Author: Don Doumakes

Trump again refuses to commit to peaceful transfer of power

Yesterday Trump was asked, not for the first time, whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election. Again, he has refused.

“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said when first asked if he would “commit here today for a peaceful transferral of power after the November election.” He continued, “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.” But it’s when the reporter, Brian Karem of Playboy magazine, pressed again, that Trump really laid it out. “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful—there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

There you have it, the Republican plan for the 2020 election with all the lies and obfuscation burned away: they plan to win by getting rid of the ballots.

Trump wants courts to declare him the victor before votes are counted

Trump told supporters at a North Carolina rally over the weekend that he expects the courts to help him remain in power even if he loses the election.

We’re going to have a victory on November 3rd the likes of which you’ve never seen.  Now, we’re counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins. Not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later.

Just read that again.  He literally is telling us that he is going to declare victory on November 3, regardless of the fact that the vote tally is unlikely to be complete on election night.  He wants, and he expects, a Republican-dominated court system to simply declare the uncounted votes invalid.

Trump supporters block an early voting site in VA

Video evidence confirms that a group of Trump supporters gathered in front of the entrance to a Virginia early voting site, blocking it.  They chanted “four more years” and intimidated voters, which I imagine was the point.  This is a violation of Virginia law.  The head of the Virginia GOP has responded by mocking those who complained.

Because in Trump’s America, apparently open voter intimidation is no longer something to even bother denying.

QAnon conspiracy theory is just rebranded Nazi conspiracy theory

Gregory Stanton, a genocide expert, makes the case that QAnon, the conspiracy theory beloved of many Republicans, is a Nazi cult.

A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power.

Does this conspiracy theory sound familiar? It is. The same narrative has been repackaged by QAnon.

Stanton points out that what QAnon has repackaged, is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time, one promoted by Hitler and his collaborators.

You might think it’s unfair to say the whole Republican Party is in bed with QAnon, but you’d be wrong.  Not only are Republicans running QAnon supporters on the ballot for Congress, but Iowa Republican Joni Ernst is repeating the QAnon conspiracy theory.  We have to vote out all the Republicans; they no longer have a place in a democratic government.

It’s no exaggeration: Nazis love Trump

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog to hear that Donald Trump is very popular among German neo-Nazis.

The Trump appeal to Germany’s neo-Nazi groups, a source of domestic terror in that nation as their far-right allies are in this one, is simple to understand. Trump is an avowed nationalist and nativist. He’s brazenly racist. He’s both a sponge for far-right conspiracy theories and an avid distributor of them. And he’s a practicing fascist—leading an administration that has increasingly simply ignored federal laws, Congress, and the courts in service to a white nationalist agenda headed by a forever-incompetent Dear Leader figure. Trump is currently closer to the neo-Nazi ideal government than perhaps any other top nation, both nationalist and world-powerful.

Nobody in Germany is confused over what Donald Trump represents or what his intentions are. They understand him, and those he has staffed his administration with, perfectly fine. It is only the American press that cannot quite muster what to make of Trump’s fascist rhetoric and “norm”-breaking dismantling of ethics and law alike.

It’s what I’ve been saying for years now:  Republicans are supporting a fascist.  And as if to underline it for us, Trump is now openly supporting extrajudicial killings.

Republicans now openly support right wing violence

I read somewhere that fascist violence doesn’t begin with uniformed military turning their guns on the people.  Instead, it begins with violence by civilians against their neighbors, on behalf of the government.  Back in 2017 I thought we might get past the first Trump term before we saw fascist violence on behalf of the Trump regime, and I was wrong.

Case in point, a pro-Trump pro-law-enforcement vigilante has murdered two people in Wisconsin.  And right wing media are rallying to support the murderer.

Crimes against humanity

We now have, from multiple sources, reports that the Trump White House dragged its feet in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic because they saw it as a blue state problem.

Post-Trump reconstruction of the United States is going to require prosecution of Trump and all his collaborators, definitely including Jared Kushner, for using the coronavirus response as a political weapon against the American people.

Secret federal police arresting people without charge in Portland

In my last post I mentioned that President Trump has threatened to send federal troops against civilian protesters.  He has now carried out that threat.  From Daily Kos:

…Trump and his Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf have not only deployed unmarked forces, they’re also snatching people off the streets without cause and effectively interrogating them. Take Mark Pettibone, a 29-year-old, who was kidnapped by these secret Gestapo-like forces while he was walking home from a peaceful protest in the wee hours Wednesday morning. Though he had done nothing wrong, men in green military fatigues jumped out of an unmarked van, descended on him, apprehended him, drove him to a federal courthouse, then eventually read him his Miranda rights and asked if he would waive those rights to answer some questions. When he said he wouldn’t, they let him go. No explanation. No identification.

These unidentified federal police also shot a peaceful protester in the head.

I have to say I’m surprised.  I didn’t think actual military force against civilian dissenters would occur until after Trump got reelected.  Apparently I was too optimistic.