But no—Trump TV is just his backup plan if he loses.
Besides, even if he is elected, and even if he wanted to do this, he couldn’t, you know, establish his own Trump TV network and shut down all other media in this country?
Who would stop him?
GODDAMNED FASCIST MORONS
Post date • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4
This is Friday, November 4, four days until the 2016 presidential election between Secretary Clinton, representing the Democrats, and Donald Trump, representing the Russians.
*
As we sit here waiting for today’s newest story about the FBI improperly, immorally, and illegally trying to interfere with next Tuesday’s elections, this question:
When should we reclassify the form of the government of the United States from “democracy” to “fascism”?
I mean, do we wait until the prospective inauguration next January of a president who doesn’t seem interested in the Constitution . . .
Or—if the FBI is already trying to help one party seize control of the government, technically, is that good enough to just cut to the chase and say we are already living in a goddamned fascist state?
Should we just admit that next Tuesday isn’t an election to try to prevent fascism and a dictatorship here, but one to try to get a woman elected who will fight back against the national detectives who have already decided that freedom is secondary to what they want and who they like?
The latest FBI nightmare broke last night—although a newer one might have broken since this commentary was posted. Reuters reported that the Bureau is so out of control that its hapless director, James Comey, shouted “Fire!” in a crowded theater a week ago today for fear that if he didn’t, somebody else in his clown college would, by means of a leak.
The news service also reported:
“Two law enforcement sources familiar with the FBI’s New York Field Office, which initially discovered the emails, said a faction of investigators based in the office is known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton.”
To me, this constitutes grounds to—you know—close the FBI’s New York Field Office, fire everybody in it, and bring in some placeholder agents to investigate actual—you know—crimes, while a special prosecutor investigates how many of the fired New York Field Office employees have violated the Hatch Act by acting politically during an election season.
And I mean if they’re acting politically for Trump or for Clinton. The moment a nationwide policing operation is corrupted by politics—right, left, or middle—it’s goddamned fascism.
But of course, all the other nightmares from the FBI suggest that they are not acting “left” or “middle.” Even earlier yesterday, the estimable Wayne Barrett of The Daily Beast underscored a timeline that nearly all of the rest of us missed.
As Barrett noted, last Wednesday, goddamned Rudy Giuliani—who has, face it, gone crazy—told Fox News that his boy Trump had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises. We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.”
Two days later—Comey’s statement.
Coincidence—no doubt.
*
Reporter Barrett also noted that Giuliani and his friend, former New York FBI chief James Kallstrom, had both boasted of being in contact with active FBI agents about Secretary Clinton. Active agents are not supposed to be talking to a man employed as a surrogate by a political campaign. Active agents are not supposed to be talking to anybody outside the agency about a presidential candidate. Active agents are certainly not supposed to be talking to a man like Kallstrom, who runs a charity that took $100,000 from Trump’s hissy-fit charity telethon during the Iowa Republican primary. It’s against the goddamned law!
Although why would they worry about the law? They’re goddamned FBI agents, and they think they should run this country without annoying interference from you or me or the goddamned laws.
Some of them also appear to be idiots.
Tuesday, The New York Times revealed that in August, the Bureau had descended to the stage of—to borrow Generalissimo Trump’s phrase—“All I know is what’s on the internet.”
The FBI’s poking around the Clinton Foundation, which found nothing, “was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book ‘Clinton Cash,’ according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case.”
Clinton Cash?!
Clinton Cash the book—written by Peter Schweizer, the editor of the right-wing nut-job goddamned fascist website Breitbart?
Or Clinton Cash the movie—produced by Stephen Bannon, then chairman of the right-wing nut-job goddamned fascist website Breitbart before he took a cut in prestige to run Trump’s goddamned campaign?
Basing an investigation on Clinton Cash?!
Because there weren’t any comic books available on the subject?
This is not just fascism—this is idiot fascism.
And it’s the one shining hope on the ever-darkening horizon.
Yes, Trump admires dictators and was saddened that arrested terror suspects get food or medical care, and he calls protests by abused minority groups “race riots,” and he wants to automatically deport any undocumented American merely accused of a crime, and he wants national stop-and-frisk and racial profiling and a religious test for people entering the country, and he wants to curb the First Amendment.
But he’s also . . . stupid!
Stupid enough to still say in Jacksonville yesterday, “I’m also honored to have the greatest temperament that anybody has”—as if he won an award for it, or there were a worldwide ranking of all seven billion people. Well, hell, maybe one of those voices in Trump’s head actually told him he had received an award, and all we should be hoping for is that one of the other voices in Trump’s head will tell him he has no effing clue what the word “temperament” means.
And while I won’t walk back an inch my contention that the best historical match to the campaign that this Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon in a suit is running is the one Adolf Hitler ran in 1932 and 1933, I’ll also continue to insist that Trump is still far dumber than he looks—and he looks radiantly dumb.
It was neither irony nor subtle strategy that made Trump send his spectacularly dense wife onto the campaign trail yesterday, where she vowed that as First Lady she would advocate against the parts of social media that are “too mean and too tough” and filled with insults based on “looks and intelligence,” and 318 million Americans simultaneously wondered if this woman had ever met her own husband and whether she was capable of understanding that if abusing people’s looks and intelligence on Twitter were a crime, he would be serving the first of 147 consecutive life sentences!
So, yes! We already live in a goddamned fascist state, with the FBI trying to choose the next president, and the would-be First Lady coming out and advocating some kind of First Amendment–altering monitoring of social media. And that should make you . . . angry!
To paraphrase one of the great speeches of film, all I know is that first you’ve got to get mad! You’ve gotta say, “I’m an American citizen, goddammit! My democracy has value!”
But when you get mad this weekend, get mad with gusto and vigor and confidence instead of depression or anxiety or panic!
These people—Trump, Giuliani, Bannon, Comey, the FBI, that Madame Tussauds version of a would-be First Lady—these people are fascists . . . fearful fascists.
But they are also morons.
And we can beat morons!
We can beat morons with the weapons still left to us—the ballot . . .
The ballot and your efforts to convince just one other person you know to vote in defense of their birthright and in defense of democracy, and against . . . morons!
Against goddamned fasc
ist morons!
ANOTHER FUCKING TRUMP LIE
Post date • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7
It was in The New York Times yesterday.
It was about Stephen Miller, senior Trump policy adviser, and Corey Lewandowski, fired Trump campaign manager, meeting with Trump campaign chairman Stephen Bannon.
It was Friday, October 28, Manchester, New Hampshire. And they had just read the letter from FBI Director Comey—the letter that was an attempt to throw the election to Trump, not the letter yesterday that was an attempt to save Comey’s ass and the asses of the fascists who have caused the FBI’s New York office to “go rogue.”
Adviser Miller and fired campaign manager Lewandowski and this baboon Bannon were trying to figure out what Trump should say in a speech just minutes away—when it happened.
As the Times wrote it:
“As the aides agonized over which words to feed into the teleprompter, they [became] so engrossed that a hot light set up next to the machine caused Mr. Bannon’s Kühl hiking pants to begin smoldering.
“‘I think my pant leg is on fire,’ he said after noticing the acrid smell.”
The chairman of this Friday the 13th Movie Marathon of a presidential campaign—and his pants are . . . literally . . . on fire.
Trump, when the go-to metaphor about lying . . . the go-to metaphor about political lying . . . suddenly happens, for reals . . . to your campaign chairman . . . in something just this side of spontaneous combustion . . .
Trump, when your campaign chairman’s clothing becomes “liar, liar, pants on fire”—imagery, analysis, probity have all lost their ability to correctly qualify or even quantify your campaign’s dishonesty. You have defied description. You have eluded art. You have beggared the imagination.
Trump: You, your campaign, and everything around you are, simply, a lie.
Another lie.
Another fucking Trump lie.
The first Comey letter?
The worst attempt to throw the election by a government agency since a morals charge against an LBJ aide in October 1964 was leaked . . . by—golly—the FBI!
And your exploitations of it—exploitations now rendered pathetic and transparent by Comey’s desperate second letter yesterday? Clinton’s going to be indicted. Clinton’s going to jail. Clinton would be impeached.
Each one of those . . . a lie.
Another lie.
Another fucking Trump lie!
*
And that was hardly the worst of the lies just this weekend!
On Friday, at a North Carolina Clinton rally, a protester interrupted President Obama. The crowd booed the older man, but the president told them—his own side—to “sit down and be quiet for a second.” He then told them to respect their elders and respect the man’s rights and the uniform he wore, which suggested he was a veteran.
That night in Pennsylvania, you, Trump, claimed that Obama “spent so much time screaming at a protester, and frankly it was a disgrace.”
A lie.
Another lie.
Another fucking Trump lie!
*
The next night in Nevada, you, Trump, upped the ante.
Now you said the president had yelled at multiple protesters:
“Wherever I go, I see him screaming at people that are protesters . . .”
And now, during the same speech, in Nevada, a guy unveils a Clinton poster and you say, “Oh, we have one of those guys from the Hillary Clinton campaign. How much are you being paid? Fifteen hundred dollars? All right, take him out.”
Your crowd promptly . . . takes him out.
He is jumped, punched; he says he was grabbed by . . . the groin.
And then, Trump, somebody says, “Gun!”
A lie.
Another lie.
Another fucking Trump lie!
There was no gun, just a guy with a sign getting beaten up by your crowd. Secret Service rushes you off the stage—fine, good, bless them, glad we haven’t yet descended to violence against candidates.
But while you are lying, Trump, about how Obama handled a protester, you incited your own crowd to beat up a protester.
And the special projects director of a group called Citizens for Trump promptly tweets, “Hillary ran away from rain today. Trump is back on stage minutes after an assassination attempt.”
A lie!
Another lie!
Another fucking Trump lie!
And that lie was promptly retweeted by your son Idiot Junior and your social media director, Dan Scavino.
Your people turned a guy with a sign into an assassination attempt.
And then at your next speech, Saturday night in Denver, the priest introducing you says you just survived attempted murder.
A lie!
Another lie!
Another fucking Trump lie!—from a priest!
The next morning, confronted on CNN with this succession of lies, your campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, refuses to back away from the lie that this was an assassination attempt instead of what it really was—a piece of cardboard—but she does complain about a list of CNN stories she doesn’t like—and offers to trade.
“You guys retract that, and I will give a call to Dan Scavino about the retweet.”
Not “Thank goodness there was no assassination attempt.” Just . . . a lie.
Another lie.
Another fucking Trump lie!
*
This weekend, Trump, was an unintentional and almost complete preview of what a Trump presidency would be like. You and your little fascist friends, like Rudy Giuliani, manipulating the levers of government to try to win elections. Presenting a universe designed to replace truth with imaginary menaces and phony assassination attempts and political prosecutions and the demonizing of criticism and the insane defiance of reality.
Lies instead of truth.
Lies instead of reality.
Lies instead of life.
*
And yet, with all of these lies, the biggest lie of the weekend, Trump, nearly flew under everybody’s radar.
It’s impossible to say for sure just how far you’d go to punish undocumented Americans. You’ve already insisted that millions will be deported. There are laws on the books right now about what happens to immigrants—even those who have become naturalized citizens—if they have lied in any way to gain citizenship. But the government rarely pursues these liars, unless they are involved in war crimes or terrorism.
But you, Trump, you want to expand prosecution of those who have worked here illegally.
Like, perhaps, the twenty-six-year-old woman who was revealed by the Associated Press on Friday night to have been here in 1996 on a visitor’s visa and yet worked here illegally, getting paid for ten modeling assignments that were not permitted by her visa.
Having violated immigration rules, Trump, she later became a citizen. If she tried this on the first day after you took over the government, you would presumably prosecute her and revoke her citizenship.
You may know her story.
She is your wife.
And her story . . . is a lie.
Another lie.
Another fucking Trump lie!
NATIONAL SUICIDE
Post date • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8
This is Tuesday, November 8 . . .
The day of the 2016 presidential election between Secretary Clinton, representing the Democrats, and Donald Trump, representing . . . national suicide.
*
The calendar says 2016, but for all intents and purposes, this might as well be November 8, 1864, because not since that day, exactly 152 years ago, have we Americans voted on whether or not . . . to put ourselves out of existence.
For all the existential national crises of the intervening century and a half s
ince Abraham Lincoln was reelected—none of those moments when the United States of America could have perished, included . . . national suicide.
That’s how deadly serious today is.
Go forward with Hillary Clinton, who at the worst will be a good president hamstrung by an obstructionist Congress and by the same kind of clutched-pearls, nonsensical investigations that hindered but never came close to defeating her husband . . .
Or put the full power of the government into the hands of an overwrought child, an amateur who believes he is God’s gift to mankind and always had too much money to be impacted by his own failures, a sadistic bully with a cult but not a clue, who indeed can be baited by a tweet, who spent much of the last three days of his campaign complaining that Beyoncé and Jay Z had appeared at a Clinton rally—and onto whom 40 percent or more of this country has projected its personal grievances and prejudices and fears, and many of whom support because of blinding and ill-timed party loyalty.
Stock markets will crash, the world balance of power will be ruined before the inauguration, Russia’s influence will immediately double, the Constitution’s guarantees will become coin flips, and the lifeblood of this country since before its founding—immigration—will be spilled, metaphorically or otherwise, on the streets.
All because of the ego of one American and the incapability of tens of millions of other Americans to understand that all that they like and love about our country can vanish nearly overnight—that a vote to burn it all down does not just mean the purge they want, of minorities and immigrants and the media and anybody else they want to blame—that it also means that their America burns; that their homes burn; that their possessions burn; that the futures of their children burn.
That’s how deadly serious today is.
*
Most Americans who know our history think of the 1860 presidential election as the last one that chose life or death for the country. The famous Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Tennessee senator John Bell, Vice President John C. Breckenridge—who was pro-slavery—against an obscure ex-congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln.
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 12