Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

‘We Weren’t Alarmist Enough’: Experts Warn Trump And GOP Could Destroy Democracy

They rang alarms about the rise of authoritarianism in America in 2018. It’s only gotten worse since then.

When Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt sounded the alarm four years ago that President Donald Trump posed a threat to American democracy, some critics treated their fears as absurd. 

“Joe Scarborough ridiculed it on TV, saying, ‘These guys are alarmists,’” Levitsky told HuffPost recently, recalling the MSNBC host’s criticism of a New York Times opinion piece that eventually blossomed into “How Democracies Die,” the book the two professors released in early 2018. 

“It turns out we weren’t alarmist enough,” Levitsky said. Continue reading.

White House blocks Navarro from testifying to House panel about ventilator deal

Michael Purpura, deputy counsel to President Donald Trump, wrote to Krishnamoorthi on Sept. 9 that the White House would not make Navarro available.

The White House has blocked trade adviser Peter Navarro from testifying at a House oversight hearing Wednesday about a partially canceled Defense Production Act contract to manufacture ventilators.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who heads the Oversight Economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee, issued a staff report in late July that argued the administration vastly overpaid Philips Respironics, agreeing to a $646.7 million deal without even trying to negotiate a lower price.

“Despite the astonishing scale of this waste, the loss of more than 190,000 lives and his willingness to appear on the cable news shows of his choice—Mr. Navarro refuses to appear before Congress to answer for his actions,” Krishnamoorthi said in a statement. Continue reading.

Trump’s hostility to cities threatens to worsen the recession

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President Trump’s hostility to cities may help him politically, but it threatens to worsen the recession because metropolitan regions are the engines of the nation’s economic growth, officials and analysts say.

The risk arises not just from the president’s rhetoric criticizing urban unrest. Trump and his Republican allies in the Senate are also rejecting fresh financial aid to state and local governments and to public transit systems in a second coronavirus relief package.

That shortchanges areas such as the Washington region and is a recipe for deepening and prolonging the economic slump. About 1.3 million state and local government employees have lost their jobs since March, and economists project that number will more than double in the next 18 months without help from Congress and the White House. Continue reading.

Former FBI Agent Peter Strzok: Trump Clearly ‘Compromised By The Russians’

“They hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interests … ahead of his own,” Strzok said.

A former FBI agent who worked on then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election said it’s “clear” that President Donald Trump was “compromised by the Russians.”

Former FBI counterintelligence officer Peter Strzok told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he believed the Kremlin gained “leverage” over Trump through certain “financial entanglements.”

“Look, I think it is clear: I believed at the time in 2016, and I continue to believe that Donald Trump is compromised by the Russians,” Strzok told host Chuck Todd. “And when I say that, I mean that they hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interests, the national security, ahead of his own.” Continue reading.

Trump makes it clear: He revels in the killing of his political opponents

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For all the demands that former Vice President Joe Biden condemn rioting and looting, no serious observer actually thinks he supports violence in the streets. The most plausible criticism of Biden is that he’s a creature of the existing political system — a product of and adherent to the established institutional order. He doesn’t want violence and chaos to shake the foundations of society.

President Donald Trump, on the other hand, really does relish chaos, and he cares little for any institutions that he doesn’t see as directly benefiting him. And in a new Fox News interview this weekend, he made clear that he’s not just a fan of violence — a view he has expressed repeatedly, even if he occasionally reads from scripts that say the opposite — but he is actively pleased by the deaths of his political enemies.

While discussing with host Jeanine Pirro the fact that U.S. Marshals — a part of the Justice Department, a part of Trump’s administration — killed the avowed antifa activist Michael Forest Reinoehl, the president expressed no regret at his death. In fact, he was triumphant about the killing.

Here’s the section of the transcript, per Factba.se: Continue reading.

Swept up in the federal response to Portland protests: ‘I didn’t know if I was going to be seen again’

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PORTLAND, Ore. — The protest outside Portland’s federal courthouse had died down by 3:40 a.m. on July 29, when a green laser shined down from a seventh-floor balcony used as a lookout by federal agents.

The laser landed on John Hacker, an activist and citizen-journalist standing in a park about 170 feet away. It skittered across Hacker’s feet, head and torso for more than 45 seconds. Suddenly, an unmarked van pulled in front of him. Doors slid open. Heavily armed men in camouflage tactical gear surrounded Hacker and took him into custody.

Hacker, 36, is among nearly two dozen people arrested but not charged during the Trump administration’s five-week response, from July through early August, to the demonstrations against police brutality in Portland. Before letting Hacker go, federal agents collected a DNA swab, photographed him and confiscated a phone that has not been returned, he said. Continue reading.

Senior DHS official alleges in whistleblower complaint that he was told to stop providing intelligence analysis on threat of Russian interference

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A senior Department of Homeland Security official alleges that he was told to stop providing intelligence reports on the threat of Russian interference in the 2020 election, in part because it “made the President look bad,” an instruction he believed would jeopardize national security.

The official, Brian Murphy, who until recently was in charge of intelligence and analysis at DHS, said in a whistleblower complaint that on two occasions he was told to stand down on reporting about the Russian threat and alleged that senior officials told him to modify other intelligence reports, including about white supremacists, to bring them in line with President Trump’s public comments, directions he said he refused.

On July 8, Murphy said in the complaint, acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf told him that an “intelligence notification” regarding Russian disinformation efforts should be “held” because it was unflattering to Trump, who has long derided the Kremlin’s interference as a “hoax” that was concocted by his opponents to delegitimize his victory in 2016. Continue reading.

Justice Dept. intervenes on behalf of Trump in defamation case brought by woman who accused him of rape

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The Justice Department on Tuesday intervened in the defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says President Trump raped her years ago, moving the matter to federal court and signaling it wants to make the U.S. government — rather than Trump himself — the defendant in the case.

In filings in federal court in Manhattan, the Justice Department asserted that Trump was “acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States” when he denied during interviews in 2019 that he had raped journalist E. Jean Carroll more than two decades ago in a New York City department store. Carroll sued Trump over that denial in November.

The maneuver removes the case — at least for now — from state court in New York, where a judge last month had rejected Trump’s bid for a delay and put Carroll’s team back on course to seek a DNA sample and an under-oath interview from the president. It also means that Justice Department lawyers will be essentially aiding Trump’s defense, and taxpayers could be on the hook for any potential damages, if the U.S. government is allowed to stand in for Trump. Winning damages against the government, though, would be more unlikely than in a suit against Trump, as the notion of “sovereign immunity” gives the government and its employees broad protection from lawsuits. Continue reading.

The signs that democracy is under attack are growing increasingly dire

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Earlier this week, New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo warned that American democracy is ending. He pointed to political violence on the streets, the pandemic, unemployment, racial polarization, and natural disasters, all of which are destabilizing the country, and noted that Republicans appear to have abandoned democracy in favor of a cult-like support for Donald Trump. They are wedded to a narrative based in lies, as the president dismantles our non-partisan civil service and replaces it with a gang of cronies loyal only to him.

He is right to be worried.

Just the past few days have demonstrated that key aspects of democracy are under attack. Continue reading.

Trump Emerges as Inspiration for Germany’s Far Right

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Among German conspiracy theorists, ultranationalists and neo-Nazis, the American president is surfacing as a rallying cry, or even as a potential “liberator.”

BERLIN — Just before hundreds of far-right activists recently tried to storm the German Parliament, one of their leaders revved up the crowd by conjuring President Trump.

“Trump is in Berlin!” the woman shouted from a small stage, as if to dedicate the imminent charge to him.

She was so convincing that several groups of far-right activists later showed up at the American Embassy and demanded an audience with Mr. Trump. “We know he’s in there!” they insisted. Continue reading.