Putin’s Trump: New American Journal graphic by Walter Simon

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rather than changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, if Trump is allowed to continue transforming this country as he has tried to do in his first 100 days back in the White House, we might as well change the name of the country itself. How about Trumpville? It’s certainly not the United States of America anymore. It’s beginning to look a lot more like a suburb of Russia.

U.S. President Donald Trump receives a football from Russian President Vladimir Putin as they hold a joint news conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland July 16, 2018: REUTERS/Grigory Dukor

And apparently that’s OK with the grifter in chief. He fooled millions into thinking he was interested in making America great, when it’s now obvious his real intent is to destroy it and make it his. A fake, gold-plated grifter palace for his criminally rich., white buddies, and to hell with anyone who disagrees with him about anything. Or more accurately, to prison or deported and screwed financially.

As senior writers for The New York Times put it: He was “intent on transforming America and its place in the world. From his first hours in office, he has relentlessly driven domestic, economic and foreign policy in risky new directions; taken a chain saw to the federal work force; challenged the authority of the courts; and sought to purge liberal influence from government, education and culture. The result has been a chaotic blur of new initiatives; judicial, political and economic backlash; and neck-snapping reversals (all of which just seem designed to manipulate the stock market for his profit and that of his friends). It has tested the nation’s ability to process disruption — and of American democracy’s resilience in the face of a president whose views of his power have prompted warnings of creeping authoritarianism.”

That’s way too nice. I would call it creepy, fascist dictatorship. That’s clearly his intent, even if he won’t come out and say it.

On the first day he pardoned the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol and tried to hang his Vice President. They were all investigated, tried and convicted by the F.B.I. and Department of Justice in the courts, back when we had relatively honest courts, including courts led by Trump-appointed judges. Trump should have faced trial himself for his role in inciting that insurrection, but President Joe Biden and his Attorney General Merrick Garland wanted to tread lightly hoping the people would not vote to elect Trump again based on what he did in his first term. Now we see that was a massive mistake that could cost us our democracy forever.

He’s proposed turning Gaza into a resort town, threatened to make Canada the 51st state, by force if necessary, and annexing Greenland, like it was a borough of New York. This may sound like a joke. At this point no one should doubt his intent and will to carry it out. He must be stopped.

He turned tech-billionaire Elon Musk loose on the federal government, firing protected civil servants en masse at agency after agency, including the ones who oversee our nuclear arsenal, and anyone who practices any kind of science, especially to protect the nation’s environment and combat climate change. Even the damn C.I.A. says it’s one of the gravest threats we face in the future, including to our national security. Trump doesn’t care about our national security. As for Elon Musk and his team of hackers, so far I am the only one to report their real mission, and I’ve got more reporting in store on this front. They are charged with creating the algorithm to train the bots to find and carry out Trump’s retribution against his “Enemies List,” which includes journalists.

So far you think Artificial Intelligence is cool? Think again.

Perspective is Everything: Bots Are Being Trained to Run Governments

He installed his personal lackey lawyers to run the Justice Department, firing inspectors general, closing down foreign aid at the U.S.A.I.D., the most important tool we have of using our soft, cultural power in the world to promote democracy. Even the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 was not for that. They wanted to use it to promote Christianity around the world. Trump just closed it down.

He ignited an ill-fated global trade war that all the experts say is going to bring down our economy, and the world economy along with it.

After berating Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office, he threatened to help Russia win the war if Zelenskyy didn’t turn over his wheat crop to the U.S.

He turned ICE agents loose on the streets of American cities, deporting anyone who looked like they might be an illegal immigrant, never mind their constitutional right of due process. His will, he thinks, is more powerful than the Constitution. And unless we all stand up to stop it, he may prove to be right.

He’s defied judges, even his own Supreme Court, who ordered his administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia who was illegally deported to El Salvador. He’s still there, imprisoned even though he did nothing wrong, except to have a Hispanic name and dark skin and be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You or I may be next. He’s threatened to detain and deport any American citizen who disagrees with him, including members of the press. If we let him get away with it, he will fucking do it. Watch.

He’s carried out his promised plan for retribution against his political enemies, removing security clearances and Secret Service protection from the likes of Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, and a host of others. It’s a war and no one is safe.

New York Times writer Ben Rhodes, author of After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made, pointed out what President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1941 as he marshaled support for the fight against fascism. His chief antagonists were isolationists at home.

“What I seek to convey,” he said at the beginning of an address to Congress, “is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained clear, definite opposition to any attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the procession of civilization went past.”

“Roosevelt prevailed, and that victory expanded America’s relationship with the world in ways that remade both,” he writes. “Eighty-four years later, President Trump is systematically severing America from the globe. This is not simply a shift in foreign policy. It is a divorce so comprehensive that it makes Britain’s exit from the European Union look modest by comparison.”

* Allies are being treated like adversaries.

* The United States has withdrawn from international agreements on fundamental issues like health and climate change.

* A nation of immigrants now deports people without due process, bans refugees and is trying to end birthright citizenship.

* Trump’s tariffs have upended the system of international trade, throwing up new barriers to doing business with every country on Earth!

* Foreign assistance has largely been terminated. So has support for democracy abroad. (Clearly Trump is not interested in any kind of democracy).

* Research cuts have rolled back global scientific research and cooperation.

* The State Department is downsizing, not preparing to deal with threats from abroad.

* Exchange programs are on the chopping block, making enemies of former friends.

* Global research institutions like the U.S. Institute of Peace are being effectively shut down. For what purpose one can only guess. He doesn’t like science. It shows how wrong he is.

* And, of course, the United States is (once again) building a wall along its southern border.

Trump promised to end the war in Gaza. The cease-fire negotiated by Joe Biden’s administration has unraveled since he took office.

He promised to end the war in Ukraine.

“Give me a day” he said.

Russia continues its war against Ukraine after 100 days, in spite of Trump’s stance. Putin doesn’t care what Donald Trump says. He laughs at the idiot in chief daily, according to sources inside the Kremlin. It’s the best entertainment on Russian TikTok. He is a laughing stock around the world, and turning us into one too for going along with it.

Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin
at Russia-U.S. Summit in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018: Shutterstock

“Europe is turning away from America, Canadians are boycotting our goods, and a Chinese Communist Party that endured the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution seems prepared to weather a few years of tariffs,” Rhodes writes.

Travel to the United States is down 12 percent compared with last March, as tourists recoil from America’s authoritarian turn, and the economy is already suffering as a result.

“If the current reduction in travel to the United States continues, it could cost up to $90 billion this year alone, along with tens of thousands of jobs,” he writes.

And yes, as we reported before the election, tariffs will only drive prices higher, bringing inflation roaring back. It took the Biden administration awhile and a lot of work. But it was coming under control. Trump’s policies will explode it.

Productivity will slow measurably if mass deportations come for the farm workers who pick our food, Rhodes points out, along with the construction workers who build our homes and the care workers who look after our children and the elderly.

International students pay dearly to attend American universities. Demonizing and dehumanizing them will imperil the $44 billion they pump into our economy.

“The outlook gets worse with time,” he points out. “Why would other countries choose to invest in a country where the president roils global markets through social media posts, profits from crypto schemes that fleece ordinary people and undermines the rule of law upon which commerce depends? It’s far more likely that nations will make trade deals and forge supply chains without the United States while China and its growing list of partners accelerate a movement away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”

And there goes the neighborhood. If the dollar fails, we all suffer.

“In the short term, treating international relations like a protection racket could yield some bilateral transactions,” he admits. “Yet something more fundamental is being lost: trust. An America that, for all its mistakes abroad, guaranteed the security of its allies. An America that, for all its nativism, took in refugees and educated countless world leaders through its universities and exchange programs. An America that, for all its hubris, responded to humanitarian crises and showcased an appealing cultural openness. An America that people around the world liked more than its government.

“The destruction of that trust will hurt us more than the rest of the world. This was certainly the case with Brexit, a project animated by the same blend of nationalism and nostalgia that has propelled … Trump. Nearly a decade after voting to divorce Europe, Britain finds itself wrestling with a predictable incapacity to generate growth, a diminished position in its region and a growing factionalism in its politics. Fewer than a third of Britons now believe they made the right decision.”

We are following that course on a global scale, he says, fueled by idiots like Steve Bannon, who should be in prison for fraud but Trump pardoned instead.

“After 250 years of growing more diverse and more connected to the world, … Trump and his cohort are imposing the staid insularity of self-imposed decline. The draining of democratic values from our national identity will leave America defined by its size, power and quixotic lust for profit: a place, not an idea.”

A bastion of run amok capitalism like nothing the world has ever seen.

“Roosevelt left us the inheritance of believing we were the good guys. …Trump is eviscerating that pretense as cuts to U.S.A.I.D. have almost certainly caused more civilian deaths than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Rhodes points out that it is totally wrong for us to “follow the foolish path of ‘America First’ — a slogan that amounted to capitulation to fascism.”

“America’s strength has always been connected to the fact that it comprises people from everywhere who chose not to be defined by a ruler or to fear the future. At a time when power in the world is becoming more diffuse, our shifting demographics should be seen as a strength, not something to be feared or suppressed through a reactionary politics that shuts out the world. If we continue down that path, the procession of civilization will leave us behind, in a fearful, diminished and impoverished place.”

That in a nutshell is what Trump is doing to our country. Now the question is, will Americans simply go along with it like rooting for their favorite football team, and watch as the future of their children is destroyed? Or will they rise up and stop this madness before it is too late?

I’m afraid a few funny protest signs in parks across the country are not going to be enough. For the first time in our history, it is time to consider not just mass protests on every front. Economic boycotts of Trump supporting corporations are fine. Again, not enough. It is time to consider mass non-violence on a scale we have never had to consider before, to shut down this government before he turns this country into a fascist Russia. We can’t just sit here and comment about how bad it is on social media. People are going to have to get off of social media and put their bodies on the line, just like John Lewis and his fellow civil rights marchers did on Bloody Sunday on that bridge in Selma.

March from Selma to Montgomery Could Go All the Way to Washington This Year

To put it bluntly, this administration must be stopped, and not just in the next election. Remember, Trump promised we won’t need anymore elections after this one. Perhaps someone should have taken him at his word at the time. After what he’s done in his first 100 days, no one should doubt his intention to become dictator for life, just like his buddy Putin in Russia.

If Congress won’t stop it, the Supreme Court won’t help, and the press is just bamboozled into following along with his every move and reporting what he’s doing like it’s just another ho hum day in Washington, the only power left is the power of the people.

As U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is saying, “In 100 days Donald Trump has FAILED and BETRAYED our country. He’s tearing up our Constitution, tearing down our economy and tearing apart our government — all to rig everything to serve the interests of his billionaire pals. We WILL NOT STOP FIGHTING for one second.”

So there are a few voices in the minority party in the Senate, including New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who inspired many with his record breaking filibuster speech on the Senate floor. They get it and are willing to speak out.

“Trump has been president for 100 days,” Booker said on social media. “And he’s made a deliberate attempt to flood the system and exhaust the public. It can be hard for most people to keep up. That’s by design.

“As a candidate, Trump said he’d lower prices. As president,” he indicated, the opposite has happened. Prices are going up again because of the tariffs.

Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin is also taking up the fight in the House.

“House Republicans are trying to ram through a budget that ends Medicaid as we know it and discards the interests of children, seniors and veterans,” he posted on social media. “Shoulder to shoulder, the people say ‘hell no.’ Hang tough everybody.”

But it will take a mass movement of non-violence to bring the wheels of this government to a screeching halt. Don’t let them take away our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid too. Stand up and stop this madness.

I’m back in Washington and ready to do my part. Will you?

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