Tag: truth social
How Will Chief Justice Roberts Tame The Monster He Created?

How Will Chief Justice Roberts Tame The Monster He Created?

The Constitution does not have a clause which states specifically, “either we have laws and follow them, or we don’t.” The closest the Constitution comes is in Article II, Section 3, where it is mandated that “the president shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This clause is violated each day when Donald Trump awakens and opens his eyes. He committed the offense of insider trading last week, when two hours before he relaxed his onerous tariffs, he posted on Truth Social that it was “a good time to buy!” signaling to his friends that stocks would be recovering from the dive they took when he imposed the tariffs in the first place.

Trump is running a lawless presidency right out in the open and announcing that fact practically every day because he has been given permission by the Supreme Court to ignore not only norms and traditions observed by previous presidents, but the law itself.

Today, a law-abiding (if undocumented) migrant is the victim of Trump’s blatantly illegal behavior. The most frightening thing about the first three months of Trump’s second term is not knowing where we stand. Unless and until Chief Justice John Roberts decides to step up and draw some lines, there are no limits on Donald Trump. Even if that happens, it remains to be seen whether Trump will deign to adhere to judicially imposed limits. He is already in violation of two district court orders and one order by the Supreme Court itself.

We are learning a grim lesson: Democracies don’t necessarily die in darkness but in the sunlight of outright defiance of the law by a president charged with its enforcement.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

Trump Releases His Latest Enemies List On Truth Social

Trump Releases His Latest Enemies List On Truth Social

Donald Trump has released a list of people he wants blacklisted from positions in his upcoming administration. The release of the list comes just a few weeks after Trump said he would not seek retribution against his detractors.

In November, after his election win, Trump told Fox News, “I am not looking for retribution, grandstanding or to destroy people who treated me very unfairly, or even badly beyond comprehension.”

But on Wednesday night, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “In order to save time, money, and effort, it would be helpful if you would not send, or recommend to us, people who worked with, or are endorsed by, Americans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch), ‘Dumb as a Rock’ John Bolton, ‘Birdbrain’ Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, disloyal Warmongers Dick Cheney, and his Psycho daughter, Liz, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, General(?) Mark Milley, James Mattis, Mark Yesper, or any of the other people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, more commonly known as TDS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

While some of the people and groups on Trump’s list are merely fellow travelers within the conservative movement who have disagreed with him (the right-wing Americans for Prosperity group) or who ran against him (failed presidential candidate Nikki Haley), many of them are figures who warned that Trump would engage in fascistic behavior during a second term.

Before retiring, Army Gen. Mark Milley served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump and was intimately involved in high-level national security issues during his administration. Milley later told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump was “fascist to the core,” and said, “He is the most dangerous person to this country.”

Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming served on the bipartisan committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol led by Trump supporters hoping to overturn the election he lost to President Joe Biden. Cheney often spoke out against Trump and said in October, “Donald Trump believes he will be immune for anything he does once he’s in office.” She endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign and said she agreed with Milley’s assessment that Trump is a fascist.

John Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser. In the foreword to his book about his time in the administration, Bolton described Trump as “unfit” for the presidency. Bolton specifically criticized Trump for prioritizing his personal vendettas over the country’s interests.

Trump’s enemies list—something which is far outside of the bounds of normal political discourse—is another bit of evidence proving that the warnings of his fascistic tendencies were accurate.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Urges Federal Probe Of Rumors He'll Sell Truth Social Shares

Trump Urges Federal Probe Of Rumors He'll Sell Truth Social Shares

Donald Trump on Friday broke his post-election silence on his failing Truth Social platform, issuing threats against unnamed people who he said were trash talking his company.

"There are fake, untrue, and probably illegal rumors and/or statements made by, perhaps, market manipulators or short sellers, that I am interested in selling shares of Truth. THOSE RUMORS OR STATEMENTS ARE FALSE. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF SELLING!” Trump wrote in the TruthSocial post. “I hereby request that the people who have set off these fake rumors or statements, and who may have done so in the past, be immediately investigated by the appropriate authorities. Truth is an important part of our historic win, and I deeply believe in it. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

It was the first real comment he's made on his Truth Social feed since his victory on Tuesday. The few other posts he sent were merely images of newspapers announcing his win.

Trump's Truth Social stock price has fallen precipitously since the company went public in March.

Initially, the stock was trading around $60 when the company first went public. It's now trading at around $30, up from the nose-dive it took in September amid reports that Trump was eligible to start trading his own shares and possibly cash out on the failing platform.

The fact that Truth Social is trading at anything of value is confounding, as the site has barely any users and lost $19 million in the third quarter alone, Axios reported.

Now that Trump will take office again, it’s unclear whether he’ll put his shares in a blind trust to avoid flouting ethics rules. Of course, Trump has no ethics and did not put his companies in a blind trust the first time around, so it’s unlikely he’ll do so now.

Also absurd is that Trump said in his post the "truth is an important part" of his win.

Trump is a notorious liar.

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale wrote an article ahead of Trump’s win titled “Donald Trump’s campaign of relentless lying,” in which he implored media organizations to cover Trump’s lies more often.

“For the third consecutive presidential election, the Republican presidential nominee is running a relentlessly dishonest campaign for the world’s most powerful office,” he wrote. “Wildly exaggerating statistics, grossly distorting his opponent’s record and his own, regularly just plain making stuff up, Trump is lying to American voters with a frequency and variety whose only precedent is his own previous campaigns.”

In fact, during Trump’s first round, the Washington Post tracked over 30,000 misleading statements.

“If you met someone at a bar who told you 25 things that weren’t true, that would be one of the first things you told other people about this encounter,” Dale wrote. “Trump telling the American people 25 things that aren’t true in a rally speech should be one of the first things media outlets tell their readers and viewers about the speech. Maybe then Trump would care a bit more about being corrected.”

Here’s hoping the media takes Dale’s warnings seriously.

Former President Donald Trump

Donald TrumpFormer President Donald TrumpTrump Wants Everyone To Know He's Ready For His Perp Walk

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Donald Trump Is A (Malignant) Foreign Influence

Donald Trump Is A (Malignant) Foreign Influence

I recently spent time flying to various regions of this country and was struck by how nice almost everyone was. Whether boarding to New York, Chicago or Albuquerque, I found fellow passengers to be super polite, patient with slow movers, helpful lifting bags into the overhead. The number of racial and ethnic backgrounds sharing the aircrafts would be hard to quantify.

This is America, still, for now. But one is struck by how un-American Donald Trump is. Underneath all that flag-waving, his contempt for soldiers wounded or killed in action, the democratic process, and people of other colors violates the American ideal. His us-versus-them scapegoating comes right out of the fascist playbook.

Sociologists refer to the "other" as those not treated as part of our culture/race/religion. The people I came across on my trip treated each other with basic courtesy. Trump, frankly, is not one of us.

I yield to no one in the desire to enforce our immigration laws. Polls say most Americans know we need foreign-born workers but want them to enter the country legally. I'm with them.

Illegal border crossings are now lower than when Trump left office. And Kamala Harris says she would immediately sign into law the strict, bipartisan immigration bill that Trump had Republicans kill.

After a "comedian" at the recent Trump rally referred to Puerto Rico as "a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean," Trump offered no contradicting views, much less condemnation. The Trump camp reportedly had heard the routine in advance and had no problem with the slur on Latinos. One adds that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. They are all here legally.

Ronald Reagan, noting the strong work ethic and family values of the Hispanic culture, famously said: "Latinos are Republicans. They just don't know it yet."

Trump's running mate J.D. Vance would not backtrack either on the comedian's bigoted riff. "I haven't seen the joke," Vance said, lying right to our faces. He went on: "I think we have to stop getting offended by every little thing."

I wondered: Had the opposition mocked Vance's wife for being the daughter of immigrants from India whether he would have even responded, so lacking he is in self-respect. Vance and his wife, Usha, wore traditional Indian attire at a wedding ceremony officiated by a Hindu priest. He even had the dot on his forehead symbolizing a third eye.

You can imagine what MAGA would do had Kamala Harris, who is part Indian American, worn a sari, no matter how stunning, at her wedding. It would be all over the ads painting her as the "other."

Trump is OK with rich foreigners who dangle dollars before him. His most prominent billionaire backers are immigrants Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. They came to America to make a pile and did. They obviously see Trump as not only for sale but increasingly easy to manipulate as his mental capacities continue their decline. (At a recent rally, Trump said the country is "close to World War II.")

More to the point, these billionaire migrants don't appreciate the rule of law and orderly election process that have made America their land of opportunity. Or they don't really care, knowing they can move onto their next country and take their billions with them. (This is Musk's third nationality.)

Should Trump win the election, America faces descent into the kind of fascist society seen elsewhere, a shambles run on primitive threats and violence. One hopes that enough Republicans will want their party back and vision of America preserved to make him lose.

All this said, many members of Trump's brainwashed cult are undoubtedly good people. They just don't know it yet.

Froma Harrop has worked for Reuters, The New York Times News Service and the Providence Journal. She has written for such diverse publications as The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar and Institutional Investor.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

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