This is an appropriate and even somewhat fun thing for July 4th.
When Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence in the weeks leading up July 4, 1776, he wanted to not only rely on just high-falutin enlightenment ideals to justify the case for separation from Great Britain. His aim was also to present a slam-dunk indictment of King George III—to prove that the royal was a “tyrant” and that he and Parliament had forfeited their right to rule the Americans by breaking their own laws and trampling on the rights of their people. This is why about half of the Declaration is a list of 27 specific grievances lodged against the King and his regime.
Two hundred and forty-nine years later, many of these grievances apply to the reign of Donald Trump. Here’s a look at how Trump stacks up against the Mad King.
Share the article with friends. Those familiar with the American Revolution will particularly appreciate it.
Trump's victory signals a national embrace of the politics of hate and a possible fascist future.
David Corn at Mother Jones:
Every election is a Judgment Day, but this one more so than any other in the history of the nation.
Never before has a major party run a nominee described by retired military leaders who worked with him as a “fascist” and a serious threat to American democracy. Never before has the electorate been provided the choice of a nominee who previously refused to accept vote tallies, falsely declared victory, covertly schemed to overturn an election, and incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to stay in power, as well as one whose mismanagement of a pandemic caused the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Never before have Americans been asked to return to office a politician who waged a massive disinformation operation fueled by the most vicious vitriol to exploit hatred, racism, misogyny, and ignorance.
Is America a nation that accepts and embraces all that? The answer is yes.
Despite Trump’s multiple offenses (criminal, political, and social), tens of millions voters—more than half of the electorate—said they want more of him and desire this felonious, misogynistic, racist, and seemingly cognitively challenged wannabe autocrat to lead the nation once again. Trumpism triumphed, and the godhead of this cult has become both the first fascist and the first convicted felon to win an American presidential election.
Facing a highly unconventional candidate whose main strategy was to whip up fear and anxiety, Vice President Kamala Harris, a latecomer to the race, ran a conventional campaign. She touted the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, presented a compelling personal story, offered a host of generally realistic policy proposals, and critiqued her opponent—doing all of this mostly accurately. Her last-minute elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket raised the question of whether the United States could elect a Black woman president. Counterpoised was another question: Can a criminal awaiting sentencing (found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to keep secret his supposed extramarital affair with a porn star) who has been indicted for other alleged crimes, and who has called for the termination of the Constitution (so he could be reinstalled as president), be elected commander in chief and the nation’s top defender of the Constitution?
There was nothing subtle about the 2024 election. It pit the political extremism Trump has embraced and fomented to drive his red-meat base to the polls against Harris’ effort to expand her pool of voters by forging an alliance of progressives and independents, centrists, and Republicans concerned about the danger Trump poses to democracy. More so than in his previous campaigns, Trump endeavored to demonize his opponents. He peddled the false claim that the United States has descended into a hellscape with an economy in a “depression” and gangs of criminal migrants armed with military-style weapons conquering towns and cities across the land. Looking to stoke grievance, resentment, and bigotry, he asserted that “evil” Democrats, assisted by a subversive media, have purposefully conspired to destroy the country. He essentially QAnonized American politics. He dismissed Harris as “low IQ” and not truly Black. He called her supporters “scum.”
Trump debased the national discourse further than he had in the years since he launched his first presidential bid in 2015. That included violent talk of retribution, which included suggesting deploying the US military against “radical left lunatics,” putting Liz Cheney on trial for treason before a military tribunal and placing her before a line of guns, and executing retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
For years, Trump has forced American politics into a downward spiral of unprecedented indecencies and anti-democratic impulses. And this year, more than 71 million Americans continued to cheer this along. Harris campaigned not only to implement a host of left-leaning policies related to such fundamental matters as health care, women’s freedom, and middle-class economics, but to prevent a would-be autocrat from gaining control of the US government. That’s a heavy lift for any one candidate.
[...]
American politics has always contained an us-versus-them element, and the battle can be fierce. But Trump turned this into asymmetrical warfare. More than any other major presidential candidate in modern history, he lied, he insulted, he appealed to the basest reflexes in people. He waged war on reality, seeking to lead millions into a cosmos of fakery and false narratives that boosts an ultra-Manichean view of the world. He saw his path to power as exacerbating the divisions within American society. He has been an accelerationist for tribalistic discord, explicitly threatening the norms and values of democratic governance. His answer to what ails the United States is strongman government, in which he is the authoritarian savior. Harris ran as a feisty Democrat who wants to work with Congress to tackle assorted problems.
These were profoundly different approaches to…well, to life. And in the 2024 election, Americans had to choose which camp they were in. Certainly, there were many issues beyond this monumental clash in values for voters to focus on: inflation, immigration, housing costs, trade, taxes, Ukraine, education, abortion, and so on. But ultimately, voters were forced to pick a side, to render a verdict on Trump’s war on truth, democracy, and decency and Harris’ traditional embrace of pluralism and established norms.
At this fork in the road, Americans made a decision on what sort of country the United States will be. A judgment has been reached: This is a nation to be ruled by Trump’s politics of hate. It can happen here, and it has.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump, Satan’s handpicked choice, won the Presidential election and the evil Elephants flipped the Senate.
See Also:
Vox: Donald Trump has won — and American democracy is now in grave danger
Mother Jones: Why Did Trump Really Win? It’s Simple, Actually.
David Corn, author of "American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy," talks with Rachel Maddow about the Republican Party's history of flirtation with the extremists on its fringe and how the Trumpist manifestation of that threatens democracy in the United States.
Guess I'm a part of the "liberal elite". You know, the Republican Party of the 1950s absolutely agreed with us. About giving rights to voting, about equality, about free speech, about healthcare, about social security, about extending minimum wage, about refugees seeking asylum, about inalienable rights, and most important of all:
About being the enemy of tyrants. So, what happened?
I still find myself agreeing with several Republicans today. It's not hard. Literally 489 of former national security advisers are supporting Biden this time around, all Republican voters.
For more than a year now, journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn have been devoted to covering the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.
Isikoff was the first reporter to reveal that there was a U.S. intelligence investigation into Russian ties to a figure in the Trump campaign — Carter Page. Corn was the first to reveal the existence of the infamous Russia dossier, the unverified collection of reports alleging connections between the Trump campaign and Russia compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
Now, in their new book, Russian Roulette, the two men attempt to put all the pieces of the story together. Check out their conversation with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross here.
'Russian Roulette' Authors Seek To Connect The Dots Between Trump And Putin
For more than a year now, journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn have been devoted to covering the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.
Isikoff was the first reporter to reveal that there was a U.S. intelligence investigation into Russian ties to a figure in the Trump campaign — Carter Page. Corn was the first to reveal the existence of the infamous Russia dossier, the unverified collection of reports alleging connections between the Trump campaign and Russia compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
Now, in their new book, Russian Roulette, the two men attempt to put all the pieces of the story together.
"We start the book with Donald Trump's trip to Moscow in 2013, when he really first forms this 'bromance' with Vladimir Putin," Isikoff says.
Isikoff notes that Trump's 2013 trip to Russia for the Miss Universe pageant centered on a business deal: "He signed a letter of intent to build a Trump Tower in Moscow with a Putin-connected oligarch, Aras Agalarov."
In 2016, Agalarov would later be one of the conduits for what was described to Donald Trump Jr. as an offer of help to the Trump campaign by the Russian government.
The earlier potential deal for the Moscow Trump Tower fell through, Isikoff says, after the Obama administration and the European Union imposed sanctions on Russia following the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine.
But Corn says that the stalled deal may help explain other elements of the story: "People have been trying to figure out for years the positive remarks that Donald Trump has made about Vladimir Putin ... It's almost hiding in plain sight that one reason he has for saying all these kind things about Putin is that he was always interested in doing business deals there."
A cross-over Book Club with Mark Hamill reading David Corn's new book 'Russian Roulette' and author David Corn reading 'The Last Jedi - A Visiual Dictionary'
