Totalitarian impulses, vendettas, anti-media lawsuits and the Epstein affiliation
What does it say that voters already knew all this about Trump yet put him back in office anyway?
Note to readers: The Trump administration’s refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, and now Donald Trump’s plan to sue The Wall Street Journal over a story about a birthday letter he reportedly sent Epstein, got me thinking back to this piece I wrote just before last November’s election. It ran in The Des Moine Register October 31 and warned of Trump’s totalitarian tactics, including against the media. It also mentioned an alleged unwelcome encounter Trump had with a woman in Epstein’s presence. I’m re-running it as a sobering remind of how much information Trump’s voters already had when they went to the polls to elect him again.
Kamala Harris went there, boldly, unhesitatingly — not posing at the border or rallying swing-state voters with rock stars, but uttering a devastating one-word truth about her opponent for the White House. On Oct. 23, she called Donald Trump a fascist.
What would once have been an unimaginable slur to make against a major-party presidential nominee, almost as unthinkable as putting a man found guilty of felonies in the office, landed more as a case of stating the obvious. Someone who expresses admiration for Hitler, vows retaliation against political enemies if elected again, pledges to unleash the military on Democrats — in his words “enemies of the state” — and won’t commit to accepting the results if he’s not declared the winner could hardly take offense.
Trump didn’t just fabricate claims about the 2020 election being stolen. He sat by and did nothing while the Capitol was attacked by his supporters and people were killed. I’m no fan of John F. Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff as president, but his experiences of Trump, as shared with The New York Times, need heeding. He called Trump a fascist, saying he’d “govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”
Kelly acknowledged Trump speaking admiringly of Hitler, not wanting to be photographed with disabled veterans and calling U.S. veterans who died for America losers and suckers. Kelly said Trump was repeatedly told while in office that he lacked authority to deploy the military on American civilians, but that Trump kept claiming he could and pushing the idea. “Looking at the definition of fascism,” said Kelly, who was also Trump’s Homeland Security secretary, told the Times, “It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy.”
Coming from someone who witnessed Trump’s undemocratic impulses and thought processes firsthand and couldn’t disabuse him of them, Kelly needs to be taken seriously. And his is far from the only evidence of it. When asked last year in Davenport by Fox News host Sean Hannity if he’d be a dictator if elected, Trump said no — “except for Day One," following that with, “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.” The problem is he alone, as president, would lack that authority.
Dictators eliminate opponents. Recently Trump vowed, if elected, to fire Jack Smith, the special counsel who oversaw two investigations into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and alleged mishandling of classified documents. Smith could still pursue charges Trump faces of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and more. Trump said he wouldn’t let that happen. “I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. John Bolton, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, has also weighed in, saying, “I think he’s talking about retribution he would exact on people who would cross him.” I’ve never been a fan of Bolton’s, either, but let’s take Trump at his word here.
Before the 2020 election, Trump signed an executive order called Schedule F, that would reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers so he could fire them at will. That’s embodied in the conservative-authored Project 2025 blueprint. No doubt he’ll bring it back. Trump reportedly made it his mission to get every Republican who voted to impeach him defeated in elections. After one such success, he boasted, “Four down and six to go.”
Former Trump administration officials who continue to lie for him about the 2020 election being stolen are expected to make a comeback in his next administration if he wins — and also to go after opponents. One is former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who actually in December 2020 urged Trump to impose martial law. CNN reported that Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, turned “baseless conspiracy theories into a cottage industry centered around live events, a documentary and political fundraising through dark money groups."
Fascists eliminate truth-tellers. Journalists would be among the targets of Kash Patel, who served in national security roles in Trump’s administration and is also expected back. Patel has vowed, “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” Fascists admire each other. Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and chatted up his access to them, even while falsely accusing Harris of being a communist.
Can there be any doubt by now about who Donald Trump is? It’s not just the totalitarian impulses but the bizarre things he says at campaign rallies. He has no decorum or sense of what’s inappropriate, like carrying on about the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia. Palmer’s daughter wasn’t amused.
Another woman has come forward to accuse Trump of groping her in 1993. Former Sports Stacey Williams claims he did so in the presence of Trump’s friend, since-convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whom she was dating. More than a dozen women have previously alleged sexual misconduct by the would-be president.
How much worse does it have to get before his supporters say, "Enough"? Meanwhile, Harris has won endorsements from a wide array of so-called “titans of corporate America,” though some apparently worry about making i t public because of Trump’s threats of retaliation against his enemies.But 82 Nobel laureates, recognized for their achievements in physics, biology, medicine, economics and more, have publicly signed an open letter endorsing her.
Harris is smart, strong, empathetic, concerned with the welfare of ordinary people and — maybe most importantly — a student of the Constitution and the rights detailed in it. She’d support women’s rights over our own bodies. Nuff said already, except: Vote — with your conscience and with your brain!
Remember what they said about those who don’t learn from history being condemned to repeat it? Trump keeps on proving it.
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Rekha, this is one of the times I don’t mind viewing a rerun. Keep up the good work.
Repost this article in as many places as you can. Wonderful!