FDR was a human being. He never claimed perfection. He loved this country and all of its citizens. His wife took him to see the poverty that her clients lived in when they were engaged. FDR was stunned; he said he had no idea people lived like that. He worked himself to death with his severe hypertension. He saved us and maybe the world. My father was fighting in Germany and he told me the soldiers cried when they learned that he died. They felt that FDR had their back. We were so lucky to have him.
Disappointing to see reader comments focusing on FDR’s human failings. It’s almost invariably the same for profiles of Winston Churchill too. Without their superhuman courage, foresight and fortitude none of us would be here in the United States of America or Europe today. Think hard about that.
As for the writing, Steve, you continue to outdo yourself.
My mom, a child of the depression, idolized FDR. My mom was Jewish and she felt this way about the man who refused entry to a boat of refugees trying to escape Hitler. However he did extraordinary things for the country.
The felons comments sound like something you would hear in the early 1800’s. Talk about living in perilous times.
While it has been brought out several times previously, President Biden was our FDR. The things he did bettered the country. Like FDR, he was not a perfect man, but he did right by the country as a whole. The felon is in the process of destroying it. If President Biden was closer to FDR’s age, he would still be in the White House.
I wonder if his "retribution" is really directed at an America that did not re-elect him in 2020 and his targeted "enemies" are only representations. Perhaps his real dream is to destroy America and our allies (many at the UN dared to laugh at him to his face) for not sufficiently joining in his self-aggrandizement.
Your comment brought to mind the fact that where there is no justice there is no truth. Trump escaped justice by eluding trials, spending millions on lawyers to employ delay tactics to cover the truth that would emerge from a trial by juries of his peers. He was found guilty in his NYS trial of election interference and fraud because he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her mouth shut about their sordid sexual encounter. He covered it up by having Michael Cohen pay her and then re-imbursing him as if it were a legal expense. This occurred just after his infamous "pussy-grabbing" comments were made public. He escaped punishment even for these felonies since before sentencing a very foolish nation re-elected him as he claimed with no evidence that he was a victim of a "witch-hunt," a victim of political prosecution.
He will never be tried, thus justice will never be meted out, for his incitement of insurrection on 1/6, his attempted interference in the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, or for his stealing and improper storage of highly sensitive government documents. Through a failure of justice, the truth is denied and our national nightmare continues.
And now he has pardoned all of the 1/6 insurrections; the justice system that revealed the truth in their cases is now denied and Trump's followers claim they were patriots fighting to reverse a rigged election.
That is so true. Trump knew potential indictments were going to be brought against him before he ever declared he was running again. He only ran because he saw it as a get out of jail free card. He tried to spin the story that the witch hunt was brought against him to interfere with his campaign. I am positive he was told to lawyer up as it looked like cases were going to be brought against him long before he announced he was running. One of them was potentially while he was still president during Cohen's trial which alluded to DT as "Individual-1". Cohen was held accountable for the crime associated with "Individual-1", but not "Individual-1" was not. Dt also was heavily involved with defaming the two Georgia poll workers, but Guiliani was the only one held accountable. He is setting up the same kind of relationships in his new administration where he has other people actually doing all of his dirty work. When they have exhausted their usefulness in this regard, they will be cut off and probably demonized like he has with other people doing his bidding. And yet so many people line up to be next to carry out his deplorable acts.
Steve Schmidt: "Human beings are capable of creating transcendent beauty and apocalypses of suffering. The same hardness, malice and greed that would lead a human being to cut down such a magnificent specimen of life for a pile of money, or perhaps for no other impulse than to destroy something beautiful, is a symptom of the same terrible disease that threatens the United States." This is one of your best pieces ever, Steve; this is the perfect time to educate about FDR.🙏
Relative to the current catastrophe, FDR was great. But not without warts as well. In particular, his immigration policy was designed to ensure that a minimum number of Jewish Holocaust survivors would ever get to the US. Eleanor was a helluva lot better on race and xenophobia in general.
No where in Steve's piece did, I see him declare FDR a saint. We all have flaws of course, but none of us are as flawed as the Hitler in Chief that now resides in the WH along with all his greedy supplicants. Hell has reached our shores and is soon to wash over us with a vengeance. I hope someone has the wherewithal to save those magnificent trees.
I realize that some people reading Steve’s essay may not be aware of that particular grave flaw of our govt (FDR, but not only him), but most of us do know of his imperfections.
Steve is trying mightily to bring our divided society together, to have us get in touch with our better angels, our sense of history & patriotism, & our interpersonal connections through those things. At this time, I do not believe it’s beneficial to lob more divisive bombs into the middle of the effort to bring us together to, once again, resist evil.
I never want us to forget, or attempt to erase, the ugliness in our history; but right this minute we are trying to form a battalion of patriots to fight back against a man & his followers who are, as we flounder here, actually succeeding in rewriting & erasing some very recent ugliness in our history.
Let us all set aside those farther ago warts of our heroes for now, to be picked back up & examined after we have once again defeated evil & arrived at peace. 💙
Chinese philosopher/Warrior Sun Tzu: "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes."
In recent weeks I have found myself quoting Sun Tzu more frequently. Trump & Co. have become the super arsonists, giving the Nazi salute and pardoning all those anti-American insurrectionists. Those insurrectionists are homegrown terrorists. One must ponder how far they may push the envelope for tyranny and treachery. Trump's full disregard and contempt for the rule of law may signal to them license to create havoc, chaos; and, MURDER? Does Trump WANT American blood in the streets? Is his shooting someone on 5th Avenue a promise on steroids? Trump is impulsive and repulsive. Choose your poison. Time to weaponize on our side?
This current Speaker & Republican majority House would not now even consider an impeachment. Perhaps after he has destroyed a few more things, & the economy that they benefit from so grandly, they may become more inclined.
Steve asks us to start with one friend and then create a group between us to have meetings to fight trump. I have no such people who believe in what I believe in, and if they did,none that would ever join with me to fight trump. I am betting no one else in this column has a friend to start a group of ten or else we would not be reduced to writing in this column in order to find people we can talk to. But no one in this column, in any case, has the same beliefs as I do, so none of the people in this column would join me to fight trump; My beliefs are:
1)The USA needs a new constitution which will require all citizens to treat each other as family and that means
2) stop OUR BRAND of CAPITALISM, a brand that leads directly to fascism, which as we all now can see is the truth.
Of Course! That is a Given.See my 6 requirements for a brand new constituion. all of.which I listed several several times, over and over, and over, in previous Steve Schmidt columns
It has become an extremely toxic form of capitalism,where monopolies have been allowed to thrive, the Antitrust Act hasn’t been truly enforced in decades, until Lena Khan was appointed by Biden. Unfortunately the titans of business despised her & I heard the rumor that in order for Kamala to receive the full-throated endorsement & campaign funding from those on the Democrats side, like Reed Hoffman of Netflix, she had to agree to replace Ms Khan if she won.
If anyone knows that to be untrue, I welcome being corrected.
Just love that picture of Bezos and his Sue Ellen Mischke wannabe fiancé cheering on the criminal arsonist. Good luck rich guys. Remember what Hitler did to rich guys he didn’t like?
Steve Schmidt said "The same hardness, malice and greed that would lead a human being to cut down such a magnificent specimen of life for a pile of money, or perhaps for no other impulse than to destroy something beautiful, is a symptom of the same terrible disease that threatens the United States."
Yes, there is another impulse besides those: the naive intoxicating experience of the feelings of power that occur when destroying something much larger than ourselves, without any awareness, much less consideration, that what we have destroyed is better than we. It's visually expressed by the immediate lead up to Musk's first salute, -- we can SEE he's feeling the power of the moment and radiating it back and forth with his audience. He's "in the core," compressing the critical mass, feeling the heat, looking for the reaction, like the video of some of Hitler's speeches where he's up and down on his toes, keeping the rhetorical beat, shaking, punching the air, almost screaming. And the audience loves him. They just wanna be loved, ... Elon, Trump, Vivek, Bezos -- and they hope that the audience that loves the power will transfer that love to them, mistake love of their power for love of _them_.
I believe that dividing the country up may be the best thing. I do not see any future when states send the dimmest bulbs on the planet — Tommy Tuberville and Marsha Blackburn — to the Senate. It is not a future.
No, the easy answer is not always the best answer. There are good Progressive people in every single state of this UNION, we just have to organize & empowerment them.
Granted that there are good people in each state. But I just do not see enough in terms of numbers when it comes to, for instance, the Bible Belt states. Even a moderate Democrat like Doug Jones who was actually serving in the Senate and representing Alabama well lost his election to a complete moron named Tommy Tuberville.
You have done it again. A heartfelt writing that brings us all to stop and ponder what we are in the process of loosing. The question that goes unanswered is …what can we do to stop this madness.
Unfortunately the inevitable defeat of Russia will be handed to the credit of Trump instead of Biden. Biden never was able to bare his killer instinct enough to take down Putin, over much fear of nuclear Armageddon or other scenario. Biden definitely lured Putin into strongman trap of Putin overestimating himself, just like Trump. When Biden called him a killer soon after Biden took office, Putin was challenged to prove who was a real killer. That was the beginning of the end of Putin, and we will be witnessing his demise from now on. The only question is how Trump will do himself in. His crypto currency is the likely beginning of the end of Trumpism. We may live to see the killer and arsonist come to their endings during our lifetime. Brace yourself for the wildest rides. Covid will be nothing compared to what could be ahead.
I don’t just want to cry, I have been sobbing off & on since Tuesday. Every time another announcement of destruction of laws & institutions comes out, I break down crying again.
FDR was a human being. He never claimed perfection. He loved this country and all of its citizens. His wife took him to see the poverty that her clients lived in when they were engaged. FDR was stunned; he said he had no idea people lived like that. He worked himself to death with his severe hypertension. He saved us and maybe the world. My father was fighting in Germany and he told me the soldiers cried when they learned that he died. They felt that FDR had their back. We were so lucky to have him.
Looking forward to the traitor-in-chief counting down his last days in a bunker somewhere.
Disappointing to see reader comments focusing on FDR’s human failings. It’s almost invariably the same for profiles of Winston Churchill too. Without their superhuman courage, foresight and fortitude none of us would be here in the United States of America or Europe today. Think hard about that.
As for the writing, Steve, you continue to outdo yourself.
My mom, a child of the depression, idolized FDR. My mom was Jewish and she felt this way about the man who refused entry to a boat of refugees trying to escape Hitler. However he did extraordinary things for the country.
The felons comments sound like something you would hear in the early 1800’s. Talk about living in perilous times.
While it has been brought out several times previously, President Biden was our FDR. The things he did bettered the country. Like FDR, he was not a perfect man, but he did right by the country as a whole. The felon is in the process of destroying it. If President Biden was closer to FDR’s age, he would still be in the White House.
Mike, my father was a child of the depression as well, and loved FDR. He talked about the amazing things he did for the US for the rest of his life.
I wonder if his "retribution" is really directed at an America that did not re-elect him in 2020 and his targeted "enemies" are only representations. Perhaps his real dream is to destroy America and our allies (many at the UN dared to laugh at him to his face) for not sufficiently joining in his self-aggrandizement.
Your comment brought to mind the fact that where there is no justice there is no truth. Trump escaped justice by eluding trials, spending millions on lawyers to employ delay tactics to cover the truth that would emerge from a trial by juries of his peers. He was found guilty in his NYS trial of election interference and fraud because he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her mouth shut about their sordid sexual encounter. He covered it up by having Michael Cohen pay her and then re-imbursing him as if it were a legal expense. This occurred just after his infamous "pussy-grabbing" comments were made public. He escaped punishment even for these felonies since before sentencing a very foolish nation re-elected him as he claimed with no evidence that he was a victim of a "witch-hunt," a victim of political prosecution.
He will never be tried, thus justice will never be meted out, for his incitement of insurrection on 1/6, his attempted interference in the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, or for his stealing and improper storage of highly sensitive government documents. Through a failure of justice, the truth is denied and our national nightmare continues.
And now he has pardoned all of the 1/6 insurrections; the justice system that revealed the truth in their cases is now denied and Trump's followers claim they were patriots fighting to reverse a rigged election.
Where there is no justice there is no truth.
That is so true. Trump knew potential indictments were going to be brought against him before he ever declared he was running again. He only ran because he saw it as a get out of jail free card. He tried to spin the story that the witch hunt was brought against him to interfere with his campaign. I am positive he was told to lawyer up as it looked like cases were going to be brought against him long before he announced he was running. One of them was potentially while he was still president during Cohen's trial which alluded to DT as "Individual-1". Cohen was held accountable for the crime associated with "Individual-1", but not "Individual-1" was not. Dt also was heavily involved with defaming the two Georgia poll workers, but Guiliani was the only one held accountable. He is setting up the same kind of relationships in his new administration where he has other people actually doing all of his dirty work. When they have exhausted their usefulness in this regard, they will be cut off and probably demonized like he has with other people doing his bidding. And yet so many people line up to be next to carry out his deplorable acts.
Steve Schmidt: "Human beings are capable of creating transcendent beauty and apocalypses of suffering. The same hardness, malice and greed that would lead a human being to cut down such a magnificent specimen of life for a pile of money, or perhaps for no other impulse than to destroy something beautiful, is a symptom of the same terrible disease that threatens the United States." This is one of your best pieces ever, Steve; this is the perfect time to educate about FDR.🙏
Relative to the current catastrophe, FDR was great. But not without warts as well. In particular, his immigration policy was designed to ensure that a minimum number of Jewish Holocaust survivors would ever get to the US. Eleanor was a helluva lot better on race and xenophobia in general.
No where in Steve's piece did, I see him declare FDR a saint. We all have flaws of course, but none of us are as flawed as the Hitler in Chief that now resides in the WH along with all his greedy supplicants. Hell has reached our shores and is soon to wash over us with a vengeance. I hope someone has the wherewithal to save those magnificent trees.
Do a search for "M Project." Chilling enough. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/m-project-franklin-delano-roosevelt-jews
I'm assuming you are talking about project 2025?
Eleanor was his conscience .
Let’s not forget that he turned a boat of Jewish refugees around wouldn’t allow them to enter the US.
I realize that some people reading Steve’s essay may not be aware of that particular grave flaw of our govt (FDR, but not only him), but most of us do know of his imperfections.
Steve is trying mightily to bring our divided society together, to have us get in touch with our better angels, our sense of history & patriotism, & our interpersonal connections through those things. At this time, I do not believe it’s beneficial to lob more divisive bombs into the middle of the effort to bring us together to, once again, resist evil.
I never want us to forget, or attempt to erase, the ugliness in our history; but right this minute we are trying to form a battalion of patriots to fight back against a man & his followers who are, as we flounder here, actually succeeding in rewriting & erasing some very recent ugliness in our history.
Let us all set aside those farther ago warts of our heroes for now, to be picked back up & examined after we have once again defeated evil & arrived at peace. 💙
The ADL is excusing Nazi imitators? That my Jewish blood curdle.
Yes, shame on them.
">>>>lest they burn everything to ash.<<<<
Chinese philosopher/Warrior Sun Tzu: "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes."
In recent weeks I have found myself quoting Sun Tzu more frequently. Trump & Co. have become the super arsonists, giving the Nazi salute and pardoning all those anti-American insurrectionists. Those insurrectionists are homegrown terrorists. One must ponder how far they may push the envelope for tyranny and treachery. Trump's full disregard and contempt for the rule of law may signal to them license to create havoc, chaos; and, MURDER? Does Trump WANT American blood in the streets? Is his shooting someone on 5th Avenue a promise on steroids? Trump is impulsive and repulsive. Choose your poison. Time to weaponize on our side?
The felon is nowhere near as popular as the influential few would have us believe; he’s not popular at all; he’s gone mad. His grip is an illusion.
Wishful thinking aside, impeachment can gain traction with proper advertising and fearless representation.
The worm turns quickly in the world of politics
This current Speaker & Republican majority House would not now even consider an impeachment. Perhaps after he has destroyed a few more things, & the economy that they benefit from so grandly, they may become more inclined.
That’s what I think too.
I considered the registered voters that didn’t vote for reasons that they didn’t like either candidate.
A healthy percentage of leaning blue unregistered voters.
Those that voted not “for” the felon but “against”Harris
All those Harris votes that were suppressed for reasons I can’t fathom.
The regretful Red votes … that I believe are increasing in number.
And Harris votes.
Harris is no longer part of the equation.
The GOP doesn’t require the felon, they have Vance, the proverbial dog with least fleas … and they don’t like the insurrectionist either
Steve asks us to start with one friend and then create a group between us to have meetings to fight trump. I have no such people who believe in what I believe in, and if they did,none that would ever join with me to fight trump. I am betting no one else in this column has a friend to start a group of ten or else we would not be reduced to writing in this column in order to find people we can talk to. But no one in this column, in any case, has the same beliefs as I do, so none of the people in this column would join me to fight trump; My beliefs are:
1)The USA needs a new constitution which will require all citizens to treat each other as family and that means
2) stop OUR BRAND of CAPITALISM, a brand that leads directly to fascism, which as we all now can see is the truth.
I believe those 2 things & several others that fit with them. Those 2 are basics though.
I would add one more that I feel is basic & the loss of it has helped to lead us to where we are
3) Restore the absolute separation of church & state.
Of Course! That is a Given.See my 6 requirements for a brand new constituion. all of.which I listed several several times, over and over, and over, in previous Steve Schmidt columns
I would join in your fight. I believe capitalism reduces people to cogs in a machine. Capitalism in America is thriving, but humans aren’t.
It has become an extremely toxic form of capitalism,where monopolies have been allowed to thrive, the Antitrust Act hasn’t been truly enforced in decades, until Lena Khan was appointed by Biden. Unfortunately the titans of business despised her & I heard the rumor that in order for Kamala to receive the full-throated endorsement & campaign funding from those on the Democrats side, like Reed Hoffman of Netflix, she had to agree to replace Ms Khan if she won.
If anyone knows that to be untrue, I welcome being corrected.
Just love that picture of Bezos and his Sue Ellen Mischke wannabe fiancé cheering on the criminal arsonist. Good luck rich guys. Remember what Hitler did to rich guys he didn’t like?
Steve Schmidt said "The same hardness, malice and greed that would lead a human being to cut down such a magnificent specimen of life for a pile of money, or perhaps for no other impulse than to destroy something beautiful, is a symptom of the same terrible disease that threatens the United States."
Yes, there is another impulse besides those: the naive intoxicating experience of the feelings of power that occur when destroying something much larger than ourselves, without any awareness, much less consideration, that what we have destroyed is better than we. It's visually expressed by the immediate lead up to Musk's first salute, -- we can SEE he's feeling the power of the moment and radiating it back and forth with his audience. He's "in the core," compressing the critical mass, feeling the heat, looking for the reaction, like the video of some of Hitler's speeches where he's up and down on his toes, keeping the rhetorical beat, shaking, punching the air, almost screaming. And the audience loves him. They just wanna be loved, ... Elon, Trump, Vivek, Bezos -- and they hope that the audience that loves the power will transfer that love to them, mistake love of their power for love of _them_.
So many of them with Daddy issues!
I believe that dividing the country up may be the best thing. I do not see any future when states send the dimmest bulbs on the planet — Tommy Tuberville and Marsha Blackburn — to the Senate. It is not a future.
No, the easy answer is not always the best answer. There are good Progressive people in every single state of this UNION, we just have to organize & empowerment them.
Granted that there are good people in each state. But I just do not see enough in terms of numbers when it comes to, for instance, the Bible Belt states. Even a moderate Democrat like Doug Jones who was actually serving in the Senate and representing Alabama well lost his election to a complete moron named Tommy Tuberville.
You have done it again. A heartfelt writing that brings us all to stop and ponder what we are in the process of loosing. The question that goes unanswered is …what can we do to stop this madness.
Unfortunately the inevitable defeat of Russia will be handed to the credit of Trump instead of Biden. Biden never was able to bare his killer instinct enough to take down Putin, over much fear of nuclear Armageddon or other scenario. Biden definitely lured Putin into strongman trap of Putin overestimating himself, just like Trump. When Biden called him a killer soon after Biden took office, Putin was challenged to prove who was a real killer. That was the beginning of the end of Putin, and we will be witnessing his demise from now on. The only question is how Trump will do himself in. His crypto currency is the likely beginning of the end of Trumpism. We may live to see the killer and arsonist come to their endings during our lifetime. Brace yourself for the wildest rides. Covid will be nothing compared to what could be ahead.
Drumph’s wanting to use our Treasury to buy & stockpile crypto is going to cause a horrid financial destruction & the deep recession that follows.
Try to stock up on foods & absolute necessities NOW. I have been
Wow Steve, this writing today is excellent! The stark contrast makes one think it can't be real. But it is and I just want to cry.
I don’t just want to cry, I have been sobbing off & on since Tuesday. Every time another announcement of destruction of laws & institutions comes out, I break down crying again.
Steve’s essays boost my spirits & give me hope.