Tag Archives: Trump

The “Welcome Nazis” Administration

It’s no longer possible for any sentient American to deny the virulent racism at the heart of MAGA and the Trump administration. The efforts to characterize DEI as “anti-White,” the dismissal of credentialed and competent Black officials and their replacement with buffoons whose only visible “credential” is White skin, the privileging of White South African immigrants…

Those well-publicized efforts have been joined by other, more covert moves to diminish recognition of the important roles played by minorities in our society–exemplified, most recently, by the removal of memorials to Black WW II soldiers in a Netherlands graveyard.

Two display panels in a cemetery in the village of Margraten commemorating African American soldiers were “quietly removed.”

The move has sparked shock in the Netherlands, with critics of the removal, including a community that cares for the graves, demanding answers about why the black American soldiers have all but vanished from displays.

MAGA’s embrace of bigotry is currently playing out more publicly in debates about Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with “out” neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. But even while those internal MAGA battles rage, there’s growing evidence that the Trump administration’s racism and anti-Semitism isn’t simply grist for domestic politics. It’s internationally recognized.

My oldest son recently sent me a link to a story I’d missed.

A prominent far-right German activist has applied for political asylum in the United States, citing fears for her safety, as the Trump administration has signaled plans to prioritize protections for White refugees and Europeans who claim they are being targeted for their populist views.

The activist, Naomi Seibt, is a social media influencer and supporter of the nationalist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which German authorities have labeled extremist.

Seibt is currently living in Washington, D.C., while her application is being processed.

That application is unusual–most candidates for asylum are people fleeing war or repressive regimes. The article notes that this “rare application from a citizen of a wealthy Western democracy” is evidence of the increasingly close ties between Germany’s far right and Trump’s MAGA movement. Seibt is close to Elon Musk and to several Republican lawmakers.

Seibt met on Oct. 30 with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida), who said in a statement that she is “personally assisting” with Seibt’s asylum application and making her case to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In 2020, Seibt was the subject of a Washington Post profile highlighting her paid work for a think tank allied with the Trump administration casting doubt on the scientific consensus around climate change.

Seibt asserts that she feels unsafe in Germany, a country that has made speech that incites hatred, threatens public order or attacks human dignity illegal. She contends that police in Germany refused to act on her complaint that she had received death threats. (The German police declined to comment, noting they don’t speak about individual cases.)

The Trump administration is actively positioning itself to be a refuge for racists and neo-Nazis. According to the linked report,

The Trump administration has already granted refuge to dozens of White South Africans who claimed to be persecuted at home.

 The administration is contemplating a broader overhaul of the refugee resettlement process to prioritize such Afrikaners at the expense of groups traditionally seen as fleeing danger and persecution. A draft proposal from the State Department also would give consideration to “free speech advocates in Europe,” according to a former U.S. official who had seen the document.

The article quoted Michael Kagan, a professor of immigration law, who observed that It will be interesting to see whether Seibt’s application is scrutinized as rigorously as others, given that the status Seibt seeks is a difficult one to win.

Seibt, however, says she’s optimistic “because my beliefs strongly align with the Trump administration’s.” She’s right–and that observation should ring the alarm bells of every American who believes in human equality. Although the State Department declined to comment on Seibt’s case, a spokesperson for the department was quoted for the statement that the U.S. “supports all Europeans working to defend our common civilizational heritage.”

I’m pretty sure that MAGA’s definition of “our common civilization heritage” would be a good deal more restrictive than mine…

And there we are.

The difference between the Trump/MAGA vision of America and that held by the rest of us is the essential fault-line between today’s GOP cult of White Christian nationalists and the majority of Americans who accept (and even celebrate) the diversity of our multi-ethnic, multi-racial society.

The Trump administration wants to remake America into a fascist haven for neo-Nazis. We absolutely cannot allow that to happen.

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The President As Mob Boss

Before I retired, I spent 21 years teaching Law and Public Policy to students who wanted to know about those topics, and I can confirm that even individuals with an interest in government often had a hard time following the intricacies of the policy process. When we come to the population at large–people who (as Jon Stewart once memorably explained) “have shit to do”–it isn’t surprising that much of what this blog addresses might just as well be written in ancient Aramaic. Policy nerds like yours truly talk about Trump violating the Emoluments Clause, and the average American wonders what that is.

Widespread ignorance of the laws–of America’s so-called “guardrails”–has allowed Trump to violate all manner of constitutional and statutory rules without generating an appropriate amount of concern. But sometimes, visual evidence of the arrogance and self-dealing breaks through. That’s what we are seeing with the destruction of the East Wing of the People’s house and its planned replacement with a gaudy and inappropriate ballroom, funded by people who have business with the government, and whose “contributions” are rather clearly bribes.

As Jennifer Rubin recently wrote in the Contrarian,

If you were watching any of the voter-on-the-street interviews Tuesday, you might have been surprised to hear how many Americans are deeply disturbed, furious even, about Donald Trump’s bulldozing of the White House to make way for a garish $330M donor-paid ballroom. It may not be the most egregious offense of the Trump regime (which has kidnapped people off the streets, sent them to foreign hell holes, and cut off SNAP benefits, among other outrages). It is not even the worst case of corruption, given the estimated $5B or so in wealth Trump and his family have hauled in from (among other sources) foreign buyers of crypto. But the ballroom is the most visible, easily explained, and visually disgusting evidence of Trump’s destruction of our democracy and the public’s ownership of our institutions.

Rubin cited a report from Public Citizen that–as she wrote–“captures the stomach-turning effort to transform the White House into a monument to private greed and public corruption.” Among other things, the report found that 16 out of 24 donors hold government contracts. Overall, those corporate donors benefited from nearly $43 billion in contracts just last year and $279 billion over the past five years.

More significantly, most of those donors—14 out of 24—are either currently facing federal enforcement actions “and/or have had federal enforcement actions suspended by the Trump administration,” including major antitrust actions, labor rights cases and SEC matters. The report also noted that these companies and wealthy individual donors have invested “gargantuan sums in combined lobbying and political contributions, totaling more than $960 million during the last election cycle and $1.6 billion over the last five years.”

In other words, those generous donations to Trump’s bad taste are rather obviously bribes.

You can almost hear the mob boss crooning into the ears of the supplicants: “you want this little enforcement problem to go away? Want another cushy contract? Just pony up for my ballroom and government will look out for you.” Trump is frequently described as “transactional,” a nice word for a mob boss approach that begins with “what’s in it for me?”

Citizens may not have noticed other corruption. Take the Trump family’s crypto scams, for example. Through their World Liberty Financial, they launched Trump-branded “tokens”–coins with no intrinsic value, purchases of which are efforts to gain or retain the good graces of our would-be King (aka bribes). Unlike those and similar transactions, the visual–and visceral–impact of East Wing destruction is hard to ignore. It’s an entirely appropriate metaphor for Trump’s mob boss regime.

As Rubin argues:

Certainly, any 2028 Democratic candidate worth his or her salt would need to advance a mammoth anti-corruption plan to tackle not only this outrage (“Tear it down, rebuild democracy!” would make a lively campaign chant) but to severely regulate crypto, recover unconstitutionally acquired foreign emoluments, restore prosecution of foreign bribery statutes and other white collar crimes, and undergo an exhaustive investigation and prosecution of any bribery that took place in the Trump regime.

As with other autocratic atrocities, the corruption issue is too important to leave solely to the politicians. Shareholders of these companies could demand a full accounting and pursue shareholder suits if appropriate. Consumers can organize public campaigns to expose and embarrass these companies or conduct targeted boycotts (e.g., cancel Amazon Prime, do not patronize Hard Rock Casinos and restaurants). And further No Kings events should keep corruption front and center.

Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

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Trump: On The Wrong Side Of Everything

One of the most annoying aspects of living under the Trump/MAGA regime is the sheer extent of its venality and stupidity. When I first began writing these daily observations, there would come times when I would begin on “empty”–when I couldn’t readily come up with a subject, and would cast around for ideas. That’s no longer the case. Every day, when I sit down at my computer to produce another blog post, I’m confronted with an avalanche of harmful, corrupt and indecent actions of this administration. My issue these days is what to choose from the onslaught.

It turns out that Trump’s AI post after the No Kings protests was accurate–he really is shitting on the country.

Today, my chosen subject is the incredible, truly evil lengths this administration has gone to in its fight to undermine efforts to combat climate change.

The New York Times has reported on one such effort–an effort that was, unfortunately, successful.

More than 100 nations were poised last month to approve a historic deal to slash pollution from cargo ships. That’s when the United States launched a pressure campaign that officials around the world have called extraordinary, even by the standards of the Trump administration’s combativeness, according to nine diplomats on its receiving end.

I have previously compared Trump to a Mafia Don, and the report amply confirmed the resemblance. An Asian ambassador was warned that if he voted for the plan, sailors from his country wouldn’t be allowed to disembark at American ports. Caribbean diplomats were threatened with being blacklisted from entering the United States. And according to the Times, Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, “personally called officials in several countries to threaten financial penalties and other punishments if they continued to support the agreement to cut ship pollution.”

These and other threats, including tariffs, sanctions and the revocation of diplomats’ U.S. visas, effectively killed the deal, according to the nine American, European and developing-nation diplomats directly involved in the negotiations. They spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from the Trump administration.

Although officials of the White House, State Department and Department of Energy denied making personal threats or engaging in tactics of intimidation, they did acknowledge derailing the deal and repeated their strong opposition to efforts to address climate change. They justified their opposition by asserting that the shipping fee would have hurt the American economy. (Like Trump’s insane tariffs haven’t done enough to hurt it all by themselves…)

But foreign diplomats said they were stunned by what they described as “nasty” and “very personal” threats made by State Department officials, which were mostly aimed at leaders from poorer or small countries that are economically dependent on the United States. Some of the delegations were summoned to the U.S. Embassy in London for these discussions, these people said.

Most countries had been ready to vote for the plan, which would have imposed a fee on heavily polluting vessels to push the industry to clean up. It was negotiated over several years by the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency that oversees shipping policy.

But the Trump administration was able to block the vote, the nine diplomats said, after numerous countries backed away in the face of the threats from the Americans.

The Trump administration has consistently denied the reality of  climate change and has opposed any and all climate policies that might negatively affect fossil fuel interests . Promoting the sale of U.S.-produced oil, gas and coal is said to be a top administration priority. The administration has refused to send a representative to the UN climate summit in Brazil, to emphasize Trump’s rejection of the reality of climate change, and Trump is–once again– withdrawing the U.S. from the 2015 Paris agreement. Trump–arguably the most intellectually-limited person ever to occupy the Oval Office–has called global warming the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and has said that the science was developed by “stupid people.”

The shipping fee had been negotiated over decades and would have been a major step toward the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping industry. Under the deal, large cargo ships would have paid a fee if their carbon dioxide emissions exceeded a certain level.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had a reaction to the administration’s tactics that was very similar to mine. He reportedly compared the administration’s bullying to that of  “a bunch of gangsters coming into the neighborhood and smashing windows and threatening shop owners.” He described the administration’s strategy as a “shock-and-awe thuggery approach.”

Does anyone have a horse’s head handy?

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Money, Trump And The Media

The longer we suffer the agony of the Trump administration and its assaults on governance, science, logic and basic decency, the more I become convinced that our current information environment is largely responsible. The enormous growth of online propaganda is partially to blame for the fact that 37% of Americans still tell pollsters they approve of Trump.

But the Internet isn’t the only culprit allowing MAGA and MAGA-adjacent folks to escape confrontations with reality. The party that holds the White House has a built-in information advantage, and Trump’s visceral need for attention–and his ability to command it– has made use of that advantage.

That said, I have become more concerned about the decline of what we think of as “mainstream” journalism.

Take the reporting about the administration’s refusal to fund SNAP. On the NBC evening news I watched, the lack of funding was attributed to the shutdown; there was absolutely NO reference to the fact that the administration was refusing to release funds that had been appropriated for precisely this purpose–to ensure ongoing funding of a critical program in cases of government shutdown.

That failure to explain the actual reason for the SNAP crisis is journalistic malpractice. It allows partisans to point fingers and distort the political conversation. In a very real sense, it’s participation in a lie.

NBC isn’t the only network or mainstream source to evade this reality, and the question is: why? Why are major networks and news sources “both siding” multiple reports rather than accurately reflecting the fact that one side is primarily responsible? Why are they normalizing so many aspects of a profoundly abnormal Trump administration?

One recent report from the American Prospect provides a chilling answer to that question.  It involves Trump’s “stage-managing” the business of information.

Warner Bros. Discovery—which owns a movie studio, numerous cable networks (CNN, Discovery, TBS, TNT, HGTV, Cartoon Network, TCM), the pay-TV channel HBO, streaming service HBO Max, DC Comics, part of The CW network, part of Fandango, several gaming studios, some theme park in Madrid, and much more—has publicly announced that it is for sale. Several companies, including Comcast, Netflix, and Amazon, are sniffing around a purchase, but the one that’s clearly amped to acquire WBD is Paramount, fresh off of being acquired itself by David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Ellison and his billionaire father have been moving to consolidate ownership of the mass media. Ellison’s Skydance Media has already taken control of CBS through its recent merger with Paramount Global. Reportedly, the Trump administration has vowed to block Comcast, Netflix or Amazon from buying WBD, and to facilitate its acquisition by Paramount. The Ellison family is a longtime Trump ally, while Comcast and Netflix “have angered the president with Saturday Night Live parodies or perceived wokeness; and these grievances are driving the discretionary application of law.”

Trump pays more attention to media mergers than other business combinations, as befits his obsession with how he is portrayed to the public. The Ellisons, who already have their hands on TikTok, would add CNN to CBS News, building out a right-leaning rival to Fox in old and new media. Doing so through a shotgun wedding with implicit (if not explicit) approvals is just deeply corrupt.

This wouldn’t be a slam-dunk: under the Clayton Act and new guidelines written by Biden antitrust officials, such a merger would trigger several structural presumptions of illegality.  State attorneys general can use them and the relevant federal laws to block the merger–assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t put a corrupt thumb on the scale. But the very prospect of yet another merger, another consolidation of ownership of the media, should be a wake-up call.

There has already been far too much consolidation, too much transformation of journalism into just another business, where owners worry more about official reprisals for stepping out of line than providing first-rate reporting.

A study by the University of Chicago found that, in the last ten years, consolidation of America’s TV broadcasting has accelerated–that currently 40 percent of all local TV news stations are controlled by three conglomerates: Gray Television, Nexstar Media Group, and Sinclair Broadcast Group, each of which owns about 100 ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC stations –and that those stations operate in more than 80 percent of US media markets. The research found “weaker constraints on owners’ interference with editorial decisions, whether for purely economic or for political motives.”

No kidding.

Our would-be King wants to control the information we receive–and with the help of his billionaire friends/courtiers, he’s well on his way.

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Building Back Better

There’s no avoiding the fact that U.S. citizens are currently experiencing a world of hurt. As one newsletter glumly reported, the federal government is now a subsidiary of Trump Inc. and the laws meant to prevent such a takeover go unenforced. There’s no investigation into Trump’s open corruption and self-dealing. The U.S. Supreme Court has elevated the president  above the law. Congress won’t even meet. 

No wonder Americans aren’t having policy debates.

The current lack of interest in the intricacies of policy may be entirely understandable, but–unless we are prepared to give in to Trumpian autocracy, we need to be thinking about how we go about rebuilding once the would-be king is gone and his MAGA racists have crawled back under their rocks.

According to a recent article in the American Prospect, a new think tank is doing precisely that. The organization is called Common Wealth. It is based in both Britain and the U.S., and it is focused not only on policy repair, but upon analysis of the policy failures that enabled Trump’s rise.

Common Wealth’s focus is on public ownership, public provision, and building state capacity. The first reason for this is simple reality: Despite the utter madness of what Trump is doing, the mess he’ll leave is going to have to be cleaned up. A future Democratic president, should there ever be one, will have no choice but to rebuild much of the entire administrative state from scratch—so they might as well build it back better, to coin a phrase. “We’re in a moment where things feel really perilous politically,” said Common Wealth’s U.S. program director Melanie Brusseler, “but also there’s a lot of hope in response.”

One important focus for Common Wealth is the affordability crisis. It has become obvious that neoliberal strategy didn’t work- belief in shipping jobs overseas to cut labor costs and keeping supply chain investment low finally collapsed during the pandemic, as supply shocks led to skyrocketing prices for goods and shipping. But it isn’t simply manufacturing; Common Wealth researchers point out that our current crisis of affordability is primarily driven by prices for things that can’t be offshored and/or imported– housing, education, health care, transportation. 

As a result, Common Wealth supports public provision, including Medicare for All and free college. As its researchers point out–and as this blog has frequently noted–America’s health care system is so plagued with hyper-complicated rent-seeking in which “uncountable private actors maneuver to swindle each other and/or the government and thereby claim a fat slice of America’s world-historical spending on health care, that the case for state coordination of providers as well as insurance practically makes itself.’

A primary focus of the new think tank is–understandably–climate change, and the policies necessary to ameliorate or slow it. Their researchers advocate “adaptations and asset development” –the creation of a huge number of publicly owned electrical generating assets that would be totally disconnected from volatile global markets for oil and gas.

Common Wealth claims affinity with previous efforts at what it terms “public provision.

Many Trump critics are focused on what he is doing to our basic democratic compact, and rightly so. But there’s a reason that all the presidents who led us through our worst previous crises also had an aggressive program of reform—and these also included public provision and ownership. Abraham Lincoln had greenbacks and land grant colleges; Franklin Roosevelt had Social Security, a massive public works program, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and much more. A core purpose of a democratic republic is to protect the welfare of the citizenry, and if a future government is to repair the damage inflicted by Trump and fight climate change as well, they will have to think even more ambitiously.

I will admit to significant reservations about some of the “public provisions” Common Wealth endorses, but we should all take comfort from the fact that there are institutions and individuals who are engaging with what will be a truly monumental task: rebuilding our governmental guardrails and ensuring the ability of those we elect to do their jobs. 

And speaking of “their jobs”–policy wonks need to start with a foundational inquiry: what is government’s job? What parts of our civic and economic life should government control, and what parts should be left to individuals and voluntary organizations? What aspects of our common lives must be approached collectively, and what parts must be protected against government overreach? 

That inquiry must be the framework within which we evaluate proposals to “build back better.”

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