Trumpism
PART III
“In With The New” by Harry Bliss
January 2, 2021
A photo op, World War III, and bleach injections:
The wildest politcal moments in the US in 2020
So much has happened in 2020 that people
often forget Donald Trump was impeached.
By Griffin Connolly and John T. Bennet
The final year of the Trump administration has been full of tumult — from the third presidential impeachment in US history, to the president’s combative response to a reinvigorated racial justice movement, to his governing and personal trials with the coronavirus pandemic.
Few Americans who survived 2020 will forget the names George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, whose deaths from encounters with police reignited the conversation surrounding law enforcement and the treatment of Black Americans in this country. Millions will remember the more than 330,000 spouses, parents, children, siblings, and friends who died from the coronavirus pandemic.
These historic events unfolded in the middle of a presidential election year with a White House incumbent, Donald Trump, whose flair for the dramatic produced some of the most iconically absurd moments this country has witnessed.
January 2021
The Gate of Heaven Is Everywhere
Among the
contemplatives
By Fred Bahnson
All happy religious families are alike; each unhappy religious family is unhappy in its own way.
The family of American Christianity has been unhappy for quite some time, so much so that it’s hard for many of us to imagine that it could be otherwise. The past four years have brought these feuds into the open. For Catholics, there is the glaring pedophilia scandal. For evangelicals, there is disagreement over church leaders’ alliance with power, their unwavering fealty, since 2016, to the crotch-grabbing Caligula of Mar-a-Lago, whose every abuse of office made them double down on their support.
For mainline Protestants like me, the discontent has been less visible. Denominational squabbles over human sexuality have made headlines, but across every denomination a certain lassitude pervades, a general lukewarmness that makes it feel as though Protestantism has run its course. When the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation rolled around in 2017, a few academics published monographs on Luther, and a commemorative study Bible appeared, but with church membership declining in every mainline denomination, Protestant circles shrugged. We knew there wasn’t much to crow about. What was it, exactly, we were still protesting?
January 3, 2021
All 10 living former defense secretaries:
Involving the military in election disputes
would cross into dangerous territory
January 4, 2021
Nation’s capital braces for violence as extremist groups converge to protest Trump’s election loss
By Will Carless
Protests planned for Washington, D.C., this week are likely to attract large numbers of President Donald Trump’s supporters, including conspiracy theorists, militia groups and members of the extremist group the Proud Boys, raising concerns of violent confrontations.
The rallies are planned to coincide with the official congressional vote to certify the Electoral College votes from the November presidential election and declare President-elect Joe Biden the winner. Far-right groups from around the country have vowed to descend on the capital to protest the vote and attempt to pressure lawmakers into voting against certifying the results, an outcome that even the leaders of the effort admit is extraordinarily unlikely to happen.
Trump himself has amplified conspiracy theories about the election and encouraged his supporters to show up at the protests. “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” he tweeted on December 18. On Sunday, the president again promoted the protests, writing on Twitter, “I will be there. Historic day!”
January 5, 2021
Former defense secretary
urges top brass to resign or
resist questionable Trump orders
All 10 living former secretaries of defense signed a column published in The Washington Post on Sunday that urged the Trump administration to allow a peaceful transition of power and to keep the Pentagon out of it. One of the signatories was William Cohen, a former Republican senator who served as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton. He joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.
January 7, 2021
World leaders react to siege on the Capitol
International headlines offered reactions to the thousands of Trump supporters storming the Capitol building.
January 8, 2021
Extremists intensify calls for violence ahead of
Inauguration Day
By
“Trump or war. Today. That simple.”
WELCOME TO THE DONALD!
Welcome to the forum of choice for The President
of The United States, Donald Trump!
Be advised this forum is for serious supporters of
President Trump. We have discussions, memes,
AMAs, and more. We are not politically correct.
Jan. 8, 2021
Republican lawmakers caught helping
pro-Trump mobs at U.S. Capitol
By Jon Skolnik
“We’re in! Let’s go, keep it moving, baby!” shouted Derrick Evans, a newly elected Republican member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates, as he is seen pushing his way through the rotunda at the U.S. Capitol with a throng of violent Trump supporters in a video live-streamed on Facebook.
“Trump, Trump, Trump!” he chanted as attackers rushed the doors.
The video, deleted by Evans after circulating Twitter, shows him donning a helmet and military gear, shouting, “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol […] Patriots inside, baby!”
Evans, 34, won his first term as a state lawmaker in November and was charged by the Department of Justice on Friday for illegally entering the Capitol. He is one of several elected Republican lawmakers across the country who have been identified as either participating in or aiding violent pro-Trump attacks on legislative bodies this week.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
January 8, 2021
Jonah Goldberg, author of Suicide of the West, argues that the rise of both liberal and conservative populism threatens to undermine America’s fundamental ideals.
Ways To Change The World
January 8, 2021
Has the threat of Trump really gone?
Timothy Snyder is an American author and historian. He is a professor of history at Yale University and a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He talks to Krishnan about the future of Trump and ‘Trumpism’, the rising influence of Russia and Britain’s next move.
Jan. 8, 2021
U.S. Capitol siege emboldens motley crew of extremists
By Ted Hesson, Ned Parker,
Kristina Cooke, and Julia Harte
As the nation recoiled in horror at scenes of rioting and chaos in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, some right-wing and anti-government extremists saw the violence as the fulfillment of a patriotic duty or opportunity to advance their agenda.
Among the inspired was Mike Dunn, a 20-year-old follower of the “boogaloo” anti-government movement, whose adherents anticipate a revolution toppling the federal government or a second U.S. civil war.
January 9, 2021
Michael Moore: The Terrorist Attack Is NOT Over.
Many of the attackers are still in D.C. They were aided and abetted by certain members of the police, military and Republican party. And Wednesday’s terror attack was just a dry run for what they are planning next. Michael Moore shares his latest, urgent thoughts on the terror attack that occurred this week and the one we must prepare for.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
January 9, 2021
Eight Questions For Former President Barack Obama
1. How and why should young leaders remain optimistic amid setbacks?
2. Do you maintain relationships with other world leaders?
3. How do you define “a leader”?
4. Is it time for America to relinquish its role as a global police power?
5. How do you grapple with America’s controversial history of foreign intervention?
6. How do you feel about the slogan “defund the police”?
7. Does the current political landscape favor Republicans with radical views?
8. What has the transition to civilian life been like?
NewsHour Weekend Full Episode
January 10, 2021
On this edition for Sunday, January 10, lawmakers weigh impeachment in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, Americans continue to get vaccinated as the virus rages across the nation, and author and former CBS news anchor Dan Rather shares his perspective on this inflection point in American politics. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York.
January 10, 2021
The Savior, the Devil, and Donald Trump
Pt. 1. How archetypal images of Devil or Savior appear in the same person
By Stephen A. Diamond Ph.D.
This week Americans face a bizarre phenomenon: We have an outgoing incumbent President in the White House who is seen by some as a savior, and by others as the proverbial Devil incarnate. The Antichrist.
Can both sides be correct? What could possibly account for this incredibly polarized, and therefore divisive and antagonistic, perception of the very same person? Why do half of us see the negative side of Donald Trump, while the other half for some reason see only the positive, to the point of not only uncivil verbal hostility, but now of violent insurrection and the possibility of bloody civil war?
CNN politics
Jan. 12, 2021
READ: Military Joint chiefs statement condemning ‘sediton and insurrection’ at US Capitol
America’s most senior general Mark Milley and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is comprised of the heads of each military branch, issued a statement Tuesday condemning the violent invasion of the US Capitol last week and reminding service members of their obligation to support and defend the Constitution and reject extremism.
January 12, 2021
Former Cult Follower Describes How President Trump Has Created a Cult Following.
This week, Katie Couric spoke to Dr. Steven Hassan, who is an expert on Undue Influence, brainwashing, and cults. He writes and speaks out about the importance of viewing terrorist groups as destructive cults, and has authored numerous books on the subject, including one called The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. They discussed the events of the Capitol insurrection, and how the mob of violent Trump supporters displayed cult-like behavior.
Golden Veil – January 22, 2021 – Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog
This just in:
“So Many Great, Educated, Functional People were Brainwashed”: Can Trump’s Cult of Followers be Deprogrammed?
Steve Hassan chimes in.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
January 15, 2021
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was on the Senate floor when members were notified of the terrorist attack, describes the anger he and his colleagues feel towards those who incited this mob by pushing the lie that Joe Biden didn’t win the election.
“The Essence Of This Crisis Is The Perpetuation Of This Huge Lie”
On America’s Way Forward: “Congress Is Going To Have To Rise Up And Be Extremely Bold”
A Message Of Unity To Republican Voters: “Let Us Work Together”
THE TRANSFER OF POWER
A Reporter’s Footage
From Inside
The Capitol Siege
By The New Yorker | January 17, 2021
When Luke Mogelson attended President Donald Trump’s speech on the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, he was prepared for the possibility that violence might erupt that day. Mogelson, a veteran war correspondent and a contributing writer at The New Yorker, had spent the previous ten months reporting on the radical fringe of Trump supporters, from anti-lockdown militias to fascist groups such as the Proud Boys. After Election Day, he interviewed Trump supporters who showed up at ballot-tabulation sites, and who believed the President’s lies that the results had been “rigged” and his victory “stolen.” At one post-election pro-Trump rally in D.C., Mogelson witnessed racist violence against Black residents of the nation’s capital. At another event, he watched the host of the white-supremacist Web program “America First” declare, “Our Founding Fathers would get in the streets, and they would take this country back by force if necessary. And that is what we must be prepared to do.”
After Trump’s incendiary speech, Mogelson followed the President’s supporters as they forced their way into the U.S. Capitol, using his phone’s camera as a reporter’s notebook. What follows is a video that includes some of that raw footage. Mogelson harnessed this material while writing his panoramic, definitive report, “Among the Insurrectionists,” which the magazine posted online on Friday. (It appears in print in the January 25th issue.) His prose vividly captures how the raging anger and violence of the initial breach of the Capitol was followed by an eerily quiet and surreal interlude inside the Senate chamber, where Mogelson watched people rummaging through desks and posing for photographs. Although the footage was not originally intended for publication, it documents a historic event and serves as a visceral complement to Mogelson’s probing, illuminating report.
January 20, 2021
After Joe Biden was sworn in as the nation’s 46th president, Amanda Gorman read “The Hill We Climb,” building on a tradition of poets — including Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander and Richard Blanco — who have read for incoming Democratic presidents. Gorman is the youngest of these inaugural poets to offer her verse.
Jan. 20, 2021
QAnon followers struggle to explain Biden inauguration
By Chris Mills Rodrigo
President Biden’s swearing-in as the nation’s 46th president has punctured the hopes of some QAnon followers who pushed the conspiracy theory that claimed former President Trump would remain in office and arrest top Democrats on Wednesday.
Reading Room
QAnon Is Just a Warmed Over Witch Panic
– and It’s Also Very Dangerous
By Daniel Loxton
In this cover story article (written in October 2020) for Skeptic magazine 25.4 (December 2020), Daniel Loxton considers the unsavory origins and rising threat of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Written prior to the deadly QAnon-led occupation of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021, this analysis exposes the conspiracy theory as baseless, unoriginal, and harmful for believers and society at large.
As 2020 nears its end and the COVID-19 pandemic continues, a rapidly growing far right conspiracy theory increasingly dominates headlines. QAnon is a crowd-sourced online mythology inspired by cryptic anonymous internet posts appearing since 2017 from an unknown figure (or group) known as “Q” or “Q Clearance Patriot.” It is an expanded successor to the debunked 2016 “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which claimed that Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats operated a child sex trafficking ring under a Washington, DC pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. QAnon is also rooted in much older mythologies about sinister secret societies of Satan worshippers, witches, or Jews.
November 10, 2020
Unmasking QAnon’s Wall Street Evangelist
A Citigroup senior vice president was recently shown to be the man behind the biggest aggregator of posts tied to QAnon, a far-right hodgepodge of outlandish conspiracy theories. So a Bloomberg reporter rented a car and drove to his house in New Jersey to ask him a few questions.
Read William Turton and Joshua Brustein’s full feature article in Bloomberg Businessweek: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featur…
Jan. 12, 2021
Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s top election official
Last weekend, President Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, imploring him with veiled threats and lies to change the outcome of the November election. Raffensperger talks to Scott Pelley about why he didn’t give in. https://cbsn.ws/38uuFjo
January 20, 2021
OBITUARY FOR A FAILED PRESIDENCY
One final dispatch from Trump’s Washington.
By Susan B. Glasser
Precisely at noon on Wednesday, Donald Trump’s disastrous Presidency will end, two weeks to the day after he unleashed a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol, seeking to overturn the election results, and one week to the day after he was impeached for so doing. He leaves behind a city and a country reeling from four hundred thousand Americans dead, as of Tuesday, from a pandemic whose gravity he downplayed and denied; an economic crisis; and an internal political rift so great that it invites comparisons to the Civil War.
In the end, Trump was everything his haters feared—a chaos candidate, in the prescient words of one of his 2016 rivals, who became a chaos President. An American demagogue, he embraced division and racial discord, railed against a “deep state” within his own government, praised autocrats and attacked allies, politicized the administration of justice, monetized the Presidency for himself and his children, and presided over a tumultuous, turnover-ridden Administration via impulsive tweets. He leaves office, Gallup reported this week, with the lowest average approval ratings in the history of the modern Presidency. Defeated by Joe Biden in the 2020 election by seven million votes, Trump became the first incumbent seeking reëlection to see his party lose the White House, Senate, and the House of Representatives since Herbert Hoover, in 1932. A liar on an unprecedented scale, Trump made more than thirty thousand false statements in the course of his Presidency, according to the Washington Post, culminating in perhaps the biggest lie of all: that he won an election that he decisively lost.
Yet Republicans—the vast majority, that is, of those who still identify themselves as Republicans—continue to embrace Trump and the conspiracy theories about his defeat that the departing President has spread to explain his loss. This, more than anything, might have been the most surprising thing about Trump’s tenure: his ability to turn one of America’s two political parties into a cult of personality organized around a repeatedly bankrupt New York real-estate developer. And so we are ending these four years having learned not that Donald Trump is a bad man—the evidence of that was already voluminous and incontrovertible before he entered politics—but that there are millions of Americans who were willing to overthrow our constitutional system in order to keep him in power, who would follow Trump’s dark lies rather than acknowledge unwelcome truths.
“A Weight Lifted” by Barry Blitt
By Francoise Mouly
January 18, 2021
On January 20th, if all goes according to plan, Donald Trump will depart the office of the Presidency. Barry Blitt, who has spent much of the past four years studying, drawing, and riffing on Trump’s antics and demagoguery, recently spoke with us about his latest cover, and about the pace and density of the news.
What visual metaphors for America—other than the eagle—come to mind? Do you have a list you turn to when searching for ideas?
Visual metaphors for America: well, you’ve got your Statue of Liberty, your Uncle Sam. Also, anything with stars and stripes on it. Babe Ruth, apple pie. And maybe, now, a fur-wearing QAnon shaman. I confess that I do actually keep a folder of potentially useful metaphors on my desktop, but it’s mostly crazy, obscure stuff: photos of bowling-alley accidents, drinking bird toys, police lineups, etc.
Political cartoons often comment on fleeting news events, so they can have a short shelf life. Are there images you did a while back that now puzzle you?
The density of ephemeral news events in the last few years—hell, in the last few weeks—has left me with piles of drawings I can barely recall or understand today. I just came across a drawing of a distinguished, impeccable Robert Mueller, seated at a kitchen table—that’s incomprehensible to me. He looks familiar, but I’m drawing a blank. Was he a TV chef? A game-show host?
You’re from Canada. Could a figure like Trump emerge there?
I guess anything is possible. Italy had Berlusconi; Brazil, Bolsonaro. Maybe there’s an up-and-coming Canadian politician who is a narcissistic, closed-minded, intolerant bully, but perfectly polite enough to get elected there.
For more of Blitt’s recent covers, see below:
“Belly Flop”
“Whack Job”
Find Barry Blitt’s covers, cartoons, and more at the Condé Nast Store.
Françoise Mouly has been the art editor at The New Yorker since 1993.
January 25, 2021
25 “Prophets” who said Trump would win
Here’s the ultimate Trump Prophecy Compilation! Featuring Pat Robertson, Paula White-Cain, Sid Roth, Chris Yoon, Robby Dawkins, Kris Vallotton, Mark Taylor, Kat Kerr, Marcus Rogers, Kevin Zadai, Greg Locke, Taribo West, Denise Goulet, Curt Landry, Jeremiah Johnson, Mark Burns, Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj, Jeff Jansen, Emily Rose Lewis, David Ramirez, Hank Kunneman, Kenneth Copeland, Evans Abban, Shawn Bolz and Loren Sandford.
Out of these 25, only four have so far apologized (Vallotton, Sandford, Johnson and Bolz) while one of them has admitted that Biden won without apologizing (Robertson). Those who have apologized have received thousands of hate mails and in some cases even death threats from Christian Trump supporters.
“I am against those who prophesy false dreams and retell them to lead My people astray with their reckless lies. It was not I who sent them or commanded them, and they are of no benefit at all to these people, declares the LORD.” – Jeremiah 23:32
PBS
January 26, 2021
TRUMP’S AMERICAN CARNAGE
From his first days as president to his last, how Trump stoked division, violence and insurrection. FRONTLINE investigates Trump’s siege on his enemies, the media and even the leaders of his own party, who for years ignored the warning signs of what was to come.
Jan. 26, 2021
Trump’s Presidency Recap: The Most Defining Stories
TRUMP ERA DEFINED: In just 4 years, Trump gave us the Russia investigation; emboldened white supremacists; separated 5,000+ children from their families; changed the Supreme Court makeup for decades to come; and sprinkled in 30,000 false statements throughout it all.
Real Time with Bill Maher
February 5, 2021
New Rule: America’s Mass Delusion
It’s fun to laugh at QAnon, but if you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you’ve already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad.
WhaleRider – February 6, 2021 – Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog
“Politics isn’t about the worship of one weird dude.”
~ Republican Congressman Ben Sasse of Nebraska taking a stand publicly against the insanity and abject denial in the cult of Trump.
I can relate.
February 7, 2021
Michael Cohen: Does Donald Trump
have a ‘secret’ pardon?
He may no longer be President, but Donald Trump can’t stop making headlines. In the next few days he goes on trial in the US Senate charged with inciting his supporters’ rampage on the Capitol building last month. But while the world was shocked by the shameful attack on democracy, Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, wasn’t surprised at all. In fact two years ago he predicted it. Cohen used to be The Donald’s closest ally but ended up an enemy, and in prison, when he took the fall for covering up Trump’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. And now, in an extraordinary interview with Tara Brown, filmed while he serves the remainder of his sentence under house arrest in New York, Cohen is happy to spill all of his old boss’s dirty secrets.
Feb. 8, 2021
Former QAnon follower: I really believe it’s a cult
Former QAnon believer Melissa Rein Lively speaks to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota about how she fell into the conspiracy theories, her darkest moment, coming to see the light and helping others find their way out as well.
PBS
Amanpour & Co.
Feb. 12, 2021
Did This 2 Min. Video Help Incite the Jan. 6 Rioters?
As former president Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial enters its third day, the question remains whether his words or actions incited the January 6 assault on the Capitol. But little attention has been paid to a video that was shown that same day, at the January 6 “March to Save America” rally in Washington, D.C.
Jason Stanley, a scholar of fascist propaganda, claims that this short video — shown immediately after Rudy Giuliani left the stage, prior to the attack on the Capitol — was full of themes and tactics that threaten liberal democracy. Stanley breaks the video down with Hari Sreenivasan and elaborates on its role in the violence that took place on that infamous day.
PBS News Hour
February 13, 2021
WATCH: Failure to convict Trump is ‘vote of infamy,’ Senator Schumer says
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., delivers remarks Feb. 13 following Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial. The 57-43 vote was the most bipartisan in history, with seven Republicans voting to convict but 10 votes shy of reaching the needed two-thirds majority needed.
Schumer said the trial was not about choosing country over party, but rather choosing country over Trump, and “43 Republican members chose Trump. They chose Trump. It should be a weight on their conscience today and it will be a weight on their conscience forever.” He said the seven Republicans who voted to convict were patriots, and the others lacked morality and courage.
Golden Veil – February 14, 2021 – Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog
Interview
Congresswoman and Jonestown survivor Jackie Speier: ‘Trump is a political cult leader’ by Ed Pilkington, February 11, 2021, The Guardian.
After the congresswoman survived an ambush by Jim Jones’s cult members in 1978, she became determined to devote herself to public service and to strengthen safeguards against cults.
February 17, 2021
Republicans Back Trump Because
of the Insurrection, Not Despite It
The former president’s ruthlessness
remains central to his appeal.
By David A. Graham
America as a whole has had enough of Donald Trump. Voters hold him responsible for the January 6 insurrection, they believe the Senate should have convicted him for his role, and they want him to leave national politics. But the Republican Party is another country, and they do things differently there. Its rank-and-file members didn’t support impeachment, don’t want Trump punished, and prefer him over any other potential candidate for president in 2024.
How can it be that Democrats and Republicans see the former president in such divergent ways? One common answer is that, thanks to information bubbles, they’re looking at different sets of facts; conservative outlets buried the impeachment hearings compared with other outlets’ coverage. Democrats and independents are still outraged, while Republicans have forgiven and forgotten.
But maybe that’s wrong, and Republicans are backing Trump not in spite of the insurrection but because of it. Many Republican voters supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 not out of particular policy affinities but because they saw him as someone who would actually fight for their vision of American culture, doing whatever it took to win. Trump’s frantic attempt to overturn the election didn’t work, but it was just the sort of furious effort his supporters wanted. Why would they object now?
Hypocrisy is a deceitful tactic used most often by those in power, who say “you must do this” or “you cannot do that” or “this is wrong,” while purporting that they themselves do not do said thing when, in fact, they do.
A hypocrite (from the Greek, “actor”) is someone who espouses a view, perspective, or philosophy without adhering in any meaningful way to it themselves, especially if they claim that their philosophy applies to all people. The ultimate snarkology of the hypocrite is “do as I say, not as I do.” Generally, “hypocrite” is a pejorative term; there are practically no cases where hypocrisy is considered a good thing unless you’re a politician like Donald Trump.
Feb. 25, 2021
The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages
The GOP has become, in form if not in content,
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s
By Tom Nichols
Author of the forthcoming book, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy
We are living in a time of bad metaphors. Everything is fascism, or socialism; Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Soviet Union. Republicans, especially, want their followers to believe that America is on the verge of a dramatic time, a moment of great conflict such as 1968—or perhaps, even worse, 1860. (The drama is the point, of course. No one ever says, “We’re living through 1955.”)
Ironically, the GOP is indeed replicating another political party in another time, but not as the heroes they imagine themselves to be. The Republican Party has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.
I can already hear the howls about invidious comparisons. I do not mean that modern American Republicans are communists. Rather, I mean that the Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes.
April 5, 2021
An Epic Debate on Trump and True Evangelicalism
In which journalist Matt Labash (a Never Trumper) and radio host Eric Metaxas (a Trump supporter) agree to disagree.
Through the many upheavals of the Trump era, one trend has remained strikingly stable: the mobilization of the white evangelical community as diehard supporters of the forty-fifth president. It’s a convergence of interests that, on paper at least, appears unlikely in the extreme. Trump’s acquaintance with the Bible and its dictates might generously be described as “passing,” and his personal conduct, both in his business dealings and his elective affinities, falls a good deal short of Christian ideals. How do sincere Protestant believers work through the many seeming tensions and contradictions that assail Trumpism as a de facto religious movement? To get to the bottom of things, The New Republic asked conservative journalist Matt Labash, a lifelong evangelical and ardent Never Trumper, to conduct an online dialogue on the vagaries of the Trump-evangelical relationship with bestselling author and radio show host Eric Metaxas, a no-less-ardent Trump supporter. The following exchange has been lightly edited for flow, style, and length.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Matt Labash, formerly a national correspondent at The Weekly Standard, is the author of Fly Fishing With Darth Vader.
Eric Metaxas hosts the Eric Metaxas Show and is author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MATT LABASH:
Eric,
Many years ago, I profiled a Christian professional wrestler named George South. He fought as a “heel,” or a bad guy. But not wishing to do his Christian testimony any harm, he would sport JOHN 3:16 on the seat of his banana hammock—the very same britches that he might fish a pair of brass knuckles out of to coldcock a referee while he wasn’t looking. I asked George how he accounted for the mixed messaging. He essentially said that sometimes you just have to climb into the squared circle, face the darkness, and hit someone over the head with a chair for Jesus.
On the surface, you and I have much in common. You’ve written biographies of Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I went to a Lutheran elementary school, and like Bonhoeffer, am no fan of Hitler’s. We have both spent much of our lives in evangelical circles. (I grew up Southern Baptist in Texas throughout the ’80s, and still go to a nondenominational evangelical church, or did, before Covid-19 turned us into a viral petri dish. Now, we worship in our sweats, remotely.) We both, without apology, pledge allegiance to our Lord and Savior, J.H. Christ.
That said, even though you are a Christian brother and coequal partner in the search for truth, a part of me wants to go George South on you, and hit you in the head with a chair for Jesus. (Figuratively, of course.)
Why? I’ll tell you why: Donald J. Trump. Yes, I understand he’s not president anymore, even if he seems to be having trouble grasping that fact. But for all the disk space he takes up in the consciousness of Republicans and evangelicals, the intersection of which is around 82 percent, he might as well be. While Trump had the lowest approval rating of any president since Gallup started keeping track in the 1930s, he scored 97 percent approval with the adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). This, after two impeachments and him headlining an insurrection. That alone is hardly surprising. When you run a cult, the cultists tend to see things your way.
But it’s broader than that. Comb through recent survey results, and a disturbing picture emerges. A Suffolk University/USA Today poll in February—after Trump’s coup attempt—had Republicans stating by a double-digit margin (46 percent to 27 percent) that they would abandon the GOP and join the Trump party if he created one. After months of Trump stoking conspiracy theories and all manner of delusional fever dreams—even though he was beaten in the election like a rented mule (both in the popular vote and the Electoral College)—a Lifeway Research poll found 49 percent of U.S. Protestant pastors claiming that they frequently hear their congregation members parroting current-event conspiracy theories. A January American Enterprise Institute poll reported 29 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of white evangelicals believing QAnon conspiracy theories. (Spoiler alert, Q-ball nutters: The Democratic Party has many faults, but being a Satanist-cannibal-pedophile ring is not one of them.)
Renowned pastor and Covid-truther John MacArthur has said that “any real, true believer” had to vote for Trump. Franklin Graham, the moral runt of Billy’s litter, compared the 10 lonely House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment to Judas Iscariot, taking 30 pieces of silver in exchange for their immortal souls. (Really, Franklin? Try getting a Fox contract these days without being a Trumpbot.)
And while I generally consider it bad manners to lunge for the jugular of a dinner guest before the salad plates have even been cleared, I have to say, you’ve been no slouch in the shamelessly shilling-for-Trump department, Eric. Like Trump, you spent months peddling his massive–election-fraud fantasy. You wrote children’s books with titles like Donald Drains the Swamp. (Never mind his five or so Cabinet secretaries who resigned under ethical clouds; or his personal lawyer and campaign manager, both of whom went to prison; or the other former campaign manager who was merely indicted before collecting his presidential pardon.) You actually told Trump himself, “I’d be happy to die in this fight. This is a fight for everything. God is with us.”
I guess the question is: why? Why is he worth all this trouble? And how do we know God didn’t vote for Biden, or maybe go third party?
I’m well aware of Paul’s admonition that “God hath chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise.” (If that’s the case here, God would have really scored, because it’d be hard to pick a bigger fool than DJT.) But though I don’t have my doctorate of divinity or anything, I have read the Bible a couple thousand times—even Trump’s favorite parts, like “Two” Corinthians. And nowhere do the Scriptures tell us: “Blessed are the mean-Tweeters, the sociopathic narcissists, the conspiracy-mongers, and seditionists, for they shall inherit the earth.” It’s just not in any translation I’ve picked up. (Maybe I should check The Message ?)
I don’t get it. It’s dispiriting. I always thought we worshipped our Triune God. But somewhere along the way, say, around 2015, it seems like the Holy Trinity became a quaternity, with Trump batting cleanup for the Holy Ghost. (Trump did once admit that J.C. was more famous than him, though the latter never got canceled by Twitter.)
One gets the feeling that these days, if the Son of Man went walking on water across Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway instead of the Sea of Galilee, he might be plowed under by a Trump boat parade, and possibly impaled on Franklin Graham’s water ski. I’m not sure anyone would mourn. They’d likely be too busy anticipating the resurrection of their new-and-improved Orange Jesus.
April 15, 2021
Germany’s Fascist Story
Rick Steves’ Europe Travel Guide © 2020 | Traveling across Germany, we learn how fascism rose and then fell, taking millions of people with it. Visiting actual locations — from Munich to Nürnberg to Berlin — we trace the roots of Nazism in the aftermath of World War I, when masses of angry people were enchanted by Hitler. We explore the totalitarian society Hitler built, and see the consequences: genocide and total war. Learning from Germany’s fascist story, we can recognize that hateful ideology as well as the tricks of wannabe dictators in our own age.
May 5, 2021
Our Friend, the Trump Propagandist
We knew David Horowitz when he was a radical leftist. Then he became a conservative. Then he joined the MAGA cult.
By Ronald Roddosh and Sol Stern
According to our old friend David Horowitz—the radical leftist turned thoughtful conservative turned Trump propagandist whom we’ve been acquainted with, in his various political guises, for more than 60 years—America is on the brink of destruction by way of a communist takeover that only the patriots of the MAGA movement can prevent. That’s the main message in Horowitz’s new book, The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America. On the book’s cover are portraits of the seven Democrats allegedly plotting the revolution: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar.
This third book Horowitz has published about Trump since 2017, The Enemy Within, is even more of a jihad against liberals and progressives than his previous two (both bestsellers). Horowitz’s justification for writing yet another Trumpist screed is that, in the aftermath of the Democrats stealing the 2020 election, an event he describes (in lip sync with the former president) as “the greatest political crime in the history of the country,” the “totalitarian” threat the party poses is now imminent.
The book begins with a lamentation: “Americans are more divided today than at any time since the Civil War.” The trouble is that almost everything Horowitz has recently written has been calculated to fan the flames of division. Yet he can’t make up his mind whether the tyranny the Democrats are about to install would be more like twentieth-century communism or fascism. He asserts, for example, that the diversity training programs favored by Democrats are akin to the surveillance system of “people’s commissars” created by the Bolsheviks. In practically the same breath, he announces that the Biden administration “has clearly defined itself and its party as a fascist vanguard.”
June 25, 2021
Michael Cohen on Dumbest Lie Trump Ever Told,
Matt Gaetz Coming After Him & Donald Going to Jail
Former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen talks about Trump wanting Jimmy investigated for making fun of him, Rudy Giuliani losing his law license, all of the terrible people in Team Trump, Donald calling him and telling him everything was going to be OK, the dumbest lie he ever heard Trump tell, Matt Gaetz coming after him, and the possibility of Trump going to jail.
July 12, 2021
Carl Sagan Predicted The Mess 2021
Would Be 25 Years Ago
Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan managed to predict a lot of things and challenges America faces in the year 2021 all the way back in 1995 when he was writing a book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, published just before his death in 1996. MSNBC’s Brian Williams shares the details.
August 12, 2021
Donald’s Plot Against America
Now, he and his GOP enablers are peddling the Second Big Lie: That January 6 was just legitimate protest. It’s the crucial ingredient in convincing America to return them—and him—to power.
By Mary L. Trump
I felt as though I had stumbled across a crime scene so violent that I couldn’t process it, let alone synthesize the images in front of me. The parts remained stubbornly separate, and there was no way to grasp the meaning of the whole.
Aug. 22, 2021
Jordan Klepper Fingers The Pulse
Into The MAGAverse: Full Special
Jordan Klepper revisits his surreal year on the 2020 campaign trail, remembering the best moments, sharing never-before-seen footage and conducting all-new interviews with the people he met along the way.
August 23, 2021
Donald Trump and the rise of Fox News | Four Corners
How Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News promoted Donald Trump’s propaganda and helped destabilise democracy in the United States: the first of our two-part special.
October 19, 2021
Trump’s Showdown
In this two-hour documentary, FRONTLINE goes inside President Trump’s fight against the investigation of his campaign and traces the dramatic events that led the White House and the nation to the brink of a Constitutional crisis. (Aired 2018)
October 31, 2021
RED FLAGS
As Trump propelled his supporters to
Washington, law enforcement agencies failed
to heed mounting warnings about violence on Jan. 6.
The head of intelligence at D.C.’s homeland security office was growing desperate. For days, Donell Harvin and his team had spotted increasing signs that supporters of President Donald Trump were planning violence when Congress met to formalize the electoral college vote, but federal law enforcement agencies did not seem to share his sense of urgency. On Saturday, Jan. 2, he picked up the phone and called his counterpart in San Francisco, waking Mike Sena before dawn.
Sena listened with alarm. The Northern California intelligence office he commanded had also been inundated with political threats flagged by social media companies, several involving plans to disrupt the joint session or hurt lawmakers on Jan. 6.
April 30, 2022
Trump’s latest hate rally: A master class
in cult mind control
By Chauncy Devega, Salon – Commentary
Donald Trump’s political circus and freak show is continuing its American tour. Everywhere it stops, Donald Trump unleashes a torrent of lies, hatred, ignorance, bigotry, racism, narcissism, authoritarianism, threats of violence and other antisocial and evil values.
Trump’s political rallies resemble George Orwell’s “two minutes of hate” from 1984, expanded to two hours or so.
World History Documentaries
May 21, 2022
The Seedy Underbelly Of The American Presidency
This doc probes the presidential campaigns that have changed America through the eyes of former campaigners, journalists and researchers. Find out how financing, crime and corruption, and TV debates play a major role in swaying political opinion on the way to the White House.
June 21, 2022
Watch Brad Raffensperger explain why
Trump lost Georgia
In testimony before the House select committee investigating January 6, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger explains why President Trump lost the state’s 16 electoral votes in the 2020 election.
July 12, 2022
‘Why We Did It’: Former RNC Spokesman
on GOP’s Descent Into Trumpism
As more is revealed about the inner workings of Trump’s White House, our next guest lifts the lid on the moral divisions within the Republican Party. In his new book, Why We Did It, Tim Miller details his involvement with the GOP and how political staffers were able to justify the new brand of politics, as he explains to Walter Isaacson.
August 20, 2022
Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo spoke at a
‘Moonies’-affiliated event, despite Japan controversy
By Alia Shoaib
The Unification Church, formed in South Korea in the 1950s by self-declared messiah Sun Myung Moon, is known to have deep-rooted ties with conservative politicians worldwide. Its followers are often colloquially referred to as “Moonies.”
Former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke in person at a conference affiliated with the church in Seoul on August 12 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the death of Sun Myung Moon.
Pompeo and Gingrich’s speeches spoke about the value of religious freedom and the dangers of communism – a view they share with the church.
The controversial religious organization – formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification – has been in the spotlight following the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The assassin told police that he was motivated by anger towards Abe and his links to the church. It is widely described as a cult by former members.
Former President Donald Trump recorded a video message played during the meeting, per Japanese outlet NTV News 24. During his speech, Trump said that Abe was a “good friend and a great man” and praised Reverend Moon’s widow Hak Ja Han, who now heads up the church.
Other billed speakers included former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former US ambassadors and generals.
According to Dr. Steven Hassan, an expert on cults and a former Moonie, the ties between right-wing politicians and the church are due to a shared hatred of communism and the group’s vast wealth and influence.
The Moon empire has been estimated to be worth billions of dollars and includes ownership of the conservative newspaper The Washington Times.
“It doesn’t shock me that Pompeo, the former head of the CIA and the State Department, spoke for them. I’m sure he got a lot of money. I’m sure Trump got a lot of money,” Hassan told Insider, speculating about their speaker’s fees. “I’m sure they don’t believe Moon was the Messiah.”
PBS
September 6, 2022
LIES, POLITICS AND DEMOCRACY
FRONTLINE’s season premiere investigates American political leaders and choices they’ve made that have undermined and threatened democracy in the U.S.
In a two-hour documentary special premiering ahead of the 2022 midterms, FRONTLINE examines how officials fed the public lies about the 2020 presidential election and embraced rhetoric that led to political violence.
September – October 2022 Issue
The Psychiatrist Who Warned Us
That Donald Trump Would Unleash
Violence Was Absolutely Right
The vindication of Bandy Lee.
By Joshua Kendall
On the afternoon of February 1, 2016, as Iowa voters prepared for that evening’s caucuses, Bandy Lee sat by the bedside of her mother, who was terminally ill with cancer. An assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Yale, Lee had been too preoccupied with her mother’s condition to pay attention to the nascent presidential race, so she was taken aback when she saw footage of a Donald Trump rally airing on the hospital room’s small TV. What shocked her was the way Trump interacted with the crowd. “He said something about how his supporters should knock the crap out of hecklers,” she recalls, “and that if they did, he would pay their legal bills.”
His belligerent behavior meant more to Lee than it might to a casual viewer. As part of her clinical work in prison settings, she had evaluated and treated hundreds of violent offenders, including leaders of prison gangs. A native New Yorker, she had assumed that Trump “was just a shady businessman,” Lee told me, but “I suddenly realized that he had a lot in common” with those patients. “Trump was engaging in the predatory manipulation of his vulnerable followers.” In some cases, gang leaders might “ask their members to engage in violence and then issue bogus promises of protection. Like Trump, these leaders also often project extreme self-confidence, and that appeals to their followers, who tend to feel a deep emotional need for protection, connection, and identity.”
Fast forward to November 9, 2016, the day after the election. Lee’s friends and colleagues were bombarding her with calls and emails. Would Trump’s victory herald an increase in hate crimes? “You are a violence expert,” one implored. “Can you do something?”
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
November 17, 2022
Barack Obama – Protecting Democracy
and the Commitment to Facts
“Democracy requires, by definition, getting along with people who don’t agree with you.” Former President Barack Obama discusses why he believes the youth turnout made all the difference in Democractic victories in the midterms; how globalization, disinformation, and the media infrastructure are contributing to the weakening of democracy globally; and what advice he has for Trevor after the Daily Show.
November – December 2022 Issue
How Trump Spread Incitement of
Violence Throughout the GOP
Republican Leaders have embraced a sinister
tactic honed by the ex-president.
By Mark Follman
Just hours after federal agents entered Mar-a-Lago on August 8 to seize highly classified national security documents, Rep. Paul Gosar urged a fight to the finish. “The FBI raid on Trump’s home tells us one thing,” the far-right Arizona congressman tweeted. “Failure is not an option. We must destroy the FBI.”
Three days later, an Ohio man named Ricky Shiffer donned tactical gear, armed himself with an AR-15, and went to the FBI field office in Cincinnati. After failing to breach the facility, he fled and later died in a shootout with law enforcement. Shiffer was a frequent user of Trump’s Truth Social site, where the ex-president has kept up steady attacks on political opponents and the Justice Department and FBI. Shiffer had posted about imminent violence, telling fellow Trump supporters to be ready “to jump into civil war.”
“People, this is it,” Shiffer wrote shortly after the Mar-a-Lago news broke. A Navy veteran who claimed he was also at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he called for stocking up at gun stores with “whatever you need to be ready for combat.” He also said “patriots are heading to Palm Beach” and should kill any federal agents who try to stop them.
Was Shiffer spurred to attack the FBI by the statements from Trump and Gosar? It’s hard to know, and that’s no accident. Shiffer’s actions point to a rhetorical method experts call “stochastic terrorism,” whereby a leader vilifies a person or group in ways likely to instigate random supporters to attack those targets, while the instigator maintains a veneer of plausible deniability. Trump made this form of incitement a hallmark of his presidency, galvanizing extremists by railing against and dehumanizing his “enemies.” The country saw the devastating consequences when his supporters stormed Congress to obstruct certification of the presidential election. And now a growing number of Republicans are emulating Trump’s technique.
“While these attacks may defy specific predictability,” threat assessment experts Molly Amman and Reid Meloy wrote in a 2021 study in the journal Perspectives on Terrorism, “their likelihood is greatly increased by the public demonization process.” Repetition and saturation through social media and news coverage further amplifies the effect, they observed.
TVO Today | The Agenda | Steve Paikin
January 31, 2023
Truth and Trump: An Evening with
Bob Woodward
The disruptive impacts of Donald Trump’s presidency continue to wreak havoc in America and influence politics abroad. Two years after losing the presidency, is his influence behind him or is his MAGA movement still a force to be reckoned with?
April 13, 2023
The Worst Things Donald Trump Has Ever Said
By S. Flannagan
The former president and reality TV star Donald Trump is a genius when it comes to getting the attention of the public and putting himself at the center of the media cycle. Even before his White House campaign in 2016, few businessmen in the history of the United States made as many appearances on TV and radio as Trump.
May 5, 2023
The E. Jean Carroll witness decision that
could haunt Donald Trump
Should the jury be entitled to hear from any of Trump’s other accusers? That was the weighty question Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had to decide.
By Carol C. Lam, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California
On Thursday, E. Jean Carroll officially rested her case. This means a jury in New York City will soon be asked to decide whether Donald Trump raped, and then later defamed, the former magazine columnist and media personality. The general public will draw its own conclusions about the civil lawsuit, a remarkable event not only because Trump is the former president of the United States, but also because he is a presidential candidate once again. But because jurors are instructed to reach their decision only on the evidence they see or hear in the trial, the decisions U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan makes about what evidence comes in — and what does not — are of enormous importance.
This week, the jury heard from four key witnesses likely to be top of mind for the jurors when they begin their deliberations. Two women — Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin — testified that Carroll talked to them shortly after the attack in 1996 and that her account back then was consistent with her testimony at trial. This evidence is important corroboration of Carroll’s testimony — that is, it was introduced to show that the rape allegation was not a recent fabrication. (Trump has denied Carroll’s claims, calling them a “scam.”)
May 5, 2023
Trump deposition in E. Jean Carroll rape trial
The full video of a deposition given by former president Donald Trump as part of his civil rape trial has been released. In the video, Trump calls his accuser, writer E. Jean Carroll a “nut job” and “mentally sick.” At one point, he also mistakes Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo.
May 9, 2023
The 26 women who have accused Trump
of sexual misconduct
By Eliza Relman and Azmi Haroun
At least 26 women accused President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, including assault, since the 1970s.
A deluge of women made their accusations public following the October 2016 publication of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women’s genitals in 2005. Some of Trump’s accusers made their stories public months before the tape’s release, and still others came forward in the months following.
Trump has broadly dismissed the allegations, which include harassment, groping, and rape, as “fabricated” and politically motivated accounts pushed by the media and his political opponents. In 2016, he promised to sue all of his accusers. In some cases, Trump and his lawyers have suggested he couldn’t have engaged in the alleged behavior with certain women because he wasn’t physically attracted to them.
March 22, 2018
Ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal tells her
story about Donald Trump
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal defends her decision to tell her story of her alleged relationship with Donald Trump, and said she doesn’t want to damage him. Trump has been charged by the Manhattan District Attorney in an hush-payment case involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Some case watchers say that McDougal’s allegations could be part of the indictment.
BuzzFeed News
October 19, 2016
A high-profile defense attorney from Florida, Cheney Mason, is now representing “Jane Doe,” the plaintiff in a New York federal civil court case where she is accusing Donald Trump of raping her in the ‘90s when she was 13 years old, according to court documents filed Monday.
July 17, 2023
Trump is campaigning to establish
‘a presidential dictatorship’ historian Beschloss says
The Republican party’s presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, is openly running a campaign based on turning America into an autocracy. Joy Reid’s panel of experts discuss this move many consider to be unprecedented.
August 2, 2023
Heather Cox Richardson
Today a grand jury in Washington, D.C, indicted former president Donald J. Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges stemmed from Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary citizens who weigh evidence of criminal activity and produce an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor.
The grand jury indicted Trump for “conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted and certified by the government; “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified”; and “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”
The indictment referred to six co-conspirators without identifying them by name, but the details included about them suggest that Co-Conspirator 1 is Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani; Co-Conspirator 2 is lawyer John Eastman, who came up with the plan for then–vice president Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role of counting the electoral votes to throw the election to Trump; Co-Conspirator 3 is Trump lawyer Sidney Powell; Co-Conspirator 4 is Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer whom Trump tried to push into the role of attorney general so he could lie that there had been election fraud; Co-Conspirator 5 appears to be Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump attorney behind the idea of the false electors.
The identity of Co-Conspirator 6, a political consultant, is unclear . . .
The Commonwealth Club of California
November 7, 2023
Heather Cox Richardson: Democracy Awakening
We’ve all been through a lot in the past five years, but it’s difficult to figure out what it all means, and how it applies to our shared existence in this democratic experiment. Heather Cox Richardson aims to remedy that.
As a historian she has been examining and explaining modern events aided by her deep understanding of history and insight into the forces working for and against democracy. In her new book Democracy Awakening, Heather Cox Richardson looks at the state of American democracy and the forces that have been driving it toward authoritarianism. In whose interest is the obfuscation of history? Who benefits if Americans are turned off or prevented from taking part in democratic acts? Who and what can help change things and rededicate this country to its founding ideals?
Join us in person as she explains how we got to this perilous point, what our history tells us about ourselves, and what the future of democracy can be.
Notes on the State of America
Heather Cox Richardson
August 23, 2023
Here Are The Mug Shots Of Everyone
Indicted In The Georgia Election Case
Look no further for the harshly-lit booking photos of the named defendants, as each one turns themselves in to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office.
By Sanjana Karanth and Sara Boboltz
Last week, a grand jury in Georgia accused former President Donald Trump and 18 others of scheming to overturn the state’s results of the 2020 presidential election so that he could remain in office.
In the Aug. 14 indictment are racketeering and corrupt organizations statutes that, in addition to Trump, have resulted in a long list of charges for his close allies like Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and John Eastman.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis gave all 19 defendants until noon on Friday to surrender.
Despite now being indicted in four criminal cases, Trump has managed to avoid getting his mug shot taken. But soon after the indictment’s release, Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat said the defendants ― including Trump ― will not receive any special treatment when they arrive for their arraignment.
August 26, 2023
Unfit (2020) | Donald Trump Documentary
Full Movie
Is Donald Trump fit to hold the office of President of the United States? An eye-opening analysis of Trump by leading US mental health professionals and Republican strategists, on the record for the record. Science. Truth. Duty to Warn.
Cast: Malcolm Nance, George Conway, Anthony Scaramucci, John Gartner, Lance Dodes, Justin Frank, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Ramani Durvasula
Director: Dan Partland
Aug. 27, 2023
Jordan Klepper Shows Trump Supporters
January 6th Hearing Clips
Jordan Klepper asks Mississippi Trump supporters what they think happened on January 6th, while showing them clips of the hearings in an attempt to break through the MAGA bubble.
Sept. 17, 2023
Full Trump Interview: ‘I don’t consider us to
have much of a democracy right now’
In this full, unedited interview with Meet the Press, former President Trump discusses his views on the 2020 election, abortion rights, foreign policy and more.
“The Race for Office” by Barry Blitt
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
November 2, 2023
Rep. Adam Kinzinger: Members of My Own Family
Disowned Me Over Jan. 6
Rep. Adam Kinzinger returns to The Late Show and discusses the personal backlash he and his family faced following his involvement in the January 6th Committee. Stick around for more with Adam Kinzinger and check out his new book, Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country, is available now.
Nov. 8, 2023
The Trump Family Confronts New Frontiers | Full Documentary
Starting with the Yukon Gold Rush of 1880, three generations of the Trump family confront new frontiers and build the foundation for Donald Trump’s fame and fortune.
Nov. 9, 2023
Mary Trump and Adam Kinzinger
On The Way Back from
Our Divided Political Moment
Adam Kinzinger and Mary Trump don’t have a lot in common on the surface: but in a moment where politics are dividing more people than ever before, Kinzinger and Trump find they have more and more in common. January 6th was a watershed moment for them both: Kinzinger’s departure from the current GOP was basically assured with his participation in the Congressional hearings on the matter, and a worst-fears-realized anguish after the discord crystalized a drive for activism in Mary Trump.
As Katie’s plus one, Mary Trump digs deep with Kinzinger on their shared fight for the future of democracy and how the country may find a path forward. Plus, Kinzinger is full of insider, behind-the-scenes explainers from his time in Congress, from what exactly is meant by “military aid” to the impact on history of Kevin McCarthy’s visits to Mar-a-Lago.
Premiered Nov. 29, 2023
Donald Trump’s Playbook: Lessons for 2024 election
Full Documentary
In this new documentary, the moment he went down the golden escalator to the moment he gave his first speech… this is how Donald Trump won his first race for president. History, as it happened. And what lessons, if any, can be learned from the Donald Trump playbook for the 2024 election? We examine the Donald Trump playbook, and retrace the timeline of his campaign with contemporaneous reporting to see how it happened, when it happened. 7NEWS Australia was there for every moment as the reality TV star became the ‘leader of the free world’. Featuring new interviews with the reporters who covered it all, this is the historical record of how Donald Trump became president. And what Trump 2024 might look like.
December 8, 2023
How Trump Got Evangelicals to Make
a Deal with the Devil
Is the Almighty, who made heaven and earth, also biting his nails over next year’s election? Tim Alberta joins Charlie Sykes to discuss the evangelicals who worship America, a 500-year moment for Christianity, and the organized crime syndicate Jerry Falwell built.
Dec. 18, 2023
Klepper’s Wildest Moments With Trumpers in 2023
From crashing campaign rallies, to Trump’s arrest protest, Jordan Klepper had quite the year.
December 26, 2023
The film the Trump Organization tried to suppress
You’ve Been Trumped Too (2020)
Investigative journalist Anthony Baxter travels between the US Presidential race and the Scottish countryside to chronicle the troubling confrontation between Donald Trump and a feisty 92-year-old widow, Molly Forbes, as she refuses to make way for his golf course. This shocking insight to a David and Goliath battle is a remarkable document of the disconnect between political rhetoric and the lives of ordinary people.
“Back to the Future” by Barry Blitt
January 21, 2024
Melania’s Ex-BFF is BACK with MORE TROUBLING
News For Entire Trump Family | The Weekend Show
Former friend and aide to Melania Trump, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, joins Anthony Davis to expose the Trump family dynamic during this politically turbulent period as Donald becomes even more extreme in light of his legal troubles and as the country grapples with the threat of dictatorship – only on The Weekend Show.
January 26, 2024
Liz Cheney Talks Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell
Being Weak and the 2024 Election
Former Congresswoman and Vice Chair of the January 6th select committee Liz Cheney joins the pod to discuss the dangers of a second Trump term, his chokehold on the Republican party and why she thinks Nikki Haley needs to stay in the GOP primary. Plus, more on Mitch McConnell’s about-face on the bipartisan Senate immigration deal and President Biden’s endorsement from the United Auto Workers Union.
January 26, 2024
The Far Right In The US And Europe | The Politics Of Hate (2017)
At 16 he became the leader of the Chicago Area Skinheads, later a white supremacist punk band. But when Christian Picciolini started a family, he began questioning his far right views. This timely doc explores a changing Western political climate, chronicling the rise of the far right in the US and Europe, and giving alarming insights into the ways the alt-right movement operates.
January 30, 2024
Democracy on Trial (full documentary)
In March, 2024 Republican presidential nomination front-runner Trump is scheduled to begin standing trial on federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S., in connection with efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. He says the charges against him are politically motivated.
“Democracy on Trial” traces the road to this unprecedented moment, and examines the implications of the historic criminal case unfolding in the midst of a presidential election year. Drawing on court documents and revelatory interviews with elected officials, former government lawyers, House Select Committee witnesses and former committee staffers, authors and journalists, the documentary reports that the work of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack provided the groundwork for special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump and may offer insights into how the trial unfolds.
The documentary chronicles how the committee built its case against Trump and tried to prove his intent, how it chose to present its case to the American public, and criticisms of its work. Key witnesses who testified before the committee and whose firsthand accounts are now evidence in the federal case speak out in the documentary — including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling and former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers.
Gripping and illuminating, “Democracy on Trial,” the newest film from FRONTLINE’s award-winning political team, Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser and Vanessa Fica, also examines how Trump has challenged the case. Trump has pleaded not guilty and made the legal argument, now being reviewed by an appellate court, that he has “absolute immunity” from prosecution for his actions while in office.
MeidasTouchNetwork
January 30, 2024
Prosecutor Who TOOK DOWN Trump BACK for More | Burn The Boats
Burn the Boats is an award-winning podcast featuring intimate conversations with change-makers from every walk of life. Host Ken Harbaugh interviews politicians, authors, activists, and others about the most important issues of our time.
While serving as the Assistant Attorney General of New York, Tristan Snell prosecuted Trump University, the Trump Organization, and Donald Trump himself. Tristan’s new book, Taking Down Trump, talks about that case, and lays out the 12 rules for prosecuting Donald Trump. In this interview, Tristan talks about Trump’s legal strategy, how he is manipulating the legal system, and his history of lies.
February 4, 2024
The resurrection of Donald Trump
To loyal Trump supporters, their candidate can do no wrong. Donald Trump’s 2024 run for the White House seems unstoppable despite all the controversies.
February 6, 2024
It’s Way Too Easy for a Crook Like Trump to
Pervert Our Legal System
If the law has one standard for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of us, it will be hard for ordinary Americans to maintain their faith in democracy.
By Michael Tomasky
We once again come to the start of yet another week that could, and by rights should, destroy Donald Trump. This Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case that seeks to bar Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Meanwhile, we await word from New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who blew past his self-imposed January 31 deadline for announcing the damages he’ll make the former president pay in the Trump Organization fraud case. Finally, we also sit here wondering what is taking that three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals so long in deciding that Trump should not be immune from prosecution.
What does it all add up to? This: We are forced to confront the devastating possibility that our legal and political systems have no way of punishing obviously illegal and immoral behavior when carried out by someone with enormous political and financial power.
We tell ourselves we’re a nation of laws. But what if that is a lie? What if that’s a fairy tale? What if our system is not only imperfect, as any system designed by human beings is bound to be? What if it is designed so that rich and powerful people — even ones with horrible defense lawyers! — can wait the system out, even pervert it, and prevail?
Feb. 19, 2024
Trump fake elector in Wisconsin describes
how he says he was tricked
Andrew Hitt, who signed a phony electoral certificate for former President Trump in 2020, tells 60 Minutes that he and other Wisconsin Republican electors were tricked.
MARCH 1, 2024 * A JOURNAL FROM AMERICA’S HEARTLAND * Vol. 30, No. 4
An Incurable Disease?
The Mystery of MAGA
How is it possible that people cheer and celebrate the most transparent fraud, the most outrageous liar, the most straitjacket-ready psycho ever visited on the body politic?
By Hal Crowther
Like nearly every self-appointed critic of the American political system, I never imagined that I would still be typing that dread-laden five-letter word in February of 2024. The one that begins with “t” and ends with “p”, of course, and it isn’t “tulip.” I’ve prayed, I’ve fasted, I’ve made burnt offerings to the neglected god of common sense, a deity so many Americans have left behind. And still the T-word and the man who embodies all its mystery and menace persist.
Arguments against the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump are like arguments against infanticide, or microwaving kittens. When you offer one, and there must be hundreds, you can’t conceive of an objection or rebuttal. The case against this creature was closed nearly a decade ago, though more damning evidence seems to turn up every day. The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg, not a writer given to heated overstatement, refers to him as a “freakish madman” and an “onrushing nightmare.” Yet indictments for 91 felonies haven’t kept him from winning Republican primaries and drawing crowds of passionate believers. One Times headline reads “Trump Tightens Grip on National Psyche.” And another, “Trump’s Connection With Supporters Has Little Precedent: Victory Reveals a New Depth of Devotion.”
March 8, 2024
Lincoln Project DESTROYS Trump,
Trump LOSES IT!
A super Political Action Committee or PAC critical of former president Donald Trump, known as The Lincoln Project, has unveiled a new video spotlighting Trump’s recent slip-ups.
MSNBC
MONDAYS 9PM ET
March 18, 2024
Confidence Man with Maggie Haberman // The American Story
How does a man like Donald Trump—simultaneously hailed as an all-American hero and condemned as a harbinger of the end of American democracy—become not only a cultural phenomenon, but the president of the United States? Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the 45th president, offers insight into his background, his motivations, and the true nature of his personality, not to mention the means by which he gained a seat in the Oval Office.
Maggie Haberman, a senior political correspondent for the New York Times and a political analyst for CNN, is the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. David M. Rubenstein (moderator), co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, is the author of How to Invest: Masters on the Craft and the host of History with David Rubenstein on PBS.
March 28, 2024
The Mass Psychology of Trumpism
What explains Donald Trump’s enduring appeal among his supporters? What drives the intense emotional connection that his most passionate followers feel with the former — and possibly next — president? This question has flummoxed and bedeviled pundits, political scientists, journalists, historians and other observers for the last decade, leading many to the realization that the normal categories of political analysis fall short when it comes to this phenomenon.
In this video essay, the psychologist Dan McAdams ventures a theory: In the minds of Trump’s most ardent supporters, he is both more and less than a person. “In the eyes of his supporters, Trump possesses extraordinary powers that are wielded for good and against evil,” McAdams observes. “Who cares if he is flawed? So what if he lacks certain distinctively human qualities? What does it matter that he is rude, authoritarian or even a criminal?”
To explain this apparent paradox, McAdams draws on the research for his book The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning (2020). McAdams, the Henry Wade Rogers professor of psychology and professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, is a pioneering scholar in the field of “narrative identity” theory, or the life-story model of human identity. His other books include The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (2006).
This video essay is drawn from McAdams’ New Lines Magazine article “The Mass Psychology of Trumpism,” which can be found at https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-….
April 5, 2024
The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem
How did a niche meme-sharing message board become a hotbed for conspiracy theories and dangerous disinformation? This documentary investigates.
April 2024
Jacob’s Dream
MAGA meets the Age of Aquarius
By Frederick Kaufman
Jacob Angeli-Chansley, the man the media has dubbed the QAnon Shaman, had been released from federal custody six weeks before when we met for lunch at a place called Picazzo’s, winner of the Phoenix New Times Best Gluten-Free Restaurant award in 2015. Despite a protracted hunger strike and 317 days isolated in a cell, Jacob’s prison sentence of forty-one months for obstruction of an official proceeding on January 6, 2021, had been shortened owing to good behavior, and he was let out about a year early on supervised release.
It took some doing to get him to sit for an interview, as Jacob is wary of what he calls Operation Mockingbird, an alleged CIA-sponsored effort begun in the Fifties to use mass media to influence public opinion. Jacob believes that people like me are the tools of the Mockingbird operation, of the deep state, international bankers, pharmaceutical cartels, and corporate monarchies that control the world. People like me believe in medicines that are addictive drugs, in food that is poison, in environmentalism that is ecocide, in education that is ignorance, in money that is debt, in objective science that is not objective. “People are brainwashed by the elites and their propaganda networks,” he said. “Mass hypnosis, bro.”
April 9, 2024
Lying Is What Dictators Do
Straight from the authoritarian playbook, Trump has turned the RNC into a hereditary dictatorship in his quest to swap out the entire GOP—and reality itself—with a murderous Christofascist fantasy.
By Brynn Tannehill
One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president in 2017 was to force Sean Spicer onto the podium to lie about how his inauguration was the best attended and watched ever. It was such an audacious and easily dispelled lie—there was footage to prove otherwise. But Trump’s narcissistic ego prevented him from admitting defeat. More so, everything had to be superlative—the most popular, the biggest, the best. It was Spicer’s job as his flack to make us understand and accept this. (Spicer paid for this by ritually being humiliated and emasculated in a way that recalls the infamous “My name is Reek” scene in Game of Thrones.)
However, Spicer was one man. And now it is a command from above to define reality as whatever Donald Trump says it is, regardless of facts, evidence, or logic. Now Trump, in his bid to run for the White House for a third time, wants the Republican National Committee, which he effectively has taken over, to replace the entire GOP. He swapped the organization’s chair Ronna McDaniel with his daughter-in-law, Eric’s wife Lara Trump, and longtime Trump loyalist Michael Whatley, and then immediately instituted mass layoffs and began restaffing it with his own people. The goal was clear: Establish the Trump family as a hereditary dictatorship.
This past week, the Washington Post revealed that interviewees for positions at the RNC were asked whether they believed the 2020 Election was stolen. This was the litmus test, so that they would only hire those who would vocally support lies meant to undermine the legitimacy of the United States’ government.
If Trump takes power again in 2025 (according to polls, if the election were held today, he would likely easily win the electoral college based on six key swing states), he will spread this command to all of government via Schedule F. This will also allow him to fill all of the top 50,000 spots in government with cronies, ideologues, and sycophants who can be hired and fired at his will.
April 11, 2024
Column: Trump 1.0 made some world
leaders laugh. Trump 2.0 terrifies them
By Jackie Calmes
Not a joke, as Joe Biden might say.
I’m talking about our country: America is no joke, no matter how many times Donald Trump claims it is.
One of his most obnoxious lies at every rally and in most interviews is his contention that, with Biden as president, a disrespectful world is laughing at us. Trump was at it again last week, at his most recent rally in Green Bay, Wis., claiming the United States is a global laughingstock.
“Joe Biden is not respected and Joe Biden is not feared” among the world’s nations, he told his fawning crowd. But once he, Trump, is reelected, “America will soon be respected again, very quickly respected, like never before.”
Like virtually all Trumpisms, this one is demonstrably false.
“Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, publics around the world held the United States in low regard,” the Pew Research Center reported soon after he left office. Its 2020 survey found that among 13 allied nations, the share of people who had a favorable view of America was the lowest it had been in the two decades since Pew began asking the question. Good feelings toward the United States rebounded after Biden took office and remained favorable by a 2-to-1 ratio last year.
It’s almost laughable, Trump’s projection of his own unpopularity onto Biden. Except that too many Americans believe him.
As for foreign leaders, they’re not laughing at the United States or Trump. They’re openly fretting that the pro-authoritarian neo-isolationist whose crude credo is “America First” could return to power. Their agita is pretty astounding, really.
They don’t respect Trump at all, though they do fear him — the way you’d fear a madman at the nuclear button. President Nixon sought leverage by making foreign counterparts think he was unstable; Trump actually is unstable. Foreign diplomats and some leaders don’t even mask their anxiety. They mostly speak anonymously, in case he actually regains power, but they speak nonetheless, ignoring norms against opining about another country’s election.
Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has said repeatedly that even the autocrats Trump admires — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, among others — “think he’s a laughing fool.”
April 19, 2024
What Did President Trump Do
for 187 Minutes on Jan. 6?
(Democracy on Trial: Pt. 12)
May 17, 2024
The Affairs and Scandals of Trump’s Pastor
Paula White | Documentary
In a world of faith and flashy lights, megachurches and their pastors sometimes come with mega-drama… In Pastor Paula White’s world, alleged marital affairs, bankrupting churches, and using church money to pay for plastic surgery aren’t unheard of. As a young girl who lived in a trailer and became a young married mother, she grew up to become a preacher after an affair with the associate-pastor of her church (and not before they ran off together to start their own church). She went on to lead a congregation of 22,000, became a multimillionaire, hosted a Christian TV show, owned a private jet and an 8,000 sq ft. beach-front home. But no matter how high she climbed, betrayal, greed, and multiple scandals have followed Paula her entire career and three marriages. This is the scandalous story and luxurious lifestyle of Pastor Paula White.
May 25, 2024
Yes, That’s Right: American Fascism
Why waste time debating the extent of Trump’s
fascism when we ought to be fighting it instead?
By Michael Tomasky
“No, no,” some admonish: “Don’t get carried away. Sure, Donald Trump is dangerous, perhaps uniquely so. But … fascist? The need to label him a fascist says more about the labeler than about Trump.” This argument has sprung from certain quarters of the right, which was to be expected, but it has also sprouted from the left, where a point of view has arisen that the “hysterical” invocation of the f-word is as much a danger as Trump.
We have trouble seeing the hysteria. We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.
June 4, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris on Protecting
Reproductive Rights, Trump’s Guilty Verdict
& Health Care
June 8, 2024
Trump’s final year as President: Part One | Full Documentary
History, as it happened. A reminder of what happened in Donald Trump’s final year as president. In this documentary, we relive the first six months of 2020 under the Trump administration, through the 7NEWS team’s coverage of all key moments.
“A Man of Conviction” by John Cuneo
June 18, 2024
‘I had that DNA of caring for people’: Fauci discusses
new book and life in public health
Dr. Anthony Fauci is arguably the world’s most famous doctor and best known for guiding the country through the pandemic. But he has also faced right-wing criticism for assessments and recommendations throughout that period and his clashes with former President Trump. Geoff Bennett sat down with Dr. Fauci to discuss his career and new memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service.
With an assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, the U.S. experienced another violent episode in its increasingly polarized politics. Former President Trump, who’s about to formally become the GOP nominee for president in the 2024 election, survived the attempted assassination when, initial reports said, a bullet grazed his ear. But one rally attendee was killed, more spectators were injured and the suspected gunman is also dead. The Conversation’s politics editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke with University of Massachusetts, Lowell, scholar Arie Perliger after the event. Perliger offered insight from his study of political violence and assassinations. Given the stark political polarization in the U.S., Perliger said, “it’s not a surprise that eventually people engage in violence.”
Schalit: When you heard the news, what was the first thing you thought?
Perliger: The first thing that I thought about is that we were basically one inch from a potential civil war. I think that if, indeed, Donald Trump would have suffered fatal injuries today, the level of violence that we witnessed so far will be nothing in comparison to what would have happened in the next couple of months. I think that would have unleashed a new level of anger, frustration, resentment, hostility that we haven’t seen for many, many years in the U.S.
This assassination attempt, at least at this early stage, may validate a strong sense among many Trump supporters and many people on the far right that they are being delegitimized, that they are on the defensive and that there are efforts to basically prevent them from competing in the political process and prevent Trump from returning to the White House.
What we’ve just seen, for many of the people on the far right, fits very well into a narrative that they’ve already been constructing and disseminating for the last few months.
Political assassination attempts don’t aim only to kill someone. They have a larger goal, don’t they?
In many ways, assassination attempts bypass the long process of trying to downgrade and defeat political opponents, when there is a sense that even a long political struggle will not be sufficient. Many perpetrators see assassinations as a tool that will allow them to achieve their political objectives in a very quick, very effective way that doesn’t demand a lot of resources or a lot of organization. If we are trying to connect it to what we’ve seen today, I think that many people see Trump as a unicorn, as a unique entity, who in many ways really consumed the entire conservative movement. So by removing him, there’s a sense that that will or may solve the problem.
I think that the conservative movement changed dramatically since 2016, when Trump was first elected, and a lot of the characteristics of Trumpism are actually now fairly popular in different parts of the conservative movement. So even if Trump will decide to retire at some point, I don’t think that Trumpism – as a set of populist ideas – will disappear from the GOP. But I can definitely understand why people who see that as a threat will feel that removing Trump can solve all the problems.
In a study of the causes and impacts of political assassination, you wrote that unless electoral processes can address “the most intense political grievances … electoral competition has the potential to instigate further violence, including the assassinations of political figures.” Is that what you saw in this attempted assassination?
July 15, 2024
‘Noxious’: See Maddow expose JD Vance’s past
statements about Trump, Jan. 6 and more
Rachel Maddow looks back at the blistering insults JD Vance directed at his now running mate Donald Trump, as well as his newfound MAGA perspective on the January 6 insurrection.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
July 15, 2024
Rep. Adam Kinzinger On Trump’s Cult-Level Control
Over The Republican Party
Former congressman Adam Kinzinger recalls the events of January 6, 2021 and admits he was surprised to see Donald Trump take total control over the GOP in the runup to the 2024 presidential race. Stick around for two more segments with Rep. Kinzinger.
“The Face of Justice” by Anita Kunz
July 15, 2024
RETRIBUTION
PART ONE: THE BATTLE FOR DEMOCRACY
Investigating Trump, Project 2025 and the future
of the United States | Four Corners
There has never been a US president like Donald Trump — and now he’s back, this time with a detailed plan for his second coming.
Nearly four years after he was cast out by voters and accused of encouraging the American people to assault their own democracy with the attack on the US Capitol, the now convicted criminal wants to rebuild the country in his own image.
Ahead of the US election in November, Four Corners reporter Mark Willacy travels to Washington for the first of a special two-part series.
He sits down with White House insiders who witnessed the chaos of Trump’s first term — some who continue to support his vision, and others Trump now considers “traitors”.
Trump wants to reshape the pillars of American democracy and give himself more power. Willacy goes inside “Project 2025”, the blueprint for a second Trump term and the army of recruits ready to carry out his orders.
Meanwhile strategy, security and defence experts warn of the impact another Trump presidency could have on America’s institutions, its democracy, and the rest of the world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
PART II – July 22, 2024
July 19, 2024
Preacher, prophet, messiah: Trump cult
takes on religious overtones at RNC
As Christian nationalism grows in strength and influence within the Republican Party, Donald Trump’s cult of personality is shifting toward increasing religiosity with Trump as the central deity. George Conway, president of the Anti-Psychopath PAC, Susan Glasser, staff writer at the New Yorker, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, columnist for the New York Times, discuss with Alex Wagner.
July 23, 2024
Trump: Guilty on all Counts | Full Documentary
Donald Trump faces four criminal cases, with the sentencing for the Hush money scandal taking place on the 11th of July 2024. Just days before the start of the Republican National Convention on the 15th of July where Trump is expected to be formally nominated for president. Although the ex-president continues to claim he is ahead in the polls, the prospect of a jail sentence could really rock his campaign and has warned that the public would reach a breaking point. However, at a time of such high intensity, the prospect of civil unrest and violence could very much rear its ugly head…once again.
Cast
Andrew Wroe
Guy Walters
Matthew Goodwin
Natasha Lindstaedt
Filmmakers
Sarah Findley, Brian Aabech, Jordan Hill
July 26, 2024
Trump Backers Are Talking Up Possible
Civil War
These commentators and GOP state official sound willing to take drastic measures if Trump loses in November.
By Arianna Coghill
Last week, at J.D. Vance’s first rally as the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, Ohio state Sen. George Lang said that civil war would be necessary if former President Donald Trump does not win the 2024 presidential election.
“I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County’s J.D. Vance are the last chance to save our country politically. I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved,” Lang said, as the crowd erupted in raucous applause.
Three days later, Lang apologized on X, claiming that the statement “didn’t accurately represent his views.” But while the Ohio legislator’s statement may not represent his views, it certainly seems to represent those of other Trump supporters.
Since campaigning for the 2024 race began, several MAGA loyalists have openly advocated for political violence in the event the real estate mogul loses the race.
July 29, 2024
A half-million records and one app: The group
behind a massive effort to ‘clean’ voter rolls
Police officers in Texas, senior citizens at a nursing home in Pennsylvania, and people who had registered to vote at a Marine base in California are among the thousands of voters whose right to cast a ballot has been needlessly challenged ahead of this November’s election by activists — many of whom have been inspired by conspiracy theories — seeking to prevent voter fraud.
“My simple right as a voter is being attacked,” said Daniel Moss, a university administrator from Denton County, Texas, whose registration was challenged by one of the activists even though he has lived in the county and voted there for about two decades. “It’s kind of un-American to do that.”
Election officials across the country have been inundated with dubious complaints about inaccurate voter rolls, which have wasted government resources and sapped taxpayer money spent reviewing lists of registered voters that officials say are already carefully maintained, a CNN investigation has found.
One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories. The group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has called on followers to help clean voter rolls by using an app called IV3 that enables users to research voter data and submit voter-eligibility challenges to local election offices.
August 6, 2024
Kamala Harris Picks Minn. Governor & Midwestern
Dad Tim Walz as Running Mate
Michael Kosta gets to know Tim Walz, the Minn. governor Kamala Harris chose as her running mate. While the Trump campaign claims the vice presidential candidate will “unleash hell on earth,” Democrats love his political record and “Midwestern dad af” vibes. Plus, Josh Johnson weighs in on why Walz is the “right type of white guy” for this race.
Aug. 15, 2024
Trump DUMPED By Evangelicals After Ruthless
New Ad
Evangelicals are finally turning on Trump as his hypocrisy and moral failures push them to rally behind Kamala Harris in a desperate bid to save the GOP from its own self-destruction. Richard Ojeda breaks it down on Rebel HQ.
August 16, 2024
Project 2025 Co-Author Lays Out “Radical Agenda”
for Next Trump Term in Undercover Video
As Donald Trump tries to distance his campaign from Project 2025, those behind the right-wing policy blueprint to remake the U.S. government continue to brag in private about their close ties to the Republican presidential nominee and how they intend to push a radical right-wing agenda in a second Trump administration. In July, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought met with two people he believed to be relatives of a wealthy conservative donor interested in funding the effort.
In fact, he was meeting with two reporters with the U.K.-based Centre for Climate Reporting as part of an undercover sting captured on video. Over the course of two hours, Vought described Trump’s disavowal of Project 2025 as mere theater and laid out plans for mass deportations, restricting abortion, gutting independent government bureaucracies, using the military against racial justice protesters and more.
The secret plans are “designed to ensure that this kind of radical agenda that the conservative movement has in the U.S. can be implemented from day one,” says Lawrence Carter, founder and director of the Centre for Climate Reporting and one of the reporters who spoke with Vought. “They want to make sure that the mistakes from the first Trump administration, as they see them, where not much got done, are avoided this time around.”
September 5, 2024
Trump’s Latest Scheme to Steal the
Election: Let Congress Do It
The ex-president has demanded that Congress insert
“voter fraud” measures into a must-pass spending
bill. Speaker Mike Johnson says he agrees.
By Thom Hartmann
Get ready. Donald Trump has made good use of the propaganda technique known as the Big Lie 1.0, famously claiming that the 2020 “election was stolen” from him. And now he’s preparing to use Big Lie 2.0 to shut down our government this fall, believing it’ll hurt the Biden administration and thus the Harris-Walz campaign.
That second weapon—this Big Lie 2.0—is the false allegation of widespread “voter fraud” in America. He intends to use it to try to bring the Biden administration to its knees in the next few weeks. And, as a bonus, if it works, he gets to prevent millions of people, particularly minorities and women, from voting.
Republicans have been using this lie to attack the heart of our democracy right out in the open ever since the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the year they responded by rolling out “Operation Eagle Eye,” yelling about nonexistent “voter fraud” and using it as an excuse to intimidate minority voters in the Goldwater/Johnson race.
In the 60 years since then, with the exception of the past year or two, no major American news media have seriously challenged the Republican “voter fraud” lie. Even though for the last few decades Republicans have routinely used it for blocking minority and women voters, and purging voting rolls the way, for example, Governor Brian Kemp and Attorney General Ken Paxton just did in Georgia and Texas, respectively, in preparation for this November.
Sept. 6, 2024
Fred Trump III Denounces His Uncle Donald Trump
for Saying Disabled People “Should Just Die”
Democracy Now! is joined by the nephew of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has endorsed Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Fred Trump III’s new memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got to Be This Way, shares fresh insights into the Trump family and acts as a platform to advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities. Fred Trump’s own son William has a rare genetic disorder that causes severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. He says Donald Trump once told him to abandon William, saying, “He doesn’t recognize you. Let him die, and move down to Florida.” After a meeting in the Oval Office about dedicating more resources to people with disabilities, Fred Trump says his uncle said, “Those people, the costs. They should just die.”
“How could one human being say that about any other human being, least of all your grandnephew?” says Fred Trump, who calls on the next president to support disabled Americans.
Sept. 9, 2024
‘This is not an idle threat’: Schiff sounds
alarm on Trump’s threat to jail opponents
Congressman Adam Schiff discusses Trump’s threat to jail opponents if he wins reelection as well as Trump’s delayed sentencing in his New York “hush money” case.
September 11, 2024
Trump Lies & Whines After Disastrous Debate,
Swift for Kamala & Do Pro-Lifers
Know the Female Body?
Sept. 12, 2024
The Secret Trump Investigation
Nobody is Talking About
Did Egypt’s President el-Sisi try to buy Trump’s loyalty by sending Trump $10 million? We looked into it and here’s what we found.
Read the excellent report that inspired this video, by Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig for The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/invest…
Sept. 15, 2024
TOP Psychiatrist BACK with NEW Diagnosis
of Trump AFTER Debate | The Weekend Show
After Trump’s disastrous TV debate, Dr Bandy Lee returns to The Weekend Show to analyze the disgraced former President’s unhinged behavior, his outrageous statements and obvious unfitness for the role of Commander in Chief. And how VP Kamala Harris used prosecutorial skill and dexterity to expose his dangerousness.
Sept. 18, 2024
Maddow on her ‘profoundly funny’ new
documentary on Trump-Ukraine scandal,
‘From Russia with Lev’
Rachel Maddow is the executive producer of a new documentary on the Trump-Ukraine plot, “From Russia with Lev,” airing this Friday at 9 pm ET on MSNBC. Maddow joins Joy Reid with more.
Sept. 19, 2024
NC Candidate Mark Robinson Gets Exposed
and Trump Reunites with Rudy Giuliani
Ronny Chieng on the North Carolina Republican busted for posting weird comments on a porn site, Rudy Giuliani’s frightening performance at Trump’s Long Island rally, and the shocking truth behind JD Vance’s cat eating stories. Plus, Troy Iwata joins with the inside scoop on one missing feline.
September 24, 2024
New Look at Trump’s Most Consequential Day:
Jan 6 Attack on the Capital
Fight Like Hell shows the true story of January 6 as it’s never been seen before. With no narration, commentary, or other “spin,” the film immerses the viewer into the Stop the Steal movement from its origins — long before the 2020 election had even ended.
As President Trump fought the election results in court, see how the Stop the Steal movement fought it in the streets. With original never-seen footage shot by an army combat cinematographer using state-of-the-art cinema cameras, Fight Like Hell is a visceral experience that brings you right into the moment as it happened.
Sept. 24, 2024
You Will Never Look At Elon Musk
The Same Way Again…
September 24, 2024
One-on-one with Heather Cox Richardson
Cap Times Idea Fest 2024
Heather Cox Richardson is a Boston College history professor whose daily digital essays (“Letters from an American”) that place current political events into historical context have gained a massive national following.
In this keynote Idea Fest session, she talks with fellow historian David Maraniss about the precedents for what we are seeing now in America’s political landscape and where we might be headed.
Sept. 24, 2024
Mary Trump: “Cruelty Was a Currency” in Trump Family
In a busy week for diplomacy, world leaders are weighing up what a second Trump term could mean for the U.S. and the world. To the former president’s niece, Mary Trump, it would spell nothing but bad news for American democracy. Mary Trump joined Michel Martin to discuss her views on the upcoming election and her latest book, Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir.
PBS
THE
CHOICE
2024
HARRIS vs.TRUMP
Premiered Sep 24, 2024 | FRONTLINE investigates the lives and characters of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as they seek the presidency.
October 2, 2024
Jack Smith Lays Out The Sharply Incriminating
Evidence of Trump’s Democracy-Busting
January 6 Crimes
In anticipation of conducting the litigation the Supreme Court directed her to conduct on the issue of presidential immunity, Judge Tanya Chutkan placed on the public docket Jack Smith’s 165-page motion setting out the crimes of Donald Trump and why he is not immune from prosecution.
Smith’s motion reads like a 165-page opening statement, showing why Trump should never again be allowed to get within a thousand miles of the Oval Office.
Vice President Kamala Harris on
October 9, 2024
Oct. 11, 2024
Fears grow that ‘clown-like’ Trump
could achieve fascist goals despite
gross incompetence
For as long as Donald Trump has been on the political scene, analysts have struggled with how much of his performance to take seriously. But as Election Day races closer and polls remain tight even as Trump rhetoric becomes more extreme and his supporters become more radicalized, more people are realizing that no matter how big a buffoon Trump may be, the risks of him taking power and abusing that power are significant and worrisome.
Charlie Sykes, a former conservative radio host who has now endorsed Kamala Harris, is joined by Susan Glasser, staff writer at the New Yorker, and McKay Coppins, staff writer for the Atlantic and author of Romney: A Reckoning, discuss with Alex Wagner.
Oct. 11, 2024
“The Apprentice”: New Film Opens Despite
Trump’s Attempts to Block Anyone from Seeing It
We speak with the director of “The Apprentice,” which opens today in theaters despite legal threats from the former president. The film looks at how Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. He went on to represent Trump as he built his New York real estate empire, and “was the person who sort of built Trump, as a person, as a brand, as an identity,” says Abbasi.
Oct. 12, 2024
Trump’s 40-Year Entanglement
with the FBI and Organized Crime
Never has a president so repeatedly and openly demonstrated his disrespect for the law, the Constitution and the democratic institutions of the United States. From Russian interference in the 2016 elections to secret deals with the mafia, Donald Trump has faced many accusations – while he claims to be the victim of an FBI conspiracy.
Despite being implicated in well-documented suspect deals, he was never charged. In fact, Trump and the FBI have been covertly enmeshed for 40 years. But exactly how far did he go to get his way, and to keep agents from investigating?
Using privileged access to FBI officials, this film examines the complex relationship between the United States Intelligence Community and its businessman-turned-President, who plays a double game with the Mafia and the bureau. In the run-up of the next presidential election, this investigation proposes to lay out the inside story of Trump’s potentially compromised presidency, examined by those who know him best.
Documentary: An American Affair : Trump & the FBI (2020)
Directed by: Fabrizio Calvi & David Carr-Brown
Production: Pumpernickel Films and Allumage
Oct. 14, 2024
The DISTURBING links between Trump, Hitler, Stalin, and Putin
— A deep dive into the comparisons between, and often taboo of, comparing Donald Trump or other modern-day authoritarians to the dictators of history, including Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Kim Jong Un, and others.
Oct. 16, 2024
PolitiFact Founder Explains the “Epidemic of Lying”
in American Politics
As Americans gear up for the election, Bill Adair warns of an “epidemic of lying” in U.S. politics — particularly within the Republican Party. Adair joins the show to discuss his new book Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy. As founder of the fact-checking website PolitiFact, Adair is well placed to account for where disinformation comes from, how it spreads and the danger it poses to democracy.
Oct. 21, 2024
Rachel Maddow interviews Yulia Navalnaya
Watch the full, extended version of Rachel Maddow’s interview with pro-democracy, anti-Putin, anti-corruption activist Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny.
October 25, 2024
President TRUMP – Has he Made
America Great Again? | First Term
The World According to Trump | Documentary
Donald Trump has imposed his own pace, provocative style, and agenda, and the world experienced his four years in office at full throttle. Every day a new controversy crowded out the previous one, to the extent that it was hard to grasp what was really at stake. What if the time had come to watch the film once again at a normal speed?
October 25, 2024
Why Trump Is So Dangerous
In this Changing Climate video essay, I examine the disaster of another Trump presidency and the implementation of Project 2025. In short, Trump will build a fossil fascist regime that would not only be catastrophic for oppressed people everywhere but also lock-in climate chaos for decades to come.
October 28, 2024
“Whoever Wins this Presidential Race,
We’re Going To See a Lot of Violence” | Shawn Ryan
Shawn Ryan, former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor, joins John to discuss politics, war, and the psychological toll of military service. Shawn reflects on his experiences in conflict zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of his podcast “The Shawn Ryan Show,” and how it resonated with listeners craving authenticity amidst a media landscape they no longer trust. He shares his personal struggles, including battling alcoholism, and how transparency and vulnerability became central themes on his platform, especially for veterans reintegrating into civilian life.
Shawn and John explore the state of the world today, touching on societal unrest in the US, the dangerous rise of extremism, and the challenges posed by foreign adversaries like China. Shawn also highlights the importance of critical thinking, the influence of money in politics, and the vital need for America to “get its house in order” before it can effectively handle global threats.
October 30, 2024
Nationalism is not patriotism: 3 insights
from Orwell about Trump and the 2024 election
Shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States in January 2017, George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four shot to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list. Apparently, lots of people thought Orwell had something relevant to say in that political moment.
Nearly eight years later, the United States once again faces the prospect of a Trump presidency.
In 2016, many Americans were caught off guard by Trump’s win, leading them to grapple with the potential consequences of a Trump presidency only after he was elected. But this time, more people seem to be thinking about the ramifications of such an outcome in advance.
Oct. 31, 2024
Fahrenheit 11/9
Michael Moore’s epic Trump-era film, presented in full.
Fire and Fury – The Podcast
What happens when one of the best-sourced reporters in the game catches up with an old friend to share his latest scoop? Every week, we listen in as journalist Michael Wolff (Fire and Fury, Siege, Landslide) speaks with James Truman, former editorial director of Condé Nast. They dish from inside the Trump campaign and share election intel before the world gets to hear it. Fire and Fury: The Podcast is essential listening for anyone looking to stay one step ahead of the headlines.
October 31, 2024
EPISODE 22: JEFFREY EPSTEIN AND DONALD TRUMP
In this episode, Michael reveals a key source for his reporting on Donald Trump: Jeffrey Epstein. Through behind-the-scenes stories and never-before-heard recordings, Michael recounts Epstein’s candid insights into Trump’s rise, revealing a world of power plays, unsettling competitions, and twisted allegiances. The conversation unearths Epstein’s perspective on Trump’s character, ambition, and his relentless pursuit of power.
Nov. 1, 2024
Trump Loves Pretending God Likes Him,
But His Cult Is Far From Christian
Will Saletan breaks down how Donald Trump and his supporters have used the failed assassination attempt on the former president to argue he’s been chosen by God to save America.
Nov. 2, 2024
US faces ‘chaos’ if Trump wins 2nd term
A second Donald Trump presidency would paralyse the US government and embolden its global adversaries, says former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum.
The Atlantic writer says the former president would immediately try to shut down the various legal investigations against him if re-elected, triggering widespread resistance.
Nov. 6, 2024
What Does A Second Trump Presidency Mean
For The Viability Of American Democracy?
Let’s hope there is some truth to the old adage, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
This video takes on some of the frequently asked questions about what happens now, given that Donald Trump has said he will be “a dictator on day one.”
Nov. 8, 2024
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Win and
What’s Next w/ Heather Cox Richardson
In the aftermath of 2024 election results, Americans are rightfully worried about what a second Trump administration may bring. This week, Jon Stewart is joined by Heather Cox Richardson, author of Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America to explore what our past can teach us about the resiliency of our democratic institutions as we navigate an uncertain future.
November 11, 2024
Did Donald Trump Actually Win?
2.7 Million Provisional Ballots Were Rejected
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oct. 18, 2024
VIGILANTES INC.
AMERICA’S NEW VOTE SUPPRESSION HITMEN
Greg Palast’s award-winning documentary, introduced by Martin Sheen and narrated by Rosario Dawson.
Nov. 15, 2024
‘Putin has failed’ and we must prepare for the Kremlin’s collapse | Vladimir Kara-Murza & Bill Browder
Putin has already been destabilised by failing to seize all of Ukraine, and the West must be prepared for the possibility of his regime collapsing, say Vladimir Kara-Murza and Bill Browder speaking to Kate Gerbeau on Frontline at the Magnitsky Human Rights Awards in London.
Nov. 15, 2024
America’s Last Election Part 5: Trump demands loyalty
Donald Trump is bringing together his cabinet, from RFK to Matt Gaetz to Elon Musk to Vivek Ramaswamy. The one thing he is prioritising above all else is loyalty.
The President has learnt from his last term in the White House where senior leaders in his administration refused to follow through on his orders.
The story of his interactions with the likes of James Comey, Mark Milley and Mark Esper are a warning for Trump.
This time around, he is determined to Make America Great Again and he is setting up his administration to make that happen.
Nov. 16, 2024
Trump ‘is crazy’ says his biographer
David K. Johnson is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of The Making of Donald Trump.
July 31, 2019
Updated May 21, 2024
Pathocracy
When people with personality disorders gain power.
By Steve Taylor, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. He is the author of several best-selling books, including The Leap and Spiritual Science.
The Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski spent his early life suffering under the Nazi occupation of Poland, closely followed by the brutality of Soviet occupation after the war. His experience of these horrors led Lobaczewski to develop the concept of “pathocracy.” This is when individuals with personality disorders (particularly psychopathy) occupy positions of power. (1)
Lobaczewski devoted his life to studying human evil, a field which he called “ponerology.” He wanted to understand why ‘evil’ people seem to prosper, while so many good and moral people struggle to succeed. He wanted to understand why people with psychological disorders so easily rise to positions of power and take over the governments of countries. Since he was living under a “pathocratic” regime himself, he took great risks studying this topic. He was arrested and tortured by the Polish authorities, and was unable to publish his life’s work, the book Political Ponerology, until he escaped to the United States during the 1980s.
Pathocracy is arguably one of the biggest problems in the history of the human race. History has been a saga of constant conflict and brutality, with groups of people fighting against one another over territory and power and possessions, and conquering and killing one another. Surveying the course of human history from ancient times to the 20th century, the historian Arnold Toynbee spoke about the “horrifying sense of sin manifest in human affairs.”
But there is an argument that this is not because all human beings are inherently brutal and cruel, but because a small number of people—that is, those with personality disorders—are brutal and cruel, intensely self-centered, and lacking in empathy. This small minority has always held power and managed to order or influence the majority to commit atrocities on their behalf.
A Science on the Nature of Evil
Adjusted for Political Purposes
