Below is a link to the most recent post from the Greg Olear PREVAIL substack that I received today. I strongly recommend that those who can do so subscribe to his substack.
This article addresses a major problem that this country will face if/when Donald Trump leaves office. Trump being impeached, even in the unlikely event that it results in convictions in the Senate and removal from office, does not, by itself, do much of anything to change the disastrous direction our national government has taken since his return to office a little over a year ago.
Trump must go, but not him alone. To reverse the damage already caused by this Administration’s far-reaching authoritarian and anti-democratic power grab will require that Trump be accompanied by the myriad accomplices who have moved heaven and earth to make his despicable dreams come true. A JD Vance Administration with the same or even worse supporting cast of characters could easily surpass the evil our nation has seen so far under Trump 2.0. – and he would definitely be Constitutionally capable of running for re-election in 2028.
The suggested solutions in Olear’s post will not be easy to accomplish, but would be preferable, in my opinion, to staging a coup/insurrection in the Trump January 6th, 2021 mode. We need to regain our democracy and restore our government without sacrificing the values that Trump has gone to such lengths to destroy in his quest for endless personal power and wealth.
This is not a proposal for an insurrection, but rather a proposal to end the insurrection that Trump and his conspirators started after he lost the 2020 election but were not held accountable for. He should not be in office now, and obviously has no intention of changing and actually acting in a manner that would follow the dictates of the oath of office he never had any intention of obeying. We must be careful to insure that he and his autocratic enablers meet justice without using methods that are similarly hypocritical as the methods they used to bring us to the state we find ourselves in today.
Source: The #Section3 #Removal Plan: A(nother) Quick, Legal, and Nonviolent Way to End the Trump Regime
Below is a link to a fact check produced by CNN regarding a speech delivered in Detroit earlier this week.
Throughout his career, but especially since he entered the realm of electoral politics in this country, Trump has perfected the art of the fact-free speech. He has been extremely proficient in his ability to convince voters that his gross exaggerations of his own ability to solve problems on a local, national or even global scale, while simultaneously blaming any perceived shortcomings of his policies on the dolts who preceded him in office.
There has been some shifting of the willingness on the part of some of those who have voted for Trump to accept his word as gospel, especially as it conflicts with their own life experiences pertaining to the economy and handling of such issues as immigration and foreign policy. Gross exaggeration of his creating an economic miracle in this country (lowering drug prices by more than 100%? When was the last time you picked up a prescription at a pharmacy and got paid by them for doing so?) can be and have been debunked many times each time he spouts them.
His immigration policy is starting to cause his support to waiver among his voters as they witness the way in which his ICE troops act like mask-wearing goons sweeping up and even killing citizens, children, and peaceful protesters (not to mention elected local political figure as well as Congressional Representatives in the course of performing their official duties). His immigration enforcement activities in his first term in office were viewed by many as despicable, but this time are far worse.
While campaigning for office this time around, he and his running mate played fast and loose with reality with their denigration of Haitian immigrants in Ohio, claiming falsely that they were butchering and feasting on the dogs and cats that were family pets of their local community members. With racism obvious to all, he now wants to blame Somali immigrants in Minnesota for all kinds of fraud and deport them all – even the many among them who are full-fledged American citizens.
Trump has also claimed that foreign governments, such as the one in Venezuela, which he has been waging an undeclared war on, have emptied their prisons and mental institutions and sent the worst of the worst to this country to destroy it. His own policy, he claims, is designed to deport these evil people and make this country great again by making it safe again. Statistics show that thus far, the vast majority of those detained and deported are not hardened criminals or mentally ill, but those whose only crime was living here without documentation making it legal for them to do so.
Trump wants to eliminate birthright citizenship so he can deport even more people. He has increased the ranks of ICE and that group is less rigorously trained and has been allowed to become more or less like Gestapo storm troopers from Nazi Germany or any number of modern authoritarian regimes, arriving in unmarked vehicles, wearing masks and without visible identification, detaining people because they look or speak differently than most “Real” Americans, or people trying to stop the abduction or the violence with which the detainees are being subjected. American citizens protesting are liable to be swept up as well, being charged with obstruction.
Trump’s immigration antics are dangerous to all people living in this country – not just immigrants. Note the totalitarian approach he’s taken in Minnesota that resulted in the cold-blooded murder of an American citizen in Minneapolis. Even foreign policy is replete with examples of Trump’s self-aggrandizing personality taking great risks with our liberties and potentially our very lives.
The undeclared one-sided war on Venezuela has been going on for months now, starting with the trumped-up (pun intended) massacres of people in small boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific supposedly engaged in drug trafficking. No involvement of Congress, which is Constitutionally responsible for declaring war and has the responsibility of limiting what the Commander-in-Chief is allowed to do when it comes to making war. More recently, Trump invaded the country and kidnapped the nation’s president and his wife and brought tio this country to be tried under our legal system on charges similar to those meted out by our courts to a former president of another country, who Trump hypocritically pardon just weeks before.
The fact-free explanation has brought to light the fact that the real reason for the attack was not fighting drug-related “terrorism”. It was all about the enormous quantities of oil buried in the ground beneath Venezuela. Doing it when Congress was in recess for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays was intentional to delay any Congressional until it was a done deal. Saying it was done to save thousands of American lives everyday (yet another fabricated exaggeration) from the scourge of illegal drugs (the fentanyl often mentioned doesn’t come to this country via Venezuela).
Trump came up with this whole “that oil belongs to the USA because oil companies that started drilling for it were displaced when it was nationalized under Chavez, the duly elected predecessor of the current president Maduro.The logic of a country several hundreds of miles away owning the natural resources located in a distant country never tied to it in any way, shape or form escapes me – and just about every scholar of international law.
Also, Trump seems hell-bent on starting want could end up being WWIII by forcibly annexing Greenland, which has for centuries held jurisdiction over it. Even Trump knows that would activate a clause in the NATO treaty for a unified armed response from all signatories should one member country be attacked militarily. So far, I believe the only use of that clause was the response to the attack on the United States by terrorists on September 11, 2001.
Trump has repeatedly and routinely sought to withdraw from many international treaties and badmouthed the other NATO member countries, saying they weren’t contributing their fair share in terms of defense spending and threatened to leave the organization if they didn’t start contributing more during his first term, but he didn’t threaten to attack another NATO country and steal their resources.
Other foreign antics include wanting to take back the Panama Canal and annexing Canada to make it our 51st state. But he started doing stuff early in this term to indicate, at least to me, that he is a loose cannon yearning to exercise control over the US military in ways that it has not been used before.
He has attacked Iran to allegedly destroy its ability to build nuclear weapons and Nigeria for the alleged attacks on Christians in that country. Now he is warning Iran that he will attack them again if the government keeps killing protesters. His hypocrisy is shining through once again, as he has longed for opportunity to do just that to protesters against his policies in this country. Remember he advocated for police to be rough when arresting people by banging their heads when putting the in the back seat of their cruisers? Or hit famous statement that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it?
One of the most absurd statement he made recently illustrates how dangerous he has become was when asked by a journalist what placed limits on what he can and cannot do to achieve his agenda and he said only his own morality can stop him. His Supreme Court presidential immunity decision has him firmly convinced that nothing but his own conscience can stop him from doing anything he wants to do with impunity.
Donald Trump has never given me any indication that he has any moral integrity whatsoever. Unless and until Congressional Republicans and GOP appointed Supreme Court justices show they have some and develop enough intestinal fortitude to challenge his belief in his own omnipotence, he will continue to violate his solemn oath of office as he sees fit. A mere Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress is not enough. Two impeachments which should have resulted in convictions and permanent removal from the highest office in our land during his first term did not because people who should have known he committed high crimes and misdemeanors voted not to convict him.
A solid showing in this November’s midterm elections will only make it possible for Trump to pass legislation he wants. But that won’t stop him from continuing to try to rule by fiat using Executive Orders and impeachment will be next to impossible unless the Senate reaches a two-thirds majority of Democrats and Independents. Given that only one-third of the Senate is even up for election this year, that would take a miracle.
In 1974, when Richard Nixon was up to his neck due to his actions during the Watergate cover-up, he chose to resign rather than face an impeachment trial that he was told by Republicans he would be convicted. If only this crop of Senate Republicans was as firm in acting as a check and balance for our Lunatic-in-Chief as was the class of 1974, many lives would be saved the world over and life here would regain a sense of sanity. I’m not convinced that will happen and even if I’d did, JD Vance would be in charge and I don’t think he would get us out of this mess either – and he would have to potential for keeping the office for longer than Trump will.
But I will continue to resist in any way legally available, at the ballot box, on the streets and on social media and hope as many people join the resistance as possible. That includes those who voted for Trump but become disillusioned by his failure to tell the truth and refusal to keep the promises he made to earn their votes to begin with.
Source: Fact check: Trump’s Detroit economic speech | CNN Politics
Below is a link to an NBC News article reporting on the release by the Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee deposition of Special Counsel Jack Smith. Smith had asked that the testimony be made publicly, but the Republicans held the inquiry behind closed doors.
Within the article are links to the lengthy transcript of the proceedings as well as a video recording of the hearing. Why they decided to hold the closed meeting rather than a public hearing in the first place is hard to comprehend given President Trump’s claims to having the most transparent administration in our nation’s history, but you’ll have that these days. I suspect the fallout from the Trump/DOJ release of the Epstein files, or lack thereof, played a role in the decision to make this information publicly available.
Trump incited the January 6, 2021 Capitol Riot. That he was not convicted of it by the Senate after being impeached by the House of Representatives is an even more grievous offense to the American people and our Constitution than after his first impeachment, as it paved the way for a person guilty of insurrection to remain in office and run for it again. We all know what that has wrought in less than a year of the New Trump. Rather than continuing to enable Trump’s desire to be our dictator, Congressional Republicans need to get serious about fulfilling their own oaths of office.
Any Senator who voted to not convict Trump in that second impeachment trial is not fit to serve in that body.
Earlier this week, President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America delivered a typical President Donald J. Trump speech before the United Nations General Assembly at their headquarters in New York City. I suspect the man has been advised millions of times not to exaggerate, and he’s cried barrels and barrels of tears over it, but he is apparently incapable of restraining his tendency to do so.
Trump spent plenty of time blaming his predecessor for a myriad of economic and political problems he has faced since his inauguration on January 20th. To hear him talk, you’d think he has saved this country and the world at large from utter devastation while simultaneously single-handedly ending multiple wars that had begun years before he rose to power. Never mind that he did nothing about them during his first term in office.
In much the same fashion as he mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic that closed out his first term in office, he justified his actions countering scientific evidence and international efforts to alleviate climate change as if the entire scientific community was doing nothing but perpetrating a giant hoax aimed at destroying a global economy that allowed his pals in the fossil fuel industry to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us. His attacks on wind, solar and other green energy technologies that are less polluting of the air we breathe and the water we drink were pitiful.
He continued on rants justifying (or so he thought) his attacks on longtime allies in his tariff policy chaos, as well as his muddled attempts at forging peaceful solutions to major armed conflicts that he promised he could easily end on day one of his new administration. Russia, Ukraine, the entire Middle East and the world at large are all sleeping better knowing that Donald Trump has solved all their problems – except for the fact that he has most likely only extended the suffering of millions.
I, for one, was embarrassed that this man delivered this speech representing my country on the world stage – just as I was when he ridiculed the presidents of Ukraine and South Africa at press events staged in the Oval Office earlier this year. Likewise, his ill-advised attempts to annex Greenland, make Canada into the 51st state, re-take control of the Panama Canal do not reflect my views or those of most Americans, let alone people from other parts of the world.
Does a man who bombed Iran and has taken to killing people in small boats in international waters while claiming he is fighting a war with terrorist organizations transporting drugs here illegally, with no attempt to even prove that’s what they were doing to begin with deserve the Nobel Peace Prize? I think not. More likely, he deserves the same international disapproval currently shared by the heads of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and Israel for its actions in Gaza.
Trump blaming the UN and accusing people of attempting to sabotage his speech because he actually had to walk up steps that were supposed to do the walking for him, and then making him read off his paper copy of the speech he was giving instead of a teleprompter, should be beneath a world leader. It is standard Donald Trump.
This country is supposed to have checks and balances among three co-equal branches of government. The Judiciary is hampered by a Supreme Court that refuses (so far at least) to rule against the man that gave them a large conservative majority. A Congressional majority composed of members of a Republican Party that nearly unanimously supports anything Trump wants isn’t doing its job, either.
The 25th Amendment won’t get Trump removed. He owns the Cabinet. Impeachment didn’t work the last two times because not enough GOP Senators would vote to convict – even when Trump’s incitement of the riot on 1/6/21 was obvious. The Judiciary, other than DOJ and SCOTUS, seems to be functioning normally for the most part, but those are huge exceptions. The American People must keep making their preferences known. We definitely don’t need to start a tradition of military parades for Dictators’ birthdays.
Source: Trump’s United Nations Speech: Read Full Text Transcript
On July 19, 2019, I published a blog post titled Trump Must Go. This post listed some of the reasons I thought that President Trump needed to be removed from office for the good of the people of this country and the world as a whole. The subsequent failure of the United States Senate to convict him in two impeachment trials was just that – a failure to remove the man from office and ensure that he could never again be eligible to serve in the office of President of the United States of America.
While Trump was thus enabled to finish out his term of office, he was defeated in the November 2020 election by President Biden quite handily. However, subsequent to this electoral defeat, he conspired to not only refuse to acknowledge his electoral defeat, he tried to overturn the results of the election and gave a rousing speech that most felt incited a riot and violent takeover of the US Capitol which disrupted the certification of Biden’s victory by the Electoral College and United Stetes Congress. This insurrection on January 6, 2021 ultimately failed and Biden was inaugurated on January 20, 2021.
After the violence of January 6, 2021, the Senate failed for a second time to convict Trump at an impeachment trial, leaving Trump open to running for the office again. Despite legal efforts to convict Trump of 91 felony charges in four separate sets of indictments, delays in the judicial process, along with at least one controversial ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States, he was able to run out the clock and actually win the 2024 election and reclaim the office on January 20, 2025.
It took less than 24 hours after Trump’s swearing in ceremony for him to violate his oath of office. Trump signed a series of Executive Orders that were not only undemocratic in nature, but some of which single-handedly overturned portions of the very Constitution of the United States of America that he had just sworn to uphold an defend. Granted, he hadn’t even placed his hand on the bible while swearing his oarg of office, which many thought was strange, but what are we supposed to believe about his sincerity about keeping his oath given the actions he took so soon after taking it?
One of his first executive orders he signed stripped many American citizens of the Birthright Citizenship they were given based on their being born in this country regardless of the citizenship status of their parents are the time of their birth. This has been seen as a key feature of the Constitution since the passage of the 14th Amendment well over one hundred years ago. I suppose Trump’s disdain for that particular Amendment is understandable, as it is also the one that prohibits individuals guilty of insurrection against the United States from ever holding federal elective office in this country. While initially aimed at preventing Confederates from the Civil War from holding office, many believed that it included those who participated in or instigated the violence of January, 6, 2021 – including Donald J. Trump.
Many of the Executive Orders signed by Trump on inauguration day and since are already being litigated in the courts, but that is only part of the chaos Trump has sewn in the short space of time since then. The authoritarian and oligarchic nature of the activity both Trump and Elon Musk have been taking so far exceeds anything Trump undertook in his earlier adminnistrnation by orders of magnitude.
While forming his cabinet after his victory in 2016, Trump selected nominees who, while generally right-wing, were at least somewhat appropriate in terms of being fit to perform the duties of the positions they were chosen to fill. This time, however, he intentionally picked people whose sole goal was to obey Trump’s every whim unquestioningly, while doing everything they could to create Chaos and in some instances make sure their respective departments could no longer perform the duties they were created to deal with in the first place.
Selecting a Secretary of Defense known to be a heavy drinker and misogynistic regarding the role of women in the military, as well as incompetent when dealing with organisations much smaller than is our Department of Defense is but one example of Trump daring GOP Senators to oppose during the confirmation process. Thus far, none of even the least qualified nominees has been voted down. Those willing to do nothing to reign in Trump in order to serve the needs of the Constitution, the nation as a whole or even their own constituents have been such a small number that the confirmatiiioon process itself has been a mockery of what it is intended to be.
Most of the same people who refused to obey the demands of their own oaths of office by refusing to convict Trump of impeachment charges twice, allowing him to not only remain in office but to also run again and serve again in the same office with even fewer guardrails to limit the degree to which Trump could exceed his constitutional powers and rule as a virtual dictator. The Senate is supposed to be a body proiding checks and balances on the executive and judiciary branches. They are instead acting like a rubber stamp enabling Trump to do whatever the hell he wants to do regardless if it is legal, constitutional or beneficial to the American people.
Other examples of this are his illegal firing of 19 departmental inspectors general whose jobs were to make sure the various departments are actually doing their jobs effectively and efficiently – some of what he and Musk’s DOGE are allegedly supposed to be doing with absolutely no authority to do so. Instead, they are running around like a bull in a china shop, removing leadership for doing their jobs correctly, purging government employees who refuse to kowtow to the will of Trump and his merry clique of billionaires while they pillage the social safety net to fill their already bulging wallets at the expense of ordinary American people.
Perhaps worst of all is the intentional purge of prosecutors and FBI personnel for properly doing their jobs in the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and seeking revenge against those who tried to control the violence while pardoning the perpetrators who were rightfully convicted of crimes they were urged to commit by Donald Trump in a speech earlier that same day. Now Trump has a gang of devoted insurgents he can count on to cause chaos and violence on his behalf should he feel the dessire for them to do so.
In the arena of foreign affairs, Trump has gone out of his way to alienate our neighbors and many of our long-term allies with threatened tariffs, talk of annexing Canada, buying Greenland and taking back control of the Panama canal. He topped it off with the idea that he wanted the United States to take over Gaza, remove all its Palestinian residents to neighboring countries and turning it into a tourist paradise along the lines of the French Riviera. Add in renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and the determination to be more inhumane than he even was in his previous term when it comes to dealing with undocumented immigrants and his determination to play fast and loose with existing law to achieve his goal of deporting millions of hard-working tax-paying non-criminal immigrants and you have a situation where he is turning this country into an unreliable ally at best and a threat to world peace at worst.
Donald Trump is proving to be even more erratic in his pronouncements and bullying in his tactics than he was previously. He seems to think he deserves to be able to do whatever he wants with no dissent from members of his own party and over the objections of Democrats and the general public – including people who voted for him. The fact that his proposals (as well as the desires of the billionaires who paid to get him elected and now comprise a disproportionately large group in his cabinet and advisory groups) will hurt more people than they help (including his hardcore MAGA base) does not dissuade him from pushing forward his agenda.
I am reminded of the response King Donald had to the COVID pandemic and wonder how many lives could have been saved had he not insisted on avoiding listening to those more competent in dealing with health crises than himself. Not being willing to seek the advice of competent professionals, especially when dealing with issues beyond the scope of one’s own knowledge is not a strength in someone in the office of President of the United States (or any other leadership position, for that matter.
President Trump is determined to act recklessly to extremes that even he did not achieve in his previous four years in office. Many people in this country and elsewhere in the world will be negatively affected by his authoritarian ambitions – especially as nearly all of his cabinet picks are as unfit to serve in their designated positions as he is. This includes especially the elected members of Congress who choose to enable his agenda to save their own political careers rather than truly representing the interests of their own constituents.
While we may be able to vote these oath breakers out of office in 2026, we cannot afford to wait that long to stop the damage that is already occurring due to the rapid-fire blitzkrieg that Trump/Musk and their acolytes are serving up. The rule of law and our democracy are at stake. We need to rein in the forces of darkness that are threatening to replace our democratically elected representative republic with an authoritarian oligarchy that replaces government of, by and for the people with one hellbent on feeding the greed for money and power of a few people at the top at the expense of the hundreds of millions of people beneath them economically.
We cannot afford to remain silent and hope that Trump and his ilk will come to their senses and show signs of humanitarian compassion for the rest of us. Ain’t gonna happen folks. Now more than ever, Trump Must Go.
Below is a link to the final report of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations and prosecutions, volume one, which dealt with President Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to President Biden. Also added on is the response Trump’s legal team made in an attempt to keep this information from ever being released to the general public.
Luckily, the attempt to suppress this report was denied by the courts. The American people need to be informed of what our alleged leaders are doing behind our backs. What might have happened last November 5th if all of this had been public knowledge prior to votes being cast in what might turn out to be one of the most important presidential elections in American history?
If a president is acting as if it is part of his official duties to incite a riot for the express purpose of overturning an election because they lost it, why bother even having elections? The President of the United States of America does not now and never should in the future have the authority to overturn the results of an election by inciting his followers to start an insurrection to prevent a peaceful transition of power as a result of the people voting in a free and fair election.
In fact, all of the claims of election fraud made in many courts throughout the nation subsequent to the events leading up to and following the riots of January 6, 2021 were found to be without merit. The 14th Amendment should have been invoked to prevent Donald Trump from ever again gaining elected office. He should have been tried and convicted or not by a jury of his peers (as he was of the 34 felony fraud counts dealing with his conduct prior to the 2016 election which helped him win the office in the first place). Instead, his legal team was able, with assistance from some judges he appointed (including 3 Supreme Court Justices) to delay the cases long enough for him to win the election this time.
Neither Donald Trump nor anyone else should be allowed to utterly disregard the Constitution they swore to uphold and defend when taking the office. The same is true of the members of the United States Senate who refused to convict him twice of articles of impeachment forwarded them by the House of Representatives, thereby allowing him to not only remain in office, but to return to the office stronger than ever, hellbent on revenge on his opponents and promising even more authoritarian governance than ever before.
We need a government, of, by and for the people now more than ever. Donald Trump and merry band of ultra-wealthy oligarchs and those willing to let him get his way regardless of the consequences for the people of this country or the world at large do not fit that description even remotely. Informing us of what really happened leading up to the attempted coup on January 6, 2021 came too late to save us from what will begin in earnest when Trump is sworn in on January 20th, and his Administration takes shape and begins his promised shakeup of the federal government.
Better late than never. But what of the other volume of Smith’s final report – the one dealing with his hoarding and hiding highly classified documents in his country club in Mar-a-Lago? Thus far, this document has not been released. What dangers to national security does that pose? If he had been brought to trial on that indictment, would he have been convicted? We’ll never know, but he certainly went out of his way to prevent the American people from knowing the depth of his shenanigans and what risk he posed if and/or when he provided that classified information to the wrong people.
Don’t the American people know what those we have trusted to run our government are doing to abuse that trust?
Source: Final Report on the Special Counsel’s Investigations and Prosecutions Volume One
Below find a link to a transcript of an interview of Trump in the aftermath of his being selected by Time magazine as its Person of the Year. Included in the introduction to this interview is a link to a fact check of the interview – something that is especially important given his proclivity to spout nonsensical gibberish if not outright lies just about anytime he speaks in public.
While there is no doubt that Donald Trump was an enormous influence on public political discourse in this country as well as abroad both before and after the November Presidential election, his selection for Time Person of the Year should not be construed as being a ringing endorsement for Trump’s conduct during the campaign or his conduct as President after being elected in 2016. Reading his answers and comparing them to the campaign rhetoric that lead to his electoral victory over Vice-President Kamala Harris reflect negatively on his fitness to serve another term as President of the United States of America.
Donald Trump is not now, never was and never will be fit to serve as our President. Should he be given free-reign to implement the policies he espoused during his first term as well as those he reiterated repeatedly throughout the campaign, the future does not look particularly promising for the vast majority of the American people.
On two separate occasions, Donald Trump should have been found guilty but did not gain the votes of 2/3 of the Senate needed to convict him of Articles of Impeachment and likely removed from office and forbidden from running for or regaining elected office again. That he was not convicted despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt points out unwillingness on the part of the vast majority of GOP Senators to fulfill their oath of office by not holding him accountable for violating his.
Now that Trump’s MAGA GOP supporters enjoy a majority of members of both houses of Congress, the incoming President and his entire Administration and a super majority of justices on the Supreme Court of the United States, expect his determination to implement authoritarian policies enumerated in Project 2025 to strengthen. Impeachment under these circumstances seems even more unlikely to succeed. Removal from office via the 25th Amendment is likewise improbable. Either option would do little to improve the situation. He’ll have a cabinet full of blind loyalists and even if he was forcibly removed from office we’d get stuck with…wait for it…President J,D. Vance.
Resistance to the Trump/Musk agenda may not be utterly futile, but it certainly be more difficult to succeed than it ultimately proved to be the last time he held the office. Resist we must. The welfare of our people and saving our democracy from Trump style fascism demand that we do so.
– rjc
Source: Read the Transcript of Trump’s Person of the Year Interview
Below, find a link to an essay published by Steven Dundas in his Dedicated to the Proposition that All Men are Created Equal substack..As always, Steven is insightful in diagnosing the causes leading up to Trump’s election to a second term as President of the United States of America, as well how we must act to thwart Trump’s promises and threats to attack and prosecute those who oppose him.
Resistance to the undemocratic and unconstitutional actions is essential even though it will be difficult and fraught with danger for us. I firmly believe that millions Trump voters bought the lies he was trying to sell us or did not believe that he really meant what he said about actions he intended to carry out very quickly once he is sworn again as President ( An oath. by the way, that he violated repeated in his first term, and will violate even more forcefully this time around.
We cannot stand by silently and allow Trump to get away with his fascist agenda.the way the Senate did by refusing to convict him after an unprecedented two impeachment trials. Millions of Germans did just that for Hitler during the 1930’s and ’40’s. The United States and cannot afford to let the same or worse happen again now.
I encourage everyone to subscribe to Steven Dundas’s substack. He knows what he’s talking about. – rjc
Source: (13) Dictators and Autocrats don’t ask Why? They ask Why Not.
Below is a link to the full transcript of Vice President Kamala Harris’s concession speech after being defeated by Donald Trump in Tuesday’s Presidential election. The speech was delivered Wednesday afternoon. Harris obviously did not pattern her speech after the one Trump delivered after losing to President Biden in the 2020 election, because that speech never happened. To this day, Trump will not admit that he was defeated in that election.
Time will tell if Donald Trump believes he is to be sworn in for a four-year term as President of the United States of America or for a more open-ended term as our authoritarian dictator. Either way, it should not take long to determine how he intends to implement Project 2025, start mass deportations and prosecuting those he identifies as his “enemies within”. I hope he doesn’t mistake a lack of a riot at the Capitol on January 6th as evidence that we will roll over and allow him to do as he pleases while in office this time around.
First things first. What is to come of the criminal indictments pending on Donald Trump? Also, what is to come of sentencing for the 34 felony convictions he already has, or the multi-million dollar civil judgments he was handed for defamation and fraud? Stay tuned… -rjc
Source: Kamala Harris Concession Speech: Read the Full Transcript | TIME
Below find a link to the speech delivered by Vice President Kamala Harris that has been hailed as closing arguments for her campaign to be elected President of the United States of America on November 5, 2024. She delivered the speech at the same place that Trump held his infamous rally on January 6, 2021 that preceded, and many contend incited, the violent attack on the Capitol shortly thereafter.
The speech by Harris contrasts strongly with the rally held by Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York City earlier in the week, conveying the former President’s closing arguments for putting him back in the office he won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Where speakers preceding Trump seemed determined to spew racist and anti-immigrant themes designed to fire up the MAGA base, Harris sought to unite, rather than further divide the American people.
The Vice President pointed out that she would support the sort of bipartisan border security bill that Trump effectively squashed by ordering his Congressional lackeys to vote against it in order to give him an important issue to campaign on. She also pointed out the ways in which Trump has promised to run the government when he regains power. Where he sees all those whose opinions differ from his to be “the enemy within” and deserving to be prosecuted and punished by “his” Department of Justice as enemies of the state, she offered those of differing opinions a seat at the table.
Despite denials that he had anything to do with the Project 2025 agenda of turning our government into a fascistic Authoritarian dictatorship, he certainly has done nothing to allay the fears of many that he will govern in that fashion if sworn in for a second time. He offers the vast majority of us nothing other than a loss of freedoms we have grown to take for granted. Rights such freedom of speech and reproductive rights have been attacked by Trump and his supporters – starting with the reversal of Roe v. Wade (made possible by allowing Trump to appoint 3 extremist justices to SCOTUS) and growing increasingly worse with even more extreme laws in many individual states.
The positive spin the Harris campaign has projected, along with the negatives of Trump’s threats to large segments of the American populace lead me to believe that, for a third time, Trump will lose the popular vote by millions. Hopefully, for the sake of our future, the electoral vote will follow suit. Even then, Trump is much more likely to incite his followers to violence than urge a peaceful transition to a Harris Administration. He has done nothing but state in every campaign since 2016 that he is impossible to beat unless the election is rigged. This year has been no exception.
Many people have already voted in this election – myself included. For those who have not, I urge you to compare Trump’s speech at Madison Square Garden to Harris’s at the ellipse and decide for yourself who is most fit to serve as our next President. One further note: Given Trump’s age and mental state, keep in mind who the two running mates are. I suspect that Vance would make an even worse chief executive of a democratic government than Trump, especially considering his relative youth.
Vote your conscience with the future in mind for the sake of our children and their children. I’m counting on being on the winning side of this election as I was in 2020, but we can’t take anything for granted – even as the results are tabulated on Tuesday and the days that follow.
Source: Watch Kamala Harris’ full closing argument on 2024 election at D.C. Ellipse
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