Trump Advisor Slings at Nikki Haley

Former President Donald Trump's bid to return to the White House is led by Senior Communications Advisor Steven Cheung.  Cheung chopped back at recent love and significant financial support given to Nikki Haley.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung dismissed Americans for Prosperity as “the political arm of the China-first, America-last movement.”

“No amount of shady money from George Soros, Democrats and Never-Trump RINOs in partnership with endless-war swamp creatures in Washington will stop the MAGA movement or President Trump from being the Republican nominee and defeating Crooked Joe Biden,” Cheung wrote in a statement responding to the Haley endorsement.

Somebody's undergoing Koch withdrawal.  That's alot of villains to pack into one statement.

The author of TrumpNation wrote:

Trump once told me, while driving together to one of his golf courses, that his favorite Bond villain was Auric Goldfinger, the chunky thug who wanted to wreck the global economy and help China and his own fortunes by tainting the U.S.’s gold supply at Fort Knox. “I thought Goldfinger was just a great character,” Trump said. “To me, he was the best of all the characters. Semi-believable.”

Goldfinger's enforcer butler "Odd Job" could fell opponents with the toss of a hat.  We'll see if Steven Cheung has similar skills.

Trump's ceaseless pursuit of power and money feels like an old movie.  It'd be nice if people let him do that on his own, but their are swamp creatures in Washington that need the money.

Update 2-6-24:  A sling of the hat towards the D.C. Circuit Court for ruling against Trump's Presidential lifetime immunity claims.

Trump's Dark Weekend

Trump's weekend included calls for sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations.  It also included calling his political enemies vermin, a page out of the Hitler/Mussolini playbook.

 

Historian John Meacham stated:

"to call your opponent vermin, to dehumanize them, is to not only open the door, but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes.” 

A Trump spokesperson defended his boss with:

“Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

The spokesperson later amended his statement:

“their sad, miserable existence will be crushed”

Really?  That's your improvement.  It's kind of sad and miserable...

The U.S. made considerable fun of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini back in the day.  Charlie Chaplain's The Great Dictator saw him playing Hynkel:

The message is that Hynkel is not a brilliant strategist or a mighty leader. He is an overgrown adolescent – as demonstrated in the sublime set piece in which he dances with an inflatable globe, dreaming of being "emperor of the world". He is an insecure buffoon who bluffs, cheats, obsesses over his public image, manhandles his secretaries, revels in the luxury of his extravagant quarters, and reverses his own key policies in order to buy himself more time in power. "To me, the funniest thing in the world is to ridicule impostors," wrote Chaplin in his autobiography, "and it would be hard to find a bigger impostor than Hitler."

Trump's values are political retribution, personal aggrandizement, lying, cheating and saying whatever he believes will optimize his image in the present moment, even if it's the exact opposite of something he said just minutes before.  That also entails projecting his sins onto his political foes with nary a care, not even the slightest reflection.  His mirror tells him one thing.  Trump's the greatest of them all.... 

The Trump of today is far more dangerous than the man who said "We're going to march to the Capital and I'll be there with you..."  His retaliatory impulses are on steroids and he plans to enact retribution without restraints.

He's a poor fit for democracy.  Please don't destroy.....

Update 11-15-23:  Trump called for the citizen's arrest of the New York Attorney General and Judge presiding over his civil fraud trial.

Update 11-26-23:  Red Team Senator Mitt Romney called for nearly anyone over Trump.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) signaled that nearly any candidate in the 2024 field, of either party, would be an “upgrade” over another term for former President Trump.

“I’d be happy to support virtually any one of the Republicans — maybe not Vivek [Ramaswamy] — but the others that are running would be acceptable to me, and I’d be happy to vote for them.”

The billionaire class seems to be coalescing behind Nikki Haley. 

Update 12-3-23:  Trump said "We've been waging an all-out war on American democracy" in a campaign speech.

Update 12-7-23:  Trump's minions have plans of the Insane Red variety.  His revenge tour could be enacted by a number of wingnuts.

Update 6-11-24:  Trump told his supporters at a Las Vegas rally in over 100 degree heat that faithful MAGA would "choose suicide over Biden."  Is that one characteristic of a cult?

UFC 295 Hardly Standard for Class

The wife of comedian Bill Burr is under criticism for flipping two middle fingers in the direction of former President Donald Trump at a UFC 295 event.  The act has been called "classless."

The UFC demographic is 90% male and 10% female.  The "highest chunk of UFC viewers who regularly tune in to events is between 25 to 54 years old, with the highest percentage belonging to the 25 to 35 age bracket." 

Donald Trump is interested in mobilizing young males with little interest in politics. 

I was not aware UFC set the standard for classy behavior.  

UFC heavyweight Derrick Lewis was arrested Oct. 25 and charged with reckless driving after police allegedly recorded him driving 136 miles per hour in a 50-mph zone, according to Harris County (Texas) court records.

UFC star Conor McGregor was arrested after a rampage at a UFC event.

Video footage appears to show the promotion’s most bankable star throwing a hand truck at a bus full of fighters after a Thursday news conference for UFC 223 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

McGregor was charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal mischief.

A former UFC star was arrested for choking out a boxer on Bourbon Street.

I would suggest Mrs. Burr's behavior fits clearly within the UFC framework and she won the skirmish. 

Update 11-16-23:  Trump's lawyer Alina Habba wore a "f__k Joe Biden" necklace to the UFC fight show.  Now that's UFC class!

Ignoring Will of the People Yet Again

 

Intentional death, wounding, destruction and the debilitating conditions of war are inhumane.  Our leaders want to automate war.  Will they automate ignoring the will of the people too?

Update 11-12-23:  On Face the Nation National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Israel is "searching for ways" to keep Gaza City hospital patients safe.  How about not attacking them?  

Sullivan spoke after Margaret Brennan interviewed the head of Doctors Without Borders.  The doctor described non-functioning hospitals jammed with sick babies and post surgical patients.  

Gaza hospitals need to be evacuated to functioning hospitals in the region.  That's what a humane international community would do.  Anything otherwise (what Jake said) is purposeful death and further disability.  

I'm sure Sullivan spoke forcefully about Russia's attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities and the killing of medical workers.  Sullivan told CNN's Fareed Zakharia:

Russia continues to show every single day that it is acting in monstrous ways.

The U.S. public sees America whitewashing Israel's actions, the very same ones for which we condemn Russia.  It's not a good look.

Disclosure:  I helped evacuate two hospitals, one completely inoperable from flooding and the other prior to a Category 5 hurricane.  I can attest inoperable hospitals need to be evacuated ASAP and to the difficulty of moving hospitalized patients in a limited time frame.  Neither of those evacuations was in a war zone.

Update 1-7-24:  U.S. foreign policy is driven by corporate interests, not public will.

There are perhaps a thousand key individuals involved in setting policy. The public interest plays little role.

Update 4-5-24:  The world is horrified by the killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza. Jesse's Crossroads Cafe wrote:

Over 30,000 innocent civilians and 196 aid workers have been systematically targeted and murdered in Gaza in this ongoing act of ethnic cleansing. The aid workers and food convoys are being targeted to promote the starvation of a civilian population. Their lies and phony claims are disgraceful, and transparent to the rest of the world. Yesterday's strike that targeted seven Western aid workers has finally provoked a response. More misery and pain is being inflicted in the West Bank, in what can only be said as a 'grab for land' of other people.