This tells me, an outsider watching from the sidelines, that the media is holding the GOP accountable for its support of Trump—at least more than I had thought. That’s a plus.
I believe the Republican support erosion will continue for the next six months because their support for Trump won’t provide an off ramp to sanity in time to save them. I’m becoming more comfortable with how the election will play out with the reelection of Joe Biden in 2024. It’s going to come down to the fact that there is really no other alternative.
John L. ; Perhaps but I doubt it. You have to ask yourself the question, Who is the heir apparent? I believe Trump is starting to lose support and in six months he won’t have enough support to win in 2024. His health and cognitive abilities are clearly in decline. Losing will force the Republicans to start to face reality and move away from MAGA. The condition of the Republican Party financially is bleak and not getting better right now. Trump is a nightmare policy wise and he is finally being exposed.
What policies do you think are so good for voters from Trump and MAGA that will sustain it for at least a generation? I don’t see it.
Tom Cotton? Josh Hawley? They're voting exactly for the racism. Some are voting for tax reduction, but a HUGE number are the white majority threatened by the inevitability of becoming a minority. His very ugliness is his draw.
Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley won’t fill that void once Trump is out of the picture because they don’t connect with the racists in the way Trump can. That’s one talent Trump has and thank God its’s unique and not easily replicated. Neither of those guys has that. Plus that whole racist demographic isn’t large enough to overwhelm the broader electorate in the long run. The vast majority isn’t racist. Once Trump is out of the picture MAGA will fade just like the Tea Party did.
I don't feel the Tea Party has "faded." They have morphed into MAGA. The Tea Party always was based in racism---it started in 2009 because we had just elected our first Black President---though they claimed it was about "conservative fiscal policies."
Tea Party protests were stuffed full of racist imagery depicting Obama, racist signs, and Confederate flags.
Good Morning to All: In response to Steven Beschloss's Substack this morning, I decided it is time to write a narrative about dictatorship. It is what I know best and can contribute to this conversation.
Towards the end of Steven's message on 5/10, he wrote:
If Trump is convicted in his hush money/election interference case, we can expect more Republicans and other fence-sitters to abandon him. Recall a February Reuters/Ipsos survey which found that 51 percent of Republicans claimed they would not vote for Trump if he’s a convicted felon. That number may ultimately be overstated. But it’s a reminder that November’s outcome remains in the hands of voters, even if the courts don’t hold Trump accountable and top Republicans continue to spread disinformation and telegraph to voters their unwillingness to support our democratic project.
The key words are the "November's outcome remains in the hands of voters." Yes, we need another seven-million voter-advantage that mirror's the Biden lead in the 2020. However, this lead did not change Trump's lies, violence, and the insurrection. He did not accept the outcome of that election and he again will not accept or swallow the results in 2024 if he looses. Most of us already know this. What that means is still unknown.
Donald Trump cannot deal with reality, and has a typical cult-like leadership mentality. Jim Jones, also thought of himself as God, and he amassed a following of about 900 individuals. He ordered them all to drink Kool Aid laced with poison and they all perished. Trump's followers, of which over 800 have been convicted of crimes and many are now in prison, have experienced the same level of coercive mind control as the people who followed Jim Jones. With his "us-versus-them mentality" most of the Trumpers are now in a state of blind loyalty. The dark and dangerous world of mind manipulation was first used in totalitarian countries about 100 years before - Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, China, and so on. The Holocaust is the best-known example of brainwashing. Hitler converted an entire country into mass murderers using slogans of hatred toward others - just like Trump. Brainwashing is defined as telling lies over and over until it is perceived as the truth. Once converted, a person has little or no independent thought. Over six million people were tortured and killed in Germany. In Russia, Stalin murdered over twenty million humans. Donald Trump's threatening behavior, disturbing words, and his duplication of Putin/Hitler's leadership methodologies echoes other treacherous historical crises and mass murders. This is not a coincidence, it is learned behavior combined with a long list of personality disorders. He learned it from Putin who spent his spy years in East Germany.
Trump is caught up in a complex web. He truly believes that "only he can fix America," without grasping the basic concepts/events that formed the United States. He talks about re-writing or scrapping our Constitution, but his many-sided destructiveness over-rides the true meaning of how a democratic country operates. The only option then is a dictatorship.
A dictatorship can be defined by a list of words: tsarism (Russia), despotism, autocracy, totalitarianism, oppression, Nazism (Germany), and domination. The word that jumps out to me is "oppression." Can you envision the United States having: (1) No public media. All tv channels and newspapers are government and dictator-controlled. All sources of information are inhibited. (2) No independent enterprise. MicroSoft, Walgreens, Utilities and all other corporations are privately retained by the dictator who receives a large percentage of the profits. and (3) Security services are combined (CIA, DIA, FBI, and others) into one organization controlled by the dictator and like the gestapo report on private citizens, arrest and imprison innocent people, and instill fear. Anyone not loyal to the "leader" may be murdered: poisoned, shot, thrown out windows in tall buildings, etc.
A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a dictatorship. He has openly admitted to preferring this form of government without an inkling of what that means. Our entire Congress would operate from fear and there would no longer be a two party system. Trump has already amassed a group of people - gangsters - who threaten anyone (and their families) who opposes him. The askew aptitudes of the Supreme Court judges already has demonstrated proclivities and partialities toward Trump, and other judges have also succumbed to delivering asymmetric justice. Many across the U.S. have lost faith in our system of justice. And during the Trump impeachment, many Republicans voted our of fear of Trump's revenge. Gonzales (R) Ohio voted to impeach. Then due to death threats, he refused to run for re-election and hired 24 hour protection for his family.
Trump sold his soul and our country to the Russians decades ago. Trump followed Putin's example in his role-out of a meticulous PR campaign, similar to what happened in Moscow after the bombing of several apartment buildings - a maneuver to perpetuate apprehension and terror. It resulted in a national sense of emergency and instilled fear. The financial scandal surrounding Yeltsin was pushed to the sidelines, and Putin was thrust to the frontlines. The blame was assigned to the separatist rebels and Chechnya independence fighters, but in the "unofficial" word on the street, Russian people said these bombings were like the Stalin purges. Putin has been compared to Stalin, and he appears to appreciate this assessment. "Could Putin's security men have bombed their own people - hundreds died in these bombings - in a cynical attempt to create a crisis that would ensure Putin took the Presidency?" (Putin's People, by Catherine Belton). This type of deception is widely known in Russia and other dictatorship countries. It reminds me of Trump still saying the 2020 election was stolen.
Trump began traveling to Russia in 1987. He became entangled with Russian business men who were all later found to be KGB operatives. This is a period when Trump was buried in debt and at the same time, the KGB was searching for new ways to transfer black cash into the U.S. instead of just bank transfers. Bayrock Group, formed with all KGB men as a real estate firm, was housed one floor below the Trump Organization at 725 Fifth Avenue in New York. They offered Trump multi-million dollar real estate deals and bailed him out of another bankruptcy. He was hooked. Both Trump elder sons have confirmed that the Trump Organization has received about $100M from Russian banks. (www.businessinsider.com).
Republican voters across the U.S. think they are supporting their political party - the same party as Abraham Lincoln. Instead, they are voting to instill a man who has been compromised by Russian KGB/FSB and who will turn our nation into a Putin-owned and operated dictatorship.
Also in Putin's People, Belton states: "Even as Trump ramped up his bid for the presidency, the same Russian network stepped up its courtship of him... In a letter to Michael Cohen, Sater (Bayrock) boasted that they would build a tower in Moscow that would be Europe's tallest building and would bring Trump a $100M licensing deal. Sater promised to leverage all of his Kremlin connections to get it done. The letter said he would get Putin on this program, and we will get you (Trump) elected." (ibid) The rest is history, except the role of William Barr in squashing the Mueller Report. Twelve Russians were arrested, but nothing changed and Trump was elected to the presidency with enormous Russian "behind the scenes" support, cyber attacks, hacking, propaganda, and misinformation fed to the American public.
Since 1993, I have saying to anyone who would listen that the Cold War did not die. In Putin's People, (Revenge of the KGB, page 479) Catherine states: "Putin's security men reveled in Trump's victory. To many, it seemed like revenge for the Soviet collapse. 'While the West was playing James Bond . . .we turned our attention to gaining respect... When the West thought the Cold War competition was over, they lost respect for their opponent (Russia). Now they are waking up to this again."
This upcoming election is critical. If Trump wins, we all loose.
Good article, nice summary of embarrassments, correct assessment at the end.
One note:
«This is a morally bankrupt statement that would justify supporting an OJ Simpson candidacy after his acquittal in 1995.»
I'm thinking, if you don't want to lose some fraction of your audience, it might be best avoid casting OJ, a Black man tangling with the US justice system, as the clear bad guy (yes, he murdered a couple of people, but still). Maybe pick a white guy who murdered a couple of people and got away with it as the exemplar. Can't think of any that are well-enough known? Hmmm.
How about Harvey Weinstein? Wasn't his conviction just overturned?
"It’s not unusual for staunch critics of a candidate to turn around and support them as their party’s nominee, but the expressed differences are typically related to policy — not mental stability, criminal activity, or a desire to end free and fair elections."
"typically related to policy"--Any Republicans or former Republicans who now disavow Trump and may have even admitted publicly they will support Biden, ALWAYS claim they support Biden DESPITE THEIR DISAGREEMENT WITH HIS POLICIES.
Republicans like Barr and McConnell do not care about policy. They care about pure, raw power. And they know they must stay with the script Donald Trump has written with the hope that enough voters will believe their narrative. They can't waver from the script one single word or the entire Republican Party collapses into irrelevance. All we can hope for is that there are more Americans who have figured out that this election is not about policy choices. It's about whether there is a majority of American voters in the right states who recognize that it's about who we want to be as a country--criminal, corrupt, nasty, or inclusive, kind, collaborative.
This tells me, an outsider watching from the sidelines, that the media is holding the GOP accountable for its support of Trump—at least more than I had thought. That’s a plus.
I believe the Republican support erosion will continue for the next six months because their support for Trump won’t provide an off ramp to sanity in time to save them. I’m becoming more comfortable with how the election will play out with the reelection of Joe Biden in 2024. It’s going to come down to the fact that there is really no other alternative.
Republican support for people like Trump will continue for a generation, at least.
John L. ; Perhaps but I doubt it. You have to ask yourself the question, Who is the heir apparent? I believe Trump is starting to lose support and in six months he won’t have enough support to win in 2024. His health and cognitive abilities are clearly in decline. Losing will force the Republicans to start to face reality and move away from MAGA. The condition of the Republican Party financially is bleak and not getting better right now. Trump is a nightmare policy wise and he is finally being exposed.
What policies do you think are so good for voters from Trump and MAGA that will sustain it for at least a generation? I don’t see it.
Tom Cotton? Josh Hawley? They're voting exactly for the racism. Some are voting for tax reduction, but a HUGE number are the white majority threatened by the inevitability of becoming a minority. His very ugliness is his draw.
Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley won’t fill that void once Trump is out of the picture because they don’t connect with the racists in the way Trump can. That’s one talent Trump has and thank God its’s unique and not easily replicated. Neither of those guys has that. Plus that whole racist demographic isn’t large enough to overwhelm the broader electorate in the long run. The vast majority isn’t racist. Once Trump is out of the picture MAGA will fade just like the Tea Party did.
I don't feel the Tea Party has "faded." They have morphed into MAGA. The Tea Party always was based in racism---it started in 2009 because we had just elected our first Black President---though they claimed it was about "conservative fiscal policies."
Tea Party protests were stuffed full of racist imagery depicting Obama, racist signs, and Confederate flags.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/naacp-issues-report-on-links-between-tea-party-factions-and-racist-hate-groups/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tea-party-racist_n_4158262
I think that’s right. A lot of the same people but different label.
Good Morning to All: In response to Steven Beschloss's Substack this morning, I decided it is time to write a narrative about dictatorship. It is what I know best and can contribute to this conversation.
Towards the end of Steven's message on 5/10, he wrote:
If Trump is convicted in his hush money/election interference case, we can expect more Republicans and other fence-sitters to abandon him. Recall a February Reuters/Ipsos survey which found that 51 percent of Republicans claimed they would not vote for Trump if he’s a convicted felon. That number may ultimately be overstated. But it’s a reminder that November’s outcome remains in the hands of voters, even if the courts don’t hold Trump accountable and top Republicans continue to spread disinformation and telegraph to voters their unwillingness to support our democratic project.
The key words are the "November's outcome remains in the hands of voters." Yes, we need another seven-million voter-advantage that mirror's the Biden lead in the 2020. However, this lead did not change Trump's lies, violence, and the insurrection. He did not accept the outcome of that election and he again will not accept or swallow the results in 2024 if he looses. Most of us already know this. What that means is still unknown.
Donald Trump cannot deal with reality, and has a typical cult-like leadership mentality. Jim Jones, also thought of himself as God, and he amassed a following of about 900 individuals. He ordered them all to drink Kool Aid laced with poison and they all perished. Trump's followers, of which over 800 have been convicted of crimes and many are now in prison, have experienced the same level of coercive mind control as the people who followed Jim Jones. With his "us-versus-them mentality" most of the Trumpers are now in a state of blind loyalty. The dark and dangerous world of mind manipulation was first used in totalitarian countries about 100 years before - Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, China, and so on. The Holocaust is the best-known example of brainwashing. Hitler converted an entire country into mass murderers using slogans of hatred toward others - just like Trump. Brainwashing is defined as telling lies over and over until it is perceived as the truth. Once converted, a person has little or no independent thought. Over six million people were tortured and killed in Germany. In Russia, Stalin murdered over twenty million humans. Donald Trump's threatening behavior, disturbing words, and his duplication of Putin/Hitler's leadership methodologies echoes other treacherous historical crises and mass murders. This is not a coincidence, it is learned behavior combined with a long list of personality disorders. He learned it from Putin who spent his spy years in East Germany.
Trump is caught up in a complex web. He truly believes that "only he can fix America," without grasping the basic concepts/events that formed the United States. He talks about re-writing or scrapping our Constitution, but his many-sided destructiveness over-rides the true meaning of how a democratic country operates. The only option then is a dictatorship.
A dictatorship can be defined by a list of words: tsarism (Russia), despotism, autocracy, totalitarianism, oppression, Nazism (Germany), and domination. The word that jumps out to me is "oppression." Can you envision the United States having: (1) No public media. All tv channels and newspapers are government and dictator-controlled. All sources of information are inhibited. (2) No independent enterprise. MicroSoft, Walgreens, Utilities and all other corporations are privately retained by the dictator who receives a large percentage of the profits. and (3) Security services are combined (CIA, DIA, FBI, and others) into one organization controlled by the dictator and like the gestapo report on private citizens, arrest and imprison innocent people, and instill fear. Anyone not loyal to the "leader" may be murdered: poisoned, shot, thrown out windows in tall buildings, etc.
A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a dictatorship. He has openly admitted to preferring this form of government without an inkling of what that means. Our entire Congress would operate from fear and there would no longer be a two party system. Trump has already amassed a group of people - gangsters - who threaten anyone (and their families) who opposes him. The askew aptitudes of the Supreme Court judges already has demonstrated proclivities and partialities toward Trump, and other judges have also succumbed to delivering asymmetric justice. Many across the U.S. have lost faith in our system of justice. And during the Trump impeachment, many Republicans voted our of fear of Trump's revenge. Gonzales (R) Ohio voted to impeach. Then due to death threats, he refused to run for re-election and hired 24 hour protection for his family.
Trump sold his soul and our country to the Russians decades ago. Trump followed Putin's example in his role-out of a meticulous PR campaign, similar to what happened in Moscow after the bombing of several apartment buildings - a maneuver to perpetuate apprehension and terror. It resulted in a national sense of emergency and instilled fear. The financial scandal surrounding Yeltsin was pushed to the sidelines, and Putin was thrust to the frontlines. The blame was assigned to the separatist rebels and Chechnya independence fighters, but in the "unofficial" word on the street, Russian people said these bombings were like the Stalin purges. Putin has been compared to Stalin, and he appears to appreciate this assessment. "Could Putin's security men have bombed their own people - hundreds died in these bombings - in a cynical attempt to create a crisis that would ensure Putin took the Presidency?" (Putin's People, by Catherine Belton). This type of deception is widely known in Russia and other dictatorship countries. It reminds me of Trump still saying the 2020 election was stolen.
Trump began traveling to Russia in 1987. He became entangled with Russian business men who were all later found to be KGB operatives. This is a period when Trump was buried in debt and at the same time, the KGB was searching for new ways to transfer black cash into the U.S. instead of just bank transfers. Bayrock Group, formed with all KGB men as a real estate firm, was housed one floor below the Trump Organization at 725 Fifth Avenue in New York. They offered Trump multi-million dollar real estate deals and bailed him out of another bankruptcy. He was hooked. Both Trump elder sons have confirmed that the Trump Organization has received about $100M from Russian banks. (www.businessinsider.com).
Republican voters across the U.S. think they are supporting their political party - the same party as Abraham Lincoln. Instead, they are voting to instill a man who has been compromised by Russian KGB/FSB and who will turn our nation into a Putin-owned and operated dictatorship.
Also in Putin's People, Belton states: "Even as Trump ramped up his bid for the presidency, the same Russian network stepped up its courtship of him... In a letter to Michael Cohen, Sater (Bayrock) boasted that they would build a tower in Moscow that would be Europe's tallest building and would bring Trump a $100M licensing deal. Sater promised to leverage all of his Kremlin connections to get it done. The letter said he would get Putin on this program, and we will get you (Trump) elected." (ibid) The rest is history, except the role of William Barr in squashing the Mueller Report. Twelve Russians were arrested, but nothing changed and Trump was elected to the presidency with enormous Russian "behind the scenes" support, cyber attacks, hacking, propaganda, and misinformation fed to the American public.
Since 1993, I have saying to anyone who would listen that the Cold War did not die. In Putin's People, (Revenge of the KGB, page 479) Catherine states: "Putin's security men reveled in Trump's victory. To many, it seemed like revenge for the Soviet collapse. 'While the West was playing James Bond . . .we turned our attention to gaining respect... When the West thought the Cold War competition was over, they lost respect for their opponent (Russia). Now they are waking up to this again."
This upcoming election is critical. If Trump wins, we all loose.
Elizabeth, http://www.democrazy2020.org
Good article, nice summary of embarrassments, correct assessment at the end.
One note:
«This is a morally bankrupt statement that would justify supporting an OJ Simpson candidacy after his acquittal in 1995.»
I'm thinking, if you don't want to lose some fraction of your audience, it might be best avoid casting OJ, a Black man tangling with the US justice system, as the clear bad guy (yes, he murdered a couple of people, but still). Maybe pick a white guy who murdered a couple of people and got away with it as the exemplar. Can't think of any that are well-enough known? Hmmm.
How about Harvey Weinstein? Wasn't his conviction just overturned?
“It's been interesting the number of legal cases that have come up against President Trump and then have failed..."
What legal cases are these? What is the number? Sigh. He's lying like a true Republican.
"It’s not unusual for staunch critics of a candidate to turn around and support them as their party’s nominee, but the expressed differences are typically related to policy — not mental stability, criminal activity, or a desire to end free and fair elections."
"typically related to policy"--Any Republicans or former Republicans who now disavow Trump and may have even admitted publicly they will support Biden, ALWAYS claim they support Biden DESPITE THEIR DISAGREEMENT WITH HIS POLICIES.
Republicans like Barr and McConnell do not care about policy. They care about pure, raw power. And they know they must stay with the script Donald Trump has written with the hope that enough voters will believe their narrative. They can't waver from the script one single word or the entire Republican Party collapses into irrelevance. All we can hope for is that there are more Americans who have figured out that this election is not about policy choices. It's about whether there is a majority of American voters in the right states who recognize that it's about who we want to be as a country--criminal, corrupt, nasty, or inclusive, kind, collaborative.
Humiliation. That seems to be the point. He wants a completely humiliated VP who won't pull a Pence-like move at any time.