Today’s reading assignmen — Adam Serwer, The Trump-Trumpist Divide at The Atlantic. It makes the point that most Trump voters were either unaware of or did not take seriously his authoritarian, anti-democratic plans. Their reasons for supporting him went from the stupid to the delusional, and they either didn’t hear or refused to believe the warnings about how dangerous he was.
So Matt Gaetz is out as the AG nominee, and Pam Bondi is in. Bondi has been mentioned in this blog before. Back in 2012 while attorney general of Florida she was on the list of speakers for the RNC National Convention. In 2016 it was noted that she dropped a planned investigation into Trump University after receiving a $25,000 campaign donation from Trump. (The donation came from the Trump Foundation, which was a scandal in itself.) And I wrote this in 2018:
… recently Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican and knee-jerk Trump supporter, needed a police escort to leave a movie theater in Tampa because members of the audience were harassing her. (The film was Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which makes this story even better.)
After leaving the AG office in 2019 she chaired Trump’s America First Policy Institute and also was on Trump’s legal team in his first impeachment. Anyway, the point is that she has long-standing right-wing credentials, she’s open to corruption, and she’s tied herself to Trump. Unlike Gaetz and most of the rest of Trump’s appointees, she does have some experience for the job, so I suspect she’ll have no trouble getting confirmed.
I seriously hope Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard are nixed also. Hegseth was an obviously inappropriate appointee when his name was first announced. Since then, more information has come out that suggests he not only should not be given a job in government; he probably needs to be kept under right surveillance.
Senator Tammy Duckworth explains some of the problems with Hegseth’s appointment here.
And this is from The Guardian:
Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, has written in a book that he could imagine a scenario in which the US armed forces would be used violently in American domestic politics.
Hegseth, a former elite soldier turned rightwing Fox television personality, is Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon which controls the gigantic American military – by far the largest armed force in the world.
In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a “national divorce” in which “The military and police … will be forced to make a choice” and “Yes, there will be some form of civil war.”
Hegseth’s 2020 book exhorts conservatives to undertake “an AMERICAN CRUSADE”, to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents”, to “attack first” in response to a left he identifies with “sedition”, and he writes that the book “lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies”.
And of course there’s also the little matter of sexual assault allegations. This guy is pure poison. See also Donald Trump’s Most Dangerous Cabinet Pick by Jonathan Chait and What Pete Hegseth’s Nomination Is Really About by Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic.
"Hegseth, a former elite soldier turned rightwing Fox television personality"
Not sure what made him "elite": that he was only promoted three times in fourteen years, that he served part time in the reserves, that he was effectively run out of the reserves before he reached retirement status for associating with anti-American white supremist types, that he was deemed an "insider threat" and was barred from serving during President Biden's inauguration? He is about as elite as sewage effluent. He is as Swami would say a big bag of shit. If he becomes the Secretary of Defense, you can kiss Military readiness for the next decade goodbye. I thought Sen. Duckworth summed it pretty well, he was a platoon leader with 35 reports, less responsibility than your typical twenty-year-old manager at McDonalds. I would argue he is less qualified for that post than his child molester buddy Gaetz was for AG.
Weird is not enough word to describe Pete Hegseth. From what I read of Chait's article and his writing, even the phrase most dangerous pick, is an understatement. Hegseth seems a serious danger to himself and others to the point that he needs a serious level of supervision perhaps at a very high level. I am surprised he has only had one run in with the police. He appears to need a competent and complete mental health evaluation before any confirmation begins.
I would not want to be in any contact with him on any basis. and certainly not in any military unit. I have served with some odd ones but none even close to one this extreme.
He is beyond unqualified and probably beyond much more than that. I suspect he has a long history with extreme politicos of the outrageous fringe. He has lots of their views. He seems quite a frightening human being.
IMO, the Kent State Massacre was a turning point for the Vietnam war. When the National Guard fired on college kids quite indiscriminately, public support for the war tanked. I don't have statistics, so this is my opinion. The empirical evidence is limited – my parents, both conservative, turned sour on the war after Kent State. I think that by this time S. Vietnam was having "elections" where there was only one candidate for president (or whatever they called the leader.) That didn't particularly bother conservatives – you had to fight commies. But when "fighting commies" spilled the blood of students on their way to classes, it was too close to personal. Even if your son or daughter didn't fall in the volley of gunfire, it was easy to imagine your kid being there.
Trump has to walk a tightrope – he has to subvert the military by intimidation without being caught at committing brutal atrocities against distinguished officers with principles. When he starts executing decorated generals who resigned from the military rather than take orders from Trump (either before they are handed an illegal order or after) the execution will become public. If Trump ordered it, or because he refused to intervene to stop it, it will get the adverse attention of Congress.
I was in the Navy, eons ago. In my day, you could not have gotten sailors to fire on Americans. (opinion) You could not have gotten officers to participate. It would be deemed an illegal order. Today, I think the CO would refuse, be replaced, and the XO would refuse. And the story would be leaked to the press from their point of view. Which means the Trump loyalists would be putting their butts on the line if they pulled a sham trial and ordered the officers hanged.
I'm not sure how much integrity there is now in the armed forces. My guess, based on DEI being supported by the military, is that the average level of internal integrity is high. By "internal", I mean policing actions within the military regarding discipline against the military. Again, opinion, but the officers, and most enlisted persons, know they can't discriminate based on color, creed, or gender. Openly espousing white supremacy can get you booted. That dipshit, Gallegher, was outed by fellow soldiers for murdering a civilian in custody. (The flip side, not relevant to this post, is that combat troops are not encouraged to ponder the ethics of violence against anyone other than a GI who gets blown away in a combat zone. Thinking about what you did is at the root of PTSD.)
If the military rolls over for Trump, he won't have to commit fascist atrocities against senior military officers to secure total submission. That's Trump's goal – to achieve total control without being caught conducting sham executions. If the officer corps stays true to their oath, Trump will lose. He doesn't control the press, so he can't prevent the truth from getting out. (Yeah, Trump has a toadie selected for the FCC – that won't get far in the courts.)
Part of Trump's plan may be to subvert the military to overthrow all civil opposition. In other words, use the military to drag the judges who have ruled against Trump out of their homes for a public execution. You can leave the rest of the judicial system in place to keep the darkies in line but no judge will rule against Trump or anyone aligned with Trump. But there is the pesky free press.
Trump has this gamed out on paper that a lot of magical things will happen and citizens of character do not exist. I'm betting he's wrong.
Oh look. a flood of new appointees. It is what Steve Bannon calls flooding the zone. A flood of Renfields is the way Bouie of the NYT referred to it. Not up on horror as I should be for this age of horror, I had to do a bit of digging. The aha moment came when Renfield was associated with Count Dracula, quite the lacky sycophant of horror fiction. A flood of them to overwhelm the system. A Bannon type move.
No, the Hoi Polloi were not aware of the threat to democracy Trump posed. Harris did a fine job of trying to break through the information bubble the right wing has created, but it is a tough one. In some areas the message got through, but the wall of lies stopped most of the information and the well-trained ground crew mopped up the rest. It does not help that public education has dropped the ball on its duty of education for democracy. It is amazing how few adults in this country can name the three branches of government. Do not try to ask about the fourth branch as some call the Federal Reserve. Most of the Hoi Polloi still cling to the gold standard but now are being wooed by crypto. It is amazing how similar the sales pitched for both are. They both include much of the baffle them with bullshit rhetoric the Duh Don supporters love. The con goes on. The lambs must be fleeced. They sometimes learn by the school of hard knocks, but fixing the blame is quite the republican machine's skill. They deny all errors. The money gushes up. The blame and a few coins dribble down.
The horror goes on and on.
Like many others, I'm trying to make sense of Team Trump's plan. It's not random acts of chaos, though it looks that way. IMO, Trump (or Project 2025) has identified three different categories they will handle differently.
The first category is the agencies Trump considers important. The top three are the Department of Defense, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Department of Justice.
The DOD because Trump intends to use the military to enforce his decrees and crush public opposition.
The FCC because Trump wants to silence criticism by shutting down unfriendly networks and publishers,
The DOJ to persecute and jail his enemies and suppress investigation of Trump's allies.
The second category is Agencies Trump considers a threat.
Homeland Security to prevent any observation and documentation of what Trump is doing. HS is supposed to put the FBI and CIA on a short leash. (see Trump's first impeachment and the recording of his conversation with Zelinski.)
Within HS is the FBI, CIA, and a host of agencies that collect information that might be crucial in a criminal investigation.
The third category is agencies Trump wants to kneecap and neuter.
IMO, this is almost the remainder of the federal government. Much Trump will want to privatize – Education, Social Security, VA, and Medicare. Others Trump will nearly abolish, like Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, federal education. I think Trump will try to privatize FEMA and lay off most of the work force.
Musk may pretend he's gonna be the tip of the spear but I think Project 2025 has already compiled a list of regulations they will rescind – I mean tens of thousands of pages of stuff that's there for a reason. Suddenly abolished which justifies huge layoffs. (See how much money I saved taxpayers and you'll never notice the difference. Do away with consumer protection. Let Big Business do anything with no consequences – see what that does to clean air and water and regarding the transportation and disposal of toxic chemicals and waste.)
IMO, there's a lot of ways this will fail – eventually, after a lot of pain. Maybe enough pain to shock citizens into action.
Yeah, I read the Trump/Trumpist divide article. We mustn't get lulled into thinking that a significant percent of the folks who voted for him because they didn't know about 2025… that many of them will realize what a monster he is and they will turn on him. I think that would happen if they ever learn what he's really up to, but they won’t because he sure as heck ain't gonna tell them. He's just gonna do the same thing as always: run the grievance campaign so that he can win a third term in 2028 (or install his son). Campaign 24/7. Deny that he has anything to do with Project 2025. And he'll say all he's doing is deporting all the criminal immigrants, and draining the DOJ swamp by prosecuting the leftists who had weaponized the DOJ against him. Oh, and he'll continue to tell his supporters not to believe any news reports.
What we need to do is increase our side's total. Better turnout, peel off some of the Independents who stayed home. Learn how to talk to the working class – let them know we're on their side without trying to explain the complexities. Not all of the working class is in the cult. And say that the past 30 years haven’t been great for a lot of Americans and we want to fix the rigged economy.