Is Anybody Going To Challenge Trump’s Blatant Propaganda?

Mr. Big Shot has the photo op going right now, to wit, the military planes that are loaded up with illegal migrants and ready to send them back from whence they came. I made one guarantee about this administration and that was spectacle. Now let’s be clear: deportation flights are ongoing. This is nothing new. But it is being framed as some new and amazing step that Donald Trump has taken to purify the country. Pure photo op nonsense, but don’t take my word.

In 2024, ICE carried out an average of 4.27 deportation flights per day (which includes weekends and holidays) The normal weekday total was above 6 deportation flights a day, per @thcartwright.

Deportation flights never stopped. This is propaganda.https://t.co/3KWfXyB3wI pic.twitter.com/53T63luJ1M

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) January 24, 2025

So Trump is sending a “strong and clear message” to the world — which just happens to be standard operating procedure for quite some time and is nothing new. But again, and always, Trump knows how to manipulate media and until media fights back, he will continue to gaslight the American people, to our collective disadvantage and dismay.

So for the moment Trump has his photo op. But things are not going all that well for him. Let’s take a look at some real statistics, not daily occurrences dressed up to look like something brand new and unique.

Trump has always fallen into a narrow popularity band in his public polling, and with his current number right now at 47%, he’s got a long, long way to drop. Folks, the most crucial illusion to reject is that Trump has a mandate or that the majority of America wants this crazy.

He’s already going into a slough of despair from which none return.

* Only 20% support freeing the January 6th terrorists.

* Only 16% want to take control of Greenland, 23% of Panama.

* 61% think he can’t lower the costs of groceries. 55% think he can’t create more jobs.

* 29% think tariffs like his tariff plan. (Watch that drop to single digits soon.)

* Real talk: deporting illegal immigrants (55%) and deporting criminal illegal immigrants (62%) and ending the tax on tips are popular. 80% oppose men in women’s sports, and 70% oppose puberty blockers for teenagers. Expect more from Trump on these areas since the rest of the agenda is so radioactive.

When they move to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security while giving Elon, Bezos, and Zuck a tax cut…bar the door.

The January 6 terrorists being put back on the street is one of the worst moves Trump has ever made and it will come back to haunt him. You remember that the stance was that only the non violent offenders would be released and then two days ago Trump had an impulse and said, “Fuck it. Release ’em all.” This made a liar out of J.D. Vance and put Marco Rubio on the spot, but who cares about any of that, right?

But there will be real world repercussions if these released felons do half of what they’ve threatened to do.

NBC News profiled the men who threw Nazi salutes, posted that they intended to start a civil war, vowed “there will be blood,” and called for the lynching of Democratic lawmakers. These men, who attacked police with bear spray, flag poles, and a metal whip and choked officers with their bare hands, are now back on the streets.

That means they are also headed home to their communities. Jackson Reffitt, who reported his father Guy’s participation in the January 6 riot and was a key witness against him, told reporters he fears for his life now that his father is free. Jackson recorded his father’s threat against talking to the authorities. “If you turn me in, you’re a traitor,” his father said, “and traitors get shot.” “I’m honestly flabbergasted that we’ve gotten to this point,” Jackson told CNN. “I’m terrified. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

The country’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, has spoken out against the pardons, as has the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote: “Law and order? Back the blue? What happened to that [Republican Party]?” “What happened [on January 6, 2021] is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy,” it wrote. “By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another.”

Mark Jacob of Stop the Presses commented: “Republicans—the Jailbreak Party.”

One of the pardoned individuals is already back in prison on a gun charge, illustrating, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance said, why Trump should have evaluated “prior criminal history, behavior in prison, [and] risk of dangerousness to the community following release. Now,” she said, “we all pay the price for him using the pardon power as a political reward.” On social media, Heather Thomas wrote: “So when all was said and done, the only country that opened [its] prisons and sent crazy murderous criminals to prey upon innocent American citizens, was us.”

That is as simple as it gets. Trump’s only been in office a few days but he has set up the mechanisms of his own self destruction. He got in by a narrow plurality, a situation which many presidents have faced, but in their case they have tried to unify the people in order to get things done. Not Trump. He’s still looking to antagonize and squandering what little political capital he has. Let’s just concentrate on a devastating win in 2026. And it starts with exposing Trump’s lies and how he has the media cowed. That’s the beginning.

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