| From: CentralParkRanger | 2/17/2025 11:12:46 PM | | | | | | From Facebook.
Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger Against Trump
I owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology.
This was four years ago:
I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency these last four years, and am still exhausted from the experience.
But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than when he incited an insurrection against the government,
Mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans,
Called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”
Separated children from their families,
Lost those children in the bureaucracy,
Tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,
Tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,
Got impeached,
Got impeached again,
Had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,
Pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,
Fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,
Bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,
Took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,
Diverted military funding to build his wall,
Caused the longest government shutdown in US history,
Called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”
Lied over 30,000 times,
Banned transgender people from serving in the military,
Ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,
Vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,
Refused to release his tax returns,
Increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,
Had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,
Called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,
Coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,
Refused to concede the 2020 election,
Hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,
Walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,
Suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,
Abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,
Pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,
Incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,
Withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,
Withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,
Withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,
Insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,
Pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,
Failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,
Called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,
Called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”
Claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,
Forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,
Believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,
Berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,
Suggested the US should buy Greenland,
Colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices, after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,
Repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”
Claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,
Violated the emoluments clause,
Thought that Nambia was a country,
Told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,
Called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution,
Nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,
Nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,
Nominated a corrupt head of HHS,
Nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,
Nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,
Praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,
Refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,
Insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,
Spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,
Falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,
Called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”
Falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,
Considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,
Mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,
Locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,
Used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”
Hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,
Pardoned several of his shady associates,
Gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his bat shit crazy conspiracy theories,
Got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),
Had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,
Forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,
Botched the COVID vaccine rollout,
Tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,
Charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,
Constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,
Claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,
Called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”
Used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,
Opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,
Got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,
Claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,
Ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,
Blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,
Redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,
Got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”
Threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,
Botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,
Threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,
Pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,
Thought that the Virgin islands had a President,
Drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,
Allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,
Rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,
Pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,
Rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,
Held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,
Tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,
Refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,
Nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,
Threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,
Attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,
Promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),
Allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,
Struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,
Called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”
Threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,
Went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,
Claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”
Seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,
Demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,
Praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,
Completely gutted the Voice of America,
Placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,
Claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,
Suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,
Suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,
Overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,
Reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,
Insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,
Gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,
Named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,
Eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,
Used soldiers as campaign props,
Fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,
Demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,
Hired a shit ton of white nationalists,
Politicized the civil service,
Did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,
Falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,
Claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,
Insulted reporters of color,
Insulted women reporters, insulted women reporters of color,
Suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,
Attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,
Summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House, to pressure them to overturn the election,
Spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,
Refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,
Hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,
Tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,
Acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,
Attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault,
Held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,
Didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,
Stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,
“Ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,
Led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,
Claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,
Tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,
Suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,
Suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,
Said that he had a special aptitude for science,
Fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,
Blurted out classified information to Russian officials,
Tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,
Fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,
Hired Stephen Miller,
Openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,
Interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,
Abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,
Tried to get Russia back into the G7,
Held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,
Seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,
Lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,
Falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,
Shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,
Still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,
Still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”
Forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,
Told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”
Screwed up the Census wording,
Withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,
Did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule: “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”
Allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,
Seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,
Stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,
Constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president, (which presumably includes four that were assassinated, and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump),
Claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,
Said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,
Claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,
Claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,
Created a commission to whitewash American history,
Retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,
Claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,
Hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent "Bowling Green Massacre" as a reason to ban Muslims,
Had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,
Bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,
Apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,
Stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,
Falsely claimed Biden wanted to de-fund the police,
Said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,
Tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,
Gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,
Tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,
Said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,
Deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,
Claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,
Touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile, which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile, or may not exist at all,
Retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,
Forced through security clearances for his family,
Suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,
Suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,
Tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender identification,
Suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,
Nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,
Retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,
Hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,
Accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,
Claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter,
because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,
Mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,
Obsessed over low-flow toilets,
Ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,
Called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),
Hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,
Took advice from the MyPillow guy,
Claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,
Said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,
Never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,
Falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent, though he, (himself), votes by mail.
Announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,
Insulted the leader of Canada,
Insulted the leader of France,
Insulted the leader of Britain,
Insulted the leader of Germany,
Insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),
Falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,
Blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,
Continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,
Said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,
Left a NATO summit early in a huff,
Stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,
Called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,
Refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise,
and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.
But other than that. . .  He was a great President 
All documented - - I would LOVE for anyone to show me proof that any of these are WRONG, and I will correct the Record Book of what Trump did! |
| | A Hard Look At Donald Trump | Political Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
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| From: Brumar89 | 2/18/2025 5:36:52 AM | | | | | | Breaking Things Faster Than You Can Read About It
Plus: Where have all the Democrats gone?
William Kristol
and
Andrew Egger
Feb 17, 2025
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440
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Elon Musk, who reliable sources inform us is still not technically the president, wants to see reporters whose coverage he doesn’t like thrown in jail. “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election,” he posted last night. “They deserve a long prison sentence.” Happy Monday.
A person holds an “I Am Stealing From You” Elon Musk poster at the U.S. Department of Education on February 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Jemal Countess / Getty Images for Progressive Change Institute.)
Everything Everywhere All at Once
by Andrew Egger
A few days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, my wife and I headed to the hospital for the birth of our third child, and I tried to clock out. Now I’m resurfacing like Rip Van Winkle—going to ground for a quick nap and waking in a brave new world. Everywhere you look, the landscape is changing—faster than we can write it down, faster than you can take it in. And they’re not even passing new laws yet!
The firings continue. Over the weekend, it was a brace of immigration judges, 1 hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration, hundreds more at DHS, an unknown number at the FDA. Trump’s goons are trying to get the Supreme Court to bless his firing of a government ethics watchdog. And as Bill discusses below, they’re also trying to hire back some nuclear safety workers they fired last week—hey, look, who knew they might be important?
That’s just one small part of the playbook, of course. The more aggressively Trump and Co. move without receiving real pushback from voters or elected Republicans, the bolder they seem to become to go still further. “He who saves his Country,” Trump posted on Saturday, “does not violate any Law.”
Did Trump pull out this perhaps-apocryphal quote from Napoleon Bonaparte on his own? Or was this one of his social-media lackeys operating for him? Dare we speculate which would be more alarming?
The White House is nearly done putting its pieces in place. Senate Republicans are waving through nominee after ludicrous nominee. The DOGE boys are worming their way into agency after agency. With the prologue stage of the Trump administration wrapping up, Trump’s laws do not constrain the People’s Emperor post feels like a thesis statement for what comes next.
Trump’s people sure seemed to take it that way. Elon Musk shared his post, festooning it with fourteen American flags. Republican congressmen fell all over themselves to laud it. “The President is Napoleon-posting and you’re blackpilling?” squealed Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), a member of both the Freedom Caucus and the House Oversight Committee. The shambling mummified corpse of conservative media scratched its head dumbfoundedly, then decided that if the president’s proclamation owned the libs, it must be good: “President sparks liberal meltdown for sharing controversial quote,” proclaimed the New York Post.
Meanwhile, Team Trump and conservative media continue to escalate their attacks on the federal judiciary, the one institution which—despite an extremely Trump-favorable 6–3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court—may still be poised to put a fly in the ointment on this, that, or the other Trump whim. “If ANY judge ANYWHERE can stop EVERY Presidential action EVERYWHERE, we do NOT live in a democracy,” Musk posted last week.
Everything moves faster and faster. So far, Americans seem barely to have noticed. Maybe it should be some grim comfort that it’s all coming to a head faster than any of us might have thought. Soon, we all may be forced to pay attention, whether we like it or not.
Make The Bulwark your go-to for the best reporting and clear-eyed analysis of Trump 2.0. Join Bulwark+.
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DOGE at the IRS
by William Kristol
It’s Presidents’ Day. But because Donald Trump is currently our president, today we have this headline in the Washington Post: “Musk’s DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS.”
The Post story explains that “Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is seeking access to a heavily guarded Internal Revenue Service system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country.”
What could go wrong?
Well, what hasn’t gone wrong?
As University of Michigan political scientist Don Moynihan writes, “Musk and DOGE are providing a real-time management case study. Unfortunately, all of the lessons are about what not to do.”
After all, last week DOGE fired—with no real review, no notice, and no transition period—one in five of the federal employees who manage our nuclear stockpile. Maybe we don’t need all those employees currently working at the National Nuclear Security Administration? Maybe we need more? Maybe their duties should be reorganized in some way or another?
I don’t know. Neither does DOGE.
So, when experts and the public and Congress reacted negatively to the firings, DOGE scrambled to reinstate the employees. Unfortunately, having canceled their email accounts, DOGE had difficulty getting in touch with the people they’d fired in order to un-fire them.
But at least in this instance the NNSA employees are reinstated, for now. That seems not to be the case at the National Institutes for Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Federal Aviation Administration or the Food and Drug Administration.
But I guess researching diseases and dealing with epidemics and keeping air travel safe and attending to food and drug safety are no big deal to the Trump administration. Not when compared with their deep and overriding objective: to break our government.
As Moynihan explains,
They don’t have a plan to fix what they are breaking because they don’t understand or care about the damage they are doing. Breaking government is the point. . . . It is a fundamental error to believe that DOGE is a government efficiency project. Cutting 1 in 4 federal employees would cut federal government spending by 1%. Cost savings are incidental. DOGE is a political control project. Firing and terrorizing public employees is a means to weakening state regulation of private interests and strengthening a personalist presidency.
We have wreckers in charge of our government.
What’s to be done? The courts can help. The media can help. Civil servants can help, by making clear what is happening, and resisting the onslaught as best they can. Even a little malicious compliance wouldn’t hurt.
But there is also something called Congress.
Yes, it’s now (narrowly) controlled by Republicans. And it’s very unfortunate that party loyalty has come to trump institutional responsibility.
Still there is a substantial minority party. They’re called the Democratic party. Remember them?
Is it too much to ask that they at least sound the alarm? Loudly and clearly and repeatedly?
They could start today. With the IRS.
Apparently, what’s going to happen at the IRS is still unresolved.According to the Post, “Under pressure from the White House, the IRS is considering a memorandum of understanding that would give officials from DOGE broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets”—but the memorandum hasn’t yet been signed. DOGE has not yet “been granted access as of Sunday evening.”
Senators voted a few weeks ago to confirm Scott Bessent as secretary of the treasury, of which the IRS is a part. The vote was 68 to 29, with 16 Democrats in favor. In his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Bessent assured senators that he would resist abuse of the IRS. Perhaps senators might speak up? And some House members as well? Some senators and representatives sit on subcommittees responsible for IRS oversight. Maybe they could interrupt their holiday to weigh in?
And perhaps the more than 70 million Americans who voted for House Democrats last November should let Democratic elected officials know they expect them to show some conviction and vigor at this fraught moment? Perhaps they should call the offices of their senators and House members, and ask—needless to say, politely and with all due respect—WHERE, OH WHERE, ARE YOU?
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Quick Hits
LITTLE MARCO FOREVER: When Trump tapped Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state, some Democrats were pleased. Here, at least, was a human being they could work with, someone with developed foreign policy views—in a sea of Robert F. Kennedy Jrs. and Kash Patels, they even dared hope he might be something resembling an adult in the room.
How’s that going so far? “It’s becoming increasingly clear that Marco Rubio is secretary of State in name only,” Nahal Toosi writes this morning for Politico:
Since taking over Foggy Bottom, Rubio has constantly appeared one or two steps behind the actions of President Donald Trump and tech mogul Elon Musk—popping up to explain, justify or even double down on choices he would probably not make if he was actually running the show. He’s talking (and posting online) in a different voice, contradicting earlier policy views and appears to have little control over the implementation of Trump’s assault on the federal workforce.
You’ve got to hand it to Rubio. He watched his vision for a revamped Republican party go up in smoke in 2016 when Trump annihilated him in the GOP primary, but he clawed his way slowly back into his new party leader’s good graces. As a reward, now he gets to be Little Marco forever—or at least until Trump gets tired of him and kicks him to the curb.
WITH ALLIES LIKE THESE: Worried about Trump’s phone call with Putin, Hegseth’s speech in Brussels, and Vance’s address in Munich? You’re probably not worried enough!
Luckily, Bill is. He recorded a video with Sarah on Friday about Vice President Vance’s embarrassing speech to the Munich Security Conference last week. In case you missed it, Vance attacked America’s allies, cozied up to Europe’s authoritarians, and completely ignored Russia.
Bill also talked to Eric Edelman, former under secretary of defense and ambassador to Turkey and Finland, who now co-hosts The Bulwark’s podcast Shield of the Republic, to really get into the weeds. The bottom line is this: Putin is great at manipulating people, and he’s got Trump doing exactly what he wants. Bulwark+ members can watch the video here. (Free version here.) |
| | A Hard Look At Donald Trump | Political Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
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| To: Brumar89 who wrote (42720) | 2/18/2025 5:41:37 AM | | From: Brumar89 | | | | Seven Myths Shattered by Trump 2.0 (and One True Thing)
Watching Trump, Musk, and their band of arsonists set fire to the shining city on a hill.
Jill Lawrence
Feb 18, 2025
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President Donald Trump before signing an executive order in the Oval Office on February 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
THE PAST FEW WEEKS have been a master class in myth-busting, starting with the fantasy that the government should be run like a business and the corollary delusion that winning candidates don’t follow through on their campaign agendas.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are running government right now just like they run their own businesses. It’s all about them and their profits, from Trump’s possibly criminal idea to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza and build a resort there (“I would own this,” he told Bret Baier) to Musk’s so far doomed attempt to get a judge to approve his possibly shady $56 billion Tesla payout.
They are slashing and trashing federal employees, programs, livelihoods, and futures without having the slightest clue about who does what and the consequences that could follow. They appear to be undermining aviation safety, nuclear weapons safety, the safety of classified data, even the safety of Americans working for USAID overseas.
A February 11 executive order called “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” meanwhile, says the plan requires “that each agency hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.” That sounds drastic. And random.
Many of us have seen this type of move-fast-and-break-things philosophy up close when friends or relatives have lost private-sector jobs. That’s capitalism: “Creative destruction” that is often callous and disruptive in service to its “ essential feature,” the profit motive.
By contrast, our government has life-and-death responsibilities, from national security to public health. It has moral and patriotic imperatives, values, rules, laws, oaths, and history. And it has three branches, one of them a 535-member legislature with control of spending under the constitutional “power of the purse.”
Maybe there’s some business person somewhere who could jump in and figure this out. Neither Trump nor Musk is that person. In fact they’re the last people who should be in charge.
The voters who chose Trump last year because of his business prowess must have forgotten about his six bankruptcies, hundreds of stiffed contractors, $25 million Trump University fraud settlement, and terrible reputation among peers. Maybe they have an affinity for the racism, cruelty, and misogyny he brings to politics. Maybe they like presidents who grift off their supporters, encourage insurrection against their own government, or bury their first wife at their golf club. Or maybe they were upset about egg prices.
Maybe they feel like Musk’s money, or the 13 children he’s had with four women, make him a real man. Maybe they think he’s really smart to start his rampage at eleven agencies engaged in “more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions” into his six companies, according to a New York Times investigation.
And maybe they are surprised by what is happening, as lives are upended all over America and the world. Except, what did they think would happen?
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A presidential sequel foretold
TRUMP HAS SURROUNDED himself with exactly the kind of people you’d expect from his first term, his 2024 campaign, and his first few weeks in office. Yes, he tried feebly to renounce Project 2025, the right-wing MAGA manual for a second Trump presidency, but that was no surprise given its many unpopular provisions—including firing civil service workers, abolishing the Department of Education, restricting contraception, and cutting federal support for renewable energy.
As Tim Walz said at the Democratic convention, “I coached high school football long enough to know, and trust me on this: When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.” They drew up that playbook in three different lengths, including the voluminous Project 2025. And shortly after Trump won the election, they dropped the pretense and proved Walz right.
As he and Musk busily disassemble the Deep State, Trump has already pardoned the January 6th rioters and imposed some of the tariffs he threatened. He has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord and is on his way to decimating the U.S. wind power industry. He mentioned defunding schools with vaccine requirements and now anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the secretary of health and human services. He didn’t end Russia’s war on Ukraine on Day One, but he’s been working hard to sell out Ukraine to Vladimir Putin.
As for lowering grocery prices, the Day One promise that may have won him the election, Trump promptly confessed that it would be “very hard” to do. The only surprise was that he confessed at all. Presidents don’t control food prices, but his indifference to the possibility of an avian flu pandemic could haunt him some day.
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It’s a fact that most presidents either do or try to do what they laid out to voters. President Barack Obama made 533 promises in his two campaigns, according to PolitiFact, and delivered on nearly half of them. He partially achieved another 28 percent by making compromises. PolitiFact labels the remaining 24 percent as “broken” promises, but that’s often not for lack of trying. Obama was repeatedly foiled and blocked by a hostile Republican-controlled House, Senate, or both from 2011 to 2017.
President Joe Biden encountered similar problems during his single term, but kept a third of his promises—including big ones like getting the COVID pandemic under control, putting America on course for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and improving the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). He compromised on 32 percent of his agenda and broke 34 percent of his campaign promises, mostly for lack of congressional support.
Trump kept only 23 percent of his promises in his first term, from raising tariffs and defunding Planned Parenthood to refusing to say “Happy Holidays,” and compromised on another 22 percent. He broke more than half of his promises, including major pledges to repeal the 2010 ACA health law, restore U.S. manufacturing, and invest in infrastructure. That’s even though he had a Republican Congress for two years. The author of The Art of the Deal turned out to be a nightmare negotiating partner—and political negotiating turned out to be complicated. Who knew?
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American dream, alive or dead?
YET ANOTHER REPUBLICAN MYTH, the myth of the perfect dealmaker, imploded. And I could go on. How about these? (And try not to laugh.)
? Presidents have limited power and must not overstep. For Republicans, including many of the conservative judges and justices they have installed, this clearly applies only to Democrats. If Obama or Biden had tried a power grab led by an unelected government contractor using immature twentysomething tech bros to destroy agencies created by Congress, fire thousands of civil servants willy-nilly, and access private taxpayer and employee information, all without any oversight or disclosure, we’d be awash in hellfire, brimstone, and articles of impeachment.
? Tax cuts pay for themselves. This doesn’t happen. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were followed by tax increases starting with him and ending with Bill Clinton, who achieved a balanced budget and a debt-reduction trajectory. George W. Bush and Trump threw that away and launched us into frightening levels of debt. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts not only are adding a projected $1.9 trillion to the deficit over ten years, more than 80 percent of the cuts went to corporations, tax partnerships, and people with high net worth. Workers saw very little benefit and black taxpayers saw even less. But Trump wants to renew his tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year.
? Presidents should obey the law, defend the Constitution, and uphold their oath of office. Also, Trump and Musk are champions of free speech. (Okay, now I’m the one laughing.)
? The American dream is about self-determination—people free to chart their destinies and follow their dreams. Except of course if you are a transgender teenager who needs health care, a woman who needs an abortion, a refugee fleeing violence, or anyone else who doesn’t conform to the expectations and requirements of leaders obsessed with money and power.
Here’s one true thing, no myth:
America is indeed an exceptional nation—exceptional in this current moment for the selfishness and cruelty of its leaders, their willful ignorance of recent history (from systemic racism to Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union), their rejection of pluralism, and their determination to make 330 million people speak, think, and live as they say.
Trump and Musk have set fire to “ the shining city on a hill.” The only mystery is whether it will survive the flames. |
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| From: CentralParkRanger | 2/18/2025 10:02:04 AM | | | | | | MOSCOW ( The Borowitz Report)—Vladimir Putin has entered into negotiations with Elon Musk over the ownership of Donald J. Trump, the Kremlin confirmed on Tuesday.
Those negotiations, however, are proving contentious, as the Russian president is arguing that, having fully owned Trump between 2017 and 2021, he is entitled to a majority stake now.
For his part, Musk claims that he purchased Trump outright by spending nearly $300 million on his 2024 campaign.
In one heated exchange, Musk reportedly told the Russian leader, “You’re being greedy, Vlad—you already own Tulsi.” |
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| From: CentralParkRanger | 2/18/2025 12:38:42 PM | | | | | | From Facebook
Robert Reich
Friends,
I want to talk today about the media’s coverage of the Trump-Vance-Musk coup.
I’m not referring to coverage by the bonkers right-wing media of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators.
I’m referring to the U.S. mainstream media — The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Public Radio — and the mainstream media abroad, such as the BBC and The Guardian.
By not calling it a coup, the mainstream media is failing to communicate the gravity of what is occurring.
Thursday’s opinion by The New York Times’ editorial board offers a pathetic example. It concedes that Trump and his top associates “are stress-testing the Constitution, and the nation, to a degree not seen since the Civil War” but then asks: “Are we in a constitutional crisis yet?” and answers that what Trump is doing “should be taken as a flashing warning sign.”
Warning sign?
Elon Musk’s meddling into the machinery of government is a part of the coup. Musk and his muskrats have no legal right to break into the federal payments system or any of the other sensitive data systems they’re invading, for which they continue to gather computer code.
This data is the lifeblood of our government. It is used to pay Social Security and Medicare. It measures inflation and jobs. Americans have entrusted our private information to professional civil servants who are bound by law to use it only for the purposes to which it is intended. In the wrong hands, without legal authority, it could be used to control or mislead Americans.
By failing to use the term “coup,” the media have also underplayed the Trump-Vance-Musk regime’s freeze on practically all federal funding — suggesting this is a normal part of the pull-and-tug of politics. It is not. Congress has the sole authority to appropriate money. The freeze is illegal and unconstitutional.
By not calling it a coup, the media have also permitted Americans to view the regime’s refusal to follow the orders of the federal courts as a political response, albeit an extreme one, to judicial rulings that are at odds with what a president wants.
There is nothing about the regime’s refusal to be bound by the courts that places it within the boundaries of acceptable politics. Our system of government gives the federal judiciary final say about whether actions of the executive are legal and constitutional. Refusal to be bound by federal court rulings shows how rogue this regime truly is.
Earlier this week, a federal judge excoriated the regime for failing to comply with “the plain text” of an edict the judge issued last month to release billions of dollars in federal grants. Vice President JD Vance, presumably in response, declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
Vance graduated from the same law school I did. He knows he’s speaking out of his derriere.
In sum, the regime’s disregard for laws and constitutional provisions surrounding access to private data, impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress, and refusal to be bound by judicial orders amount to a takeover of our democracy by a handful of men who have no legal authority to do so.
If this is not a coup d’etat, I don’t know what is.
The mainstream media must call this what it is. In doing so, they would not be “taking sides” in a political dispute. They would be accurately describing the dire emergency America now faces.
Unless Americans see it and understand the whole of it for what it is rather than piecemeal stories that “flood the zone,” Americans cannot possibly respond to the whole of it. The regime is undertaking so many outrageous initiatives that the big picture cannot be seen without it being described clearly and simply.
Unless Americans understand that this is indeed a coup that’s wildly illegal and fundamentally unconstitutional — not just because that happens to be the opinion of constitutional scholars or professors of law, or the views of Trump’s political opponents, but because it is objectively and in reality a coup — Americans cannot rise up as the clear majority we are, and demand that democracy be restored. |
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| To: Brumar89 who wrote (42723) | 2/18/2025 12:40:42 PM | | From: Brumar89 | | | | Trump went to the South this weekend. Not to visit flood victims in Kentucky, but to have his security drive him around a race track. He doesn’t give a sh*t about you or your needs. He’s on a vanity tour for the next four years.
- Rep. Eric Swalwell |
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| To: Brumar89 who wrote (42725) | 2/18/2025 1:20:43 PM | | From: Brumar89 | | | | Bari Weiss Torches Tucker Carlson and the Far-Right for ‘Erasing the Line Between Good and Evil’
Isaac SchorrFeb 18th, 2025, 12:12 pm
 LEFT: Tucker Carlson (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) RIGHT: Bari Weiss (Gilberto Tadday/TED)
Bari Weiss, the former New York Times editor and founder of The Free Press, fired a shot across the bow of Tucker Carlson and the far-right more generally on Monday.
Weiss, who began her career on the center-left but have moved to the right in recent years as came to view the Democratic Party as increasingly illiberal, argued that the far-right is “erasing the line between good and evil,” and likened this cohort to their counterparts on the far-left in an speech before the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.
After observing that Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election should not have been as surprising as it was to some, she asked “So what can we learn from this recent history?” before answering that “one big takeaway is that if a political movement does not police its ranks, does not draw lines, if it neglects to protect its borders, if it does not defend its sacred values, it cannot long endure.”
She continued:
What are those values? They include the rule of the law. The belief in the inalienable rights of each individual. That we are all created in the image of God and it is that—and not our ethnicity or our IQ score—that gives us our worth and that makes us all equal. It is a rejection of mob violence. It is the view that the West is good and that America is good, and that we deserve our heroes along with our whole complex history.
These values are not left or right. They are foundational. They are civilizational. And they have always required constant vigilance to preserve.
But that’s not the sense you get online these days—and some places offline, too—where power is celebrated instead of principle. Where power is quickly becoming the only principle.
If that continues without being challenged, we may wind up spending the next few years watching the same story we just lived through on the other side, as the far right (not the one defined by cable news, which includes most of us here today) devours what remains of the center-right.
If you aren’t aware of the dangers that come with apparent victory, if you think, it’s impossible, I believe you are as naive as the professors at Harvard who still email me to say, “Can you believe what’s happening?!” And yes I can.
So what does this group, which differs from the rest of the right in its open embrace of illiberalism, sound like? Well, it sounds an awful lot like the far left.
This group says that we are in a war—a war here at home—and that because we’re at war, because the stakes are life and death, the normal rules of the game need to be suspended.
They say those who don’t go along with that are squishes or traitors or they were secret leftists all along. Or they accuse them of being conservative or Republican in name only, which is a version of the “false consciousness” that Marxists were so fond of telling people they suffer from.
They say that it’s not enough to return to normal or renew our old values — because that’s not an option. Instead what they say is it’s time to give the other side a taste of their own medicine.
They say we were treated cruelly, and so cruelty is the only response.
They say the thing we are trying to conserve has already been destroyed—and perhaps was an allusion to begin with.
They say that reform is a losers’ strategy, and that the whole thing needs to be burned down.
Like the far left, this group has no use for history. They judge people living or dead in the ideological light of presentism, or they simply reimagine them entirely from scratch. Just as the left defaced and desecrated statues of [Winston] Churchill, the vandals on the right desecrate his name and his memory.
Again here, it’s a question of borders. In this case, they actively erase them by erasing the line between good and evil, and between past and present—looking backward to a place where “things went wrong,” as if it’s ever possible to turn back the clock.
While the left, long sympathetic with Stalin, today sympathizes with modern-day Nazis in the form of Hamas—this new right eulogizes the original ones. And in rehabilitating Hitler they are not merely demonizing Jews, but demonizing America, Britain, and the millions who fought and died to preserve our freedoms.
All of this seems as obvious to me as the notion that a girl cannot become a boy. But a lot of people seem to have a hard time saying these things out loud right now.
Speaking at the @Arc_Forum, @BariWeiss warns conservatives that if an ascendant far-right goes unchecked, it could cause the movement’s future downfall.
“If you aren’t aware of the dangers that come with apparent victory, if you think,‘That’s impossible,’ I believe you are as… pic.twitter.com/lkTuo47nfO
— The Free Press (@TheFP) February 18, 2025
The line about desecrating Churchill’s name and memory is a thinly-veiled reference to Carlson, who infamously indulged internet personality Darryl Cooper’s claim that Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II.
During an episode of Carlson’s show last fall, the former Fox News host identified Cooper as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” shortly before Cooper trashed Churchill and whitewashed the Holocaust.
More recently, Carlson mused “So people want to tell me Churchill’s an incredible guy. Really? Well, why didn’t he save Western Civilization?”
Carlson also criticized Weiss last month, submitting that “It’s pretty obvious that the whole purpose of her organization, the Free Press and her career in journalism is to kind of soften up the right for war with Iran.” Weiss is a staunch supporter of Israel, while Carlson has been extremely critical of the world’s only Jewish-majority state, and even amplifying smears against it.
medialite |
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| To: Brumar89 who wrote (42726) | 2/18/2025 1:27:45 PM | | From: Brumar89 | | | | NBC News Analyst Questions Whether Trump Voters Are Even ‘American Anymore’
Isaac SchorrFeb 18th, 2025, 11:05 am
Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI official now working as a senior national security analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, declared that Trump voters should question whether they’re even “American anymore” on the latter network Monday.
After anchor Nicolle Wallace pointed out that current Trump allies like Tucker Carlson, Vice President JD Vance, and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) have all denounced President Donald Trump in the past, Figliuzzi submitted that “We’re watching Exhibit A for an unmitigated desire for power, and influence, and relevancy. That’s who surrounds Donald Trump right now –people who literally can’t get another job without kissing his rear end.”
Then he addressed a clip of former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus defending Trump’s recent declaration that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”:
And this Reince Priebus clip that you played, Nicole — “Nothing to see here,” as Angela said. “Don’t worry, remain calm. He occasionally likes to take a grenade out and throw it on the floor to see what happens.” I’ll tell you what happens when you play with a live grenade and toss it on the floor. Eventually it explodes, and the only question for us is whether it’s going to explode back on Trump or explode and hurt the rest of us. And my money’s on both, by the way. People are going to get hurt and eventually it will blow back on Trump.
And then, you know, with regard to this statement, which, again, we shall not believe, Reince Priebus, what he says, don’t worry that someone who saves his country cannot violate a law. Okay, it’s been attributed by some historians who aren’t certain to Napoleon, but I’ll tell you where it’s definitely been used far more recently. And that’s with a white supremacist, far-right extremist named Anders Breivik in Norway who killed 77 people in Norway. The worst modern mass murder in Norwegian history, including a mass murder, two separate incidents by him on the same day, incluliteding a mass murder at a kids camp in in Norway. And he’s the one, who describes himself as a neo-Nazi, who’s used that statement more recently in history. And now our president is quoting that white supremacist neo-Nazi murderer. If you voted for that, you really need to question whether you’re American anymore. But that’s who’s using that kind of statement. And listen, does Trump sit and read Norwegian history? Hell, no. Someone is handing him this story, this quote, and we need to figure out who keeps spoon feeding him the white supremacy, white terrorist philosophy.
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