Tag: President Fascist

  • Trump whipped the crowd into fevered chants

    Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman at the Times report that Trump blamed the media for the angry divisions in the country.

    In an angry, unbridled and unscripted performance that rivaled the most sulfurous rallies of his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump sought to deflect the anger toward him against the news media, suggesting that they, not he, were responsible for deepening divisions in the country.

    “It’s time to expose the crooked media deceptions,” Mr. Trump said. He added, “They’re very dishonest people.”

    “The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself and the fake news,” he said.

    Mr. Trump also derided the media for focusing on his tweets, which are his preferred form of communication.

    “I don’t do Twitter storms,” said the president, who often posts a few tweets in a row on a given subject, with exclamation points.

    It was the latest shift in what has become a nearly daily change of roles for this president: from the statesmanlike commander in chief who sought harmony on Monday evening by citing the example of America’s soldiers to the political warrior who, just a day later, preached unapologetic division to his supporters here, eliciting louder cheers with every epithet.

    He’s a vulgar trashy brawler with a lot of money, and he got elected. We’re a sick country.

    Mr. Trump accused the news media of “trying to take away our history and our heritage,” an apparent reference to the debate over removing statues to heroes of the Confederacy, which prompted the rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville.

    The president singled out a familiar list of malefactors — including the “failing New York Times,” which he erroneously said had apologized for its coverage of the 2016 election; CNN; and The Washington Post, which he described as a lobbying arm for Amazon, the company controlled by the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos.

    Pointing repeatedly to the cameras in the middle of a cavernous convention center, Mr. Trump whipped the crowd into fevered chants of “CNN Sucks.” Members of the audience shouted epithets at reporters, some demanding that the news media stop tormenting the president with questions about his ties to Russia.

    Scary enough yet?

  • The latest fascist rally

    Chris Cillizza gives the flavor of Trump’s rally last night by listing 57 berserk lies, threats, dog whistles, self-flatteries, and random collections of words.

    President Donald Trump went to Arizona on Tuesday night and delivered what has now become a trademark speech: Full of invective, victimhood and fact-free retellings of recent historical events.

    I went through the transcript of Trump’s speech — all 77 minutes — and picked out his 57 most outrageous lines, in chronological order. They’re below.

    1. “And just so you know from the Secret Service, there aren’t too many people outside protesting, OK. That I can tell you.”

    That’s the very first thing he said. It’s not true. There were thousands of people protesting.

    5. “Our movement is a movement built on love.”

    Says the man who spends most of his time spewing hatred and venom on Twitter and at “rallies” and in conversation. Says the man who has done more to stir up hatred and violence in this country than anyone ever. How dare he say that.

    6. “We all share the same home, the same dreams and the same hopes for a better future. A wound inflicted upon one member of our community is a wound inflicted upon us all.”

    The second sentence of this is verbatim from his speech on Monday. But as the rest of Trump’s speech shows, these are just words to him. He reads them but doesn’t understand them. Or believe them.

    Then he says oh goody look at all the red hats – the red hats that stand for all that anger and venom. He doesn’t mean the love bullshit. He’s all about the anger and venom.

    14. “If you’re reading a story about somebody, you don’t know. You assume it’s honest, because it’s like the failing New York Times, which is like so bad. It’s so bad.”

    I have no idea what Trump’s point is here. But MAN, the New York Times is failing, right?!?!?

    15. “Or the Washington Post, which I call a lobbying tool for Amazon, OK, that’s a lobbying tool for Amazon.”

    Amazon doesn’t own the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos does.

    16. “Or CNN, which is so bad and so pathetic, and their ratings are going down.”

    I’ll just leave this here.

    17. “I mean, CNN is really bad, but ABC this morning — I don’t watch it much, but I’m watching in the morning, and they have little George Stephanopoulos talking to Nikki Haley, right? Little George.”

    A few things: 1. Trump watches TV constantly. 2. “Little George”: Trump as bully-in-chief.

    He relentlessly attacks the mainstream media while promoting the shoddy Murdoch mouthpiece Fox.

    28. “Now, you know, I was a good student. I always hear about the elite. You know, the elite. They’re elite? I went to better schools than they did. I was a better student than they were. I live in a bigger, more beautiful apartment, and I live in the White House, too, which is really great.”

    Oh.dear.god.

    30. “And yes, by the way — and yes, by the way, they are trying to take away our history and our heritage. You see that.”
    This is demagogic language from Trump about the media. “They” are trying to rob us of “our history and our heritage.” You don’t have to look very hard to see racial and ethnic coding in that language.
    31. “I really think they don’t like our country. I really believe that.”
    Trump’s claim that the media doesn’t “like” America is hugely offensive. Offensive and dangerous. Imagine ANY other president saying anything close to this — and what the reaction would be.

    It’s fascism, is what it is.

    36. “You would think — you would think they’d want to make our country great again, and I honestly believe they don’t. I honestly believe it.”

    The media, in Trump’s telling, is rooting against the country. Let me say again: Rhetoric like this is offensive, dishonest and dangerous.

    He hints he’s going to pardon Arpaio. He threatens to shut down the government to extort payment for “the wall.” He makes a big fuss about not mentioning McCain by name because They told him not to, and attacks him without naming him. He attacks the other Arizona senator, also without naming him, for the same reason. He says that’s what he’s doing.

    56. “They’re trying to take away our culture. They are trying to take away our history.”

    [dog whistle]

    That’s our head of state. That lying enraged toddler is our head of state.

  • Hello fascism

    Oh sweet jesus.

  • An unconventional choice

    Well here’s a classic of normalizing language – in the Washington Post’s story on President Pussygrabber’s nomination of reactionary retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to HUD chief:

    President-elect Donald Trump nominated retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an unconventional choice that underscores Trump’s willingness to forgo traditional policy expertise in some Cabinet positions to surround himself with allies.

    Normalizing and grossly euphemistic, would be a more thorough description. Make that: a shockingly random choice that underscores Trump’s determination to appoint completely unqualified inexperienced people to Cabinet positions.

    That determination, in turn, underscores Trump’s contempt for the very concepts of knowledge, relevant experience, expertise, competence, and the like.

    That contempt, in turn, underscores Trump’s frightening anti-intellectualism and amateurism, which in turn underscore the logical underpinning of such a view: that only force and power count.

    In other words Trump seems to think that there is no such thing as relevant knowledge and expertise, and thus that it’s all random, and thus that winning and losing are all there are.

    In other words Trumpworld is wholly arbitrary apart from force and money. There is no such thing as argument, or careful thought, or analysis, or weighing opposing views. There is only fiat.

    That’s what makes Trump a fascist. That’s fascismworld, and we now have to live in it.

  • The Fascist rallies start tomorrow

    Trump’s Triumph of the Will tour has a shiny pretty logo.