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.”
Jan. 8, 2021
Republican lawmakers caught helping
pro-Trump mobs at U.S. Capitol, Oregon Statehouse
One West Virginia Republican Live-streamed with
the the mobs in DC, another was caught opening
doors to them in Oregon.
By Jon Skolnik and Sophia Tesfaye
“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.
Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, who describes herself as “Trump in heels,” spoke at the rally that preceded the riot on Wednesday. She later praised the rioters and blamed the violence on “antifa or BLM agents of destruction,” for which her Facebook account was suspended on Friday. After Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem posted photos of himself at Trump’s rally, he continued to push a baseless conspiracy theory — that anti-fascist activists, not Trump supporters, broke into the Capitol — which had already been debunked by the Department of Justice.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
January 8, 2021
Jonah Goldberg – “Suicide of the West” and
Preserving the American Experiment
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
CNN
Jan. 12, 2021
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.
Jan. 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.
January 14, 2021
A. C. Thompson: Proud Boys “have believed
for years that Trump is on their side”
With security at an all-time high for President-elect Biden’s inauguration next week, the FBI is warning that armed far-right protesters could hit cities in all 50 states, just as they struck the Capitol on January 6. Hundreds of thousands of security forces are bracing for impact. Investigative reporter for ProPublica A. C. Thompson has been tracking far-right movements for years, and speaks with Hari Sreenivasan about which groups were at the Capitol riot and what to look out for in the future.
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”
January 17, 2021
The Shared Psychosis of Trumpism
–The shared psychosis of Trumpism gives us important insight into the cult that has developed over the last four years.
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.
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.
January 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.
On 6 January, Jackie Speier was one of scores of members of Congress threatened by the mob of violent Trump supporters and white supremacists who stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the results of the presidential election.
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.”
[Our Friend, the Trump Propagandist pdf ]
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.
In the early afternoon of January 6, while the mob was still swarming the stairs of the Captial, I was asked in an interview what I thought of the unfolding situation. I watched the crowd that had been stoked that morning by my uncle, and by Republicans like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Mo Brooks, with their Confederate flags, their MAGA hats, and their Camp Auschwitz shirts; I watched the smoke (the origin of which I couldn’t yet discern) drift through the air, and I heard shouts of grievance and anger. It looked like a scene from a failed country whose government had just been toppled, a banana republic; but it was the United States of America, my country, our country, and knowing who was responsible for the chaos here, the first word that came to my mind was “tawdry.”
[ Donald’s Plot Against America pdf ]
August 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.
January 16, 2022
American Anti-Intellectualism
America has a long history of anti-intellectualism. This analysis looks at the social psychology behind why Americans believe anti-intellectual information spread by powerful people like former President Donald Trump, PragerU, and oil companies.
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: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, 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?”
September 23, 2022
Andy Borowitz: How American Politicians Got
Dumber and Dumber
As the world struggles with war, inflation and climate change, political leadership is needed now more than ever. Humorist Andy Borowitz believes good leadership is increasingly hard to find these days. His new book, Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumber and Dumber, looks at America’s embrace of anti-intellectualism. He joins Walter Isaacson to talk about the danger this trend poses to our democracy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
November 1, 2022
How Civil Wars Start: The Pelosi Attack
and the Rise of Extremism in the U.S.
Democracy in America is balanced on a knife edge, says political scientist Barbara F. Walter, but it may not be too late to rescue it. Walter is the author of How Civil Wars Start and she speaks with Hari Sreenivasan about how America can prevent another one from starting.
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.
Nov. 29, 2022
Stewart Rhodes’ son: ‘How I escaped
my father’s militia’
The son of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes spent years plotting to help his family escape an abusive household. Now that the elder Rhodes faces decades in prison, the rest of the family is rebuilding their lives.
Read the full story here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-can…
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? Steve Paikin discusses this during an evening with Bob Woodward on TVO Today Live, where the veteran investigative journalist shares his insights on the ongoing political landscape.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
August 29, 2023
Confidence Man: Maggie Haberman
in Conversation with Alex Burns
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has covered the political career of Donald Trump more extensively than any other journalist.
Join one of the defining journalists of the Trump era for the launch of her new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America — and a candid conversation about her years covering the former President. Following Trump from his early days in New York City real estate to his tortured post-Presidential period, Haberman’s account — based on extensive research and years of interviews with hundreds of sources, including Trump himself — is a disturbing and clarifying story of a man who has brought American democracy to the edge of collapse.
Recorded on October 3, 2022 at The 92nd Street Y, New York.
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, available now.
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
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, Adam and Mary 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.
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. 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.
November 30, 2023
Elon Musk’s death drive
The tech billionaire built a world that he
could rule — then allowed it to destroy him.
By Quinn Slobodian
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.
