Trump's hellscape has become just plain normal for half the country, by Hal M. Brown

From supporting Putin to firing CIA officers to being just plain rude to a reporter, it's all become just plain normal for half the country to accept that this is the president.

Watch the short video of President Donald J. Trump both refusing to answer a simple question and being rude to a reporter from NBC News and ask yourself if there’s any other president since the press asked questions on television who would have done what he did.

There is an article about this on RawStory: ‘You’re not supposed to be asking that’: Trump refuses to answer questions about Musk.

On MSNBC this morning former CIA director John Brennan was talking about new employees at the CIA being fired and he noted that these were people who were hired because they had crucial expertise. In the background of the screen was an image that said “Reshaping the World Order.” I thought “reshaping, hell, they are overtruning the world order.” I’m not the only one to think this. Consider that this was published in The Wall Street Journal: Trump Is Overturning the World Order That America Built. (Subscription not required to read.)

Here’s an excerpt from the article. The paragraph below the photo is mind-boggling and horrific.

America’s 80-year run as the world’s strongest power, a relatively benevolent hegemon that attracted willing partners and allies, has been rooted in two major U.S. initiatives launched in response to the upheaval of World War II.

One was to convene the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, which enshrined the idea of free trade and low tariffs, generating unprecedented prosperity for the West. The other, five years later, was to lead the establishment of NATO, an alliance that won the Cold War and has ensured peace in Europe.

To fashion this system out of the chaos and rubble of world war, wrote Dean Acheson, a key adviser to Roosevelt and Truman throughout this period, required America to make “an imaginative effort unique in history and even greater than that made in the preceding period of fighting.” Acheson, who first entered politics in the 1930s to combat “America First” isolationists, called his memoir “Present at the Creation.”

Both of these legacies are being undone with stunning speed by President Trump. His second administration has targeted America’s closest allies with punitive tariffs, has ordered an abrupt stop to military assistance for Ukraine, has frozen foreign aid—and is raising the prospect of a geopolitical realignment toward authoritarian Russia.

It is easy to be distracted by what could be seen as the amusing or ridiculous things that have been happening like the scrubbing of a reference to the bomber Enola Gay or innocuous words that could be consdered woke or DEI (article).

The nonsense that RJK Jr. has precipitated like ordering a new study on vaccines and autism and recommending olive oil as a measles treatment (read article) are distractions.

The clash between Musk and Rubio is nothing more than a fart in the wind.

The attention being paid to court cases, many of which are rulings against Trump & Co’s. actions also amount to small victories which will add up to nothing when Trump & Co. cements their power.

My friend Dianna Jackson in her Substack post “It’s the Lawyers, Stupid” dreams of the American Bar Association stepping into sanctions to disbar unethical attorneys. Trump acolytes want to take over the DC Bar Association. Trump’s attacks on the ABA are threatening the group’s funding. This is a distraction. When they are ready, as far as Trump and Co. are concerned “the courts be damned, full speed ahead” when is comes to creating the Trump Reich.

What Musk tweets about the judiciary will also be irrelevant.

Many elements of DOGE are also lots of smoke and many mirrors which obscure what Trump & Co. are really doing.

In a similar way, eliminating the Department of Education and eliminating or drastically cutting back USAID and foreign aide is irrelevant. Their employees don’t carry guns.

Not only are tariff threats lots of choking smoke, no mater how toxic to the countries targeted, but I shouldn’t have to bother to point out how immaterial to Trump’s ultimate goal demanding Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal become parts of the Untied States are.

This background image was on MSNBC this morning:

Purging the federal payroll of thousands of employees makes us miss how he/they are reshaping crucial agencies like the CIA and FBI to be his Gestapo/FSB and SS.

Here’s the most recent news about FBI director Kash Patel: FBI Director Patel asked for private security team and personal direct line to Trump.

The two things Trump is doing dwarf anything else that seems like a tsunami of malevolent mishegaas. The craziness has come in a giant wave washing over us. It is difficult to pay attention to the most dangerous elements of the Trump & Co. agenda.

One is to turn us into an autocratic police state with no checks and balances on what nicely could be called “executive authority.”

This MSNBC chyron will be relegated to the history’s heap of futile efforts:

What we are observing now is the a king’s juggernaut to exercise his weaponization of his power both to eliminate opposition and satisfy his need for revenge.

The other is equally grave and alarming. It is that Trump & Co. have only just begun to extricate the United States from our traditional allies and realign the country with Russia. He is using the war in Ukraine as an excuse. In fact this has less to do with the war than a convenient way to establish a new world order where he is a kind of Ceasar or Hitler with the military might to dominate every other country and force them to bend to his personal will. He doesn’t see himself as ruling over a Holy Roman Empire which will last for generations or a Third Reich. He doesn’t care who the ruler is if by chance it is true that he is actually mortal and will eventually die. He doesn’t even care about starting a dynasty that his son Donald Jr. can take over when he dies, and then Barron, and then more Trump spawn.

Trump wants what he wants for the rest of his life. After he dies his attitude is “fuck it” let the chips from one of his defunct failed casinos fall where they will.

Recommended reading update: “Trump is still demonizing others for a reason,” by Sabrina Haake in RawStory+.

RawStory has an exclusive opinion section, Rawtory+, which is subscription. I think it is well worth subscribing to.

She begins…

Only a handful of media outlets have used the term, but America is under siege, in the throes of Trump’s second coup attempt. So far, Trump’s plan to subvert the rule of law and destroy the federal government has been administrative and largely nonviolent, but it’s early days.

and concludes:

Trump has made repeated references to staying in power past his expiration date, and lusts openly for China’s presidential power “for life.” After he lost the 2020 election he tried but failed to stay in power by force, but now he has the US military at his disposal. Anyone who doesn’t see where this is going is lying to themselves.

Trump has bragged that there will be no more elections, and is circulating a meme of himself as a king.

He is mentally unfit, unwell, and dangerous, an ignorant force loosed upon the world by 90 million Americans who didn’t bother to vote. On a good day I relish the fight. Today is not a good day.

Addendum:

Stories like 'It reeks of incompetence': Lawmakers baffled by demoted Trump appointee still on the job and others showing ineptitude are just setbacks as Trump’s blitzkrieg to take over the country hits a few bumps in the road.

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me. I generally reply to comments.

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