Even though the number of dying Trump followers increases daily, his coup rolls on.
Now, in the Trump shadow-universe he’s created a shadow-government for his shadow-fans. It’s not as wacky an idea as it seems and suggests Trump’s solidifying his control over the GOP going toward 2022 and 2024.
Last November, on election day, I suggested on my radio program that if the Biden ticket were to lose (something we did not expect, but after 2016 who knows what can happen) they should set up a “shadow government” to be a visible and ongoing opposition and alternative to Trump’s second term.
Apparently, somebody on Team Trump was listening. Or they copped the idea from the same place I did — the UK, Canada and Australia, all countries where the party out of power assembles a “shadow government” with a “shadow cabinet” that regularly informs voters of how and why they’d run the government differently were they in power.
Friday, Trump’s last Chief of Staff, former Tea Party Congressman Mark Meadows, appeared on a fringe rightwing TV internet show and repeatedly referred to Trump’s “Cabinet.”
“We met with several of our Cabinet members tonight,” Meadows said. “We actually had a follow-up … meeting with some of our Cabinet members.”
Referring to Trump as “the president,” just as Trump does himself in the daily fundraising emails I receive from him, Meadows added, Trump is “a president who is fully engaged, highly focused and remaining on task.”
In other words, the coup rolls on.
Voltaire’s old quote, that “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” is playing out right in front of our eyes.
People are dying for Trump, getting into fights with hospital staff as they’re about to be intubated, insisting that Trump was right when he said that Democrats’ reaction to the growing pandemic was just their latest “hoax.”
Jim Jones, as I noted in an earlier op-ed, was a piker by today’s standards: he only convinced 913 people to commit suicide. Trump has convinced millions to expose themselves to a deadly virus, and at least 400,000 who didn’t need to die are now no longer with us.
Across America mini-Jim Jones’ like Pastor Greg Locke are rising up to preach the gospel that vaccines and masks are the work of the devil and getting sick or dying for Trump is a sure path to heaven.
Meanwhile, the coup rolls on.
Florida, although not alone among Red states and counties in encouraging death and disease, is apparently leading the nation both in megalomaniac preachers and Covid deaths.
Ron DeSantis, who won his election by only 32,463 votes (after his party purged more than 7 percent — over one million — of Florida’s voters from the rolls in the preceding 2 years) has now overseen the death of over 39,000 people in his state alone.
And now DeSantis, apparently trying to live up to his moniker of “DeathSantis,” has issued an executive order forbidding Florida public schools from requiring schoolchildren to wear masks. Voltaire had nothing on this guy, and he’s #2 behind Trump in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
But no matter how many they kill, the coup rolls on.
It also turns out sedition and treason are pretty profitable. Bizarre scam notwithstanding, Trump, DeSantis and the entire Trump contingent in Congress are making big bucks off saying that avoiding Covid is for pansies and that Trump actually won an election he lost by 7 million votes in 2020.
Trump is sitting on over $100 million from his grift just in the 6 months since he lost the election, and DeSantis has raised over $44 million. Marjorie Traitor Greene raked in over $3 million in the first three months of this year while she did virtually nothing in Congress (having lost all her committee assignments for lying to voters) while other “Trumpy” Republicans are rolling in the dough as well.
As they drain their followers of cash, the coup rolls on.
But no part of the Trump scam is as troubling as is its potential to ultimately end democracy in this country (and, eventually, around the world).
A recent CBS News poll found that about half of all registered Republican voters thought rigging elections for their own party was a better idea than promoting ideas that would win elections.
“Almost half of Republicans admit they’re ready to ditch democracy” read the ominous headline in The Washington Post.
The rightwing billionaire oligarchs’ best bet for eliminating democracy and keeping their regulations and taxes low is to make sure Trump’s coup rolls on.
While “shadow” governments in the other three big English-speaking countries are all designed to simply inform voters about the differences between the parties and how the out-of-power party would govern given current circumstances, Trump’s shadow Cabinet is part of his ongoing coup attempt.
He began his coup attempt the day after he lost the election, when he publicly repudiated the election results and began harassing the Department of Justice and multiple Secretaries of State and election officials to declare that Biden only won because of “fraud.”
All he needed, he told them, was for the DOJ to declare official doubts about the outcome and he and his “R congressmen” would take care of the rest.
“Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Trump told then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.
Rosen and the DOJ didn’t go along, so Trump simply switched strategy from coercion to an outright murder attempt on Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi as his coup rolled on.
The high point of his coup was on January 6th when he encouraged his followers to attack the Capitol to “stop the steal,” and refused to mobilize the DC National Guard until long after his terrorists had left the building. (Unlike every other state, the DC National Guard can only be activated by the President because DC has no governor.)
Making sure the coup never ends but keeps rolling on is probably Trump’s best chance to avoid going to jail for crimes ranging from rape to bank fraud, sedition and treason. Running for office gives him both some political and legal immunities and access to more cash, so he’s going to persist and amp up the volume of his efforts.
But Trump’s neofascist coup is no longer limited to himself and his fellow DC insiders.
State after state is being taken over from the ground up by Trump supporters who want to end multiracial democracy in America and turns us back into a white-supremacist ethnostate.
From Oregon to Florida and all across states in between, local school boards are being seized by anti-American supporters of the former reality TV star.
The world watches with horror and our actual president, Joe Biden, finds himself, along with Democrats in Congress, frustrated at every turn by Trump’s loyalists and a few Democratic senators who are taking money from the same billionaires who fund the GOP and empower Trump.
Meanwhile, the coup rolls on.
Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
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In addition to covering the widespread onslaught of draconian policy, we’re shoring up our resources for what might come next for progressive media: bad-faith lawsuits from far-right ghouls, legislation that seeks to strip us of our ability to receive tax-deductible donations, and further throttling of our reach on social media platforms owned by Trump’s sycophants.
We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
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