NORMALIZING "THE BOSS" - AND HIS FASCISM

This past Saturday in New Hampshire, in a speech advertised as honoring Veteran’s Day, Donald Trump said: “In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day [sic] we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream…. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

To make certain people understood that he had not misspoken, that what he had said was written and in the telprompter, Trump posted the same statement - word for word - on his fake social media platform, Truth (anti)Social.

Everyone commented on how he had used “Fascist terminology” when he described his domestic enemies as “vermin.”

The Washington Post report of the speech made a point of the statement as an example of his increasing proclivity to use fascist terminology in his speeches and used the word “Nazi” in the headline.

The headline posted by Forbes was “Trump Compares Political Foes to ‘Vermin’ On Veterans Day—Echoing Nazi Propaganda.”

The Boston Globe headline read: “Trump Calls Political Enemies ‘Vermin” Echoing Dictators Hitler, Mussolini”.

Reddit managed to come up with “It's Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk.”

The New York Times came up with, “Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction.”

In response to outcry from readers, that was later modified to “In Veterans Day Speech, Trump Promises to Root Out the Left.”

In 2016, when Hillary Clinton referred to Trump supporters as “deplorables,” the New York Times headline read: “Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers ‘Deplorables,’ and G.O.P. Pounces.”

In a follow-up report about the Trump campaign’s response to the report, the NYT’s headline was “After Calling Foes ‘Vermin,’ Trump Campaign Warns Its Critics Will Be ‘Crushed’.” The sub-headline to that was “The former president’s Veterans Day speech used language similar to the dehumanizing rhetoric wielded by dictators like Hitler and Mussolini.”

It took a lot of upset and three tries, but the Times finally got on board with the others when the third time turned out to be the charm. The body of the third article concluded thus: “Last month, Mr. Trump told a right-wing website that migrants were ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ a phrase recalling white supremacist ideology and comments made by Hitler in his manifesto Mein Kampf.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said for the record in responding, “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

In response to questions from NYT reporters Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Charlie Savage who were writing an article published Friday regarding plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and hold them in massive camps while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights, Jewish Nazi Trump staffer Steven Miller responded for the record: “Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown. The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.” Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur: “Operation Wetback.”

Trump’s speeches have grown progressively more extreme since this past April, when he was indicted for the first time by New York DA Alvin Bragg for paying off Stormy Daniels to silence her story of having had a sexual affair with him shortly after the birth of his son Barron in 2006, which he believed would harm his 2016 presidential campaign.

For those who have been paying attention to Trump since back when he was just an arriviste from Queens with his nose pressed to the glass door of Manhattan society that would never be opened to him, his fascination with dictatorial strongmen isn’t new news. His father was arrested in 1927 for disorderly conduct at a Ku Klux Klan rally in New York City, and his first wife Ivanka told the New York Post that he had Hitler’s speeches in a book titled “My New Order” that he kept in his nightstand. For those who think he is illiterate, she went on to say that he read the book often.

The 2016 campaign, and numerous incidents during his time in office, demonstrated his awe of anti-democratic strongmen, particularly Vladimir Putin. In his weekend speech he referred to Hungarian fascist Victor Orban in laudatory terms.

Trump proclaimed his opposition for birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented parents, and in a second term would try to end it by proclaiming government policy ending that right to be the new position of the government, by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports.

While that policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Mr. Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court, since it stands in opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment where birthright citizenship for anyone born in the United States is in the first paragraph of the amendment, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) in which the court ruled that since birthright citizenship was part of the constitution through the Fourteenth Amendment that no act of Congress could overrule a constitutional amendment.

Should Trump win the 2024 election, and the Republicans take control of the Senate and maintain control of the House, one can foresee that if such a rule was implemented, and the court affirmed the Wong Kim Ark ruling, that Trump could respond as his hero Andrew Jackson did when the court ruled against his removal of the Cherokee Nation to Indian Territory in 1830, saying “The court has ruled, let them enforce their ruling.”

As Rachel Maddow pointed out tonight, fascism has been turned back when national institutions whose existence and power are threatened by the possibility of a fascist takeover stand in opposition. The institution in the United States whose existence and power is threatened by the possibility Trump’s fascist coup, is the Republican Party. We have seen numerous times in the past eight years where the party has refused to take a stand against Trump - from his initial takeover of their presidential nomination process in 2016 to this past weekend, when Ronna ROMNEY (the name she stopped using when Trump said he didn’t like it back in 2017) McDaniel appreared Sunday on Meet the Press and Kristen Welker asked her: “Are you comfortable with this language coming from the [Republican] frontrunner?” McDaniel answered: “I am not going to comment on candidates and their campaign messaging.”

The Republican Party has effectively turned itself into the Trump Party.

ABC News posted a video tonight from Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis’s plea deal that clearly shows the distinction between liberal democracy and a far-right dictatorship. Ellis told prosecutors that former White House deputy chief of staff and social media coordinator Dan Scavino - who originally was Trump’s golf caddy before “the boss” became president - told her in December 2020 Trump was not going to leave the White House, despite having lost the presidential election. When Ellis lamented that their election challenges had all lost in court, Scavino allegedly answered: “‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave.” Ellis replied: “‘What do you mean?” Scavino answered: “The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.” When Ellis responded “Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?” he allegedly answered: “We don’t care.”

As many observers have pointed out, should Trump return to the White House, he will do so now knowing how the system works. He has already declared he will appoint no “RINOs” to his cabinet. The Heritage Foundation is running “The 2025 Project” and is interviewing potential appointees in order to have a list of 50,000 pre-vetted individuals whose personal and political loyalty is to Trump, not the Constitution, ready for a rapid transformation of the federal government facilitated by an executive order Trump will sign his first day in office making all Federal Civil Service senior employees subject to his personal authority to remain in their jobs.

There is an argument to be made that Trump’s increasing extremism is linked to the increasing threat of his being found guilty of all or some of the 91 felonies he has been indicted on in four different legal cases.

But he has always been extreme.

And that is the problem for the media. “Oh, that’s just Trump blowing off steam” is the position the major media has taken for years before he decided to run for office in 2015. It is why it took the New York Times three attempts to get it right in their reports on Trump’s Veteran’s Day speech.

This unwillingness to see Trump as the threat he is to the continued existence of the Republic by the major media allows them to continue the “horse race” coverage of the 2024 election, coverage that protrays the contest as being between two candidates who are no different from all other candidates for the presidency, which allows them to normalize Trump’s revolutionary extremism.

The “bothsiderism” reporting that the major media has been cowed into over the past 50 years by the relentless attacks by the Right against them for being “the lib’rul media” is now a threat to the continued existence of our constitutional democratic republic.

These are not two similar candidates. One is a defender of that constitutional democratic republic and the rule of law on which it is founded. The other is a dedicated foe of that republic, who is pushing a fascist revolution to overthrow that republic.

If the major media actually believes that they exist to serve the public good, as they claim whenever they are attacked for these failures, then they have an obligation to point out this essential fact.

It appears that some of the media have awakened from their slumber and are willing to point out Trump’s statements and compare them to the statements of earlier fascists who overthrew the governments of their countries.

There is an “institution” in this country whose existence and power are threatened by the possibility of a fascist takeover.

Us.

The American people.

We are threatened.

If the major media will only pull their heads out of the sand when their ass gets kicked, then it is up to us to become Professional Media Ass-Kickers. If the Republicans could “work the refs” to get their current attitude of political cowardice, then we can “work the refs” to get them to report the actual facts and warn of the threat.

After all, it’s in their interest to keep the rule of law that protects them under the First Amendment. If Trump takes power, they are the ones who will end in FEMA camps of their own while Trump herds 10 million people into concentration camps.

It CAN “happen here.”

Email reporters when they get it wrong. Almost all newspapers have the reporters’ emails listed in online articles. State clearly what the problem is, what the facts are - cite sources - and show them where they got it wrong. Educate them.

Don’t call them the “over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable trust fund babies of the DC Press Corpse” in your email.

You can use those words here.

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