This is disturbing, y’all. It’s about weaponizing the government. It’s about turning the government into an instrument of your will. It’s about rewarding allies and taking down enemies. Nixon tried to turn the government into an extension of his will. Trump is doing it. I’m even more worried.
“You see very similar personality traits in the men, about how they feel about people and what they want to do about them,” said John Dean, who served as Nixon’s White House counsel during Watergate and later revealed the existence of the enemies list. But, Dean added, whereas Nixon would often lose sight of his threats or back off when faced with resistance inside or outside his administration, Trump and his aides are moving to draft virtually every component of the federal government into this mission. “Everything with Nixon is more or less a one-off,” Dean said, “whereas with Trump it is a way of life.”
The effect is that, with much less pushback than Nixon faced, Trump is now moving far faster and further toward reconfiguring the federal government’s sweeping authority into an extension of his personal will. “We are so far beyond Nixon’s inclinations and disposition to employ the government to attack perceived enemies and perceived political adversaries,” Dean said, “that it is the difference between spitballs and howitzers.”
Spitballs and howitzers. Wow. That’s a HUGE difference, and, come to think of it, a very good way to express the differences. Agent Orange is changing the government into something for him and his allies, but his enemies? Ouch. He keeps increasing the pressure on those who won’t yield to his demands. And those who have yielded? It didn’t stop there either. Take Columbia University. They bowed to tRump’s demand that they remove any DEI related material. Now he’s trying to remove their accreditation, and may very well succeed, which would be a HUGE loss to everyone!
Trump is using executive orders, federal investigations , and regulatory decisions to deploy federal power against a stunning array of targets, ranging from powerful institutions such as Harvard and Columbia universities and major law firms to individual critics from his first term and former President Joe Biden’s top White House aides. Simultaneously, Trump is rewarding allies with presidential pardons, commutations, government contracts, and the termination of federal regulatory or criminal investigations.
Wow again. Seeing this in black and white, putting it all together, is damn near devastating. It also shows the extent of what the Mango Mandarin Messiah is doing. We get news articles about this and that, but having it all put together? Oof.
Until Trump, historians considered Richard Nixon the president who pushed hardest to bend federal legal authority into a lever to advance his personal and political interests — a process that culminated in the Watergate scandal and the disclosure of the infamous White House “enemies list.” But while Nixon fulminated against his opponents in private, he never subjected them to anything approaching the bombardment of hostile federal actions that Trump has directed at his targets. Dean added that whereas Nixon would often lose sight of his threats or back off when faced with resistance inside or outside his administration, Trump and his aides are moving to draft virtually every component of the federal government into this mission. “Everything with Nixon is more or less a one-off,” Dean said, “whereas with Trump it is a way of life.”
Almost daily, Trump is acting in new ways to deploy federal power in precision-focused attacks on individuals and institutions who have crossed or resisted him. But with Nixon, in an August 16, 1971, memo — titled “Dealing with our Political Enemies” — Dean succinctly explained that the list’s intent was to find all the ways “we (Nixon) can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” Nixon never got nearly as far as Trump has done.
Sounds just like Trumpolini, doesn’t it? Nixon only tried. tRump is succeeding. SUCCEEDING. What is going to happen to our country? Will he manage to make it his own personal dictatorship, and we’re stuck with him till he becomes completely incapacitated? Will he actually leave at the end of his term? Will we either get stuck with Vance or another Republican president? So many questions, so, so many. Unfortunately, we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, we will do what we can to resist. I had to pick and choose from the article. You can find the full, long (!!!!) piece here. It’s fascinating…and terrifying. Thanks for sticking with me!
*****From Ursula ******
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