Trump is stripping people bare
Yesterday, Donald Trump, summoned a slew of employees from gigantic corporations to ask him questions that ranged from the completely inane to the searingly stupid. The relationship is utterly symbiotic. Trump needs a foil, and the American media is his Stradivarius.
When Trump takes the podium he is the ringmaster of his own circus and surreal creature cantina, where the media thirsts for drops of nonsense to quench their insatiable desire for the type of stupidity that can be harvested into clickbait. It is then fed to audiences penned in by invisible fences guarded by algorithms.
They call it news.
Meanwhile, the world is burning.
The most newsworthy aspect of Trump’s encounter with the Meadowlark Lemons of journalism was the fact that the most prolific liar in American history has started to tell the truth with some degree of consistency.
Here is what he said about the American media:
We need a great media and a fair media. You need a fair press.
America’s most powerful are lining up at Mar-a-Lago.
Before reading about Donald Trump’s ecstasy at having Sergey Brin come courting it is important to understand how small, cloistered and interconnected the world apart truly is.
Brin, the co-founder of Google, is worth $134 billion. He is also the ex-husband of Nicole Shanahan, who became a billionaire in the divorce settlement, before becoming Robert Kennedy’s running mate, and before he joined MAGA and put polio vaccines in the crosshairs.
By the way, here is what a polio ward looked like:
For the record, Trump is for the polio vaccine. It’s as if he wanted to tell us that he could spell Salk. He was ready:
You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. That’s not going to happen.
Trump’s long soliloquy about Pete Hegseth giving up a career as a Fox News morning clown and scourge of Republican women’s conventions was almost touching.
I guess this is Trump’s version of a call to national service:
It would be a tragedy [if he wasn’t confirmed] because he was going big places at Fox. A lot of money.
Trump made clear that he is coming after the Des Moines Register and the errant pollster who got it wrong with a suit that was filed last night.
Like I said, running an American newsroom is going to take a lot of fortitude over the next four years.
Trump is blasting through a layer of weakness and decay that has long faced him as unworthy opposition that was not what it claimed to be.
This is a moment when Trump is stripping people bare by illuminating who they are — by sitting still and making them march to him.
Justin Trudeau came on bended knee, and his government will soon collapse with yesterday’s resignation of finance minister Chrystia Freeland.
Joe and Mika came on bended knee, and imploded the ratings of their show and MSNBC with a naked act of self-interest and capitulation.
ABC News settled a lawsuit that they would have won, and lowered the temperature in every American newsroom by 50 degrees in an instant.
Jeff Bezos is tampering with ethics that, once vandalized, cannot be easily refaced.
Patrick Soon-Shiong of the LA Times is like a caricature of a collaborator who can’t stop dancing no matter how slow the music gets. He’s going to tap all night long if he has to, so long as someone picks up the echo in Mar-a-Lago where licenses to print money are handed out to the richest in the world by the most powerful in the world.
Everywhere one looks these days, someone, somewhere is looking to get in line and move close to power. There is a great taking afoot. No matter how rich a person gets it seems for some that $100 billion is never enough when someone has $400 billion. Closing the gap during the Trump era is going to be called “patriotism”for a good long time before someone steps forward and calls it by its name, which is theft.
Donald Trump will take power in 34 days. There seems to be nothing unusual about someone like Steve Bannon standing up and saying this in front of a group of young people at the New York Young Republican Club’s 112th annual gala:
Donald John Trump is going to raise his hand on the King James Bible and take the oath of office, his third victory and his second term. Since it doesn't actually say “consecutive” in the Constitution, I don't know, maybe we do it again in ‘28? Are you guys down for that? Trump ‘28?
Two years ago, this is what I wrote about what it seemed to me that Donald Trump was promising:
Donald Trump has made eight promises that are at the center of his 2024 presidential campaign:
He has promised revenge against his enemies, which includes everybody who has dared oppose him.
He has promised to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1791, and deploy the Armed Forces of the United States of America against the American people for the purposes of crushing protests and dissent. He seeks to declare martial law. Previously, he has inquired about the possibility of the US Military shooting peacefully protesting Americans on his orders.
He has promised to arrest, harass, prosecute and destroy his political opponents through imprisonment.
He has promised to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists who sought to destroy the republic and bloodied the peaceful transfer of power, while desecrating the United States Capitol.
He has promised to withdraw the United States from NATO, which will cause global chaos, and ultimately, the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Americans who will fight the wars caused by the insanity, stupidity and ignorance of men like Trump.
He has promised to build concentration camps where millions of people will be rounded up for deportation with police state tactics, where uniforms of service are turned into uniforms of brutality and oppression.
He has promised to fundamentally dismantle the US civil service and competent government so that he may fill it from top to bottom with obedient cronies who will attack the rule of law, the US Constitution, decency, and ultimately, the American people.
He has promised to cut off the defense of Ukraine, which will escalate Russian aggression and widen the war in Europe.
The moment has arrived.
Trump is a philosopher of “f*ck you-ism,” with no plan, no vision and no hope for anything beyond his promises of vengeance. There is something important to remember about those types of promises. There has never been a person who promised them who achieved political power and didn’t deliver on it. Ever.
I have never envied the obscenely rich. In fact they are like dog's chasing their tails and will never be satisfied. I pity them. I wrote this letter to the editor of my local newspaper and I believe it was inspired by the same sentiments that led Steve to write his essay for today:
Behind all the rot plaguing our country is irrational greed. We are greedy for "money;” numbers stored in our computers as the portfolio so many care about more than anything else. We have forgotten that money has no intrinsic value, functioning as a store of value, measure of value, and medium of exchange; a tool, not a "thing in itself,". At the heart of the Trump/Maga/Christian Nationalist movement are pride and hate; MONEY is their god. If others suffer so that true believers can feel good about their portfolios, amounts of money impossible to spend on the most flagrant self-indulgence, but in their minds a reflection of their self-worth, power, and success, it makes them even prouder.
If most people are so naive they can not see through this delusion or suffer from it, there will be no saving the human species. War, corruption, and exploitation will continue as people increasingly lose touch with what really makes life worth living, security, a sense of community and belonging, mutual support systems, and joy and awe at what the natural world offers us.
If we can’t abandon our zero sum games we will never achieve a non-profit single-payer health care system that provides the best medical care possible to all, a democratic system without corruption, guaranteeing everyone freedom from want and the respect we all crave, or an end to international disputes and war. Climate change, pollution, deforestation and extinction of species will doom the planet.
Let’s begin to care.
Much of the media is the enemy of the people, and swung the last election to Trump via daily barrages that overlooked a felon, a sexual abuser, a grifter, a noted crook as if equal to the other candidate. This was criminal, and they should be treated as such. Boycotted. ABC has pointed Trump to a very lucrative market where people obey in advance. Sue the media, a brand new market for the grifter. Graft is Donald Trump’s agenda and intention. Legal graft is best, but not the BIG buck$. That is a distraction from what is really in play. How about privatizing the post office? An illegal graft pipeline. How about privatizing schools? An illegal graft pipeline. How about building and operating detention centers? An illegal graft pipeline. Kickbacks that you will never see: the bitcoin exchange, the Kushner-Saudi lashup, etc. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/rape-the-us-treasury?r=3m1bs