Trumpism
PART III
âIn With The Newâ by Harry Bliss
January 2, 2021
A photo op, World War III, and bleach injections:
The wildest politcal moments in the US in 2020
So much has happened in 2020 that people often forget Donald Trump was impeached.
By Griffin Connolly and John T. Bennet
The final year of the Trump administration has been full of tumult â from the third presidential impeachment in US history, to the presidentâs combative response to a reinvigorated racial justice movement, to his governing and personal trials with the coronavirus pandemic.
Few Americans who survived 2020 will forget the names George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, whose deaths from encounters with police reignited the conversation surrounding law enforcement and the treatment of Black Americans in this country. Millions will remember the more than 330,000 spouses, parents, children, siblings, and friends who died from the coronavirus pandemic.
These historic events unfolded in the middle of a presidential election year with a White House incumbent, Donald Trump, whose flair for the dramatic produced some of the most iconically absurd moments this country has witnessed.
January 2021
The Gate of Heaven Is Everywhere
Among the
contemplatives
By Fred Bahnson
All happy religious families are alike; each unhappy religious family is unhappy in its own way.
The family of American Christianity has been unhappy for quite some time, so much so that itâs hard for many of us to imagine that it could be otherwise. The past four years have brought these feuds into the open. For Catholics, there is the glaring pedophilia scandal. For evangelicals, there is disagreement over church leadersâ alliance with power, their unwavering fealty, since 2016, to the crotch-grabbing Caligula of Mar-a-Lago, whose every abuse of office made them double down on their support.
For mainline Protestants like me, the discontent has been less visible. Denominational squabbles over human sexuality have made headlines, but across every denomination a certain lassitude pervades, a general lukewarmness that makes it feel as though Protestantism has run its course. When the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation rolled around in 2017, a few academics published monographs on Luther, and a commemorative study Bible appeared, but with church membership declining in every mainline denomination, Protestant circles shrugged. We knew there wasnât much to crow about. What was it, exactly, we were still protesting?
January 5, 2021
Former defense secretary
urges top brass to resign or
resist questionable Trump orders
All 10 living former secretaries of defense signed a column published in The Washington Post on Sunday that urged the Trump administration to allow a peaceful transition of power and to keep the Pentagon out of it. One of the signatories was William Cohen, a former Republican senator who served as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton. He joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.
January 3, 2021
All 10 living former defense secretaries:
Involving the military in election disputes
would cross into dangerous territory
January 4, 2021
Nationâs capital braces for violence as extremist groups converge to protest Trumpâs election loss
By Will Carless
Protests planned for Washington, D.C., this week are likely to attract large numbers of President Donald Trumpâs supporters, including conspiracy theorists, militia groups and members of the extremist group the Proud Boys, raising concerns of violent confrontations.
The rallies are planned to coincide with the official congressional vote to certify the Electoral College votes from the November presidential election and declare President-elect Joe Biden the winner. Far-right groups from around the country have vowed to descend on the capital to protest the vote and attempt to pressure lawmakers into voting against certifying the results, an outcome that even the leaders of the effort admit is extraordinarily unlikely to happen.
Trump himself has amplified conspiracy theories about the election and encouraged his supporters to show up at the protests. âStatistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!â he tweeted on December 18. On Sunday, the president again promoted the protests, writing on Twitter, âI will be there. Historic day!â
January 7, 2021
World leaders react to siege on the Capitol
International headlines offered reactions to the thousands of Trump supporters storming the Capitol building.
Investigates
Extremists intensify calls for violence ahead of
Inauguration Day
By
Updated Friday, January 8, 2021
âTrump or war. Today. That simple.â
WELCOME TO THE DONALD!
Welcome to the forum of choice for The President
of The United States, Donald Trump!
Be advised this forum is for serious supporters of
President Trump. We have discussions, memes,
AMAs, and more. We are not politically correct.
Jan. 8, 2021
Republican lawmakers caught helping
pro-Trump mobs at U.S. Capitol
By Jon Skolnik
âWeâre in! Letâs go, keep it moving, baby!â shouted Derrick Evans, a newly elected Republican member of West Virginiaâs House of Delegates, as he is seen pushing his way through the rotunda at the U.S. Capitol with a throng of violent Trump supporters in a video live-streamed on Facebook.
âTrump, Trump, Trump!â he chanted as attackers rushed the doors.
The video, deleted by Evans after circulating Twitter, shows him donning a helmet and military gear, shouting, âDerrick Evans is in the Capitol [âŠ] Patriots inside, baby!â
Evans, 34, won his first term as a state lawmaker in November and was charged by the Department of Justice on Friday for illegally entering the Capitol. He is one of several elected Republican lawmakers across the country who have been identified as either participating in or aiding violent pro-Trump attacks on legislative bodies this week.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
January 8, 2021
Jonah Goldberg, author of Suicide of the West, argues that the rise of both liberal and conservative populism threatens to undermine Americaâs fundamental ideals.
Ways To Change The World
January 8, 2021
Has the threat of Trump really gone?
Timothy Snyder is an American author and historian. He is a professor of history at Yale University and a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He talks to Krishnan about the future of Trump and âTrumpismâ, the rising influence of Russia and Britainâs next move.
Jan. 8, 2021
U.S. Capitol siege emboldens motley crew of extremists
By Ted Hesson, Ned Parker, Kristina Cooke, and Julia Harte
WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) â As the nation recoiled in horror at scenes of rioting and chaos in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, some right-wing and anti-government extremists saw the violence as the fulfillment of a patriotic duty or opportunity to advance their agenda.
Among the inspired was Mike Dunn, a 20-year-old follower of the âboogalooâ anti-government movement, whose adherents anticipate a revolution toppling the federal government or a second U.S. civil war.
January 9, 2021
Michael Moore: The Terrorist Attack Is NOT Over.
Many of the attackers are still in D.C. They were aided and abetted by certain members of the police, military and Republican party. And Wednesdayâs terror attack was just a dry run for what they are planning next. Michael Moore shares his latest, urgent thoughts on the terror attack that occurred this week and the one we must prepare for.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
January 9, 2021
Eight Questions For Former President Barack Obama
1. How and why should young leaders remain optimistic amid setbacks?
2. Do you maintain relationships with other world leaders?
3. How do you define âa leaderâ?
4. Is it time for America to relinquish its role as a global police power?
5. How do you grapple with Americaâs controversial history of foreign intervention?
6. How do you feel about the slogan âdefund the policeâ?
7. Does the current political landscape favor Republicans with radical views?
8. What has the transition to civilian life been like?
NewsHour Weekend Full Episode
January 10, 2021
On this edition for Sunday, January 10, lawmakers weigh impeachment in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, Americans continue to get vaccinated as the virus rages across the nation, and author and former CBS news anchor Dan Rather shares his perspective on this inflection point in American politics. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York.
January 10, 2021
The Savior, the Devil, and Donald Trump
Pt. 1. How archetypal images of Devil or Savior appear in the same person
By Stephen A. Diamond Ph.D.
This week Americans face a bizarre phenomenon: We have an outgoing incumbent President in the White House who is seen by some as a savior, and by others as the proverbial Devil incarnate. The Antichrist.
Can both sides be correct? What could possibly account for this incredibly polarized, and therefore divisive and antagonistic, perception of the very same person? Why do half of us see the negative side of Donald Trump, while the other half for some reason see only the positive, to the point of not only uncivil verbal hostility, but now of violent insurrection and the possibility of bloody civil war?
CNN politics
Jan. 12, 2021
READ: Military Joint chiefs statement condemning âsediton and insurrectionâ at US Capitol
Americaâs most senior general Mark Milley and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is comprised of the heads of each military branch, issued a statement Tuesday condemning the violent invasion of the US Capitol last week and reminding service members of their obligation to support and defend the Constitution and reject extremism.
January 12, 2021
Former Cult Follower Describes How President Trump Has Created a Cult Following.
This week, Katie Couric spoke to Dr. Steven Hassan, who is an expert on Undue Influence, brainwashing, and cults. He writes and speaks out about the importance of viewing terrorist groups as destructive cults, and has authored numerous books on the subject, including one called The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. They discussed the events of the Capitol insurrection, and how the mob of violent Trump supporters displayed cult-like behavior.
Golden Veil â January 22, 2021 â Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog
This just in:
âSo Many Great, Educated, Functional People were Brainwashedâ: Can Trumpâs Cult of Followers be Deprogrammed?
Steve Hassan chimes in.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
January 15, 2021
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was on the Senate floor when members were notified of the terrorist attack, describes the anger he and his colleagues feel towards those who incited this mob by pushing the lie that Joe Biden didnât win the election.
âThe Essence Of This Crisis Is The Perpetuation Of This Huge Lieâ
On Americaâs Way Forward: âCongress Is Going To Have To Rise Up And Be Extremely Boldâ
A Message Of Unity To Republican Voters: âLet Us Work Togetherâ
THE TRANSFER OF POWER
A Reporterâs Footage
From Inside
The Capitol Siege
By The New Yorker | January 17, 2021
When Luke Mogelson attended President Donald Trumpâs speech on the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, he was prepared for the possibility that violence might erupt that day. Mogelson, a veteran war correspondent and a contributing writer at The New Yorker, had spent the previous ten months reporting on the radical fringe of Trump supporters, from anti-lockdown militias to fascist groups such as the Proud Boys. After Election Day, he interviewed Trump supporters who showed up at ballot-tabulation sites, and who believed the Presidentâs lies that the results had been âriggedâ and his victory âstolen.â At one post-election pro-Trump rally in D.C., Mogelson witnessed racist violence against Black residents of the nationâs capital. At another event, he watched the host of the white-supremacist Web program âAmerica Firstâ declare, âOur Founding Fathers would get in the streets, and they would take this country back by force if necessary. And that is what we must be prepared to do.â
After Trumpâs incendiary speech, Mogelson followed the Presidentâs supporters as they forced their way into the U.S. Capitol, using his phoneâs camera as a reporterâs notebook. What follows is a video that includes some of that raw footage. Mogelson harnessed this material while writing his panoramic, definitive report, âAmong the Insurrectionists,â which the magazine posted online on Friday. (It appears in print in the January 25th issue.) His prose vividly captures how the raging anger and violence of the initial breach of the Capitol was followed by an eerily quiet and surreal interlude inside the Senate chamber, where Mogelson watched people rummaging through desks and posing for photographs. Although the footage was not originally intended for publication, it documents a historic event and serves as a visceral complement to Mogelsonâs probing, illuminating report.
January 20, 2021
After Joe Biden was sworn in as the nationâs 46th president, Amanda Gorman read âThe Hill We Climb,â building on a tradition of poets â including Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander and Richard Blanco â who have read for incoming Democratic presidents. Gorman is the youngest of these inaugural poets to offer her verse.
January 20, 2021
QAnon followers struggle to explain Biden inauguration
By Chris Mills Rodrigo
President Bidenâs swearing-in as the nationâs 46th president has punctured the hopes of some QAnon followers who pushed the conspiracy theory that claimed former President Trump would remain in office and arrest top Democrats on Wednesday.
Reading Room
QAnon Is Just a Warmed Over Witch Panic
â and Itâs Also Very Dangerous
By Daniel Loxton
In this cover story article (written in October 2020) for Skeptic magazine 25.4 (December 2020), Daniel Loxton considers the unsavory origins and rising threat of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Written prior to the deadly QAnon-led occupation of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021, this analysis exposes the conspiracy theory as baseless, unoriginal, and harmful for believers and society at large.
As 2020 nears its end and the COVID-19 pandemic continues, a rapidly growing far right conspiracy theory increasingly dominates headlines. QAnon is a crowd-sourced online mythology inspired by cryptic anonymous internet posts appearing since 2017 from an unknown figure (or group) known as âQâ or âQ Clearance Patriot.â It is an expanded successor to the debunked 2016 âPizzagateâ conspiracy theory, which claimed that Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats operated a child sex trafficking ring under a Washington, DC pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. QAnon is also rooted in much older mythologies about sinister secret societies of Satan worshippers, witches, or Jews.
November 10, 2020
Unmasking QAnonâs Wall Street Evangelist
A Citigroup senior vice president was recently shown to be the man behind the biggest aggregator of posts tied to QAnon, a far-right hodgepodge of outlandish conspiracy theories. So a Bloomberg reporter rented a car and drove to his house in New Jersey to ask him a few questions.
Read William Turton and Joshua Brusteinâs full feature article in Bloomberg Businessweek: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featurâŠ
Feb. 8, 2021
Former QAnon believer Melissa Rein Lively speaks to CNNâs Alisyn Camerota about how she fell into the conspiracy theories, her darkest moment, coming to see the light and helping others find their way out as well.
Jan. 12, 2021
Trumpâs phone call with Georgiaâs top election official
Last weekend, President Trump called Georgiaâs secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, imploring him with veiled threats and lies to change the outcome of the November election. Raffensperger talks to Scott Pelley about why he didnât give in. https://cbsn.ws/38uuFjo
January 20, 2021
OBITUARY FOR A FAILED PRESIDENCY
One final dispatch from Trumpâs Washington.
By Susan B. Glasser
Precisely at noon on Wednesday, Donald Trumpâs disastrous Presidency will end, two weeks to the day after he unleashed a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol, seeking to overturn the election results, and one week to the day after he was impeached for so doing. He leaves behind a city and a country reeling from four hundred thousand Americans dead, as of Tuesday, from a pandemic whose gravity he downplayed and denied; an economic crisis; and an internal political rift so great that it invites comparisons to the Civil War.
In the end, Trump was everything his haters fearedâa chaos candidate, in the prescient words of one of his 2016 rivals, who became a chaos President. An American demagogue, he embraced division and racial discord, railed against a âdeep stateâ within his own government, praised autocrats and attacked allies, politicized the administration of justice, monetized the Presidency for himself and his children, and presided over a tumultuous, turnover-ridden Administration via impulsive tweets. He leaves office, Gallup reported this week, with the lowest average approval ratings in the history of the modern Presidency. Defeated by Joe Biden in the 2020 election by seven million votes, Trump became the first incumbent seeking reĂ«lection to see his party lose the White House, Senate, and the House of Representatives since Herbert Hoover, in 1932. A liar on an unprecedented scale, Trump made more than thirty thousand false statements in the course of his Presidency, according to the Washington Post, culminating in perhaps the biggest lie of all: that he won an election that he decisively lost.
Yet Republicansâthe vast majority, that is, of those who still identify themselves as Republicansâcontinue to embrace Trump and the conspiracy theories about his defeat that the departing President has spread to explain his loss. This, more than anything, might have been the most surprising thing about Trumpâs tenure: his ability to turn one of Americaâs two political parties into a cult of personality organized around a repeatedly bankrupt New York real-estate developer. And so we are ending these four years having learned not that Donald Trump is a bad manâthe evidence of that was already voluminous and incontrovertible before he entered politicsâbut that there are millions of Americans who were willing to overthrow our constitutional system in order to keep him in power, who would follow Trumpâs dark lies rather than acknowledge unwelcome truths.
âA Weight Liftedâ by Barry Blitt
By Francoise Mouly
January 18, 2021
On January 20th, if all goes according to plan, Donald Trump will depart the office of the Presidency. Barry Blitt, who has spent much of the past four years studying, drawing, and riffing on Trumpâs antics and demagoguery, recently spoke with us about his latest cover, and about the pace and density of the news.
What visual metaphors for Americaâother than the eagleâcome to mind? Do you have a list you turn to when searching for ideas?
Visual metaphors for America: well, youâve got your Statue of Liberty, your Uncle Sam. Also, anything with stars and stripes on it. Babe Ruth, apple pie. And maybe, now, a fur-wearing QAnon shaman. I confess that I do actually keep a folder of potentially useful metaphors on my desktop, but itâs mostly crazy, obscure stuff: photos of bowling-alley accidents, drinking bird toys, police lineups, etc.
Political cartoons often comment on fleeting news events, so they can have a short shelf life. Are there images you did a while back that now puzzle you?
The density of ephemeral news events in the last few yearsâhell, in the last few weeksâhas left me with piles of drawings I can barely recall or understand today. I just came across a drawing of a distinguished, impeccable Robert Mueller, seated at a kitchen tableâthatâs incomprehensible to me. He looks familiar, but Iâm drawing a blank. Was he a TV chef? A game-show host?
Youâre from Canada. Could a figure like Trump emerge there?
I guess anything is possible. Italy had Berlusconi; Brazil, Bolsonaro. Maybe thereâs an up-and-coming Canadian politician who is a narcissistic, closed-minded, intolerant bully, but perfectly polite enough to get elected there.
For more of Blittâs recent covers, see below:
âBelly Flopâ
âWhack Jobâ
Find Barry Blittâs covers, cartoons, and more at the CondĂ© Nast Store.
Françoise Mouly has been the art editor at The New Yorker since 1993.
January 25, 2021
25 âProphetsâ who said Trump would win
Hereâs the ultimate Trump Prophecy Compilation! Featuring Pat Robertson, Paula White-Cain, Sid Roth, Chris Yoon, Robby Dawkins, Kris Vallotton, Mark Taylor, Kat Kerr, Marcus Rogers, Kevin Zadai, Greg Locke, Taribo West, Denise Goulet, Curt Landry, Jeremiah Johnson, Mark Burns, Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj, Jeff Jansen, Emily Rose Lewis, David Ramirez, Hank Kunneman, Kenneth Copeland, Evans Abban, Shawn Bolz and Loren Sandford.
Out of these 25, only four have so far apologized (Vallotton, Sandford, Johnson and Bolz) while one of them has admitted that Biden won without apologizing (Robertson). Those who have apologized have received thousands of hate mails and in some cases even death threats from Christian Trump supporters.
âI am against those who prophesy false dreams and retell them to lead My people astray with their reckless lies. It was not I who sent them or commanded them, and they are of no benefit at all to these people, declares the LORD.â â Jeremiah 23:32
PBS
January 26, 2021
TRUMPâS AMERICAN CARNAGE
From his first days as president to his last, how Trump stoked division, violence and insurrection. FRONTLINE investigates Trumpâs siege on his enemies, the media and even the leaders of his own party, who for years ignored the warning signs of what was to come.
Jan. 26, 2021
Trumpâs Presidency Recap: The Most Defining Stories
TRUMP ERA DEFINED: In just 4 years, Trump gave us the Russia investigation; emboldened white supremacists; separated 5,000+ children from their families; changed the Supreme Court makeup for decades to come; and sprinkled in 30,000 false statements throughout it all.
January 27, 2021
Trump’s American Carnage: Frank Luntz (interview)
Frank Luntz is a strategist and pollster who has worked on behalf of the Republican Party for nearly three decades. The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINEâs Jim Gilmore on Jan. 12, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length. This interview is being published as part of FRONTLINEâs Transparency Project, an effort to open up the source material behind our documentaries. Explore the transcript of this interview, and others, on the FRONTLINE website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/in…
Real Time with Bill Maher
February 5, 2021
New Rule: Americaâs Mass Delusion
Itâs fun to laugh at QAnon, but if you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, youâve already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad.
February 4, 2021
Message to Nebraska GOP State Central Committee
WhaleRider â February 6, 2021 â Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog
âPolitics isnât about the worship of one weird dude.â
~ Republican Congressman Ben Sasse of Nebraska taking a stand publicly against the insanity and abject denial in the cult of Trump.
I can relate.
February 7, 2021
Michael Cohen: Does Donald Trump have a âsecretâ pardon?
He may no longer be President, but Donald Trump canât stop making headlines. In the next few days he goes on trial in the US Senate charged with inciting his supportersâ rampage on the Capitol building last month. But while the world was shocked by the shameful attack on democracy, Trumpâs former attorney, Michael Cohen, wasnât surprised at all. In fact two years ago he predicted it. Cohen used to be The Donaldâs closest ally but ended up an enemy, and in prison, when he took the fall for covering up Trumpâs affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. And now, in an extraordinary interview with Tara Brown, filmed while he serves the remainder of his sentence under house arrest in New York, Cohen is happy to spill all of his old bossâs dirty secrets.
PBS
Amanpour & Co.
Feb. 12, 2021
Did This 2 Min. Video Help Incite the Jan. 6 Rioters?
As former president Donald Trumpâs second impeachment trial enters its third day, the question remains whether his words or actions incited the January 6 assault on the Capitol. But little attention has been paid to a video that was shown that same day, at the January 6 âMarch to Save Americaâ rally in Washington, D.C.
Jason Stanley, a scholar of fascist propaganda, claims that this short video â shown immediately after Rudy Giuliani left the stage, prior to the attack on the Capitol â was full of themes and tactics that threaten liberal democracy. Stanley breaks the video down with Hari Sreenivasan and elaborates on its role in the violence that took place on that infamous day.
PBS News Hour
February 13, 2021
WATCH: Failure to convict Trump is âvote of infamy,â Senator Schumer says
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., delivers remarks Feb. 13 following Trumpâs acquittal in his second impeachment trial. The 57-43 vote was the most bipartisan in history, with seven Republicans voting to convict but 10 votes shy of reaching the needed two-thirds majority needed.
Schumer said the trial was not about choosing country over party, but rather choosing country over Trump, and â43 Republican members chose Trump. They chose Trump. It should be a weight on their conscience today and it will be a weight on their conscience forever.â He said the seven Republicans who voted to convict were patriots, and the others lacked morality and courage.
Golden Veil â February 14, 2021 â Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog
Interview
Congresswoman and Jonestown survivor Jackie Speier: âTrump is a political cult leaderâ by Ed Pilkington, February 11, 2021, The Guardian.
After the congresswoman survived an ambush by Jim Jonesâs cult members in 1978, she became determined to devote herself to public service and to strengthen safeguards against cults.
February 17, 2021
Republicans Back Trump Because
of the Insurrection, Not Despite It
The former presidentâs ruthlessness
remains central to his appeal.
By David A. Graham
America as a whole has had enough of Donald Trump. Voters hold him responsible for the January 6 insurrection, they believe the Senate should have convicted him for his role, and they want him to leave national politics. But the Republican Party is another country, and they do things differently there. Its rank-and-file members didnât support impeachment, donât want Trump punished, and prefer him over any other potential candidate for president in 2024.
How can it be that Democrats and Republicans see the former president in such divergent ways? One common answer is that, thanks to information bubbles, theyâre looking at different sets of facts; conservative outlets buried the impeachment hearings compared with other outletsâ coverage. Democrats and independents are still outraged, while Republicans have forgiven and forgotten.
But maybe thatâs wrong, and Republicans are backing Trump not in spite of the insurrection but because of it. Many Republican voters supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 not out of particular policy affinities but because they saw him as someone who would actually fight for their vision of American culture, doing whatever it took to win. Trumpâs frantic attempt to overturn the election didnât work, but it was just the sort of furious effort his supporters wanted. Why would they object now?
Hypocrisy is a deceitful tactic used most often by those in power, who say âyou must do thisâ or âyou cannot do thatâ or âthis is wrong,â while purporting that they themselves do not do said thing when, in fact, they do.
A hypocrite (from the Greek, âactorâ) is someone who espouses a view, perspective, or philosophy without adhering in any meaningful way to it themselves, especially if they claim that their philosophy applies to all people. The ultimate snarkology of the hypocrite is âdo as I say, not as I do.â Generally, âhypocriteâ is a pejorative term; there are practically no cases where hypocrisy is considered a good thing unless youâre a politician like Donald Trump.
February 25, 2021
The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages
The GOP has become, in form if not in content,
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s
By Tom Nichols
Author of the forthcoming book, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy
We are living in a time of bad metaphors. Everything is fascism, or socialism; Hitlerâs Germany, or Stalinâs Soviet Union. Republicans, especially, want their followers to believe that America is on the verge of a dramatic time, a moment of great conflict such as 1968âor perhaps, even worse, 1860. (The drama is the point, of course. No one ever says, âWeâre living through 1955.â)
Ironically, the GOP is indeed replicating another political party in another time, but not as the heroes they imagine themselves to be. The Republican Party has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.
I can already hear the howls about invidious comparisons. I do not mean that modern American Republicans are communists. Rather, I mean that the Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes.
April 5, 2021
An Epic Debate on Trump and True Evangelicalism
In which journalist Matt Labash (a Never Trumper) and radio host Eric Metaxas (a Trump supporter) agree to disagree.
Through the many upheavals of the Trump era, one trend has remained strikingly stable: the mobilization of the white evangelical community as diehard supporters of the forty-fifth president. Itâs a convergence of interests that, on paper at least, appears unlikely in the extreme. Trumpâs acquaintance with the Bible and its dictates might generously be described as âpassing,â and his personal conduct, both in his business dealings and his elective affinities, falls a good deal short of Christian ideals. How do sincere Protestant believers work through the many seeming tensions and contradictions that assail Trumpism as a de facto religious movement? To get to the bottom of things, The New Republic asked conservative journalist Matt Labash, a lifelong evangelical and ardent Never Trumper, to conduct an online dialogue on the vagaries of the Trump-evangelical relationship with bestselling author and radio show host Eric Metaxas, a no-less-ardent Trump supporter. The following exchange has been lightly edited for flow, style, and length.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Matt Labash, formerly a national correspondent at The Weekly Standard, is the author of Fly Fishing With Darth Vader.
Eric Metaxas hosts the Eric Metaxas Show and is author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MATT LABASH:
Eric,
Many years ago, I profiled a Christian professional wrestler named George South. He fought as a âheel,â or a bad guy. But not wishing to do his Christian testimony any harm, he would sport JOHN 3:16 on the seat of his banana hammockâthe very same britches that he might fish a pair of brass knuckles out of to coldcock a referee while he wasnât looking. I asked George how he accounted for the mixed messaging. He essentially said that sometimes you just have to climb into the squared circle, face the darkness, and hit someone over the head with a chair for Jesus.
On the surface, you and I have much in common. Youâve written biographies of Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I went to a Lutheran elementary school, and like Bonhoeffer, am no fan of Hitlerâs. We have both spent much of our lives in evangelical circles. (I grew up Southern Baptist in Texas throughout the â80s, and still go to a nondenominational evangelical church, or did, before Covid-19 turned us into a viral petri dish. Now, we worship in our sweats, remotely.) We both, without apology, pledge allegiance to our Lord and Savior, J.H. Christ.
That said, even though you are a Christian brother and coequal partner in the search for truth, a part of me wants to go George South on you, and hit you in the head with a chair for Jesus. (Figuratively, of course.)
Why? Iâll tell you why: Donald J. Trump. Yes, I understand heâs not president anymore, even if he seems to be having trouble grasping that fact. But for all the disk space he takes up in the consciousness of Republicans and evangelicals, the intersection of which is around 82 percent, he might as well be. While Trump had the lowest approval rating of any president since Gallup started keeping track in the 1930s, he scored 97 percent approval with the adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). This, after two impeachments and him headlining an insurrection. That alone is hardly surprising. When you run a cult, the cultists tend to see things your way.
But itâs broader than that. Comb through recent survey results, and a disturbing picture emerges. A Suffolk University/USA Today poll in Februaryâafter Trumpâs coup attemptâhad Republicans stating by a double-digit margin (46 percent to 27 percent) that they would abandon the GOP and join the Trump party if he created one. After months of Trump stoking conspiracy theories and all manner of delusional fever dreamsâeven though he was beaten in the election like a rented mule (both in the popular vote and the Electoral College)âa Lifeway Research poll found 49 percent of U.S. Protestant pastors claiming that they frequently hear their congregation members parroting current-event conspiracy theories. A January American Enterprise Institute poll reported 29 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of white evangelicals believing QAnon conspiracy theories. (Spoiler alert, Q-ball nutters: The Democratic Party has many faults, but being a Satanist-cannibal-pedophile ring is not one of them.)
Renowned pastor and Covid-truther John MacArthur has said that âany real, true believerâ had to vote for Trump. Franklin Graham, the moral runt of Billyâs litter, compared the 10 lonely House Republicans who voted for Trumpâs impeachment to Judas Iscariot, taking 30 pieces of silver in exchange for their immortal souls. (Really, Franklin? Try getting a Fox contract these days without being a Trumpbot.)
And while I generally consider it bad manners to lunge for the jugular of a dinner guest before the salad plates have even been cleared, I have to say, youâve been no slouch in the shamelessly shilling-for-Trump department, Eric. Like Trump, you spent months peddling his massiveâelection-fraud fantasy. You wrote childrenâs books with titles like Donald Drains the Swamp. (Never mind his five or so Cabinet secretaries who resigned under ethical clouds; or his personal lawyer and campaign manager, both of whom went to prison; or the other former campaign manager who was merely indicted before collecting his presidential pardon.) You actually told Trump himself, âIâd be happy to die in this fight. This is a fight for everything. God is with us.â
I guess the question is: why? Why is he worth all this trouble? And how do we know God didnât vote for Biden, or maybe go third party?
Iâm well aware of Paulâs admonition that âGod hath chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise.â (If thatâs the case here, God would have really scored, because itâd be hard to pick a bigger fool than DJT.) But though I donât have my doctorate of divinity or anything, I have read the Bible a couple thousand timesâeven Trumpâs favorite parts, like âTwoâ Corinthians. And nowhere do the Scriptures tell us: âBlessed are the mean-Tweeters, the sociopathic narcissists, the conspiracy-mongers, and seditionists, for they shall inherit the earth.â Itâs just not in any translation Iâve picked up. (Maybe I should check The Message ?)
I donât get it. Itâs dispiriting. I always thought we worshipped our Triune God. But somewhere along the way, say, around 2015, it seems like the Holy Trinity became a quaternity, with Trump batting cleanup for the Holy Ghost. (Trump did once admit that J.C. was more famous than him, though the latter never got canceled by Twitter.)
One gets the feeling that these days, if the Son of Man went walking on water across Floridaâs Intracoastal Waterway instead of the Sea of Galilee, he might be plowed under by a Trump boat parade, and possibly impaled on Franklin Grahamâs water ski. Iâm not sure anyone would mourn. Theyâd likely be too busy anticipating the resurrection of their new-and-improved Orange Jesus.
May 5, 2021
Our Friend, the Trump Propagandist
We knew David Horowitz when he was a radical leftist. Then he became a conservative. Then he joined the MAGA cult.
By Ronald Roddosh and Sol Stern
According to our old friend David Horowitzâthe radical leftist turned thoughtful conservative turned Trump propagandist whom weâve been acquainted with, in his various political guises, for more than 60 yearsâAmerica is on the brink of destruction by way of a communist takeover that only the patriots of the MAGA movement can prevent. Thatâs the main message in Horowitzâs new book, The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America. On the bookâs cover are portraits of the seven Democrats allegedly plotting the revolution: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar.
This third book Horowitz has published about Trump since 2017, The Enemy Within, is even more of a jihad against liberals and progressives than his previous two (both bestsellers). Horowitzâs justification for writing yet another Trumpist screed is that, in the aftermath of the Democrats stealing the 2020 election, an event he describes (in lip sync with the former president) as âthe greatest political crime in the history of the country,â the âtotalitarianâ threat the party poses is now imminent.
The book begins with a lamentation: âAmericans are more divided today than at any time since the Civil War.â The trouble is that almost everything Horowitz has recently written has been calculated to fan the flames of division. Yet he canât make up his mind whether the tyranny the Democrats are about to install would be more like twentieth-century communism or fascism. He asserts, for example, that the diversity training programs favored by Democrats are akin to the surveillance system of âpeopleâs commissarsâ created by the Bolsheviks. In practically the same breath, he announces that the Biden administration âhas clearly defined itself and its party as a fascist vanguard.â
August 23, 2021
How Rupert Murdochâs Fox News promoted Donald Trumpâs propaganda and helped destabilise democracy in the United States: the first of our two-part special.
August 12, 2021
Donaldâs Plot Against America
Now, he and his GOP enablers are peddling the Second Big Lie: That January 6 was just legitimate protest. Itâs the crucial ingredient in convincing America to return themâand himâto power.
By Mary L. Trump
I felt as though I had stumbled across a crime scene so violent that I couldnât process it, let alone synthesize the images in front of me. The parts remained stubbornly separate, and there was no way to grasp the meaning of the whole.
October 31, 2021
RED FLAGS
As Trump propelled his supporters to
Washington, law enforcement agencies failed
to heed mounting warnings about violence on Jan. 6.
The head of intelligence at D.C.âs homeland security office was growing desperate. For days, Donell Harvin and his team had spotted increasing signs that supporters of President Donald Trump were planning violence when Congress met to formalize the electoral college vote, but federal law enforcement agencies did not seem to share his sense of urgency. On Saturday, Jan. 2, he picked up the phone and called his counterpart in San Francisco, waking Mike Sena before dawn.
Sena listened with alarm. The Northern California intelligence office he commanded had also been inundated with political threats flagged by social media companies, several involving plans to disrupt the joint session or hurt lawmakers on Jan. 6.
July 12, 2021
The LAST THING before WE GO tonight is a new appreciation of A MAN AHEAD OF HIS TIME
Carl Sagan Predicted The Mess 2021 Would Be
25 Years Ago
Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan managed to predict a lot of things and challenges America faces in the year 2021 all the way back in 1995 when he was writing a book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, published just before his death in 1996. MSNBCâs Brian Williams shares the details.
October 19, 2021
Trumpâs Showdown
In this two-hour documentary, FRONTLINE goes inside President Trumpâs fight against the investigation of his campaign and traces the dramatic events that led the White House and the nation to the brink of a Constitutional crisis. (Aired 2018)
April 30, 2022
Trumpâs latest hate rally: A master class
in cult mind control
By Chauncy Devega, Salon â Commentary
Donald Trumpâs political circus and freak show is continuing its American tour. Everywhere it stops, Donald Trump unleashes a torrent of lies, hatred, ignorance, bigotry, racism, narcissism, authoritarianism, threats of violence and other antisocial and evil values.
Trumpâs political rallies resemble George Orwellâs âtwo minutes of hateâ from 1984, expanded to two hours or so.
World History Documentaries
May 21, 2022
The Seedy Underbelly Of The American Presidency
This doc probes the presidential campaigns that have changed America through the eyes of former campaigners, journalists and researchers. Find out how financing, crime and corruption, and TV debates play a major role in swaying political opinion on the way to the White House.
June 21, 2022
Watch Brad Raffensperger explain why
Trump lost Georgia
In testimony before the House selct committee investigaing January 6, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger explains why President Trump lost the state’s 16 electoral votes in the 2020 election.
August 20, 2022
Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo spoke at a âMooniesâ-affiliated event, despite Japan controversy
By Alia Shoaib
The Unification Church, formed in South Korea in the 1950s by self-declared messiah Sun Myung Moon, is known to have deep-rooted ties with conservative politicians worldwide. Its followers are often colloquially referred to as âMoonies.â
Former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke in person at a conference affiliated with the church in Seoul on August 12 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the death of Sun Myung Moon.
Pompeo and Gingrichâs speeches spoke about the value of religious freedom and the dangers of communism â a view they share with the church.
The controversial religious organization â formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification â has been in the spotlight following the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The assassin told police that he was motivated by anger towards Abe and his links to the church. It is widely described as a cult by former members.
Former President Donald Trump recorded a video message played during the meeting, per Japanese outlet NTV News 24. During his speech, Trump said that Abe was a âgood friend and a great manâ and praised Reverend Moonâs widow Hak Ja Han, who now heads up the church.
Other billed speakers included former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former US ambassadors and generals.
According to Dr. Steven Hassan, an expert on cults and a former Moonie, the ties between right-wing politicians and the church are due to a shared hatred of communism and the groupâs vast wealth and influence.
The Moon empire has been estimated to be worth billions of dollars and includes ownership of the conservative newspaper The Washington Times.
âIt doesnât shock me that Pompeo, the former head of the CIA and the State Department, spoke for them. Iâm sure he got a lot of money. Iâm sure Trump got a lot of money,â Hassan told Insider, speculating about their speakerâs fees. âIâm sure they donât believe Moon was the Messiah.â
PBS
September 6, 2022
LIES, POLITICS AND DEMOCRACY
FRONTLINEâs season premiere investigates American political leaders and choices theyâve made that have undermined and threatened democracy in the U.S.
In a two-hour documentary special premiering ahead of the 2022 midterms, FRONTLINE examines how officials fed the public lies about the 2020 presidential election and embraced rhetoric that led to political violence.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
November 17, 2022
Barack Obama – Protecting Democracy
and the Commitment to Facts
“Democracy requires, by definition, getting along with people who don’t agree with you.” Former President Barack Obama discusses why he believes the youth turnout made all the difference in Democractic victories in the midterms; how globalization, disinformation, and the media infrastructure are contributing to the weakening of democracy globally; and what advice he has for Trevor after the Daily Show.
TVO Today | The Agenda | Steve Paikin
January 31, 2023
Truth and Trump: An Evening with Bob Woodward
The disruptive impacts of Donald Trumpâs presidency continue to wreak havoc in America and influence politics abroad. Two years after losing the presidency, is his influence behind him or is his MAGA movement still a force to be reckoned with?
May 5, 2023
The E. Jean Carroll witness decision that
could haunt Donald Trump
Should the jury be entitled to hear from any of Trumpâs other accusers? That was the weighty question Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had to decide.
By Carol C. Lam, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California
On Thursday, E. Jean Carroll officially rested her case. This means a jury in New York City will soon be asked to decide whether Donald Trump raped, and then later defamed, the former magazine columnist and media personality. The general public will draw its own conclusions about the civil lawsuit, a remarkable event not only because Trump is the former president of the United States, but also because he is a presidential candidate once again. But because jurors are instructed to reach their decision only on the evidence they see or hear in the trial, the decisions U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan makes about what evidence comes in â and what does not â are of enormous importance.
This week, the jury heard from four key witnesses likely to be top of mind for the jurors when they begin their deliberations. Two women â Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin â testified that Carroll talked to them shortly after the attack in 1996 and that her account back then was consistent with her testimony at trial. This evidence is important corroboration of Carrollâs testimony â that is, it was introduced to show that the rape allegation was not a recent fabrication. (Trump has denied Carrollâs claims, calling them a âscam.â)
May 5, 2023
Trump deposition in E. Jean Carroll rape trial
The full video of a deposition given by former president Donald Trump as part of his civil rape trial has been released. In the video, Trump calls his accuser, writer E. Jean Carroll a ânut jobâ and âmentally sick.â At one point, he also mistakes Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo.
The 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct
Eliza Relman and Azmi Haroun | Updated May 9, 2023
At least 26 women accused President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, including assault, since the 1970s.
A deluge of women made their accusations public following the October 2016 publication of the âAccess Hollywoodâ tape, in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing womenâs genitals in 2005. Some of Trumpâs accusers made their stories public months before the tapeâs release, and still others came forward in the months following.
Trump has broadly dismissed the allegations, which include harassment, groping, and rape, as âfabricatedâ and politically motivated accounts pushed by the media and his political opponents. In 2016, he promised to sue all of his accusers. In some cases, Trump and his lawyers have suggested he couldnât have engaged in the alleged behavior with certain women because he wasnât physically attracted to them.
March 22, 2018
Ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal tells her story
about Donald Trump
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal defends her decision to tell her story of her alleged relationship with Donald Trump, and said she doesnât want to damage him. Trump has been charged by the Manhattan District Attorney in an hush-payment case involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Some case watchers say that McDougal’s allegations could be part of the indictment.
BuzzFeed News
October 19, 2016
A high-profile defense attorney from Florida, Cheney Mason, is now representing âJane Doe,â the plaintiff in a New York federal civil court case where she is accusing Donald Trump of raping her in the â90s when she was 13 years old, according to court documents filed Monday.
July 11, 2023
Trump âfailedâ U.S.: Icon Bob Woodward
talks âTrump Tapesâ with Ari Melber
Pulitzer-Prize winner Bob Woodward says he had ânever seen such a failure to protect the peopleâ until his reporting on President Trumpâs handling of Covid. The Washington Post journalist did 20 interviews with Trump as President, and in this special edition of âThe Beat,â he talks to Ari Melber about what came through in those candid conversations as the pandemic first hit. Melber also breaks down a key period of the pandemic, playing excerpts of Woodwardâs tapes and other source material to offer a broader look at Trumpâs handling of the crisis, which is newly relevant as Trump runs to return to the White House.
July 17, 2023
Trump is campaigning to establish
âa presidential dictatorshipâ historian Beschloss says
The Republican partyâs presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, is openly running a campaign based on turning America into an autocracy. Joy Reidâs panel of experts discuss this move many consider to be unprecedented.
August 1, 2023
Heather Cox Richardson
Today a grand jury in Washington, D.C, indicted former president Donald J. Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges stemmed from Trumpâs attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary citizens who weigh evidence of criminal activity and produce an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor.
The grand jury indicted Trump for âconspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted and certified by the government; âconspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certifiedâ; and âconspiracy against the right to vote and to have oneâs vote counted.â
The indictment referred to six co-conspirators without identifying them by name, but the details included about them suggest that Co-Conspirator 1 is Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani; Co-Conspirator 2 is lawyer John Eastman, who came up with the plan for thenâvice president Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role of counting the electoral votes to throw the election to Trump; Co-Conspirator 3 is Trump lawyer Sidney Powell; Co-Conspirator 4 is Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer whom Trump tried to push into the role of attorney general so he could lie that there had been election fraud; Co-Conspirator 5 appears to be Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump attorney behind the idea of the false electors.
The identity of Co-Conspirator 6, a political consultant, is unclear.
The Commonwealth Club of California
November 7, 2023
Heather Cox Richardson: Democracy Awakening
We’ve all been through a lot in the past five years, but it’s difficult to figure out what it all means, and how it applies to our shared existence in this democratic experiment. Heather Cox Richardson aims to remedy that.
As a historian she has been examining and explaining modern events aided by her deep understanding of history and insight into the forces working for and against democracy. In her new book Democracy Awakening, Heather Cox Richardson looks at the state of American democracy and the forces that have been driving it toward authoritarianism. In whose interest is the obfuscation of history? Who benefits if Americans are turned off or prevented from taking part in democratic acts? Who and what can help change things and rededicate this country to its founding ideals?
Join us in person as she explains how we got to this perilous point, what our history tells us about ourselves, and what the future of democracy can be.
Notes on the State of America
Heather Cox Richardson
August 23, 2023
Here Are The Mug Shots Of Everyone
Indicted In The Georgia Election Case
Look no further for the harshly-lit booking photos of the named defendants, as each one turns themselves in to the Fulton County Sheriffâs Office.
By Sanjana Karanth and Sara Boboltz
Aug 23, 2023 | Updated Aug 27, 2023
Last week, a grand jury in Georgia accused former President Donald Trump and 18 others of scheming to overturn the stateâs results of the 2020 presidential election so that he could remain in office.
In the Aug. 14 indictment are racketeering and corrupt organizations statutes that, in addition to Trump, have resulted in a long list of charges for his close allies like Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and John Eastman.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis gave all 19 defendants until noon on Friday to surrender.
Despite now being indicted in four criminal cases, Trump has managed to avoid getting his mug shot taken. But soon after the indictmentâs release, Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat said the defendants â including Trump â will not receive any special treatment when they arrive for their arraignment.
August 26, 2023
Unfit (2020) | Donald Trump Documentary
Full Movie
Is Donald Trump fit to hold the office of President of the United States? An eye-opening analysis of Trump by leading US mental health professionals and Republican strategists, on the record for the record. Science. Truth. Duty to Warn.
Cast: Malcolm Nance, George Conway, Anthony Scaramucci, John Gartner, Lance Dodes, Justin Frank, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Ramani Durvasula
Director: Dan Partland
September 17, 2023
Full Trump Interview: âI donât consider us to
have much of a democracy right nowâ
In this full, unedited interview with Meet the Press, former President Trump discusses his views on the 2020 election, abortion rights, foreign policy and more.
Nov. 8, 2023
The Trump Family Confronts New Frontiers | Full Documentary
Starting with the Yukon Gold Rush of 1880, three generations of the Trump family confront new frontiers and build the foundation for Donald Trumpâs fame and fortune.
Nov. 9, 2023
Mary Trump and Adam Kinzinger
On The Way Back
from Our Divided Political Moment
Adam Kinzinger and Mary Trump donât have a lot in common on the surface: but in a moment where politics are dividing more people than ever before, Kinzinger and Trump find they have more and more in common. January 6th was a watershed moment for them both: Kinzingerâs departure from the current GOP was basically assured with his participation in the Congressional hearings on the matter, and a worst-fears-realized anguish after the discord crystalized a drive for activism in Mary Trump.
As Katieâs plus one, Mary Trump digs deep with Kinzinger on their shared fight for the future of democracy and how the country may find a path forward. Plus, Kinzinger is full of insider, behind-the-scenes explainers from his time in Congress, from what exactly is meant by âmilitary aidâ to the impact on history of Kevin McCarthyâs visits to Mar-a-Lago.
Premiered Nov. 29, 2023
Donald Trumpâs Playbook: Lessons for 2024 election
Full Documentary
In this new documentary, the moment he went down the golden escalator to the moment he gave his first speech⊠this is how Donald Trump won his first race for president. History, as it happened. And what lessons, if any, can be learned from the Donald Trump playbook for the 2024 election? We examine the Donald Trump playbook, and retrace the timeline of his campaign with contemporaneous reporting to see how it happened, when it happened. 7NEWS Australia was there for every moment as the reality TV star became the âleader of the free worldâ. Featuring new interviews with the reporters who covered it all, this is the historical record of how Donald Trump became president. And what Trump 2024 might look like.
December 8, 2023
How Trump Got Evangelicals to Make a Deal with the Devil
Is the Almighty, who made heaven and earth, also biting his nails over next yearâs election? Tim Alberta joins Charlie Sykes to discuss the evangelicals who worship America, a 500-year moment for Christianity, and the organized crime syndicate Jerry Falwell built.
December 26, 2023
The film the Trump Organization tried to suppress
Youâve Been Trumped Too (2020)
Investigative journalist Anthony Baxter travels between the US Presidential race and the Scottish countryside to chronicle the troubling confrontation between Donald Trump and a feisty 92-year-old widow, Molly Forbes, as she refuses to make way for his golf course. This shocking insight to a David and Goliath battle is a remarkable document of the disconnect between political rhetoric and the lives of ordinary people.
January 26, 2024
Liz Cheney Talks Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell Being Weak and the 2024 Election
Former Congresswoman and Vice Chair of the January 6th select committee Liz Cheney joins the pod to discuss the dangers of a second Trump term, his chokehold on the Republican party and why she thinks Nikki Haley needs to stay in the GOP primary. Plus, more on Mitch McConnellâs about-face on the bipartisan Senate immigration deal and President Bidenâs endorsement from the United Auto Workers Union.
January 26, 2024
The Far Right In The US And Europe | The Politics Of Hate (2017) | Full Film
At 16 he became the leader of the Chicago Area Skinheads, later a white supremacist punk band. But when Christian Picciolini started a family, he began questioning his far right views. This timely doc explores a changing Western political climate, chronicling the rise of the far right in the US and Europe, and giving alarming insights into the ways the alt-right movement operates.
January 30, 2024
Democracy on Trial (full documentary)
In March, 2024 Republican presidential nomination front-runner Trump is scheduled to begin standing trial on federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S., in connection with efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. He says the charges against him are politically motivated.
âDemocracy on Trialâ traces the road to this unprecedented moment, and examines the implications of the historic criminal case unfolding in the midst of a presidential election year. Drawing on court documents and revelatory interviews with elected officials, former government lawyers, House Select Committee witnesses and former committee staffers, authors and journalists, the documentary reports that the work of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack provided the groundwork for special counsel Jack Smithâs indictment of Trump and may offer insights into how the trial unfolds.
The documentary chronicles how the committee built its case against Trump and tried to prove his intent, how it chose to present its case to the American public, and criticisms of its work. Key witnesses who testified before the committee and whose firsthand accounts are now evidence in the federal case speak out in the documentary â including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling and former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers.
Gripping and illuminating, âDemocracy on Trial,â the newest film from FRONTLINEâs award-winning political team, Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser and Vanessa Fica, also examines how Trump has challenged the case. Trump has pleaded not guilty and made the legal argument, now being reviewed by an appellate court, that he has âabsolute immunityâ from prosecution for his actions while in office.
MeidasTouchNetwork
January 30, 2024
Prosecutor Who TOOK DOWN Trump BACK for More | Burn The Boats
Burn the Boats is an award-winning podcast featuring intimate conversations with change-makers from every walk of life. Host Ken Harbaugh interviews politicians, authors, activists, and others about the most important issues of our time.
While serving as the Assistant Attorney General of New York, Tristan Snell prosecuted Trump University, the Trump Organization, and Donald Trump himself. Tristanâs new book, Taking Down Trump, talks about that case, and lays out the 12 rules for prosecuting Donald Trump. In this interview, Tristan talks about Trumpâs legal strategy, how he is manipulating the legal system, and his history of lies.
February 4, 2024
The resurrection of Donald Trump
To loyal Trump supporters, their candidate can do no wrong. Donald Trumpâs 2024 run for the White House seems unstoppable despite all the controversies.
February 6, 2024
Itâs Way Too Easy for a Crook Like Trump to
Pervert Our Legal System
If the law has one standard for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of us, it will be hard for ordinary Americans to maintain their faith in democracy.
By Michael Tomasky
We once again come to the start of yet another week that could, and by rights should, destroy Donald Trump. This Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case that seeks to bar Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Meanwhile, we await word from New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who blew past his self-imposed January 31 deadline for announcing the damages heâll make the former president pay in the Trump Organization fraud case. Finally, we also sit here wondering what is taking that three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals so long in deciding that Trump should not be immune from prosecution.
What does it all add up to? This: We are forced to confront the devastating possibility that our legal and political systems have no way of punishing obviously illegal and immoral behavior when carried out by someone with enormous political and financial power.
We tell ourselves weâre a nation of laws. But what if that is a lie? What if thatâs a fairy tale? What if our system is not only imperfect, as any system designed by human beings is bound to be? What if it is designed so that rich and powerful people â even ones with horrible defense lawyers! â can wait the system out, even pervert it, and prevail?
MARCH 1, 2024 * A JOURNAL FROM AMERICAâS HEARTLAND * Vol. 30, No. 4
An Incurable Disease?
The Mystery of MAGA
How is it possible that people cheer and celebrate the most transparent fraud, the most outrageous liar, the most straitjacket-ready psycho ever visited on the body politic?
By Hal Crowther
Like nearly every self-appointed critic of the American political system, I never imagined that I would still be typing that dread-laden five-letter word in February of 2024. The one that begins with âtâ and ends with âpâ, of course, and it isnât âtulip.â Iâve prayed, Iâve fasted, Iâve made burnt offerings to the neglected god of common sense, a deity so many Americans have left behind. And still the T-word and the man who embodies all its mystery and menace persist.
Arguments against the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump are like arguments against infanticide, or microwaving kittens. When you offer one, and there must be hundreds, you canât conceive of an objection or rebuttal. The case against this creature was closed nearly a decade ago, though more damning evidence seems to turn up every day. The New York Timesâ Michelle Goldberg, not a writer given to heated overstatement, refers to him as a âfreakish madmanâ and an âonrushing nightmare.â Yet indictments for 91 felonies havenât kept him from winning Republican primaries and drawing crowds of passionate believers. One Times headline reads âTrump Tightens Grip on National Psyche.â And another, âTrumpâs Connection With Supporters Has Little Precedent: Victory Reveals a New Depth of Devotion.â
March 8, 2024
Lincoln Project DESTROYS Trump,
Trump LOSES IT!
A super Political Action Committee or PAC critical of former president Donald Trump, known as The Lincoln Project, has unveiled a new video spotlighting Trumpâs recent slip-ups.
MSNBC
MONDAYS 9PM ET
March 18, 2024
Confidence Man with Maggie Haberman // The American Story
How does a man like Donald Trumpâsimultaneously hailed as an all-American hero and condemned as a harbinger of the end of American democracyâbecome not only a cultural phenomenon, but the president of the United States? Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the 45th president, offers insight into his background, his motivations, and the true nature of his personality, not to mention the means by which he gained a seat in the Oval Office.
Maggie Haberman, a senior political correspondent for the New York Times and a political analyst for CNN, is the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. David M. Rubenstein (moderator), co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, is the author of How to Invest: Masters on the Craft and the host of History with David Rubenstein on PBS.
April 2024
Jacobâs Dream
MAGA meets the Age of Aquarius
By Frederick Kaufman
Jacob Angeli-Chansley, the man the media has dubbed the QAnon Shaman, had been released from federal custody six weeks before when we met for lunch at a place called Picazzoâs, winner of the Phoenix New Times Best Gluten-Free Restaurant award in 2015. Despite a protracted hunger strike and 317 days isolated in a cell, Jacobâs prison sentence of forty-one months for obstruction of an official proceeding on January 6, 2021, had been shortened owing to good behavior, and he was let out about a year early on supervised release.
It took some doing to get him to sit for an interview, as Jacob is wary of what he calls Operation Mockingbird, an alleged CIA-sponsored effort begun in the Fifties to use mass media to influence public opinion. Jacob believes that people like me are the tools of the Mockingbird operation, of the deep state, international bankers, pharmaceutical cartels, and corporate monarchies that control the world. People like me believe in medicines that are addictive drugs, in food that is poison, in environmentalism that is ecocide, in education that is ignorance, in money that is debt, in objective science that is not objective. âPeople are brainwashed by the elites and their propaganda networks,â he said. âMass hypnosis, bro.â
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | PBS
April 2, 2024
Nazi Town, USA | Full Documentary
In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a âPro-American Rally.â Images of George Washington hung alongside swastikas, underlining the organizers’ belief that Nazism was entirely consistent with American ideals.
NAZI TOWN, USA tells the largely unknown story of the German American Bund, an organization of Nazi sympathizers on American soil.
DAME Magazine
April 9, 2024
Lying Is What Dictators Do
Straight from the authoritarian playbook,
Trump has turned the RNC into a hereditary
dictatorship in his quest to swap out the entire
GOPâand reality itselfâwith a murderous
Christofascist fantasy.
By Brynn Tannehill
One of Donald Trumpâs first acts as president in 2017 was to force Sean Spicer onto the podium to lie about how his inauguration was the best attended and watched ever. It was such an audacious and easily dispelled lieâthere was footage to prove otherwise. But Trumpâs narcissistic ego prevented him from admitting defeat. More so, everything had to be superlativeâthe most popular, the biggest, the best. It was Spicerâs job as his flack to make us understand and accept this. (Spicer paid for this by ritually being humiliated and emasculated in a way that recalls the infamous âMy name is Reekâ scene in Game of Thrones.)
However, Spicer was one man. And now it is a command from above to define reality as whatever Donald Trump says it is, regardless of facts, evidence, or logic. Now Trump, in his bid to run for the White House for a third time, wants the Republican National Committee, which he effectively has taken over, to replace the entire GOP. He swapped the organizationâs chair Ronna McDaniel with his daughter-in-law, Ericâs wife Lara Trump, and longtime Trump loyalist Michael Whatley, and then immediately instituted mass layoffs and began restaffing it with his own people. The goal was clear: Establish the Trump family as a hereditary dictatorship.
This past week, the Washington Post revealed that interviewees for positions at the RNC were asked whether they believed the 2020 Election was stolen. This was the litmus test, so that they would only hire those who would vocally support lies meant to undermine the legitimacy of the United Statesâ government.
If Trump takes power again in 2025 (according to polls, if the election were held today, he would likely easily win the electoral college based on six key swing states), he will spread this command to all of government via Schedule F. This will also allow him to fill all of the top 50,000 spots in government with cronies, ideologues, and sycophants who can be hired and fired at his will.
July 31, 2019
Pathocracy
When people with personality disorders gain power.
By Steve Taylor, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. He is the author of several best-selling books, including The Leap and Spiritual Science.
The Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski spent his early life suffering under the Nazi occupation of Poland, closely followed by the brutality of Soviet occupation after the war. His experience of these horrors led Lobaczewski to develop the concept of “pathocracy.” This is when individuals with personality disorders (particularly psychopathy) occupy positions of power. (1)
Lobaczewski devoted his life to studying human evil, a field which he called “ponerology.” He wanted to understand why ‘evil’ people seem to prosper, while so many good and moral people struggle to succeed. He wanted to understand why people with psychological disorders so easily rise to positions of power and take over the governments of countries. Since he was living under a “pathocratic” regime himself, he took great risks studying this topic. He was arrested and tortured by the Polish authorities, and was unable to publish his life’s work, the book Political Ponerology, until he escaped to the United States during the 1980s.
A Science on the Nature of Evil
Adjusted for Political Purposes
