Something dramatic has happened.
Many people who consider themselves non-political or independent, or moderate Republican, or who even voted for Trump last November, can’t avoid seeing what’s now come so clearly into the open.
And they’re finding it terrifying.
They’ve watched Trump order the Texas National Guard into Portland and Chicago, over the objections of the mayors of those cities and the governors of Oregon and Illinois. They’ve heard him call for jailing the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois for opposing these moves.
They’ve heard him threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act and send federal troops all over America.
They’ve watched Trump’s ICE agents drag people out of their beds in the middle of the night, zip-tie them and their children, and haul them away.
They’ve seen Trump’s prosecutors indict the attorney general of New York state because she held Trump accountable for fraud. And seen him threaten to do the same to a California senator because he conducted hearings in the House exposing Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol.
They’ve heard Trump say he can kill anyone who he claims is an enemy combatant trafficking drugs.
They’ve heard Trump direct the IRS, FBI, and Justice Department against liberal groups that oppose him — George Soros’s Open Society Foundation; ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising organization; Indivisible, the community-based resistance organization.
And they watched him take off the air comedians who criticize him — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel.
All across America, millions of people who have avoided politics, or identified as independents or moderate Republicans or even Trump voters, are shaken by what they’re seeing and hearing.
It’s no longer Democrat versus Republican or left versus right.
It’s now democracy versus dictatorship. Right versus wrong. It’s no longer a war on undocumented immigrants. It’s now a war on Americans.
It’s no longer a foreign enemy. It’s now the “enemy within.”
Across the land, average Americans are realizing that they too could be dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night by Trump’s ICE agents, or tear-gassed and arrested by Trump’s National Guard, or targeted by Trump’s prosecutors, or shot by Trump’s military.
The Big Reveal is that all of us are now endangered.
Multiple polls show Trump’s approval tanking, but I think it runs deeper than this.
Something dramatic has happened over the last two weeks — as America sees more vividly than ever who Trump is, where he and his trio of lapdogs (Miller, Vought, and Vance) want to take the country, and how we’re all potential targets.
The Big Reveal is impossible not to see. Trump and his lapdogs are doing all of this completely in the open. They have no shame.
Most Americans abhor what they see, because what they see is abhorrent. This is how the great sleeping giant of America awakens, roars, and puts an end to it.
Robert Reich,
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/sunday-thought-the-big-reveal?
By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Weekly, Dec 27, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump got his name splashed in news headlines all around the world last week. The reason is both humorous and worrisome. In one of his Truth Social ‘Christmas Messages,’ he threatened the peace and trampled on the dignity of three countries in one paragraph:
· “Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in “repair” money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about “anything.” Also, to Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose Citizens’ Taxes are far too high, but if Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%, their businesses would immediately double in size, and they would be militarily protected like no other Country anywhere in the World. Likewise, to the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the U.S. to be there, and we will!”
We are always taken aback by the number of lies and insults Trump can pack into a small space. Everyone would be wise to be concerned. No matter how much he goes on in this way, we should not surrender to it as a ‘new normal.’ So let’s deconstruct Trump’s season’s greeting.
First, there are no Chinese soldiers operating the Panama Canal. (The truth: CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based company, manages two ports at the canal's entrance, but not with any Chinese soldiers. China is also funding a new bridge and other projects at the Canal to the tune of $1 billion). Second, the U.S. lost just over 5000 workers building the Canal, not 38,000. Even adding the 10s of thousands dead from other countries and previous attempts, largely from yellow fever, the total doesn’t approach Trump’s 38,000. Third, the claim that the U.S. is paying billions in repair money is false and misleading. The U.S. itself has no merchant ships traversing the Canal. It pays for U.S.-bound freight on carriers under the flags of other countries, and the ships and cargoes of all countries pay exactly the same, including a percentage going to repair. Trump's 'unfair' claims are bogus.
Next, Justin Trudeau is Prime Minister of Canada, not it's 'Governor.' Trump used ‘governor’ to imply that Canada’s real status is, or ought to be, the U.S. 51st state. Nor would Canada gain much, if anything, by being annexed. In overall standard of living, Canada ranks 17th in the world, while the U.S. is stuck back at 28th. Finally, judging from current polls, a vast majority of Canadians—ranging between 80 and 90 percent depending on the province—do not want to be the 51st state of the U.S. They are quite firm about their independence and sovereignty.
As for Greenland, It remains an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. Except for foreign policy, it is self-governing, and since a 2009 change in Denmark’s constitution, it has the right to declare independence. At present, it has no desire to do so, with its small economy linked to Denmark’s. Greenland’s population of 55,000 is about 90% Inuit and seven percent Danish. They live in 18 towns connected only by sea and air travel. Fishing is by far the mainstay of the economy, with a small amount of mining.
Trump is not the first U.S. president to offer to buy Greenland. Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million in 1946, but Denmark turned it down. When the Nazis occupied Denmark, the U.S. occupied Greenland until the end of WW2, then recognized Denmark's rule. The U.S. had built several military bases, but they are now reduced to one, at Thule. Its main military value was a string of radar stations, now made redundant with satellite technology.
What Trump likely finds of real interest are Greenland’s ‘rare earths,’ a series of 17 heavy metals needed mainly for making alloys with ordinary metals used in nuclear and military technologies. At present, over 80% of rare earths are exported from China’s Inner Mongolia. While China tightly regulates amounts and prices, they are sold to all countries, including the U.S. A few rare earth mines also exist in the U.S. but Greenland is seen as a valuable new source. The island also has considerable off-shore oil deposits that have yet to be tapped in any major way. For its own power, Greenland makes uses of hydro plants at numerous waterfalls from the glaciers.
Note. the advancement of the propaganda that the "leader" provides the truth, and facts do not matter is a fundamental strategy of fascism.
A quick word on “FEMA money going to immigrants.” If Congress has enacted a budget that requires a money stream for that purpose, that is what the Federal government is required to do. It’s the law, not incidentally enacted with the support of the House Republican majority. Trump might like to pretend that he or Biden can simply redirect the money by fiat, but that would be illegal. It would also violate the most basic feature of the U.S. Constitutional system, which vests “the power of the purse” in the U.S. Congress.
There is no trade-off between money for FEMA hurricane operations, and money for immigrants, or anything else. The gigantic Federal government can easily do both. The real constraint is the generalized political unease about higher taxes to pay for higher spending, something to which Democrats of course routine capitulate. There is also the idiotic debt ceiling. The culprits in all this can be seen in the mirror.
What should the Democrats do? It might be inadequate, but telling the truth would help. Lies disrupt rescue and relief efforts and should be hanging offenses. How powerful is shame? I would hate to stake my life on it, but I don’t see what else we would have.
Amid all the focus on President Biden’s unsteady performance, it might have been easy to miss Trump’s answer.
Trump seized the moment to turn the debate stage — with the biggest audience he’s enjoyed since his presidency — into the latest theater for his yearslong effort to rewrite the story of Jan. 6, 2021. And he twice ignored questions about whether he would accept the results of the next election before agreeing to do so only under certain conditions.
Over the course of several exchanges with Biden and the moderators, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, Trump downplayed the most damaging attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812, falsely blamed the security lapses that day on former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and defended the more than 1,000 people who have been charged with participating in the deadly violence.
It was the latest step in Trump’s attempt to see if his continuing lies about Jan. 6 — an alternate story he tells about the day that was once mostly fodder for far-right audiences — can persuade mainstream voters as well.
And the former president’s critics say that, as unnerving as Biden’s performance might have been, Trump’s embrace of Jan. 6 and his refusal to agree to unqualified acceptance of a democratic election were worse.
Donald Trump is a confidence man, a charlatan, an unrepentant liar whose deceits have cost at least a half-million Americans their lives.
When Dustin Thompson was hauled before US District Judge Reggie Walton for assaulting the Capitol police on January 6th, his defense lawyer, Samuel Shamansky, argued about Trump:
“You had, frankly, a gangster who was in power. The vulnerable are seduced by the strong. That’s what happened.”
The jury didn’t buy the argument and sent Thompson to prison, as US District Judge Reggie Walton, who was overseeing the case, said:
“I think our democracy is in trouble because, unfortunately, we have charlatans like our former president who doesn’t, in my view, really care about democracy but only about power.”
And yet Trump remains popular with about 20 percent of the American public, making up the majority of the Republican primary-voting base. But why?
There’s nothing new about charlatans and confidence men. Marco Antonio Bragadini(1545-1591) was one of Europe’s most famous: he convinced both a pope and the government of Venice that he could turn lead into gold and they financed a lavish lifestyle for most of his life.
William Thompson was America’s first labeled “confidence man” in New York in the 1840s because he’d approach wealthy men, pretend they were old friends, and ask them if they had “the confidence” to give him their gold watch for an hour: many did, and he ran the scam for years before being busted.
Donald Trump similarly convinced banks that he was had assets worth ten, twenty, sometimes more than fifty times their real value as was revealed in court this week. The self-proclaimed “king of debt” then used his borrowed money to support a lifestyle that reinforced everybody’s belief that he was truly rich.
After American banks refused to lend Trump money, he and his good friend Jeffrey Epstein turned to Deutsche Bank and managed to extract over $2 billion from that institution with the help of William Broeksmit, Thomas Bowers, and Justin Kennedy.
Broeksmit hanged himself in 2014, leaving a suicide note and paperwork tying him to the bank’s unit accused of laundering some $10 billion of Russian oligarch money along with over $400 million in questionable loans to Trump.
As stories about Trump’s finances began hitting the media in 2019, Tom Bowers (55 years old), who signed off on Trump’s loans, also hanged himself.
Justin Kennedy worked for Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009 and, according to the Finance Editor of The New York Times, David Enrich as reported by The Guardian’s Julian Borger:
“Drawn to Trump’s risk-taking and glamour, he [Kennedy] became a Trump confidant, sitting with the real estate impresario at the US Open tennis or in Manhattan nightclubs, and chaperoning huge loans to finance Trump’s real estate spending sprees.”
Kennedy was also the son of US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy who, when apparently asked by Trump to resign to make room for Brett Kavanaugh, mysteriously complied and stepped away from one of the most powerful positions in America.
Without the help of these three men, Trump would almost certainly have ended up broke and destitute. He’d been sued thousands of times for nonpayment of his debts and was well known to New Yorkers as a hustler and scam artist with a long string of failed businesses behind him.
In fact, by the time of his bankruptcies in the 1990s he had squandered almost all the roughly half-billion dollars he inherited from his father and stole from his brother, nephews, and nieces (as Mary Trump will tell you) before being rescued by mobbed-up Russian oligarchs looking to launder ill-gotten gains via real estate.
NBC further saved him by making him the star of a reality TV show that was every bit as deceptive about Trump’s wealth and business acumen as were Bragadini’s exhibitions of gold he’d “transmuted” from lead.
We Need to Take a Stand
