(1/13) Even losing will be a business opportunity for Trump
(2/13) When Donald Trump first decided to run for president, he confided to friends that his real goal was to get publicity for his brand and squeeze a larger payment out of NBC for his TV show. He even bragged he’d be the first person to make money running for the White House.
(3/13) Once he unexpectedly won, he turned that into a business opportunity, redirecting over $100 million of government money into his own properties and businesses.
(4/13) Now, with the possibility of losing the presidency, he’s setting up his Plan B, his next business opportunity.
(5/13) The suckers who’ve been funding his reelection campaign are complaining that when they made a donation, they didn’t notice that the “make this a recurring donation“ check-box had been pre-filled-in.
(6/13) Every week, Trump is extracting more and more money from their checking accounts or credit cards.
(7/13) Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone missing from Trump’ inaugural fundraising and his 2020 election fundraising; odds are most of it has ended up in Trump’s pockets.
(8/13) So now he’s launching lawsuits and a PR blitz to convince his cult followers that they need to hang in there with him until after his presidency so they can continue to buy his products, subscribe to his new online TV network, and pay to attend his rallies.
(9/13) Trump has taken America closer to authoritarian fascism than any president in our history, and shown us exactly how a future truly fascist and truly competent president could destroy our republic.
(10/13) The good news is that he was more interested in lining his own pockets than being the next Mussolini. As a result, it wasn’t until the third year of his presidency that he really got going with the fascist agenda, mostly with the help of Bill bar.
(11/13) But his presidency has shown us how fragile our republic has become as the result of massive consolidation of power in the executive branch, a process that really began with the Nixon administration in the war in Vietnam, and went on steroids after 9/11.
(12/13) As Trump moves on to his next hustle to extract cash from his cult followers, America needs to take on to the serious work of rebuilding the executive branch so the next Republican president…
(13/13) …who might be a very competent fascist, can’t completely pull off what Donald Trump nearly did, and can’t ever again use the White House like it’s an ATM.
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(1/11) There’s a reason this election is this close. The old saying is, “Own the media, own the country,” and this election proves it true.
(2/11) Democrats have been totally stupid when it comes to the information wars. While Republicans built an enormous national “talk to people all day, every day, all year“ media infrastructure, Democrats only pour money into advertising once every four years.
(3/11) In the 1970s and 1980s, conservatives began building out an intellectual infrastructure to seize control of the political narratives in America.
(1/14) This election proves the need for a right to vote
(2/14) America needs an absolute right to vote, like most other major democracies.
(3/14) One legacy of slavery is that our Constitution does not contain an absolute right to vote for all citizens who have achieved the age of majority.
(1/16) Will America embrace or reject fascism in 2020?
(2/16) Fascists build walls, like they did around East Germany. Donald Trump is building a new, unscalable wall around the White House today, and the Republican party has spent the past four years celebrating a wall on our southern border.
(3/16) Fascists divide and imprison people based on ideology and race. Trump and the Republicans have put children in cages after tearing them away from their mothers, and built out a private for-profit prison system to hold refugees of color.
(1/26) On April 18, Bob Woodward recorded Jared Kushner saying that Trump had taken control away from the doctors and was going to open the country back up. Why then? What was happening right around that time?
(2/26) Trump’s official national emergency declaration came on March 11, and most of the country shut down or at least went partway toward that outcome. The economy crashed and millions of Americans were laid off, but saving lives was, after all, the number one consideration.
(3/26) Trump put medical doctors on TV daily, the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.
(1/21) The Republican Party is an organized gang of sociopaths.
(2/21) Trump doesn’t care how many people in Omaha are stuck for hours in the freezing cold, over 3 miles from the nearest road or parking lot, after he’s left his rally, putting some in the hospital. And he clearly doesn’t care how many people die of Covid.
(3/21) One of the defining characteristics of a sociopath is that they view themselves as the only “real“ humans on the planet, and everybody else is basically a prop in the amazing story of their lives.
(1/18) The Supreme Court has awesome power, and now that there’s a 6-to-3 right-wing majority, they’re preparing to use that power like a sledgehammer. …
(2/18) In 2000, they put popular-vote-loser George W. Bush into the White House, and Brett Kavanaugh just signaled to Donald Trump that he’s enthusiastic to be part of a second such effort. …
(3/18) They single-handedly decided that corporations should have the rights of persons, and that billionaires and big corporations should be able to legally own politicians. …