Tag: Donald J. Trump Page 1 of 4

In Books, Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Health/Medicine, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Scary stories, Science and Medicine

by Brent Molnar ( Voice of Reason ~ “The Man-Child in Chief: Why Donald Trump’s Behavior Isn’t Just Alarming—It’s Clinical”

Donald J. Trump

“At this point, calling Donald Trump a sociopath feels like stating water is wet. But throw that term around too loosely and people stop hearing it. So let’s be precise.

What if the erratic cruelty, the compulsive lying, the open disdain for rules and empathy—it’s not just some quirky political branding. What if it’s a documented, diagnosable pattern? Because it is. And understanding it might be the first real step toward protecting what’s left of American democracy.

Sociopathy—officially known as Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)—isn’t some cartoonish label you slap on a villain. It’s a well-defined clinical condition. It starts early, often appearing in childhood as conduct disorder—aggression, deceit, a lack of remorse—and fully emerges in adulthood as a complete disregard for others, rules, and basic morality. It’s not about being mean. It’s about being wired to harm without guilt.

Trump’s entire life fits that arc. His father, a distant real estate baron who valued dominance over decency. His mother, emotionally unavailable. A home life that trained him not in compassion, but in conquest. And what we see now—what we’ve always seen—isn’t a break from that past. It’s the fulfillment of it. Trump isn’t unwell because of power. He got power because he was unwell in a way that ruthless systems reward.

Look at the checklist: No remorse for pain caused? Check. Disregard for laws, norms, and human dignity? Check. Chronic lying, even when it gains him nothing? Bullying those beneath him, worshipping those above? All boxes checked. And still, millions confuse his behavior for “strength.” In reality, it’s a toddler in a suit with the nuclear codes and a permanent grudge.

Trump & Putin

The tragic twist? Authoritarians and autocrats abroad have figured this out. Trump’s second-term travel itinerary is a map of manipulation. NATO leaders learned: flatter him, and he’ll do whatever you want. Putin knew it. So did MBS. So does Musk. His emotional development stopped sometime before junior high, and it shows. If you coddle the ego, you get the policy.

But let’s not sugarcoat this: Trump’s inner circle is now filled with people just like him. Not sober adults with institutional memory or democratic instincts—but fellow man-babies with vendettas, fragile egos, and no ethical guardrails. And when developmentally stunted men hold real power, they don’t just throw tantrums. They break countries.

We’re already seeing it. Arresting political opponents. Threatening judges. Openly demanding revenge. Surrounding himself with yes-men willing to torch institutions to stay in his good graces. This isn’t just a moral collapse—it’s a psychological time bomb.

So what do we do? First, call it what it is. Trump’s behavior isn’t “eccentric.” It’s pathological. Then we build movements—not just to oppose policies, but to inoculate ourselves against this style of politics. Because this isn’t just about Trump. It’s about a system that rewards antisocial traits and mistakes immaturity for strength.

BEE GONE book cover

We need voters to stop falling for tough-guy cosplay. We need to educate people about what this kind of psychological profile actually looks like—and why it’s disqualifying, not admirable.

We need to rebuild civic life around empathy, truth, and shared responsibility. And we need to do it fast.”

https://www.weeklywilson.com/unfit-by-director-dan-partland-documents-trumps-mental-health/

“The Manchurian Candidate:” From Fiction to Fact?

By Connie Wilson

On July 3, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Donald J. Trump cut-out

“The story begins in March 1986, when Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin and his daughter Natalia walked into Trump Tower and requested a meeting with Donald Trump.

Natalia told Politico years later that their mission was to “hook” the assumed billionaire, and “Trump melted at once.”

This was the beginning of the KGB’s recruitment of Donald Trump.

The story as it’s told here and on our website is composed of interviews with Soviet / Russian nationals and former KGB agents, reports by reputable sources, and Donald Trump’s own book.

In the mid-1980s, as sympathy for the Soviet Union was waning, KGB head Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov began exploring new strategies for the intelligence agency to recruit assets abroad.

Primarily, agents were directed to use flattery on potential assets and rely more heavily on “material incentives,” i.e. money, to bring them on board.

Most importantly, they were told to focus on U.S. targets of value – like Donald Trump – who may be able to “actively influence” foreign policy in favor of the Soviet Union.

In The Art of the Deal, Trump writes that he sat next to Yuri Dubinin at a luncheon in 1986 (some time after the Trump Tower meeting).

There, Dubinin completed the first stage in KGB recruitment, offering Trump a “material incentive” he couldn’t refuse.

The incentive, according to Trump’s own book: “a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.”

But first, Dubinin would need Trump to meet with some of his associates in Moscow, the second stage of recruitment.

On the Fourth of July, 1987, Donald and Ivana Trump checked into the Intourist hotel in Moscow, a facility allegedly operated and surveilled by the KGB, across the street from the Kremlin.

As far as Trump knew, the purpose of this trip – which was paid for by the Soviet government – was to meet with officials from the country’s tourist agency. But the agents he met with weren’t interested in tourism.

The conversation centered on deals with the Politburo, the highest committee within the Kremlin, and how Trump might be of assistance to the KGB.

The operatives fed Trump common KGB talking points and went to great lengths in their efforts to flatter him. They knew from their intel that he was psychologically vulnerable and that flattery was his weak spot.

The KGB used this to their advantage and pretended to be “immensely impressed” by him, according to one former agent. They told him “it’s people like him who could change the world.”

They even went as far as to suggest that he could become president someday.”

Continue reading and get all source links at https://trumpfile.substack.com

Was 2024 Rigged? More Strange Days Ahead.

By Connie Wilson

On June 16, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Interviews, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

trio of Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Peter Thiel

Has it ever occurred to you that Elon Musk, with his Starlink expertise, may well have “fixed” the vote for DJT in 2024? I’m sure it has. Certain irregularities were noted in some of the swing states. Investigation of this has been ongoing and a Substack writer has assembled the article below. If I could find the writer’s name, it would appear here. I filled in the blank for being on the receiving end of further articles, but the name of the actual investigator/writer was MIA, as far as I can tell. Maybe that is for purposes of safety. You either get credit or blame. If you’ve watched “Good Night and Good Luck” that showed recently on CNN, you know that speaking truth to power is the rule to protect our democracy.

Is the article below well-researched enough to be labeled as “truth?” You can be the judge of that. I’m not vouching for it or its writer, but I am sharing it, because it confirms the suspicions that many of us harbor about the 2024 presidential race.

Again, do your own further research and—if you find the name of this Substack writer—I’ll happily give full credit (or blame?) to that individual, but I was not quite ready to sign up for $55. I was ready to consider this individual’s thoughts on what may have happened. I still am. I’m not swearing on a stack of Bibles that this is the truth, but it certainly has a lot of food for thought.

So, chew on this.

****************

A Power Cord Becomes a Backdoor

In March 2021, Leonard Leo—the judicial kingmaker behind the modern conservative legal machine—sold a quiet Chicago company by the name of Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. The buyer: Eaton Corporation, a global power infrastructure conglomerate that just happened to have a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

To most, Tripp Lite was just a hardware brand—battery backups, surge protectors, power strips. But in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.

They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet.

ES&S systems, including central tabulators and Electionware servers, rely on Tripp Lite UPS devices. ES&S’s Electionware suite runs on Windows OS, which automatically trusts connected UPS hardware.

If Eaton pushed an update to those UPS units, it could have gained root-level access to the host tabulation environment—without ever modifying certified election software.

In Dominion’s Democracy Suite 5.17, the drivers for these UPS units are listed as “optional”—meaning they can be updated remotely without triggering certification requirements or oversight. Optional means unregulated. Unregulated means invisible. And invisible means perfect for infiltration

2024 VOTE

On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

That revelation is a shock to the public.

But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.

And it started with a long forgotten sale.

ELECTION FRAUD?

BallotProof: The Front-End for Scrubbing Democracy

Enter the ballot scrubbing platform BallotProof. Co-created by Ethan Shaotran, a longtime employee of Elon Musk and current DOGE employee, BallotProof was pitched as a transparency solution—an app to “verify” scanned ballot images and support election integrity.

With Palantir’s AI controlling the backend, and BallotProof cleaning the front, only one thing was missing: the signal to go live.

September 2024: Eaton and Musk Make It Official

Then came the final public breadcrumb:
In September 2024, Eaton formally partnered with Elon Musk.
The stated purpose? A vague, forward-looking collaboration focused on “grid resilience” and “next-generation communications.”

But buried in the partnership documents was this line:

“Exploring integration with Starlink’s emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity.”

The Activation: Starlink Goes Direct-to-Cell

That signal came on October 30, 2024—just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.

DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.

From that moment on:
– Commands could be sent from orbit
– Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors
– Compromised devices could be triggered remotely

This groundbreaking project that should have taken two-plus years to build, was completed in just under ten months.

Elon Musk boasts endlessly about everything he’s launching, building, buying—or even just thinking about—whether it’s real or not. But he pulls off one of the largest and fastest technological feats in modern day history… and says nothing? One might think that was kind of… “weird.”

Lasers From Space

Elon Musk.

According to New York Times reporting, on October 5—just before Starlink’s DTC activation—Musk texted a confidant:

“I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.”

Then, an hour later:

“This isn’t something on the chessboard, so they’ll be quite surprised. ‘Lasers’ from space.”

This wasn’t a theory. It was a full-scale operation. A systemic digital occupation—clean, credentialed, and remote-controlled.

The Outcome

Data that makes no statistical sense. A clean sweep in all seven swing states.
The fall of the Blue Wall. Eighty-eight counties flipped red—not one flipped blue.
Every victory landed just under the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Donald Trump outperformed expectations in down-ballot races with margins never before seen—while Kamala Harris simultaneously underperformed in those exact same areas.

If one were to accept these results at face value—Donald Trump, a 34-count convicted felon, supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan. According to the co-founder of the Election Truth Alliance:

“These anomalies didn’t happen nationwide. They didn’t even happen across all voting methods—this just doesn’t reflect human voting behavior.”

They were concentrated.
Targeted.
Specific to swing states and Texas—and specific to Election Day voting.

And the supposed explanation? “Her policies were unpopular.”

Let’s think this through logically. We’re supposed to believe that in all the battleground states, Democratic voters were so disillusioned by Vice President Harris’s platform that they voted blue down ballot—but flipped to Trump at the top of the ticket?

Not in early voting.
Not by mail.
With exception to Nevada, only on Election Day.
And only after a certain threshold of ballots had been cast—where VP Harris’s numbers begin to diverge from her own party, and Trump’s suddenly begin to surge. As President Biden would say, “C’mon, man.”

In the world of election data analysis, there’s a term for that: vote-flipping algorithm.

Billionaires and Tech Giants Pulled Off the Crime of the Century

Why? There wasn’t just one reason—there were many.

Elon Musk himself hinted at the stakes: he faced the real possibility of a prison sentence if Trump lost. He launched his bid for Twitter—at $20 billion over market value—just 49 days after Putin invaded Ukraine. That alone should have raised every red flag. But when the ROI is $15 trillion in mineral rights tied to Ukraine losing the war and geopolitical deals Trump could green light, it wasn’t a loss—it was leverage.

It’s no secret Musk was in communication with Putin for over two years. He even granted Starlink access to Russian forces.

Then there’s Peter Thiel and the so-called “broligarchs”—tech billionaires who worship at the altar of shower-avoidant blogger Curtis Yarvin. They casually joke about “humane genocide for non-producers” and have long viewed democracy as a nuisance—an obstacle to their vision of hypercapitalism and themselves as the permanent ruling elite.

Well, what is the elimination of Medicaid if not “humane genocide”—and does anyone really wonder why his 40-year-old protégé and political rookie, JD Vance, is Vice President? With this technology in place, if the third-term legislation were to pass, it would hand Vance a minimum of twelve years at the helm of Thiel’s regime.

And of course, Donald Trump himself:
He spent a year telling his followers he didn’t need their votes—at one point stating,

“…in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”

Trump was facing eighty-eight felony indictments—he was desperate to avoid conviction and locked in a decades-long alliance with Vladimir Putin. An alliance that’s now impossible to ignore—look no further than his policy trail.

He froze aid to Ukraine and has threatened to place sanctions on them, while planning to lift sanctions off Russia. He openly campaigned for anti-EU candidates, and sided with Russia in multiple key United Nations votes related to the Ukraine conflict.

[Comments on the interview above]

(*Note that Elon testifies that DJT did not seem concerned about 2 so-called “assassination attempts,” one of which supposedly hit his ear, which, miraculously, healed almost overnight leaving no trace of such an injury.) Elon’s assertions about illegals being bussed to swing states are unverified and have no basis in fact. Conversely, Musk’s antagonistic attitude towards people of color, a product of his South African heritage, is well-documented as is that of his father before him. The purpose of “no ID to vote, says Musk, is “obviously” to influence elections when there are other viable explanations, but identification to vote has never been something that Democrats oppose. Elon lays out which 6 states need to be targeted late in the interview and note the many “obviously” affirmations, which are not “obvious” at all.

His admission that Pete Buttigieg did a good job is to his credit, but contentions that billionaires are “for sure” more in the Democratic camp are debatable. The attack on the media as biased is, again, a GOP and Russian staple. Court comments are also part of the Communist playbook. Elon worries that “everything is on the side of the Dems” and denigrates Kamala Harris’s candidacy, saying that nobody voted for her. (Kamala was part of the elected ticket in 2020.)

Late-in-the-interview comments about not becoming a one-party elite ruling class are ironic; that is exactly what Elon’s infusion of cash was intended to create. The fact that Elon Musk denigrates Harris, (who was a woman of great achievement prior to her election as VP), is also telling. He puts her down continuously while ignoring the “marionette” nature of DJT’s public remarks. Many of Trump’s public statements make no sense at all lately, so comparing the remarks of the two candidates word-for-word as to eloquence would be interesting.

Musk claims that billionaires are terrified that their support for Harris’s candidacy might come out, which seems to be simply his view, again unsupported by fact. Epstein’s name comes up late in the interview, which is interesting considering how he later announced that Trump’s name would appear on the Lolita Express rolls and that he was involved, which has been previously reported. “If Trump wins, we can do some housecleaning and shed light on things. Adhere to freedom of speech within the bounds of the law” are remarks made late in the interview, which is also ironic, as there has been little effort to stay within the bounds of the law but extreme efforts to do the opposite. Elon notes that he fears a Harris win would put “X”—which he had recently bought and which he had semi-ruined—out of business. He mentions a lawsuit against “X” regarding hiring permanent residents or citizens. He mentions a lawsuit against Space X for trying to hire asylum seekers. He also mentions Stalin’s chief enforcer, who is mentioned in the recent documentary “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” Elon admits that he fears a Democratic majority might shut his businesses down. Obviously, he decided to back the candidate who would shine on his pursuits.

Elon’s remarks about freedom and opportunity open the door to interpretation about the freedom and opportunity that he has bought for himself and his own pursuits. Talk about “improving the liberty of Americans” ignores his future role as the DOGEfather, firing people willy-nilly with chainsaw tactics.

Musk’s remarks about over-regulation have merit, but doing away with all regulatory agencies is folly. “There are so many different regulatory agencies and so many different regulations that we won’t be able to get anything done.” Some truth in those remarks, but let’s not forget that the developer of the Titan ignored regulations in pursuit of deep-see tourism to the wreck of the “Titanic” and we all know how that ended (good documentary about it streaming now.) He also touches on vaccination. “I don’t enjoy hurting other people. I have a hard time imagining, ‘Why would someone do that?'” (This from the man who literally ruined many careers with his DOGE antics.)

“There’s a small % of Americans who have anger management issues that cause them to hurt other people. If you don’t incarcerate them, they will hurt other people.” This leads Musk to talk about empathy for the victims, rather than the perpetrators. In examining anger management issues, Musk might have looked closer to home to the man he supported who has been on an 8-year-long crusade for retribution and is now exercising his power as president to “punish” all who defied him. (The law firm where Kamala Harris’s husband worked was one target, among many).

There is an interesting Tucker Carlson reference to Minneapolis as being a nice city “pre George Floyd.” This was before Vance Boelter (on left) began systematically trying to wipe out all elected Democrats in the city in pre-dawn raids. Musk further decries the deterioration of modern American cities, which Carlson terms “ubiquitous.” Musk says, “I’ve got to lead by being compassionate” and then goes on a Trump-designated stampede to literally ruin the careers and lives of many in the sights of DOGE. (Shakes head.) Musk’s axe-murderer example is pretty far out and leads Tucker to call this “anti-civilization.” Movement to de-criminalize crime is brought up and seems to point most notably to the MAGA crowd that attacked the Capitol on January 6th and were subsequently found guilty, sentenced and then pardoned wholesale with no real attempt to pardon in any kind of reasonable, sensible, logical manner (which also seems to be true of most DOGE initiatives.)

Near the end of the interview, Musk comments on Europe, saying that the birth rate is declining (Musk has 14 kids by multiple women, one of whom is trans-gender and hates him) and that that needs to be addressed. He also rails against censorship in Europe. Those of us who reside in Austin are watching Musk’s assembling of a sort of harem of his offspring and their mothers, which isn’t going too well, so far. It is also designed to help with the housing shortage for new Tesla employees. He then begins talking about the decline of religion and the increasing secular nature of society. Work takes the place of religion, says Musk. (Someone please remind the GOP of the founding fathers wish that there be separation of church and state.) “For me, I’m culturally Christian but also went to a Hebrew pre-school. I didn’t fall for believing all of these religious stories. I try to understand as much as possible about reality. In physics you’re not supposed to believe everything absolutely. If your rocket is designed with physics in mind correctly it will get to orbit, or otherwise it will not.” (Lately, more “not” than “will”).

“We definitely went to the moon. How about Mars? It was a remarkable piece of technology for 1969 and it was an important ideological battle with Communism, because they couldn’t put a man on the moon and capitalism could.”

Israel Bombs Iran

By Connie Wilson

On June 12, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

horizon during drive

Today is Thursday and I drove from Chicago to the Quad Cities today.

There was extensive road work near Minooka and, again, about 58 miles from the Quad Cities on Interstate 80, but the drive was relatively uneventful.

I left Chicago at 2 p.m. and arrived home at 5:30 p.m., which is exactly the time frame anticipated. We decided to order Chik’ Fil A. In the twenty minutes my husband was gone picking up those sandwiches, it was announced that Israel had launched “preemptive” strikes against Iran. It also was announced that the strikes were the first of a wave of many and that Israeli citizens could expect retaliation.

You can’t convince me—(despite Marco Rubio’s protestations to the contrary)—that the United States didn’t know full well that Benjamin Netanyahu was going to strike Iran, aiming at nuclear facilities and other nuclear-related targets. The U.S. had made some progress in forging a nuclear agreement under John Kerry, but Trump tore up that agreement. Then the Trump administration began attempting to resurrect that dead agreement.

Ironically, there were supposedly talks scheduled for Sunday about limiting Iran’s reach for nuclear weapons. Sounds like those meetings will not be taking place now. Despite the presence of deep-underground Iranian nuclear facilities that will be difficult (if not impossible) to destroy from the air, perhaps there won’t be as much left to “regulate” after Israel unleashes another wave of bombings against its adversarial antagonistic neighbor.

How much DJT really anticipated ever getting such an Iranian arms agreement, with safeguards and inspections, is anybody’s guess. As for me, I suspect that letting Israel bomb Iran right now, when Iran is weakened by the Gaza conflict and Hamas (which is Iran-backed) is in disarray was probably something—much like Ben and Donnie agreeing that they could sure make a nice hotel strip out of the Gaza beach area—the two authoritarian leaders could agree on.

The leader of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami, was confirmed dead, Iranian state television reported, a significant blow to Tehran’s governing theocracy and an immediate escalation of its long-simmering conflict with Israel.The chief of staff of Iranian armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, was also confirmed dead by Iranian state television. Other top military officials and scientists were believed to have been killed. Some 200 Israeli aircraft took part in the operation, hitting about 100 targets, Israeli army chief spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said. Over 100 drones were launched by Iran towards Israel, which the country was intercepting and warning the country’s occupants to remain vigilant. Schools and businesses were closed and other attacks were anticipated.

So, accept the United States’ denial that we had anything to do with the attacks on Iran if you want, but realize that our close relationship with Israel, intensified by the chummy friendship between Netanyahu and Trump—means that at least tacit approval of such a bombing occurred. It would be right in line with DJT’s usual ham-handed approach to diplomacy and everything else (*Cases in point: the removal of immigrants from the U.S. and/or the separation of infants from their mothers at the border during Trump 1.0). This complicit silent approval of the bombing of Iran by Israel goes right along with the chainsaw-wielding He-Man persona Trump wants to project, [while babbling incoherently and (probably) wearing adult diapers.]

Armed troops sent in by Mayor Daley during the Chicago riots of 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King.

One other late-breaking news flash: Trump has been ordered to return the National Guard to the command of the Governor of California, who did not ask for the guard to be sent in in the first place. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, an appointee of former President Clinton, temporarily blocked the president from deploying thousands of guardsmen to Los Angeles. The judge said Trump had exceeded his authority (you think?). An appeal was filed immediately and the case will probably go to the Supreme Court.

We Are Living in the Time of Nero

By Connie Wilson

On May 30, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Donald J. Trump

Written by the the highly respected Canadian journalist, Andrew Coyne:

“Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.

The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, corrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.

There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.

The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.

At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric.

At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.

The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.

Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fuelled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.

Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.

We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?”

Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.

All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.

All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”

Tariff or Not-to-Tariff: That Is the Question

By Connie Wilson

On May 29, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Interviews, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

ships in LA harbor (Photo by Maggie Shannon)

From the New York Times reporters Tony Romm and Ana Swanson on 5/29/2025, comes this introduction to a day that has seen its share of pronouncements that could significantly impact the U.S. economy, with a Maggie Shannon photo of ships in harbor waiting to unload: “A head-spinning series of court rulings over President Trump’s signature tariffs left Washington, Wall Street and much of the world trying to discern the future of U.S. trade policy on Thursday, including whether import taxes would fall meaningfully or if the administration would get the legal green light to upend the global trading system.

Less than 24 hours after the U.S. Court of International Trade blocked steep tariffs that Mr. Trump had imposed on trading partners using emergency powers, a separate court temporarily paused that decision, sowing even more chaos on a day filled with economic uncertainty.”

The CNN headline on my afternoon “breaking news” chyron was federal appeals court restores Trump’s ability to levy tariffs with “emergency powers.” Administrative stay by the Federal Appeals Court. (Apparently the original ruling was in response to suits brought by the Attorney Generals of various states and possibly the Democratic Governors, whom Illinois Governor Pritzker has been attempting to rally as a cohesive whole.)

AZ Attorney General Kristin Mayes

The Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kristin Mayes said the first court “invalidated all of the tariffs, which are really taxes on our families. They have the capacity to crush small businesses.” Kristin was a Republican who won by only 280 votes as a Democrat. She is only the third “out” lesbian office-holder as Attorney General and changed parties from Republican to Democratic in 2019, because of Donald J. Trump. Her office indicted 18 people in connection with the attempt to install an illegal slate of presidential electors and, therefore, overturn the election of Joseph Biden in 2020.

The White House is saying “they have a work-around,” a remark delivered by Peter Navarro, whom Elon Musk denounced as “as dumb as a box of rocks.” (* Be sure to catch Elon’s Farewell Press Conference on TV tomorrow, 5/30/2025.) Said Ms. Mayes: “For the first time ever, the attorney generals of America agree with Rand Paul, who says the power rests with Congress.”

Arizona’s Attorney General said: “I believe the United States Supreme Court agrees with the rule of law and that they’re gonna’ say, ‘Look. Wait a second. This is a vast expansion of presidential powers that goes far beyond what Congress delegated to the executive branch. I think we’re going to win at the end of the day. We’re hearing, especially from our small businesses that they are having trouble ordering things like coffee from Mexico for a coffee shop. We have small businesses who don’t know how extensive the costs are going to be once the imports make it through L.A. ports. I think we’re very worried about people in Arizona and other states to gain access. This is not good for our economy; it has the potential to wreck our small businesses.”

I was hopeful that the few Republicans who seem to retain a brain and a heart would seize upon the first ruling to say (to DJT), “Well, the court says you don’t have the power to arbitrarily set tariffs, so we have to stand by that.”

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana

Right now, Senator John Kennedy of the Republican Judiciary Committee is speaking and is saying, “The only good tariff is a dead tariff.” Speaking from Madisonville, Louisiana: “If these tariffs lead to higher prices that’s gonna’ create a political problem for us in the mid-terms.” He is saying Trump represented hope versus Harris’s hurt but has just noted that the White House goes from zero to “screw everyone” in short order.

Kennedy, who was first elected in 2017, is considering the backlash from the voting public. He is saying, “We gave that authority (to enact tariffs) to the President, for better or worse.” He says he doesn’t feel that Trump has exceeded his authority. He is being asked about the “big beautiful bill” to which he said, It’s not as beautiful as it can be.” He is now endorsing tax cuts. $4.3 trillion increase in the national debt is being mentioned as bad, a very negative effect of DJT’s budget.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.

“I want to cut spending until we run out of votes. I want to renew the tax cuts.” (John Kennedy on Trump’s tax bill.)

Trump posted a screed attacking the courts, which, of course, is detrimental. Timothy M. Reif and Leonard Leo are now in Trump’s sights and he is requesting that the Supreme Court weigh in.

Peter Navarro: “The tariffs remain in place. The courts have told us, ‘Go do it another way.’ Even if we lose, we will do it another way.” Ironically, Trump’s trade advisor commented on the lack of trust in “rogue judges,” despite the fact that Trump appointed the judge in question.

Brandon Gill (R, Texas) is the youngest Republican member of Congress at age 30.

Congressman Brandon Gill (R, Texas) immediately began talking about usurping the President’s authority, calling it “a huge problem. I don’t agree with the ruling. I agree with the President. The American public can see that we have a large problem with large trade deficits and Trump is taking action to alleviate that problem. Just a few months ago the Senate took up the question of whether the President had the authority to institute tariffs and they said he did.” (This was alluded to by Louisiana Senator John Kennedy in previous statements on CNN .) Congressman Gill also endorsed codifying the DOGE cuts that Elon Musk made, including eliminating NPR.

“It’s chaos now in the courts,” said the CNN commentator on Anderson Cooper’s 5 p.m. (CDT) program.

Nancy Gertner, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Law School, said Trump cannot keep his mouth shut. “It’s quite clear what is going on here. He wants to control Harvard and the institutions that could be the source of opposition to him. It’s an over-reach for what he is trying to do.” 149 suits have been launched against DJT in his time in office for his overreach, versus 6 for “W” and 8 for Obama in 8 years of their presidencies. John E. Jones III, President of Dickinson College, said “Trump is a lawyer’s nightmare because he can’t stop talking. His own words will give the lie to his stated objections. They turn out to be pretext for what he wants to do.”

It looks, to those of us without legal degrees (on the outside, looking in), as though the MAGA administration is shopping for courts that DJT may have stacked. If he doesn’t like the decision by one court, he moves to another and counts on delay. (Trump has a lengthy history of launching lawsuits and has recently been suing CBS over a “Sixty Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris and has been involved in a dispute with ABC—which ponied up—over a remark on George Stephanopoulus’ Sunday morning talk show.)

Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

One of the judges Trump blasted, Leonard Leo, has a long history of trying to shift the court to the right in his many years on the bench. The declaration of an emergency is the problem with the way the tariffs were enacted, says Justin Wolfers, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. “The right thing for any country to do now is to sit on their hands,” rather than negotiate, said Wolfers, noting that the bottom line is that being publicly humiliated the way Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of Britain was during his recent visit, is not a very appealing prospect for the leader of any country.

Putting a malignant narcissist who has a well-known reputation for dishonesty and corruption in office is turning out to be a not-very-good decision for the welfare of the United States economy, which seems to be in limbo at the moment.

Dana Milbank Nails Trump’s Actions in the “Washington Post”

By Connie Wilson

On May 27, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Dana Milbank in “The Washington Post” nailed the embarrassing, cruel and lawless tack our current Chief Executive continues on, undeterred by public opinion or accepted norms of behavior. By all means, disparage your predecessor at a time when he has just been announced with a life-threatening cancer. Go ahead and invite the leader of another country to the White House Oval Office and attempt to humiliate them with gerrymandered facts and–in this case—an actual video montage of white crosses that had nothing to do with what DJT presented them as being. I was always embarrassed by “W,” but it had more to do with evident stupidity than criminal intent. I actually had a keyring that counted down the number of months, days and years until “W” would be out of the White House. Where is that watch when I really need it? And can we trust that THIS guy will even leave when his time is up, since he rarely does anything we expect our Chief Executive to do to represent the true feelings of the United States as the one-time leader of the free world. (Are we even the leader of the Free World any more?)

Read Dana Milbank’s to-the-point summation of this week’s embarrassing, illegal and humiliating acts by Donald J. Trump below:

“Turn the lights down and just put this on,” President Donald Trump commanded his aides. It was time for another Oval Office ambush of a foreign leader, this time South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. He then narrated a video, which, at one point, showed white crosses lining a roadside, which Trump portrayed as a mass grave for White South African farmers, murdered in what Trump has errantly described as a “genocide.”

“Now, this is very bad. These are the — these are burial sites right here. Burial sites,” Trump said. “Each one of those white things you see is a cross, and there’s approximately a thousand of them. They are all White farmers. … And it’s a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it. Both sides of the road, you have crosses. Those people were all killed.”

Ramaphosa looked baffled. “I’d like to know where that is,” he said, “because this I’ve never seen.”

And there’s a good reason for that: It doesn’t exist.

The video was not of graves at all but of a symbolic protest five years ago. It has been promoted on X recently, including by one overtly racist account in South Africa to which Trump sidekick Elon Musk subscribed. “This is what Elon wanted,” Trump explained.

Trump seemed genuinely to believe that the phony graves were evidence of an actual atrocity — much like when he presented as genuine an obviously Photoshopped image purporting to show the characters “MS-13” tattooed on the knuckles of the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego García.

But Trump’s confusion went beyond the fake graves: He also confronted his visitor with video of two Black men he portrayed as South African government “officials” saying vile things such as “Kill the Boer.” As South Africa’s (White) agriculture minister patiently explained to Trump, those two men are opponents of the government. Apparently Trump didn’t know that, either.

If all this weren’t awkward enough, Trump, prompted by a reporter, explained why the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, needed to rely on charity from Qatar in the form of that donated 747 (which, it turns out, Trump had solicited): Qatar’s royals needed to “help us out because we need an Air Force One.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” Ramaphosa told him.

“I wish you did,” Trump replied. “I’d take it.”

EMBARRASSING

This is just embarrassing — maybe not for our president, who seems incapable of such a sentiment, but for the rest of us. Everywhere I looked this week, I cringed for my country.

Asked to comment on former president Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis this week, Trump twice remarked that the cancer must have been growing a long time “to get to Stage 9” (there is, of course, no such thing) while also boasting about himself: “I did a very complete physical, including cognitive test. I’m proud to announce I aced it.” Earlier, Trump had revealed that he doesn’t seem to realize that a doctorate in education is not the same thing as a degree in medicine, something that most high school students would know.

On Capitol Hill, even Republicans are growing embarrassed that a credulous Trump is being outmaneuvered by Russia’s Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. “That guy is stringing President Trump along. We don’t appreciate it,” Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) told Semafor. Sen. Todd Young (Indiana) said that “it’s pretty clear to me that Putin has been jerking us around for months.” And Sen. Mike Rounds (South Dakota) remarked that “nobody likes to see somebody try to play the president.”

MORE GRIFT

Vietnam is in talks with the Trump Organization to build a new Trump Tower in Ho Chi Minh City, Reuters reported — a transparent attempt to buy Trump’s favor while it tries to persuade him to drop tariffs he imposed against the country. Vietnam just approved a $1.5 billion golf project by the Trump Organization, and has offered favorable terms to Musk’s Starlink internet service. Closer to home, Trump held a black-tie dinner Thursday night to celebrate the top investors in his meme coin, who have collectively expanded his personal wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Asked this week for his thoughts on the first American pope, Trump turned it into a celebration of himself. The pope’s brother “is a major MAGA fan,” Trump said. “He’s got MAGA and he’s got Trump, and I look forward to getting him to the White House.”

TRUMP LOVES TRUMP

In a “briefing” this week at the White House for young children, press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a moment of candor when one of the tots asked, “Which is Donald Trump’s favorite president, besides himself?”

“A good question,” Leavitt said, “because it would be, uh, probably, himself.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, presiding over the administration’s deportation of migrants without due process, shrouded herself in glory this week when Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) quizzed her: “What is habeas corpus?”

“Well,” Noem replied, “habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”

Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey) continued the quiz, asking whether Noem knew which article of the Constitution mentioned habeas corpus.

“No, I do not, sir.”

In New Jersey, a federal judge scolded prosecutors for their “embarrassing” decision to drop charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka just a few days after charging him with trespassing at an immigration detention facility. The judge said that after this “worrisome misstep,” the U.S. attorney’s office, run by former Trump lawyer and campaign adviser Alina Habba, “must operate with a higher standard.” But Habba’s office has now filed assault charges against a sitting member of Congress, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-New Jersey), in the same incident and is threatening charges against two other lawmakers. Trump cheered this banana republic roundup of political opponents, following a similar move against a Wisconsin judge, saying that “the days of woke are over.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) introduced a resolution to expel McIver from the House, saying McIver “must be held accountable to the highest standards of conduct in order to safeguard the public’s faith in this institution.” This came a day after Mace upheld those standards in a committee meeting by displaying a nude photo of herself taken by her “predator and rapist” former fiancé. “This naked silhouette is my naked body,” she explained to the panel.

THE BIG BAD BILL

But perhaps the biggest embarrassment was the ugly way in which the House passed Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” full of tax breaks and cuts in help for the poor: during an all-night session on the House floor, following an all-night session the night before in the House Rules Committee.

The frantic rush allowed the Republican majority to pass the gargantuan bill, packed with last-minute provisions to buy the votes of holdouts, before there could be a final assessment of how much the bill would increase the federal debt (somewhere around $4 trillion), how many people would lose their health insurance (10 to 15 million) and at least some of their food assistance (also north of 10 million)

In the absence of such relevant information, the administration filled the vacuum with fantastical ideas. Trump promised that working-class people “won’t lose health insurance.” Leavitt claimed the bill “does not add to the deficit.” Trump further said the bill, which cuts some $300 billion from food stamps, “is going to give everybody much more food.”

The markets weren’t fooled. Moody’s Ratings downgraded U.S. debt, specifically warning about continued high deficits “from current fiscal proposals under consideration.” Bond yields spiked on Wednesday, while stocks and the dollar fell, as a “sell America” sentiment took hold among investors. But lawmakers went ahead anyway in the wee hours, forcing the bill through the House just hours after the final package was introduced, before quitting town for an 11-day recess.

This is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. In fact, it’s embarrassing.

To be sure, “embarrassing” isn’t the only adjective that comes to mind. There’s also “lawless.”

LAWLESS

A federal judge this week said the Trump administration had “obviously” and “unquestionably” violated his order requiring detained migrants be given a reasonable chance to challenge their removal. Instead, seven migrants from Mexico, Cuba, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam were deported to South Sudan, which is on the verge of civil war, on just hours’ notice. The administration continues not to comply with court orders requiring it to arrange the return of other migrants who were improperly deported. Though the Supreme Court made it easier for the administration to revoke the legal status of 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, Trump’s lawyers continue to pile up court losses, most recently in their attempts to shut the Education Department and take over the U.S. Institute of Peace; at least 171 rulings have temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, in the latest New York Times tally.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division abandoned investigations into several police departments over misconduct. Instead, the DOJ is investigating Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson because he touted how many Black people he hired, the Chicago Tribune reports. Justice also agreed to send nearly $5 million in taxpayer dollars to the family of Ashli Babbitt, killed during the Capitol riot as she attempted to break into the House chamber where lawmakers were sheltering.

The Constitution, of course, requires that the president “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” But Trump continues his faithless reign: halting the enforcement of federal rules and regulations he doesn’t like, cutting funds to states that voted Democratic while sending additional funds to Republican states, and combing the federal government for new opportunities for vengeance, particularly against Harvard University.

Trump, in an early-morning post this week, called for a “major investigation” into whether Kamala Harris’s campaign paid Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Bono. This is on top of legal action threatened or taken lately against other political opponents, including former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey and the New Jersey officials. When NBC News’s Peter Alexander asked Trump about his Air Force One gift from Qatar Wednesday, Trump erupted and said of the head of NBC News parent company Comcast: “Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they ought to be investigated.”

After the Biden family disclosed his advanced prostate cancer diagnosis, a senior counselor in the DOJ, Leo Terrell, suggested that Jill Biden should be prosecuted. Responding to an X post claiming the former first lady “knew about President Biden’s health problems” and “still wanted him to run for President,” Terrell wrote: “Elder abuse! Criminal charges??”

Donald Trump Jr. was thinking along the same lines. “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five [sic] metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup???” he posted, adding that, “without question,” the announcement of the diagnosis was an effort to distract attention from “the fact Biden was running the country as a vegetable.”

His father joined in, saying that “there are things going on that the public wasn’t informed of” — and calling for yet another investigation.

Come to think of it, “paranoid” is another relevant adjective.

At one White House briefing this week, Leavitt gave the first question to a “correspondent” from the outlet ZeroHedge, which promotes far-right conspiracy theories. The questioner asked about one such fantasy known as the “Clinton body count,” which holds that Bill and Hillary Clinton have murdered many people. He then went on to propose that Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking was done “on behalf of intelligence agencies, and even potentially as part of a blackmail ring with potential ties to the Israeli government.”

Leavitt offered no refutation.

CRUEL

Bee Gone

Add “cruel” to the adjectival assortment.

In the Oval Office this week, when asked about the “devastating impact” in Africa caused by the administration’s shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Trump replied: “Well, it’s devastating.” He went on to complain: “Europe doesn’t help. Europe hasn’t given anything.” (European Union nations collectively gave more in foreign aid than the U.S., even before Trump shut USAID.)

He seemed equally unmoved about the effects of his “big, beautiful bill,” which, the Congressional Budget Office found, would cut the income of the poorest 10 percent of Americans while raising the income of the wealthiest 10 percent — and that was before last-minute changes that accelerated cuts to Medicaid and added new tax breaks favoring wealthy homeowners.

The mammoth bill followed a familiar trajectory toward House passage. Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus complained that it added trillions to the federal debt. Moderates demanded larger tax breaks and objected to the huge cuts to Medicaid. They called each other names. The whole thing appeared to be collapsing.

To win them over, Trump went to Capitol Hill — and talked about himself, proclaiming, among other things, that he is “a man of God” and that “there’s nobody like me as a fiscal hawk.” Probably none of this persuaded Republican holdouts. But something else did: The White House issued a statement saying any defection would be the “ultimate betrayal,” and Trump delivered similar threats in person. Republicans cowered. It was approved by a single vote, with two Republicans in opposition, one voting present, one absent and one falling asleep in a back room.

Democrats tried to make the majority squirm, forcing votes during a 19-hour Rules Committee meeting on several of the 537 amendments that had been filed. Republicans blocked one amendment limiting the tax cuts to people who earn under $400,000 a year. They blocked another restricting the tax cuts to those who make under $10 million a year. Because the legislation hiked taxes on some, Republicans had to waive their own rule, adopted four months ago, requiring a supermajority for such increases.

The votes of some Republican holdouts had to be bought with special provisions. At the last minute, a $1.4 billion provision deregulating firearm silencers and repealing their sales tax found its way into the bill, at the request of Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia), a gun dealer.

Another 11th-hour change: The legislation requires that baby trust accounts created by the bill, in which every newborn American child would get $1,000, be officially named “Trump Accounts.”

Unofficially, they should be named “cringe accounts.”

READERS’ REMARKS for Dana Milbank’s “Washington Post” column

The comments overwhelmingly express deep embarrassment and shame over President Trump’s actions, particularly his portrayal of a misleading video to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Many commenters highlight the negative impact on international relations.

Trump 1.0 & 2.0

By Connie Wilson

On May 2, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Politics

I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency these last four years, and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than when he incited an insurrection against the government,

Mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans,

Called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”

Separated children from their families,

Lost those children in the bureaucracy,

Tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,

Tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,

Got impeached,

Got impeached again,

Had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,

Pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,

Fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,

Bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,

Took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,

Diverted military funding to build his wall,

Caused the longest government shutdown in US history,

Called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”

Lied over 30,000 times,

Banned transgender people from serving in the military,

Ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,

Vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,

Refused to release his tax returns,

Increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,

Had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,

Called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,

Coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,

Refused to concede the 2020 election,

Hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,

Walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,

Suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,

Abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,

Pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,

Incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,

Withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,

Withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,

Withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,

Insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,

Pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,

Failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,

Called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,

Called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”

Claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,

Forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,

Believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,

Berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,

Suggested the US should buy Greenland,

Colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices, after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,

Repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”

Claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,

Violated the emoluments clause,

Thought that Nambia was a country,

Told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,

Called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p—y” for following the Constitution,

Nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,

Nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,

Nominated a corrupt head of HHS,

Nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,

Nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,

Praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,

Refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,

Insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,

Spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,

Falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,

Called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”

Falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,

Considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,

Mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,

Locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,

Used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”

Hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,

Pardoned several of his shady associates,

Gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his bat shit crazy conspiracy theories,

Steve Bannon (Wikipedia photo).

Got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),

Had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,

Forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,

Botched the COVID vaccine rollout,

Tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,

Charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,

Constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,

Claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,

Called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”

Used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,

Opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,

Got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,

Claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,

Ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,

Blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,

Redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,

Got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”

Threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,

Botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,

Threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,

Pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,

Thought that the Virgin islands had a President,

Drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,

Allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,

“The Christmas Cats Flee the Bee,” 6th book in the Christmas Cats series (www.TheXmasCats.com).

Rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,

Pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,

Rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,

Held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,

Tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,

Refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,

Nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,

Threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,

Attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,

Promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),

Allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,

Struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,

Called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”

Threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,

Went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,

Claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

Seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,

Demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,

Praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,

Completely gutted the Voice of America,

"The Christmas Cats Flee the Bee," sixth book in the Christmas Cats series (www.TheXmasCats.com).

Placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,

Claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,

Suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,

Suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,

Overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,

Reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,

Insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,

Gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,

Named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,

Eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,

Used soldiers as campaign props,

Fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,

Demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,

Hired a shit ton of white nationalists,

Politicized the civil service,

Did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,

Falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,

Claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,

Insulted reporters of color,

Insulted women reporters, insulted women reporters of color,

Suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,

“Bee Gone: A Political Parable”

Attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,

Summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House, to pressure them to overturn the election,

Spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,

Refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,

Hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,

Tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,

Acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,

Attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault,

Held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,

Didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,

Stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,

“Ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,

Led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,

Claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,

Tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,

Suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,

Suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,

Said that he had a special aptitude for science,

Fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,

Blurted out classified information to Russian officials,

Tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,

Fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,

Hired Stephen Miller,

Openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,

Interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,

Abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,

Tried to get Russia back into the G7,

Held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,

Seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,

Lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,

Falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,

Shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,

Still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,

Still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”

Forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,

Told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”

Screwed up the Census wording,

Withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,

Did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule: “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”

Allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,

Seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,

Stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,

Constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president, (which presumably includes four that were assassinated, and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump),

Claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,

Said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,

Claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,

Claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,

Created a commission to whitewash American history,

Retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,

Claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,

Hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent “Bowling Green Massacre” as a reason to ban Muslims,

Had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,

Bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,

Apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,

Stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,

Falsely claimed Biden wanted to de-fund the police,

Said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,

Tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,

Gave himself an A for his handling of the pandemic,

Tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,

Said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,

Deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,

Claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,

Touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile, which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile, or may not exist at all,

Retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,

Forced through security clearances for his family,

Suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,

Suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,

Tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender identification,

Suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,

Nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,

Retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,

Hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,

Accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,

Claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter,

because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,

Mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,

Obsessed over low-flow toilets,

Ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,

Called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),

Hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,

Took advice from the MyPillow guy,

Claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,

Said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,

Never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,

Falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent, though he, (himself), votes by mail.

Announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,

Insulted the leader of Canada,

Insulted the leader of France,

Insulted the leader of Britain,

Insulted the leader of Germany,

Insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),

Falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,

Blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,

Continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

Said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,

Left a NATO summit early in a huff,

Stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,

Called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,

Refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise,

and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

But other than that. . .

He was a great President

(by Alan Scott Helgeson)

National Labor Relations Board Computer Data in Russia’s Hands

By Connie Wilson

On April 24, 2025

In Editorial, Education, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

“A whistleblower told Congress and CNN that DOGE staffers secretly used Starlink (Musk’s satellite network) to export vast amounts of sensitive worker, union and employer data from the records of the National Labor Relations Board. Russian hackers then logged onto the NLRB’s computers, USING THE RIGHT PASSWORDS, the whistleblower said.”

Where does your mind go when you read this?

Do you wonder, as I did, “Gee. How did the Russian hackers KNOW THE PASSWORDS?”

Or do you say “Well, DJT is definitely in the tank for Putin. Everything he has done—nearly all of it very detrimental to our country in so many different ways—is something that Russian media is crowing about on their official television channel. ”

I could go on at great length about the damage to our country that has been visited upon us to date, but I don’t need to explain this to anyone with a functioning brain and the ability to “connect the dots.”

Think about the above and be afraid. Be very afraid.

And while I am pondering the horrors of being stuck in a kakistocracy (look it up), if you have, so far, been giving Donald J. Trump the benefit of MANY doubts and honestly do believe that he is acting in our country’s best interests and is treating the Presidency of the United States the way it should be treated—well, then you’re not really paying attention, so move long,.

Nothing to see here if you’ve drunk the Kool Aid.

Justin Trudeau Addresses Tariffs on Canada on March 4, 2025

By Connie Wilson

On March 4, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Pop Culture, Television

Canadian Primer Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unleashed a historic speech scorching Donald Trump’s idiocy over his disastrous new tariffs: “This is a very dumb thing to do.”

“The United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend. At the same time, they’re talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying murderous dictator,” began Trudeau.

“Make that make sense.”

Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico took effect today and the markets are in free fall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has already plummeted 662 points after plunging 650 points on Monday. The S&P 500 lost 1.3% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.9%

The gullible fools who thought that Trump would be “good for the economy” have had the rug pulled out from under them in record time.

“Canadians are reasonable and we are polite,” Trudeau continued. “But we will not back down from a fight, not when our country and the well-being of everyone in it is at stake. At the moment, the U.S. tariffs came into effect in the early hours of this morning and so did the Canadian response.”

“Canada will be implementing 25% tariffs against $155 billion worth of American goods starting with tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods immediately and tariffs on the remaining $125 billion of American products in twenty-one days time,” said Trudeau. “Our tariffs will remain in place until the U.S. tariffs are withdrawn and not a moment sooner.”

“And should these tariffs not cease, we are in active and ongoing discussions with provinces and territories to pursue several non-tariff measures, measures which will demonstrate that there are no winners in a trade war,” he threatened.

“Now just like I did a month ago, I want to speak first directly to the American people. We don’t want this,” said Trudeau. “We want to work with you as a friend and ally and we don’t want to see you hurt either.”

BEE GONE

“But your government has chosen to do this to you,” he stated bluntly. “As of this morning, markets are down and inflation is set to rise dramatically all across your country.”

“Your government has chosen to put American jobs at risk at the thousands of workplaces that succeed because of materials from Canada or because of consumers in Canada or both,” he went on.

“They’ve chosen to raise costs for American consumers on everyday essential items like groceries and gas, on major purchases like cars and homes, and everything in between,” he continued.

“They’ve chosen to harm American national security, impeding access to the abundant critical minerals, energy, building materials, and fertilizers that we have and that the United States needs to grow and prosper,” he explained.

“They’ve chosen to launch a trade war that will first and foremost harm American families. They’ve chosen to sabotage their own agenda that was supposed to usher in a new ‘Golden Age’ for the United States,” said Trudeau, taking a direct shot at MAGA’s latest inane rhetoric.

“And they’ve chosen to undermine the incredible work that we’ve done together to tackle the scourge that is fentanyl, a drug that must be wiped from the face of the Earth,” he added. “So on that point, let me be crystal clear. There is absolutely no justification or need whatsoever for these tariffs today.”

Trudeau then shifted gears to go after Donald Trump directly, the clueless mastermind behind this entire disaster—

“Now I want to speak directly to one specific American: Donald. In the over eight years you and I have worked together, we’ve done big things,” said Trudeau, appealing to Trump’s ego.

“We signed a historic deal that has created record jobs and growth in both of our countries. We’ve done big things together on the world stage as Canada and the U.S. have done together for decades, for generations,” he continued. “And now we should be working together to ensure even greater prosperity for North Americans in a very uncertain and challenging world.”

“Now, it’s not in my habit to agree with The Wall Street Journal but Donald, they point out that even though you’re a very smart guy this is a very dumb thing to do. We two friends fighting is exactly what our opponents around the world want to see,” said Trudeau.

“And now to my fellow Canadians: I won’t sugarcoat it. This is going to be tough even though we’re all going to pull together because that’s what we do,” he added. “We will use every tool at our disposal so Canadian workers and businesses can weather this storm.”

(*A last-minute exchange on Trump’s Truth Social Network suggests that Trump might now use this 25% tariff, scheduled to go into effect on March 5th, as a bullying tactic against Canada, much as he used the threat of discontinuing Ukrainian military aid to extract a promise from that war-torn country to hand over precious minerals to the U.S.

CNN called Trump’s threats “a game of economic chicken.”

Trump sees everything in terms of money and power and will use any means to seize and hold both, even if it means abandoning moral principles our country has espoused for many

generations, such as USAID. To put it in simpler terms, DJT finds the far-right groups easier to manipulate, since they will blindly follow a figurehead without thinking through that Talking Head’s positions to determine if they are really advantageous to them, personally. DJT and Elon Musk are overthrowing the traditional values of free speech (and, soon, free elections) because a “free” election might throw them out of power. And, as mentioned, DJT is all about seizing and maintaining their power and wealth. There is no morality to thinking this way, but, then, we’re talking about a man not known for his morality or his compassion or his concern for anyone but Donald J. Trump.

We are talking about a man who is squandering our (former) position as the Leader of the Free World. The message to the world is that the U.S. cannot be counted on. This is not about DJT. This is about the American people and DJT is not keeping the American people (and America) safe on any level.)