Tag: President Nazi

  • Our own Wannsee conference

    He says it. He says it.

  • The “of course” brigade appears

    Now Trump’s people are dutifully lining up to say of course he condemned the Nazis in Charlottesville, it’s obvious that he did, he was unambiguous about it.

    The White House said in a statement Sunday that when President Trump condemned “all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred” that were on display in Charlottesville this weekend “of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.”

    Of course. Of coursey course.

    But inclusion of Nazis wasn’t what was needed. That “and all extremist groups” at the end wasn’t and isn’t what was needed. “Everybody was to blame” isn’t what’s needed. A robust condemnation of racism and racist hatred and incitement of racist hatred is what’s needed. That’s what Trump refused to give.

    You can tell the “from many sides” part wasn’t in the prepared remarks he was haltingly reading. You can tell from the way he looks up and throws his arm out to the side – you can see that that’s one of his ad libs.

    And three of Trump’s top advisers appeared on Sunday morning news shows to defend the vague statement that the president delivered the previous afternoon at his private golf club in New Jersey, although their messaging shifted as the morning progressed. Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and a top adviser, broke with her father’s messaging Sunday morning to tweet: “There should be no place in society for racism, white supremacy and neo-nazis.”

    Yes, and then she immediately returned to her father’s message with the second tweet – and she numbered them, so we know the two are one statement – that what we need is to Unite as Americans.

    National security adviser H.R. McMaster said on ABC News that the president was “very clear” in his statement and “called out anyone, anyone who is responsible for fomenting this kind of bigotry, hatred, racism and violence.” Later in the morning, McMaster added on NBC News that it “ought to be clear to all Americans” that Trump’s comments about bigotry and hatred included white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

    Yes, and that’s the problem, because his comments merely “included” the murderous Nazis. He needs to single them out. It wasn’t a lefty who drove that car into the crowd.

    CIA Director Mike Pompeo said on CBS News that the president was “specific,” “very clear” and, “frankly, pretty unambiguous” in responding to the violence. He added: “When someone marches with a Nazi flag, that is unacceptable, but I think that’s what the president’s saying.”

    No, it’s not. He specifically, deliberately avoided saying that. He raised his head and threw his arm out to say “from many sides, from many sides.” He didn’t need to say that. I think it was probably not in the prepared statement. He chose to say it. It’s a lie.

    Tom Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser, who has been in direct contact with Charlottesville authorities, repeatedly praised the president on CNN for not naming the groups that were involved and instead focusing on an overarching call for Americans to love one another.

    To love one another? Did he say that? Not that I’ve seen. He told us to “unite.” I don’t recall anything about love. And not naming the groups involved is not something to praise him for. We know who the groups are, and we know they are devoted fans and admirers of Trump’s. This is his baby, not ours.

    Bossert said that people “on both sides” showed up in Charlottesville “looking for trouble” and that he won’t assign blame for the death of a counterprotester on either group, although he said the president would like to see “swift justice” for the victim. After repeated questioning, Bossert did say that he personally condemns “white supremacists and Nazi groups that espouse this sort of terrorism and exclusion.” He did not say whether the president agrees with him on that.

    It must be awkward to be a Nazi in a Nazi administration and be pressed to reject Nazism on national tv.

    While Bossert acknowledged that white supremacy is a problem in the country, he quickly shifted to talking about the greater threat of “a global jihadi terrorist problem.” This is a common tactic used by the Trump administration, which considered refocusing the government’s Countering Violent Extremism program on Islamist groups, not white supremacists, and has proposed slashing funding for the program. A recent study found that between 2008 and 2016, the number of designated terrorist attacks on U.S. soil carried out by right-wing extremist groups, including white supremacists, outnumbered those carried out by Islamists by 2 to 1.

    Trump has a lot more in common with Islamists than lefties do (though many lefties fail to grasp that). Both have contempt for women, both have contempt for gay men (I think they ignore lesbians), both love a good fight.

    Numerous Republicans and Democrats have criticized the usually blunt-speaking president for reacting to the violence and racism in Charlottesville in such vague terms, for placing equal blame on the counterprotesters and for not specifically condemning the white supremacists involved.

    Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) urged the president to use the words “white supremacists” and to label what happened Saturday as a terrorist attack. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) declared that “white supremacy is a scourge” that “must be confronted and defeated.” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) tweeted, “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

    Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer (D) has directly blamed Trump for the explosion of hate in his city this weekend, and he continued to do so Sunday in an interview with CNN. He accused Trump of intentionally courting white supremacists, nationalists and anti-Semitic groups on the campaign trail, and he criticized the president for not condemning these groups.

    “This is not hard. There’s two words that need to be said over and over again: domestic terrorism and white supremacy,” Signer said. “That is exactly what we saw on display this weekend, and we just aren’t seeing leadership from the White House.”

    If you vote a hate-mongering racist misogynist evil toad of a man president, this is what you get.

  • All hail the blood of the patriarchs

    Updating to add:

    The “patriarchs” thing was an accident – a typo for “patriots.” What he actually said:

    The memories of those who perished in the Warsaw Uprising cry out across the decades, and few are clearer than the memories of those who died to build and defend the Jerusalem Avenue crossing. Those heroes remind us that the West was saved with the blood of patriots; that each generation must rise up and play their part in its defense, and that every foot of ground, and every last inch of civilization, is worth defending with your life.

    Of course, he didn’t rise up and play his part in its defense. He had “bone spurs.” He didn’t defend jack shit, and he didn’t spill a drop of patriotic blood. He went to business school and learned how to sell real estate to white people only.

    /update

    Oh god.

    The Fox headline: POTUS: WEST SAVED BY BLOOD OF PATRIARCHS

    Trump Twitter scream: THE WEST WILL NEVER BE BROKEN. Our values will PREVAIL. Our people will THRIVE and our civilization will TRIUMPH!

    Image result for triumph of the will

  • “They don’t understand this country.”

    It’s only the first week of the Trump putsch and already we’re miles deep into Nazi territory.

    The New York Times talked to Steve Bannon yesterday, and what he said is blood-chilling. He could be reading from a volume of collected rants by Goebbels. It would be gross if he were just the Breitbart guy, but he’s now at the center of the executive branch.

    “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call.

    “I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

    That’s fascist talk. That’s Kill the Other talk. He’s talking about The Jews, and all of us are those Jews he’s talking about. We “don’t understand this country” – we are not of it – we pollute it.

    During a call to discuss Sean M. Spicer, the president’s press secretary, Mr. Bannon ratcheted up the criticism, offering a broad indictment of the news media as biased against Mr. Trump and out of touch with the American public. That’s an argument familiar to readers of Breitbart and followers of Trump-friendly personalities like Sean Hannity.

    “The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”

    Like the blood guilt, am I right? We can never wash away the pollution.

    “That’s why you have no power,” Mr. Bannon added. “You were humiliated.”

    Of all of Mr. Trump’s advisers in the White House, Mr. Bannon is the one tasked with implementing the nationalist vision that Mr. Trump channeled during the later months of the campaign, one that stemmed from Mr. Bannon himself. And in many ways Mr. Trump’s first week has put into action that vision — from the description of “American carnage’’ Mr. Trump laid out in his inauguration speech, to a series of executive actions outlining policy on trade agreements, immigration, the building of a border wall and the demands that Mexico pay for it.

    It shouldn’t have been this easy. That’s the enduring stain: that the fascists took power this easily.

    A savvy manipulator of the press, and a proud provocateur, Mr. Bannon was among the few advisers in Mr. Trump’s circle who was said to have urged on Mr. Spicer’s confrontational, emotional statement to a shocked White House briefing room on Saturday, when the White House disputed press reports on the inauguration crowd size. He mostly shares Mr. Trump’s view that the news media has misunderstood the movement that the president rode into office.

    On the telephone, Mr. Bannon spoke in blunt but calm tones, peppered with a dose of profanities, and humorously referred to himself at one point as “Darth Vader.” He said, with ironic relish, that Mr. Trump was elected by a surge of support from “the working class hobbits and deplorables.”

    Yes, it’s all hilarious. No doubt they’ll stand around the gas chambers cracking wise.

  • In what direction do we pray?

    With his usual modesty, Trump declared himself our new object of “patriotic devotion.”

    President Trump has officially declared the day of his inauguration a national day of patriotism.

    Trump’s inaugural address on Friday frequently referred to patriotism as the salve that would heal the country’s divisions. “When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice,” Trump said from the steps of the Capitol after being sworn in as president.

    Later that day, Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, said that naming a national day of patriotism was among the executive actions that Trump took in his first few hours as president.

    Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.

    On Monday, the paperwork was filed with the federal government declaring officially that Jan. 20, 2017 — the day of Trump’s inauguration — would officially be known as the “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.”

    “Now, therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Jan. 20, 2017, as National Day of Patriotic Devotion, in order to strengthen our bonds to each other and to our country — and to renew the duties of government to the people,” the order says.

    “Our Constitution is written on parchment, but it lives in the hearts of the American people,” the order continues. “There is no freedom where the people do not believe in it; no law where the people do not follow it; and no peace where the people do not pray for it.”

    Hail the new Volksgemeinschaft.