”
Illegal alien climbing over the border fence in Brownsville, Texas
Six months later, on January 17, 2025, another Vox story offered: “What Democrats must learn from Biden’s disastrous immigration record.”
It opened: “One of the main reasons Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election is the Biden administration’s record on immigration and the border — polls show it ranks up close with inflation among the top issues that drove swing voters to Trump….
“During Biden’s first three years in office, the number of arriving migrants skyrocketed, leading to a backlash as even blue states and cities complained they were overwhelmed. The peak came in December 2023, a month when officials reported about 250,000 encounters with migrants at the border, a record.”
Then, starting early in 2024, and continuing throughout the year, border arrivals plummeted—by more than 80%.
The reasons:
- The Biden administration got the Mexican government to launch an extensive crackdown on migrants passing through its territory to the United States.
- Biden decreed that new unauthorized migrants would be ineligible for asylum if too many people were coming to the border. Essentially, this meant shutting down the asylum process.
Unfortunately for Harris, the downturn in illegal immigration came too late.
Donald Trump
In times of economic uncertainty, hostility rises toward immigrants—especially those who are alien to a host country’s language and culture. This has proven true in Europe as well as the United States.
Case #10: Americans blamed President Biden for inflationary price increases—especially for groceries such as eggs.
According to a December 20, 2024 article—“Why are groceries so expensive? What you need to know”—by the Center for Science in the Public Interest:
“Since January 2019, food prices have risen nearly 30 percent in the US, leaving many households struggling to afford groceries.”
Among the issues responsible for this:
- COVID-19: Caused worldwide disruptions in supply chains.
- Transportation costs and fuel prices: Fuel costs are directly tied to how much retailers charge for groceries and other goods.
- Animal diseases, weather events, crop failures: When bird flu (H5N1) first struck the U.S. in 2022, eggs were priced at around $2 per dozen. They peaked at $4.82/dozen in January 2023, and in December 2024—following the infection of over 123 million chickens—prices fell to about $4.15/dozen.
- Global conflict: In February, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, which exports wheat, corn and agricultural fertilizer, among other products. Russia has tried to strangle Ukraine’s exports by attacking the nation’s agricultural centers.
No President—including Biden and Trump—can control such events. Unfortunately, every Presidential candidate virtually promises to be Superman. And voters repeatedly fall victim to this absurdity.
So when elected Presidents fail to perform miracles, those voters turn on them—and turn them out of office.
Case #11: Americans don’t want a woman President.
American voters proved that in 2016 when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran for President—and lost to Trump in the Electoral College by a count of 227 to 304.
And Hillary had an advantage that Vice President Kamala Harris lacked: Hillary was white.
England has elected a female Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher. And Mexico—notorious for the machismo of its men—has elected a woman President: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. But in the United States, electing a woman chief executive is unthinkable to most American men.
According to Daniel Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, men who support Trump hold to a traditionally masculine identity.
“So, among that group, Trump is up over Harris by about 35 points. Huge gap, Among other men, the half of men who don’t put themselves at the extremes of masculinity, Harris is up by 20. In fact, Harris is also up by 20 among most groups of women. So, really the gap is not between men and women, it’s between this one group of traditional masculine men and everybody else.”
Machismo played a major role in Trump’s popularity among Hispanics. Roughly six in 10 men described Trump as a strong leader, compared with 43% who said that in 2020. About half of Hispanic women said Trump was a strong leader, up from 37%.
Case #12: Democrats expected to receive support from their traditional allies—such as blacks and Hispanics. But that didn’t happen.
During the eight-year tenure of America’s first black President, Donald Trump attacked Barack Obama as a foreign-born citizen who was thus ineligible for that office. He also had a history of supporting—and being supported by—racist white groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
Nevertheless, blacks deserted Vice President Kamala Harris in droves. About three in 10 back men under age 45 went for Trump, roughly double the share he got in 2020.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ABUSE OF POWER, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ASSASSINATION, AXIOS, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BIRD FLU, BLACKS, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHINA, CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DANIEL CASSINO, DEMOCRACY, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FBI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FUEL PRICES, GALLUP POLL, GAZA, GLOBAL CONFLICT, GROCERY PRICES, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HISPANICS, HITLER: ASCENT (BOOK), HUFFINGTON POST, HUNTER BIDEN, illegal immigration, IMPEACHMENT, INFLATION, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, ISRAEL, JACK SMITH, JAMAL KHASHOOGI, JAMES COMER, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JARED KUSHNER, JIMMY HOFFA, JOHN ADAMS, JOSEPH BIDEN, Kamala Harris, KEVIN MCCARTHY, KIM JONG-UN, LATINOS, LOW INFORMATION VOTERS, MAR-A-LAGO, MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, MASCULINITY, MEDIA MATTERS, MEIN KAMPF, MERRICK GARLAND, MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIMS, NAZI GERMANY, NAZIS, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NORTH KORREA, NPR, OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SUPERMAN, TALKING POINTS MEMO, TERRORISM, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS, TIME, TRANSPORTATION COSTS, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. BORDER PATROL, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLKER ULLRICH, VOLODMYR ZELENSKY, VOX, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, WORLD WAR 11, X, XI JINPING
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 18, 2025 at 12:05 am
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.
Case #5: Even after Donald Trump left office, the Justice Department treated him with a deference not shown any other criminal defendant.
He was allowed, for example, to hurl insults and threats at Special Counsel Jack Smith and even Smith’s family.
One such post, published on Trump’s website, Truth Social, went: “Deranged Jack Smith, who is a sick puppet for A.G. Garland & Crooked Joe Biden, should be DEFUNDED & put out to rest. Republicans must get tough or the Dems will steal another Election. MAGA!”
By “A.G. Garland” Trump meant Attorney General Merrick Garland. By “put out to rest,” he meant that his followers should assassinate Smith.
Not even Mafia bosses like Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Albert “The Executioner” Anastasia dared issue such a threat.
Jack Smith
By contrast: Jimmy Hoffa was president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. But that didn’t prevent Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department from indicting him for jury tampering—and convicting him on March 4, 1964. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
No one in the Kennedy Justice Department said: “He’s the elected president of the Teamsters Union—so we can’t touch him.” Yet that is precisely how the Biden Justice Department repeatedly acted—simply because, in 2016, he won a Presidential election.
Case #6: Throughout his struggles to stay out of prison, Trump was aided by the unrelenting support of the Republican party.
Republicans loudly and repeatedly claimed that Donald Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 Presidential election—despite overwhelming evidence that he wasn’t.
They also claimed that, by appointing Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump, the Democrats had weaponized Federal law enforcement.
They also fully supported Trump’s demand for the release of those who attacked the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
For example: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has depicted these coup supporters as persecuted martyrs.
On March 24, 2022, members of the Republicans’ House Oversight Committee toured a Washington, D.C. jail where some of these defendants were held. “Their due process rights are being violated. And they have been mistreated and treated as political prisoners,” Greene told reporters after the tour.
Adolf Hitler similarly portrayed as martyrs the Nazis who tried to violently overthrow the government of Bavaria on November 9, 1923.
A March 2, 2020 Washington Monthly story concluded ominously: “U.S. democracy wasn’t set up to deal with a president openly behaving like a James Bond villain while being protected by a political party behaving more like a mafia than a civic institution.”
Case #7: While Congressional Republicans have relentlessly investigated President Joe Biden and his family, Democrats have refused to similarly investigate Trump’s family.
The United States House Oversight Committee opened its investigation into the Biden family on January 11, 2023. The investigation included the foreign business activities of Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, James.
By November 2023, the investigation had not found any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden.
Democrats, by contrast, have not probed why Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser, received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The money came to Kushner’s private equity firm after Kushner left the White House in 2021.
Jared Kushner
Salman has been implicated by U.S. Intelligence reports in the 2018 torture and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. When asked if he believed the reports, Kushner said: “Are we really still doing this?”
Democrats have also refused to investigate the Trump administration’s illegally seizing vitally-needed medical supplies in at least seven states during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not publicly report the thefts, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Nor did the administration explain how it decided which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.
The Federal Government did not inform states whose supplies it seized if they would receive the materials they ordered and paid for.
Case #8: On July 13, 2024, Trump was allegedly wounded in his right ear by a gunman while speaking at an open-air Presidential campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania.
The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight rounds from an AR-15 style rifle from the roof of a nearby building. Trump dived for cover behind his lectern, as the shooter killed one audience member and critically injured two others.
Crooks was shot and killed seconds later by the Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team.
Had Trump not slightly turned his head at the moment Crooks fired, Republicans would have been forced to choose another nominee.
In addition, Trump would not have been alive to win the 2024 Presidential election and openly threaten to imprison the Justice Department prosecutors who sought to hold him accountable for his litany of crimes.
The assassination attempt calls to mind that by Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944, to kill Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb. Had he succeeded, the war in Europe would no doubt have ended far earlier, with countless lives being saved.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ABUSE OF POWER, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ASSASSINATION, AXIOS, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BIRD FLU, BLACKS, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHINA, CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DANIEL CASSINO, DEMOCRACY, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FBI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FUEL PRICES, GALLUP POLL, GAZA, GLOBAL CONFLICT, GROCERY PRICES, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HISPANICS, HITLER: ASCENT (BOOK), HUFFINGTON POST, HUNTER BIDEN, illegal immigration, IMPEACHMENT, INFLATION, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, ISRAEL, JACK SMITH, JAMAL KHASHOOGI, JAMES COMER, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JARED KUSHNER, JIMMY HOFFA, JOHN ADAMS, JOSEPH BIDEN, Kamala Harris, KEVIN MCCARTHY, KIM JONG-UN, LATINOS, LOW INFORMATION VOTERS, MAR-A-LAGO, MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, MASCULINITY, MEDIA MATTERS, MEIN KAMPF, MERRICK GARLAND, MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIMS, NAZI GERMANY, NAZIS, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NORTH KORREA, NPR, OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SUPERMAN, TALKING POINTS MEMO, TERRORISM, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS, TIME, TRANSPORTATION COSTS, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. BORDER PATROL, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLKER ULLRICH, VOLODMYR ZELENSKY, VOX, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, WORLD WAR 11, X, XI JINPING
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 17, 2025 at 2:37 am
On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.
About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen.
Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.
Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.
At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
Serving time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria. he was given a huge cell, allowed to receive unlimited visitors and gifts, and treated with deference by guards and inmates.
Hitler used his time in prison to write his infamous book, Mein Kampf-–“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—including the extermination of the Jews and the conquest of the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924
Nine months later, he was released on parole—by authorities loyal to the authoritarian Right instead of the newly-created Weimar Republic.
Hitler immediately began rebuilding the shattered Nazi party—and deciding on a new strategy to gain power. Never again would he resort to armed force. He would win office by election—or intrigue.
Writes historian Volker Ullrich, in his monumental biography, Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939: “Historians have perennially tried to answer the question of whether Hitler’s rise to power could have been halted….
“There were repeated opportunities to end Hitler’s run of triumphs. The most obvious one was after the failed Putsch of November 1923. Had the Munich rabble-rouser been forced to serve his full five-year term of imprisonment in Landsberg, it is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to restart his political career.”
Thus, it isn’t just what happens that can influence the course of history. Often, it’s what doesn’t happen that has at least as great a result.
Future historians—if there are any—may one day write that it’s what didn’t happen that played at least as great a role in re-electing Donald Trump President as what actually did.
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 election.
Case #1: On December 18, 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. On February 5, 2020, the Republican-dominated Senate voted to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment.
Their motive: Fear that if they didn’t, they would be “primaried” by even more extreme, Trump-supported Right-wing candidates—and lose their positions and the accompanying power and perks.
Had Republicans agreed to convict him, he could not have run again for President.
Case #2: On January 13, 2021, Trump was impeached for the second time for “incitement of insurrection”—inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.
The reason: To stop the counting of Electoral College votes, which he knew would prove that former Vice President Joseph Biden had won the 2020 Presidential election.
The evidence against him was overwhelming—including video of his inciting a mob of his followers to storm the Capitol Building.
But Republican Senators again acquitted Trump on February 13, 2021—choosing ambition over patriotism.
Had they done so, he could not have again been a candidate for President.
Donald Trump
Case #3: Only on November 18, 2022—a year and a half after becoming Attorney General—did Merrick Garland appoint Jack Smith Independent Counsel to investigate Donald Trump’s role for:
- Inciting the January 6 attack on Congress; and
- Illegally seizing and storing highly classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida.
This gave Trump time to play his “deny and delay” game. Had he been prosecuted and convicted before the November 5 Presidential election, the results might well have been different.
Even hardcore supporters might have proved unwilling to vote for someone found guilty of inciting a riot or stealing highly classified documents.
Case #4: In June, 2023, Trump was indicted for illegally seizing and storing hundreds of highly classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee as Federal Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, presided over the case.
She repeatedly ruled in his favor and finally dismissed the case in July, 2024. claiming that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.
Aileen Cannon
Southern District of Florida, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many legal experts, citing her handling of the civil case against Trump, called for her recusal from the case. Jack Smith could have requested her removal from the case but did not ask a Federal appeals court to do so.
MSNBC analyst Barbara McQuade told Newsweek that Smith likely refused to do so to “return public trust” to the Justice Department, which had been challenged in recent years.
Cannon’s kid-gloves treatment of Trump echoed that of the Right-wing judge who presided over Adolf Hitler’s trial in 1923 for trying to overthrow the government of Bavaria.
2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ABUSE OF POWER, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ASSASSINATION, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DONALD TRUMP, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FBI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HITLER: ASCENT (BOOK), HUFFINGTON POST, HUNTER BIDEN, IMPEACHMENT, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, JACK SMITH, JAMAL KHASHOOGI, JAMES COMER, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JARED KUSHNER, JIMMY HOFFA, JOSEPH BIDEN, KEVIN MCCARTHY, MAR-A-LAGO, MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, MEDIA MATTERS, MEIN KAMPF, MERRICK GARLAND, MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NAZIS, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REUTERS, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VOLKER ULLRICH, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on December 18, 2024 at 12:47 am
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.
Case #5: Even after Donald Trump left office, the Justice Department treated him with a deference not shown any other criminal defendant.
He was allowed, for example, to hurl insults and threats at Special Counsel Jack Smith and even Smith’s family.
One such post, published on Trump’s website, Truth Social, went: “Deranged Jack Smith, who is a sick puppet for A.G. Garland & Crooked Joe Biden, should be DEFUNDED & put out to rest. Republicans must get tough or the Dems will steal another Election. MAGA!”
By “A.G. Garland” Trump meant Attorney General Merrick Garland. By “put out to rest,” he meant that his followers should assassinate Smith.
Not even Mafia bosses like Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Albert “The Executioner” Anastasia dared issue such a threat.
Jack Smith
By contrast: From 1957 to 1971, Jimmy Hoffa was president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. But that didn’t prevent Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department from indicting him on May 18, 1962, for accepting $1 million from a trucking company in exchange for labor peace.
After beating the case through jury tampering, he was again indicted—for jury tampering—and convicted on March 4, 1964. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
No one in the Kennedy Justice Department said: “He’s the elected president of the Teamsters Union—so we can’t touch him.” Yet that is precisely how the Biden Justice Department repeatedly acted—simply because, in 2016, he won a Presidential election.
Case 6: Throughout his struggles to stay out of prison, Trump was aided by the unrelenting support of the Republican party.
Republicans loudly and repeatedly claimed that, by appointing a Special Counsel to investigate Trump, the Democrats had weaponized Federal law enforcement.
Republicans refuse to acknowledge the criminal charges which led to the Justice Department appointing former DOJ official Jack Smith to that position. They also fully support Trump’s demand for the release of those who attacked the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
For example: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has depicted these coup supporters as persecuted martyrs.
On March 24, 2022, members of the Republicans’ House Oversight Committee toured a Washington, D.C. jail where some of these defendants were held. “Their due process rights are being violated. And they have been mistreated and treated as political prisoners,” Greene told reporters after the tour.
Adolf Hitler similarly portrayed as martyrs the Nazis who tried to violently overthrow the government of Bavaria on November 9, 1923.
Case 7: While Congressional Republicans have relentlessly investigated President Joe Biden and his family, Democrats have refused to similarly investigate Trump’s family.
The United States House Oversight Committee opened its investigation into the Biden family on January 11, 2023. The investigation included the foreign business activities of Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, James.
By November 2023, the investigation had not found any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden.
Democrats, by contrast, have not probed why Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser, received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The money came to Kushner’s private equity firm after Kushner left the White House in 2021.
Jared Kushner
Salman has been implicated by U.S. Intelligence reports in the 2018 torture and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. When asked if he believed the reports, Kushner said: “Are we really still doing this?”
Democrats have also refused to investigate the Trump administration’s illegally seizing vitally-needed medical supplies in at least seven states during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not publicly report the thefts, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Nor did the administration explain how it decided which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.
The Federal Government did not inform states whose supplies it seized if they would receive the materials they ordered and paid for.
Case 8: On July 13, 2024, Trump was shot and slightly wounded in his right ear while speaking at an open-air Presidential campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania.
The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight rounds from an AR-15 style rifle from the roof of a nearby building. Trump dived for cover behind his lectern, as the shooter killed one audience member and critically injured two others.
Crooks was shot and killed seconds later by the Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team.
Had Trump not slightly turned his head at the moment Crooks fired, Republicans would have been forced to choose another nominee.
In addition, Trump would not have been alive to win the 2024 Presidential election and openly threaten to imprison the Justice Department prosecutors who sought to hold him accountable for his litany of crimes.
The assassination attempt calls to mind that by Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944, to kill Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb. Had he succeeded, the war in Europe would no doubt have ended far earlier, with countless lives being saved.
Case 9: On November 5, Americans faced a choice between a former prosecutor and a convicted felon for President.
They chose the felon—partly out of hatred for illegal aliens and partly out of anger at high grocery prices.
2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ABUSE OF POWER, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ASSASSINATION, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DONALD TRUMP, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FBI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HITLER: ASCENT (BOOK), HUFFINGTON POST, HUNTER BIDEN, IMPEACHMENT, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, JACK SMITH, JAMAL KHASHOOGI, JAMES COMER, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JARED KUSHNER, JIMMY HOFFA, JOSEPH BIDEN, KEVIN MCCARTHY, MAR-A-LAGO, MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, MEDIA MATTERS, MEIN KAMPF, MERRICK GARLAND, MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NAZIS, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REUTERS, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VOLKER ULLRICH, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 17, 2024 at 12:18 am
On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.
About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen.
Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.
Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.
At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
Serving time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria. he was given a huge cell, allowed to receive unlimited visitors and gifts, and treated with deference by guards and inmates.
Hitler used his time in prison to write his infamous book, Mein Kampf-–“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—including the extermination of the Jews and the conquest of the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924
Nine months later, he was released on parole—by authorities loyal to the authoritarian Right instead of the newly-created Weimar Republic.
Hitler immediately began rebuilding the shattered Nazi party—and deciding on a new strategy to gain power. Never again would he resort to armed force. He would win office by election—or intrigue.
Writes historian Volker Ullrich, in his monumental biography, Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939: “Historians have perennially tried to answer the question of whether Hitler’s rise to power could have been halted….
“There were repeated opportunities to end Hitler’s run of triumphs. The most obvious one was after the failed Putsch of November 1923. Had the Munich rabble-rouser been forced to serve his full five-year term of imprisonment in Landsberg, it is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to restart his political career.”
Thus, it isn’t just what happens that can influence the course of history. Often, it’s what doesn’t happen that has at least as great a result.
Future historians—if there are any—may one day write that it’s what didn’t happen that played at least as great a role in re-electing Donald Trump President as what actually did.
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 election.
Case #1: On December 18, 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. On February 5, 2020, the Republican-dominated Senate voted to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment.
Their motive: Fear that if they didn’t, they would be “primaried” by even more extreme, Trump-supported Right-wing candidates—and lose their positions and the accompanying power and perks.
Had Republicans agreed to convict him, he could not have run again for President.
Case #2: On January 13, 2021, Trump was impeached for the second time for “incitement of insurrection”—inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.
The reason: To stop the counting of Electoral College votes, which he knew would prove that former Vice President Joseph Biden had won the 2020 Presidential election.
The evidence against him was overwhelming—including video of his inciting a mob of his followers to storm the Capitol Building.
But Republican Senators again acquitted Trump on February 13, 2021—choosing ambition over patriotism.
Had they done so, he could not have again been a candidate for President.
Donald Trump
Case #3: Only on November 18, 2022—a year and a half after becoming Attorney General—did Merrick Garland appoint Jack Smith Independent Counsel to investigate Donald Trump’s role for:
- Inciting the January 6 attack on Congress; and
- Illegally seizing and storing highly classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida.
This gave Trump time to play his “deny and delay” game. Had he been prosecuted and convicted before the November 5 Presidential election, the results might well have been different.
Even hardcore supporters might have proved unwilling to vote for someone found guilty of inciting a riot or stealing highly classified documents.
Case #4: In June, 2023, Trump was indicted for illegally seizing and storing hundreds of highly classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee as Federal Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, presided over the case.
She repeatedly ruled in his favor and finally dismissed the case in July, 2024. claiming that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.
Aileen Cannon
Southern District of Florida, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many legal experts, citing her handling of the civil case against Trump, called for her recusal from the case. Jack Smith could have requested her removal from the case but did not ask a Federal appeals court to do so.
MSNBC analyst Barbara McQuade told Newsweek that Smith likely refused to do so to “return public trust” to the Justice Department, which had been challenged in recent years.
Cannon’s kid-gloves treatment of Trump echoed that of the Right-wing judge who presided over Adolf Hitler’s trial in 1923 for trying to overthrow the government of Bavaria.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLACKS, BLOOMBERG, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRACY, DONALD J. TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT, EXTORTION, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GESTAPO, GREED, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HATRED, HISPANICS, HUFFINGTON POST, HUNTER BIDEN, immigration, INDEPENDENT COUNSEL, INFLATION, JAMES COMEY, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JEWS, JOE BIDEN, JOE SCARBOROUGH, JOHN ADAMS, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Kamala Harris, MEDIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MEXICO, MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MORNING JOE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI ATROCITIES, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PAM BONDI, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PROJECT 2025, RACISM, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT MUELLER, ROD ROSENSTEIN, SALON, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOVIET UNION, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUMP UNIVERSITY SCANDAL, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UNEMPLOYMENT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLODMYR ZELENSKY, WEHRMACHT, WHITE WOMEN, WONKETTE, X
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 4, 2024 at 12:11 am
During the 2024 Presidential election, the two most important issues—for voters—were immigration and inflation.
In short: “Get rid of the spics!” and “Give us cheaper eggs!”
Repeatedly, Vice President Kamala Harris warned that Donald Trump’s return to the Presidency would result in a Fascistic dictatorship:
“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly [Trump’s former chief of staff] would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions….
“He wants a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States.”
Reputable media warned that he intended to turn the FBI into his private Gestapo and use the Justice Department to attack his political rivals.
Kamala Harris
But Americans didn’t care.
Instead, 76.9 million voters chose to overturn the democratic traditions that had guided American life since 1788, when the United States Constitution was ratified.
Appeals to their hatred, racism and greed proved far more seductive.
Throughout Trump’s Presidency—2017 to 2021—those who opposed his agenda took solace in a series of expected saviors.
- On May 9, 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for daring to investigate his proven ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then appointed Robert Meuller as special counsel to investigate that firing—and Trump’s ties to Russia.
Mueller had a sterling reputation for integrity as a former prosecutor and FBI director. But he allowed himself to be intimidated by the Presidential aura—and refused to directly interview Trump.
His subsequent official report contained no impeachment-worthy evidence.
- On July 25, 2019, Trump threatened to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine—which faced increasing aggression from Russia—unless its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, did him “a favor”: Investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden. Unless Zelensky found this, the promised aid would be withheld.
The House of Representatives tried Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The evidence against him was overwhelming—including a transcript of the extortionate phone call.
Donald Trump
But the Republican Senate refused to convict.
Had this happened, Trump would have been legally barred from running again for President.
- On January 6, 2021, Trump incited a violent attack on the United States Capitol to stop the counting of Electoral College votes—which would prove that he had lost the 2020 Presidential election to former Vice President Joseph Biden.
As a result, five people died and 174 police officers were injured. The Capitol Building—the symbol of American democracy—suffered about $2.7 billion in damages.
Evidence of Trump’s guilt was overwhelming—including video of his incitement.
But, once again, the Republican-dominated Senate refused to convict.
Stormtrumpers attacking the Capitol Building
Tyler Merbler from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Trump’s opponents had placed their hopes in Special Counsel Robert Mueller and (twice) the United States Congress to address the brazen criminality of Donald Trump.
The results: Anger and disappointment.
Yet one last hope remained:
That the 2024 Presidential election would send Joseph Biden, and then, after he dropped out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris—to the White House.
Harris waged what was widely descripted as “a campaign of joy,” promising to be “the President of all Americans,” including those who voted against her. Repeatedly, she warned that, if re-elected, Trump would pursue a vengeance-fueled agenda against anyone who had dared cross him.
Trump ran a campaign based on hatred—of Hispanics, of liberals, of those who had served in his administration and now disowned him. During his single debate with Harris, he falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were “eating the dogs….they’re eating the cats” of local citizens.
On one occasion, he appeared to emulate performing a ‘sex act’ on a microphone stand during a rally after experiencing technical difficulties.
Most ominously, credible news reports circulated that, if Trump were re-elected, he would implement a radical, Right-wing plan—Project 2025—to completely reshape the federal government.
At its heart: The mass firings of politically neutral civil service officials and their replacement with thousands of political hacks.
This would arm Republicans with the power to establish an absolute dictatorship under the next Republican president.
Yet, in the end, none of this mattered.
His supporters included:
- Hispanics: 54%—despite being repeatedly vilified by Trump and slated for mass deportation;
- White women: 52%—despite his destroying abortion rights and being convicted for raping columnist E. Jean Carroll;
- Blacks: 21%—giving Harris fewer votes than they gave Biden in 2020.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler rose to dictatorial power through backroom intrigues and appointment as Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg.
On November 5, 2024, Trump rose to dictatorial power when Americans voted to ignore his past crimes and the ones he boasted he intended to commit.
John Adams predicted this long ago: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLACKS, BLOOMBERG, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRACY, DONALD J. TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT, EXTORTION, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GESTAPO, GREED, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HATRED, HISPANICS, HUFFINGTON POST, HUNTER BIDEN, immigration, INDEPENDENT COUNSEL, INFLATION, JAMES COMEY, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JEWS, JOE BIDEN, JOE SCARBOROUGH, JOHN ADAMS, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Kamala Harris, MEDIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MEXICO, MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MORNING JOE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI ATROCITIES, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PAM BONDI, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PROJECT 2025, RACISM, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT MUELLER, ROD ROSENSTEIN, SALON, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOVIET UNION, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUMP UNIVERSITY SCANDAL, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UNEMPLOYMENT, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLODMYR ZELENSKY, WEHRMACHT, WHITE WOMEN, WONKETTE, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on December 3, 2024 at 12:13 am
On April 27, 2020, Joe Scarborough offered an important insight about why most Americans ignored President Donald Trump’s crimes and outrages for so long:
“Back in January Joe Biden wrote an Op-Ed that the President was not prepared for this coming pandemic, and things were going to get worse. And he said ‘Let your doctors talk. Let your scientists talk. Follow their lead.’
“…And it’s been one scam idea after another, that people then promoted on other networks, scam doctors promoting these scam solutions, claiming that everybody who had taken this malaria drug had been cured in certain hospitals. This is just the sort of thing that catches up to Donald Trump.
“I’ve said from the very beginning: You can lie about independent counsels, people won’t listen. You can lie about former FBI directors—“
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: “It doesn’t impact their lives.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “They’re still going to work, the kids are doing fine, they’ve got enough money to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, You can even lie about the Ukraine call—they don’t really care.
“But all of these lies, all of these [COVID-19] scams that he’s been pushing…have been revealed as lies—not by the people on cable news, but by their doctors. By nurses they know. If you’ve got a doctor who’s been treating your family for 20-25 years, you’re going to believe that person more than a scam artist that’s pushing propaganda for Donald Trump on talk radio.“
On August 23, 2018, Trump, appearing on “Fox and Friends,” said: “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
Donald Trump
Thus, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
Then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders bragged, on June 4, 2018:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.”
Many Congressional Republicans echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
For eight years, Nazi Germany underwent such an epoch. Germans called it “The Happy Time.”
It began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor—and lasted until June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
Germans knew about the Nazis’ cruelty to the Jews, the conquests of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, the mass arrests and concentration camps.
They didn’t care.
Frenzied Germans greet Adolf Hitler
The Gestapo didn’t have to watch everyone: German “patriots” gladly reported their fellow citizens—especially Jews—to the secret police.
As far as everyday Germans were concerned:
- The streets were clean and peaceful.
- Employment was high.
- The trouble-making unions were gone.
- Germany was once again “taking its rightful place” among ruling nations, after its catastrophic defeat in World War 1.
The height of “The Happy Time” came in June, 1940. In just six weeks, the Wehrmacht accomplished what the German army hadn’t in four years during World War 1: The total defeat of its longtime enemy, France.
Suddenly, French clothes, perfumes, delicacies, paintings and other “fortunes of war” came pouring into the Fatherland.
Most Germans believed der Krieg—“the war”—was over, and only good times lay ahead.
Then, on June 22, 1941, three million Wehrmacht soldiers slashed their way into the Soviet Union. The Third Reich was now locked in a death-struggle with a nation even more powerful than itself.
German soldiers in the Soviet Union
And then, on December 11, 1941—four days after Germany’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor—Hitler declared war on the United States.
“The Happy Time” for Germans was over. Only prolonged disaster lay ahead.
Donald Trump has spent his life appealing to the greed or fear of those around him. For example:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from 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 against Trump, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign.
- According to an April 14, 2019 story by ABC News, a nationwide review uncovered at least 36 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
- In nine cases, attackers hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting victims.
- In 10 more cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others.
- And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant’s violent or threatening behavior.
But starting in January, 2020, Trump faced an enemy—to his re-election—that he couldn’t bribe or intimidate.
The deadly COVID-19 virus didn’t accept bribe-monies or grovel before a raging tyrant. As a result, 400,000 Americans died by the time Trump left office.
The Germans made a devil’s-bargain with Adolf Hitler—and paid dearly for it.
Millions of greedy Americans made a similar bargain with Donald Trump—and paid almost as dearly.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 60 MINUTES, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BALLOTS, BBC, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHRIS KREBS, CIA, CNN, CRIMINALITY, CROOKS AND LIARS, CYBERSECURITY INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA), DAILY KOZ, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE CYBER COMMAND, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS), DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE REPORT, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION, ELECTION SECURITY, ELECTORAL COLLEGE, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HACKING, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HUFFINGTON POST, JOE BIDEN, Kamala Harris, MEDIA MATTERS, MICROSOFT, MIKE PENCE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, POPULAR VOTE, PROPAGANDA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RUSSIA, SALON, SCOTT PELLEY, SEATTLE TIMES, Secret Service, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TIME MAGAZINE, TIME MAGAZINIE’S PERSON OF THE YEAR, TREASON, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SENATE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WONKETTE, X
DEMOCRACY’S SAVIOR, TRUMP’S TARGET: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 29, 2025 at 12:14 amAs a result of the vast increase in election security, President Donald Trump failed to get the help he expected from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
The result: He lost the 2020 Presidential election.
Thus, Joe Biden won the popular vote by 81,268,924 to 74,216,154 for Trump—and the Electoral College by 306 to 232.
Two days later, Trump claimed: “And this is a case where they’re trying to steal an election, they’re trying to rig an election.”
Chris Krebs was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And the man most responsible for ensuring election security.
Chris Krebs
On November 12, to counter the growing chorus of lies from Trump and his Right-wing allies, he put out the following statement:
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet more lies:
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more.
“Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”
Donald Trump
Asked by “60 Minutes'” Scott Pelley if he was surprised to be fired, Krebs replied: “I don’t know if I was necessarily surprised. It’s not how I wanted to go out. The thing that upsets me the most about that is I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to my team.
“And I’d worked with them for three and a half years, in the trenches. Building an agency, putting CISA on the national stage. And I love that team. And I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, so that’s what I’m most upset about.”
Krebs was no dyed-in-the-wool Democrat but a lifelong Republican. He gave up a lucrative job as Microsoft’s head of cybersecurity policy to join the Trump administration. He wanted to serve his country by creating a dedicated cybersecurity agency for the first time.
Still, he had his reservations about taking the job. As he told the Financial Times: “The flaws of this man [Trump] were obvious to everybody that was willing to pay attention. [But] to do your job, you have to be able to compartmentalize. I was willing to do that.
“Over time, it eats away at you. It eats away at you, the other parts of the department that were doing stuff that just seemed so inhumane. I was never involved in any of those policy conversations.”
On April 9, 2025, re-elected President Donald Trump issued a “Memorandum For the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies.” Its second paragraph read in part:
“Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority. Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic.”
In short: Krebs prevented Russia from interfering with the 2020 Presidential election and dared warn Americans about the dangers of COVID-19.
Trump had counted on Russian interference and repeatedly lied about the dangers of COVID while promoting quack “cures” such as shining UV light up a patient’s anus.
Trump’s accusing lies continued in the Memorandum:
“Krebs, through CISA, promoted the censorship of election information, including known risks associated with certain voting practices.
“Similarly, Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”
Trump then ordered:
Clearly, Trump seeks to find any plausibly legal excuse to destroy the man who dared come between him and his Russian backers in 2020—and who contradicted his lies about COVID and the election.
Two key goals of Project 2025-–which Trump supported, while claiming he didn’t–were:
Americans are about to discover what it meant to live in Joseph Stalin’s Russia—where truth was punished and lies were rewarded.
Share this: