This is the most frightening column you have written yet. So many people do not know this history and so are blind to what is happening every day. Steve--can you not try to publish this in an Op-Ed? To the NYTimes? The Washington Post? Somewhere it will be read by many.
Personally, I think they know EXACTLY what they are doing. I think this plan has been a long time in the making going as far back as Ronald Reagan. This did not happen in a vacuum in the last 5 to 10 years. We are living through very, very tumultuous times.
I like Kinzinger's strategy, Europe lock out Trump and give Ukrane more support. My father and his two brothers all served in WW2. Oldest brother a P-38 pilot was KIA in North Africa. One of their high school buddies an Army Ranger came ashore on D-Day went into France and in a farm house, fought the Germans until they ran out of ammo. Were captured, spent a year in a POW camp, escaped and made it home. They are all gone now. We cannot let this happen again. Their efforts and patriotism cannot be forgotten nor the innocents who were done in by senseless hate.
Yes absolutely Raissa....NATO claims ALL members must vote for Ukraine to be admitted....but we know Hungary, Italy, and Turkey wont....but so what. Change rules to an 80% majority...what is Hungary gonna do to retaliate? They are a weak and impotent nation.
Yes Deborah, one the saddest state of affairs in my lifetime. All that the greatest generation fought for. For what . . . . this? My father fought for this! Last November I awoke to find how much hatred there is in this country. Germany did something about it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. People don't grow up this way . . . they're taught, this is passed down.
And the psychological damage that the two world wars had on our fathers and grand fathers, and on their wives/families is incalculable. Some of my cousins and I blame our grandfather's time in the French trenches of WWI for some of our families struggles today.
It's because they are no longer alive that this is happening. Those who lived it and remember it are gone, allowing the space to give oxygen to the fantasy of fascism.
My father and his two brothers also fought in WW2. And when Putin started his full scale invasion in 2022, a great and ominous feeling entered my body that this was as serious as WW2 and as necessary to fight. But our country has bought into fantasies of being existentially safe and somehow impregnable, and dismissed the needs and realities of other lands as if they are basically of little or no importance and can not threaten us. But this is real, and those who disdain reality are fools that will lead us into losses we can’t yet imagine.
You promised the Truth Steve, and you delivered it today.
The Tyrant always needs more power because there is always a new threat perceived that he needs absolute power to destroy.
The vortex of American Tyranny is growing and it is growing out of control. We now have Trump, Musk, and Vance openly embracing the Nazi vision for Tyranny.
Musk with a Nazi Salute on Inauguration Day and doing all his fortunes can to return the actual Nazis back into power in Germany.
Vance, declaring the United States has left the Allies, openly switching sides, to team up with today's heirs of Adolf Hitler and Chairman Mao- Putin and Xi. How dare Vance walk on the ground that launched the Nazi concentration camps, Dachau, strutting about as he revives the purposes of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich. It is beyond nauseating.
But the question is, as those in power in the United States, those who command without any challenge the world's mightiest military, those who command enough nuclear weapons to destroy all of humanity, who will stop those in such power from switching sides? Who exactly will stop the US from strangling Ukraine, helping Russia level the rest of the nation? Who exactly will stop the new favored son of Dachau, Vance, the new American lover of Hitler, Musk, from egging Putin on to conquer as much of Europe as possible?
Not just who, but how?
Hitler and Imperial Japan nearly enslaved all of humanity, with some machine guns, some biplanes and bombers, even some rudimentary rockets. Think what today's Nazis and fascists can do with AI, nuclear weapons, armies and navies beyond imagining.
Countries go dark, that is now new. The bad guys win, that is not new.
I remain deeply grateful to you Steve Schmidt, you beam the lantern bright and strong, and give us all hope. We must stop the American coup and stop our descent into unimaginable hell. And I do believe we can.
Steve, I no longer believe these guys don't get it, or it got past them, or they didn't comprehend the experience. No. I think they have a strategy of patronizing and then blindsiding to demonstrate the callous disregard and contempt they hold for others who actually bought that they were being remotely empathetic in the first place. They say their views out loud. That we don't expect people to lie or be duplicitous or to be acting in ways contrary to how they present themselves, a matter of being able to function among other people in society, is a blindspot they're taking advantage of. They are not empathetic. They do not have sympathy. They are sociopaths. They're incapable of those emotional strengths. And they see anyone who functions that way as weak and pathetic and worthy of their contempt. JD fully comprehended the experience. What he walks away with though is, he fooled everyone and now he wants everyone to feel and experience what fools they are that he outsmarted them.
Sociopaths is a perfect term. They know exactly what they are doing and so do the people and politicians that support them. THEY DON'T CARE, PERIOD. No more making excuses for them like they don't know history, all they do is watch FOX news etc. No excuse for this except satanic greed. And what is worse, the public that supports these monsters will have nothing to show for it. The monsters yes - land and/or wealth, but Joe down the street - nada.
Beyond contempt, JD and all the other sociopaths are afraid of people who are empathic because empathy means you care, and if you care you will question hurtful actions made by destructive people. Care is an alien world which threatens these horrible people... which inspires me to care more and more very day.
Thank you for one of your most powerful, and meaninful, narrations yet, and for including "The Memorial to the Children Victims of the War, Lidice, Czech Republic." "We cannot escape history"--Abraham Lincoln
Steve, you really need to get your content out to the masses. Your articles are always so moving. Remind, or teach, the people who voted for frump what living and sacrifice really looks like. 🥲
I think Seth Moulton was inspired and learned a thing or two during Steve's recent interview. Perhaps he could send his posts directly to all members of Congress.
Thanks Steve.... He is more than a Hillbilly snake oil ... he is lethal. You wrote a great speech about what America should be and used to be..not anymore.. I think that what Zelinsky said in Munich is something that the European countries should do.. He said that Europe should form it's own Military .. Keep its indiviual defense but build there own Military ... I think if they were do that it would give the piece of shit fuckhead pause. He is so disgusting I cannot take it.. How dare he say Zelinsky will be left out ot the peace talks with Russia ..Fuck him. I can't help cursing right now..It helps me breathe.
That anyone could visit the Dachau memorial and then go forth to embrace right wing ideology is beyond my comprehension. When I I visited, what struck me after being utterly overwhelmed by the memorial itself, was the incredible proximity of the town itself to the camp. That people lived their lives pretending that nothing nefarious was happening behind those fences, beggars belief. Are we going to be the people who allow TrumpMusk, Vance, and company to violate our humanity while we go about our lives hoping that they won’t point their finger at us?
The people of the towns near the camps knew. Many of them worked at the camps. You don't keep horror stories like this quiet. I'm sure a gun literally was to their heads if they spoke out. Look at the cowards in our Congress now. No gun to their head and all you hear are crickets.
JD Vance is pure evil, a hollow man with no conscience. Only a sociopath of the highest order could walk back out the iron gate at Dachau and then meet with leaders of the AfD. His actions were a display of maximum depravity, of in-your-face depravity.
I wish I could find something charitable to say about Vance, but I can’t. I have as much disdain for him as I do the voters in Ohio who thought he was a better person than Tim Ryan.
And for that we can thank that stupid, empty suit, Chuck Schumer, who refused to fund Tim’s campaign. For that I can never forgive him. Why don’t the Dems replace him with a worthy fighter?
Ohio voters also dumped Sherrod Brown, a man who advocated for working people, and elected a shady car dealer who has his nose so far up Trump’s butt as to be a useless quack.
I agree about Schumer, but Vance received 53 percent of the vote to Ryan’s 47 percent. It was not exactly a close election and the voters there should have known better, frankly.
You have described this horror before Steve and each reading leaves a fresh wound. Imperfect as our own history is, we are indeed the only nation capable of holding liberal alliances together and protecting the free world from this dark shadow that stalks history and threatens our future.
But how do we stop this? The Republican Party has capitulated, Democrats are rudderless, the courts can’t keep up and Ukraine cannot be expected to protect Europe from aggression alone.
What levers of power can we use as our own government is being dismantled and our partners and allies in peace are being driven away. Our allies forgave us for Trump’s first term, believing it was a mistake. We have no such excuse this time. We are no longer reliable, let alone respected.
Vance and Hegseth have sullied the honor and trust we with build with our wisdom, blood and treasure over the past 80 years. Instead of building more support for Ukraine, they’ve signaled a desire to cut our losses. They are not statesmen, they are thugs. Defending Nazis in Germany? Throwing away valuable bargaining chips for Ukraine’s peace? Extorting Ukraine for rare mineral in exchange for protection?
Our democratically elected leaders have turned on our nation. The next election is nearly 2 years away. How much damage will they do in 2 years?
Do you honestly think we'll have fair and free elections in 2026? Something needs to happen before that. An election is not going to get rid of these people.
This is the most frightening column you have written yet. So many people do not know this history and so are blind to what is happening every day. Steve--can you not try to publish this in an Op-Ed? To the NYTimes? The Washington Post? Somewhere it will be read by many.
Please, DO IT.
I second your request of Steve to publish this column as an editorial.
Having been to Dachau and felt the souls there, for Vance to go through it with a closed mind is despicable.
I would argue a dead soul vs. a closed mind. Eyes are the window to the soul, it is said.
This gave me goose bumps.
Yes, Steve. Put this out there, for all historical illiterates to read and see.
Good grief!! How can “an American politician” be this CLUELESS??
But then again, walking a fascist through the remains of a concentration camp is tantamount to waking a cockroach through treacle.
This clueless, heartless, thug doesn’t deserve to visit and walk the grounds of the resting place of thousands of innocents.
It’s desecration.
It’s disrespectful.
Germany threw him out with the dishwater.
I would have emptied him into a sewer where him and his ilk belong.
Douchebag.
This is not clueless, it's methodical.....
WE need to throw him out along with the rest of the nazis who have infiltrated our government.
That is at the core of my attempt to understand these guys.
ARE they clueless, or is it all an act, and they know EXACTLY what they're doing?
Personally, I think they know EXACTLY what they are doing. I think this plan has been a long time in the making going as far back as Ronald Reagan. This did not happen in a vacuum in the last 5 to 10 years. We are living through very, very tumultuous times.
I like Kinzinger's strategy, Europe lock out Trump and give Ukrane more support. My father and his two brothers all served in WW2. Oldest brother a P-38 pilot was KIA in North Africa. One of their high school buddies an Army Ranger came ashore on D-Day went into France and in a farm house, fought the Germans until they ran out of ammo. Were captured, spent a year in a POW camp, escaped and made it home. They are all gone now. We cannot let this happen again. Their efforts and patriotism cannot be forgotten nor the innocents who were done in by senseless hate.
Yes! As I commented on a Tim Snyder piece, Europe dumps the US and becomes NATO’s core. The US then has no seat at the table.
Yes absolutely Raissa....NATO claims ALL members must vote for Ukraine to be admitted....but we know Hungary, Italy, and Turkey wont....but so what. Change rules to an 80% majority...what is Hungary gonna do to retaliate? They are a weak and impotent nation.
As much as I miss my parents generation, I'm glad most of them aren't alive anymore to see this after their sacrifice during WWII.
Yes Deborah, one the saddest state of affairs in my lifetime. All that the greatest generation fought for. For what . . . . this? My father fought for this! Last November I awoke to find how much hatred there is in this country. Germany did something about it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. People don't grow up this way . . . they're taught, this is passed down.
And the psychological damage that the two world wars had on our fathers and grand fathers, and on their wives/families is incalculable. Some of my cousins and I blame our grandfather's time in the French trenches of WWI for some of our families struggles today.
It's because they are no longer alive that this is happening. Those who lived it and remember it are gone, allowing the space to give oxygen to the fantasy of fascism.
My father and his two brothers also fought in WW2. And when Putin started his full scale invasion in 2022, a great and ominous feeling entered my body that this was as serious as WW2 and as necessary to fight. But our country has bought into fantasies of being existentially safe and somehow impregnable, and dismissed the needs and realities of other lands as if they are basically of little or no importance and can not threaten us. But this is real, and those who disdain reality are fools that will lead us into losses we can’t yet imagine.
You promised the Truth Steve, and you delivered it today.
The Tyrant always needs more power because there is always a new threat perceived that he needs absolute power to destroy.
The vortex of American Tyranny is growing and it is growing out of control. We now have Trump, Musk, and Vance openly embracing the Nazi vision for Tyranny.
Musk with a Nazi Salute on Inauguration Day and doing all his fortunes can to return the actual Nazis back into power in Germany.
Vance, declaring the United States has left the Allies, openly switching sides, to team up with today's heirs of Adolf Hitler and Chairman Mao- Putin and Xi. How dare Vance walk on the ground that launched the Nazi concentration camps, Dachau, strutting about as he revives the purposes of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich. It is beyond nauseating.
But the question is, as those in power in the United States, those who command without any challenge the world's mightiest military, those who command enough nuclear weapons to destroy all of humanity, who will stop those in such power from switching sides? Who exactly will stop the US from strangling Ukraine, helping Russia level the rest of the nation? Who exactly will stop the new favored son of Dachau, Vance, the new American lover of Hitler, Musk, from egging Putin on to conquer as much of Europe as possible?
Not just who, but how?
Hitler and Imperial Japan nearly enslaved all of humanity, with some machine guns, some biplanes and bombers, even some rudimentary rockets. Think what today's Nazis and fascists can do with AI, nuclear weapons, armies and navies beyond imagining.
Countries go dark, that is now new. The bad guys win, that is not new.
I remain deeply grateful to you Steve Schmidt, you beam the lantern bright and strong, and give us all hope. We must stop the American coup and stop our descent into unimaginable hell. And I do believe we can.
But how? Especially now?
Steve, I no longer believe these guys don't get it, or it got past them, or they didn't comprehend the experience. No. I think they have a strategy of patronizing and then blindsiding to demonstrate the callous disregard and contempt they hold for others who actually bought that they were being remotely empathetic in the first place. They say their views out loud. That we don't expect people to lie or be duplicitous or to be acting in ways contrary to how they present themselves, a matter of being able to function among other people in society, is a blindspot they're taking advantage of. They are not empathetic. They do not have sympathy. They are sociopaths. They're incapable of those emotional strengths. And they see anyone who functions that way as weak and pathetic and worthy of their contempt. JD fully comprehended the experience. What he walks away with though is, he fooled everyone and now he wants everyone to feel and experience what fools they are that he outsmarted them.
They are Nazis
Sociopaths is a perfect term. They know exactly what they are doing and so do the people and politicians that support them. THEY DON'T CARE, PERIOD. No more making excuses for them like they don't know history, all they do is watch FOX news etc. No excuse for this except satanic greed. And what is worse, the public that supports these monsters will have nothing to show for it. The monsters yes - land and/or wealth, but Joe down the street - nada.
Beyond contempt, JD and all the other sociopaths are afraid of people who are empathic because empathy means you care, and if you care you will question hurtful actions made by destructive people. Care is an alien world which threatens these horrible people... which inspires me to care more and more very day.
Thank you for one of your most powerful, and meaninful, narrations yet, and for including "The Memorial to the Children Victims of the War, Lidice, Czech Republic." "We cannot escape history"--Abraham Lincoln
Steve, you really need to get your content out to the masses. Your articles are always so moving. Remind, or teach, the people who voted for frump what living and sacrifice really looks like. 🥲
I think Seth Moulton was inspired and learned a thing or two during Steve's recent interview. Perhaps he could send his posts directly to all members of Congress.
Thanks Steve.... He is more than a Hillbilly snake oil ... he is lethal. You wrote a great speech about what America should be and used to be..not anymore.. I think that what Zelinsky said in Munich is something that the European countries should do.. He said that Europe should form it's own Military .. Keep its indiviual defense but build there own Military ... I think if they were do that it would give the piece of shit fuckhead pause. He is so disgusting I cannot take it.. How dare he say Zelinsky will be left out ot the peace talks with Russia ..Fuck him. I can't help cursing right now..It helps me breathe.
This would be wonderful...my heart would be happy.
That anyone could visit the Dachau memorial and then go forth to embrace right wing ideology is beyond my comprehension. When I I visited, what struck me after being utterly overwhelmed by the memorial itself, was the incredible proximity of the town itself to the camp. That people lived their lives pretending that nothing nefarious was happening behind those fences, beggars belief. Are we going to be the people who allow TrumpMusk, Vance, and company to violate our humanity while we go about our lives hoping that they won’t point their finger at us?
The people of the towns near the camps knew. Many of them worked at the camps. You don't keep horror stories like this quiet. I'm sure a gun literally was to their heads if they spoke out. Look at the cowards in our Congress now. No gun to their head and all you hear are crickets.
Yes.
JD Vance is pure evil, a hollow man with no conscience. Only a sociopath of the highest order could walk back out the iron gate at Dachau and then meet with leaders of the AfD. His actions were a display of maximum depravity, of in-your-face depravity.
It makes him a Nazi
"What does that make JD Vance exactly?"
"It makes him a Nazi"
And someday some future essayist like Steve will drive that point home. Not everyone is going to forget who the real evil monsters are in OUR times.
I wish I could find something charitable to say about Vance, but I can’t. I have as much disdain for him as I do the voters in Ohio who thought he was a better person than Tim Ryan.
And for that we can thank that stupid, empty suit, Chuck Schumer, who refused to fund Tim’s campaign. For that I can never forgive him. Why don’t the Dems replace him with a worthy fighter?
Ohio voters also dumped Sherrod Brown, a man who advocated for working people, and elected a shady car dealer who has his nose so far up Trump’s butt as to be a useless quack.
That one really hurt. Sherrod Brown was one of the best. I lost a lot of respect for Ohio when the voters got their attack of stupid.
It is maddening what people are doing. They are handing the country over to thieves who won’t stop until they get every last dollar from them.
I agree about Schumer, but Vance received 53 percent of the vote to Ryan’s 47 percent. It was not exactly a close election and the voters there should have known better, frankly.
He had a choice.
Steve, Hillbilly in Snake Oil in Munich… is a masterpiece. J D Vance, his boss and his wife are cut of the same: fascism… thank you, Steve…
You have described this horror before Steve and each reading leaves a fresh wound. Imperfect as our own history is, we are indeed the only nation capable of holding liberal alliances together and protecting the free world from this dark shadow that stalks history and threatens our future.
But how do we stop this? The Republican Party has capitulated, Democrats are rudderless, the courts can’t keep up and Ukraine cannot be expected to protect Europe from aggression alone.
What levers of power can we use as our own government is being dismantled and our partners and allies in peace are being driven away. Our allies forgave us for Trump’s first term, believing it was a mistake. We have no such excuse this time. We are no longer reliable, let alone respected.
Vance and Hegseth have sullied the honor and trust we with build with our wisdom, blood and treasure over the past 80 years. Instead of building more support for Ukraine, they’ve signaled a desire to cut our losses. They are not statesmen, they are thugs. Defending Nazis in Germany? Throwing away valuable bargaining chips for Ukraine’s peace? Extorting Ukraine for rare mineral in exchange for protection?
Our democratically elected leaders have turned on our nation. The next election is nearly 2 years away. How much damage will they do in 2 years?
Do you honestly think we'll have fair and free elections in 2026? Something needs to happen before that. An election is not going to get rid of these people.
I can only hope. In the meantime all we have is pressure on our representatives and the courts.
May we never forget! NEVER AGAIN
Never again: never forget. And now never give in in advance.