We have a madman zealot at the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You well recall Cold Hard Kash vowing to get rid of Trump’s enemies if and when he ever became head of the FBI. Then during the Senate hearings Patel claimed, “there is no enemies list,” a sentiment which Pam Bondi echoed, not to worry about an enemies list. No such thing exists.
Another claim that Patel made was in a recent memorandum to the agents of the FBI, stating that the Deputy Director would be one of them, “an on-board, active Special Agent as has been the case for 117 years.” Later that same day Trump announced that podcaster Dan Bongino was appointed. The moral? Don’t believe a word Patel says and get ready for the worst.
Who’s in charge?
Putin?
Musk?
Heritage Foundation?
Satan?
Trump— SusanTweets 💙🇺🇸 (@susantweetsNY) February 24, 2025
I would say “All of the above.” Right under this tweet was a MAGAt who crowed, “We absolutely love your tears,” completely oblivious to the fact that these nets are cast wide and it’s already showing that Trump voters are affected by Musk rampaging through the government. We’re ALL affected and these clowns just can’t seem to get it. I guess America is going to have to learn the hard way. The only problem with that is that fully half of us knew all along what would happen in another Trump regime. And lo, it is happened as we prophecied:
On Thursday, Donald Trump apparatchik Kash Patel was confirmed by the United States Senate as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On Friday, Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, began to purge the military. The firing of the chairman of the joint chiefs got the most attention. But perhaps more significant was the unprecedented firing of the service JAGs in order to replace them with lawyers who, presumably, will find any and all of Trump’s orders to the military to be lawful.
On Saturday, Trump urged Elon Musk to “get more aggressive” in the project of destroying our nonpartisan civil service and converting it to an instrument of Trump.
And on Sunday, Dan Bongino was installed in the traditionally nonpolitical post of deputy director of the FBI. Bongino is a particularly clownish Trumpist, but as Charlie Sykes likes to point out, a clown with a flamethrower is still very dangerous. So are clowns at the top of our nation’s principal law enforcement agency who have utter disdain for the rule of law.
So Trump’s autocratic takeover is proceeding apace. His effort to break any institutional resistance and to ensure personal fealty throughout the executive branch is moving ahead. The power ministries—defense, law enforcement—are falling one by one.
As historian Robert Kagan explained on the Bulwark on Sunday podcast, we’re on a path towards autocracy, and it does us no good to continue to pretend it can’t happen here.
And as Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond told the New Yorker, one lesson of history is that once an autocratic takeover begins, the forces of autocracy can grow stronger very quickly.
So I conclude: It’s going to get worse before it gets better, assuming it does get better. And time is of the essence if we are to reverse course. As Diamond explains, “The earlier the intervention, the earlier the mobilization, the earlier the forthright exercise of countervailing power, the better the prospect of saving democracy.”
We don’t see a lot of opposition to Trump and his plan, is the problem, because the Republicans are complacent and terrified. ALL of these bad appointments could have been avoided by two or even one senator — if the person could have been found. The Republicans are terrified of their autocratic standard bearer. They have taken the principal of go along to get along to the point of abandoning their constitutional oath. That is taking it way too far. But this crowd is spineless or Trump would never have survived the first impeachment.
And Addison Mitchell McConnell bears a lot of the blame for that. Had he been of a different mettle, had he been Barry Goldwater, back in the Watergate era, McConnell, too, would have walked down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and told Trump that he was finished.
We don’t have the same kind of people in the Republican party anymore. This is not the party of Eisenhower. The Republicans been on the downhill slide since Nixon. And now that party has been subsumed by MAGA and MAGA’s leader is destroying democracy.
There is some evidence—from national polls to local town halls, from reports not just from blue states but from red states—of a public reaction against the Trump-Musk rampage through our government. But a gradual reaction may not be enough.
If the autocracy is allowed to settle in, increased public unhappiness may not matter much. Trump and Musk haven’t gone to all this trouble to control the military and law enforcement agencies in order to hand over power should they happen to become less popular and seem to be on course to lose an election. If Trump and Musk can continue down the path they’re on, they’ll use their control and intimidation of our institutions to put a weighty thumb on the scale in 2026 and certainly in 2028. There’ll be elections. But will they be free and fair? Is that something to which Trump and Musk are deeply committed?
I don’t pretend to know at this time where any of this goes next. Trump and Musk did quickly recoil from the backlash that started up when the third-rail, redline issues of Medicare and Social Security came up. But again, we don’t know what will be safe in the future, because we don’t know what Musk/Trump are going to undermine next and how the chips will fall. To know these things you need to be able to think five or six steps ahead, like a chess player, like Garry Kasparov.
What is the red line for the Republican Senate at this point? Just keep voting with Trump where they have authority and complain about him on things where they don't? Bongino appt on same day as voting with Russia & North Korea on UN motion. And? https://t.co/LAN6UfTenA
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) February 24, 2025
Kasparov’s vision is bleak but it is factual. And he should know the signs, he lived in Soviet Russia. The one thing that is positive and will be what saves us is that Trump won by 1.5% of the electorate. Not by 5% not by 20%, but by 1.5%. It was not a Johnson/Goldwater or a Reagan/Mondale wipeout. Had it been, I would be writing this blog from either Canada or Ireland, both places to which I could conceivably flee, although I don’t want to go anywhere.
So ignore Trump’s bullshit about “overwhelming mandate.” That’s flat out nonsense. Fully half of this nation despises this man because we see him for who and what he is. He’s fooled enough of the people enough of the time to where he’s gotten back in office. But he far and away has not fooled all of us. And the ones he has fooled are starting to get pissed at him in their own right. Therein lies democracy’s salvation.
And take heart that the conservative party in Germany, not the far-right loonies, the AfD, won election this past week. The Ancient Evil raises its head and then it is beaten back. And Trump may become synonymous with Hitler, depending upon how much damage he inflicts on his own people.
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Friends, we thank you if you have already donated. If you have not, and are able, we use the donations to pay the overhead until our traffic gets back up to normal again. Everything crashed after November 5, which is why you see people like Joy Reid getting fired and Jim Acosta resigning. We are at war in this country. Truth v. Lies. This blog will always bring you the truth as long as we have internet access and Kash Patel doesn’t carry us off. I have no idea how bizarre things could get. Truly I don’t. But we’re in it together. Ursula
Anyone who believes every German solider was a fervent believer in the Nazi Party should go and join the military. There you will find ten thousand reasons why people find themselves in uniform. The problem is when your choices get narrowed down. I was almost drafted for Vietnam when Nixon ended the college deferment. I would easily guess most soliders in actual battle would rather be somewhere else. Unfortunately all military organizations operate on a hierarchy of command. Trump now sits at the top. The rapist/alcoholic is his right hand guy. The law, as I’ve pointed out many times, has no intrinsic morality. It is just the rules laid down by those in power, backed by GUNS. FACT. So I can guess Trump will order his henchmen, when the time comes, to fire on protesters when the population really gets butt burned by his actions. Then he can declare martial law, suspend elections indefinitely, and make his dictatorship official. We then will have the same rights the slaves had for hundreds of years…none. The real question is whether this is a nation willing to fight for our freedom, or will we lay in the road and let the tanks roll over us? Much more evil has to transpire before that reality rears its ugly head. That being said…he’s only stolen the office for one month. Just imagine where we’ll be in a year!