Image by Pau Casals.
It’s almost hard to fathom the level of rabid derangement exhibited by Donald Trump and his Republi-Nazi minions across the first 100 days of Trump’s second nightmare presidency.
“A Dangerous Dictator”
Reflecting mass disgust over his chaotic tariffs and his war on basic democratic rights and the rule of law, Trump’s approval rating has fallen further and faster than any previous president in their first 100 days. A Washington Post survey finds his approval down to 39%. An NPR/PBS/Marist poll finds that nearly half of Americans give Trump47 the grade of F and less than a quarter gave him an A. Half of the nation’s “independents” said he deserves an F.
A Public Religion Research Institute poll reported by Axios yesterday finds that 52% of Americans agree with the statement that “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.” This view is shared by 87% of Democrats, 56% of Independents, but just 17% of Republicans, 54% of whom give Trump an A for his first disastrous hundred days.
Trump’s response to his 100-day polling numbers is what we’ve come to expect from the demented, orange-sprayed wannabe dictator-for-life. Two days ago, he accused pollsters, including even those with Fatherland/FOX News, of being “frauds” with “Trump Derangement Syndrome” who should be “investigated for election fraud.” He repeated his recurrent insane charge that the nation’s thoroughly capitalist news outlets are radical left “enemies of the people.”
“I Could Get Him Back But Won’t”
“Dangerous dictator”?
Oh, indeed. Trump, whose underlings have absurdly said that he lacks the power to bring Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia back from a prison in El Salvador to the United States, told ABC respondent Terry Moran two nights ago that he does in fact possess the capacity to retrieve the wrongly deported Maryland father of three but is unwilling to do so because he believes Garc is a gang member.
Never mind the Trump regime’s failure to provide any evidence of Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang affiliation.
Never mind an October 2019 US federal court ruling that Abrego Garcia could not be deported back to El Salvador because he faced a credible fear of persecution there.
And above all, never mind the recent 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia.
Trump’s ongoing abject defiance of the judiciary has now openly reached up the highest court in the land – a court he and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell helped craft along far-right lines during his first presidency.
Trump’s fascist contempt for due process was also displayed during a recent interview with reporters in which he opined on his wish to bypass immigration courts in carrying out his mass deportation program. “I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” Trump said.
Leaving aside the important fact that immigration courts conduct hearings, not trials, Trump here menacingly treated due process and habeas corpus, a basic democratic right encoded in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, as an inconvenient luxury. That is the perspective of a dangerous dictator.
Rendition, Not Deportation
The media and US politicians need to stop calling Trump’s extrajudicial kidnappings and removal from the US of Latin American and other immigrants “deportations.” Deportation is a process that includes hearings before immigrant judges. In the cases of Abrego Garcia and hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants Trump has sent to the Salvadoran torture prison in the name of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, the Trump fascist regime has actually carried out renditions.
Mahmoud Khalil and numerous international students and academics detained by the dangerous dictator Trump for exercising their First Amendment free speech rights in opposition to Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza have also been denied due process.
USA, USA!
Yesterday I looked briefly at Fatherland News’ broadcast of Trump’s 100 day hate rally outside Detroit. In the part I saw, the dangerous dictator put up dystopian video depicting and celebrating the dehumanizing rendition of extrajudicially kidnapped brown-skinned immigrants to a torture-chamber prison in El Salvador. Trump’s crowd of frothing white MAGAts chanted “USA, USA!” while watching Salvadoran prison guards force their captives into crouched walks and head-shavings.
Trump followed this chilling display by insanely claiming that US judges who have issued orders trying to somewhat constrain his criminal rendition program of being “communists.” He absurdly accused these judges of engaging in unjust interference with his Fuhrer-like prerogatives, supposedly approved by the American people in a “landslide” election victory last fall. (In fact, Trump’s Electoral College victory rested on the votes of just 0.15% of the national electorate and would not have occurred without stepped up racist vote suppression.)
In the interest of time, space, and my own mental health, I won’t go into the large number of other ridiculous statements Trump made in his rambling 100 Days oration, including the claim that his reckless tariff policy will spark an American manufacturing renaissance.
Retribution: 100-Plus Targets in the Dangerous Dictator’s First 100 Days
Dangerous dictator? Damn straight. An NPR report released yesterday reveals that “Trump has used government powers to target more than 100 perceived enemies” in his first 100 days:
‘When Donald Trump campaigned for president, he promised his followers payback. ‘I am your retribution,’ he said in 2023. It was not just campaign rhetoric. In the first 100 days of his second term, President Trump has moved aggressively to fulfill his promise of retribution against an extraordinary range of individuals and organizations, targeting political opponents, news organizations, former government officials, universities, international student protesters and law firms….the administration is using a vast array of government powers to launch criminal investigations, sweep people into ICE detention, ban companies from receiving federal contracts, revoke security clearances and fire employees.
On Wednesday, April 9, Trump ordered criminal probes into two former Trump administration officials, saying one was “guilty of treason” — a crime, Trump has noted, that is punishable by death. That same day, he signed an order targeting a law firm for alleged “election misconduct.”
The next day, Thursday, Trump’s former personal attorney, who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, announced criminal investigations into the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general over immigration policies.
That Friday, his administration sent a series of sweeping demands to Harvard University, including an end to diversity programs, audits to ensure “viewpoint diversity” and bans on certain student groups.
This agenda of retribution has defined the early days of the second Trump administration. The list of targets now exceeds 100, according to NPR’s review, ranging from some of the United States’ most prominent Democratic politicians to international students who were unknown to the general public. The FBI’s arrest last week of a Wisconsin judge for allegedly obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement has raised additional concerns that the administration may also be targeting members of the judiciary. While discussing the case on Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi described some judges as “deranged” and added “no one is above the law.”’
No one, that is, except her malignant fascist Dear Leader, who sits in the White House despite his monumentally criminal attempt to subvert and overthrow a presidential election in 2020 and 2021. Trump has fired Justice Department lawyers for following the previous Attorney General’s order to investigate and prosecute the fascist thugs who physically assaulted the US Capitol at Trump’s behest on January 6. Trump has pardoned 1500-plus January 6 criminals and granted clemency to the insurrection’s two top fascist paramilitary leaders, both of whom were serving long prison sentences. The pardons and clemency orders were tellingly granted on the very first day of Trump’s second and worse fascist presidency.
“Obey the Law”
It’s not just judges that the dangerous dictator and his team of Amerikaner fascist oppressors wants to bring to heel on the path to his deportation/rendition agenda. Two days ago, “El Maligno” put his eerily Satanic signature on an executive order that seeks to identify and potentially cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities, part of a broader campaign to bully jurisdictions that refuse full cooperation with the White House’s fascist war on immigrants. “It’s quite simple,” said Mein Trumpf’s cultish Christian fascist press secretary Karoline Leavitt: “Obey the law, respect the law” – an astonishing statement given Trump’s felon status, his big criminal record, and his brazen defiance of the rule of law on one policy matter after another.
Relentless Attacks
The attacks seem endless and relentless. The dangerous dictator has attacked the media (including wild lawsuits against CBS, ABC, and the Des Moines Register for reporting and commentary he found politically objectionable), leading American universities (pulling billions of federal of dollars from elite higher educational institutions that don’t align with the administration’s revanchist goals), leading law firms (denying access to the federal courts to firms that don’t align with those goals), voting rights (potentially disenfranchising millions of voters by issuing an executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration), police reform (an executive order shit out by Trump two days ago claims to terminate all federal consent decrees mandating reform efforts by police departments across the country), and….the list goes on and on and on.
Cowardly Oligarchs
Bernie Sanders is failing to meet the moment by focusing so hard on “billionaire class oligarchy,” which we’ve had for at least fourteen decades, when what’s distinctive about the current regime is the fascism. Stul, it’s worth noting the Vichy-like cowardice and accommodation of Trump being exhibited by billionaire backers and enablers. Jeff Bezos yesterday ordered his firm Amazon not to display the impact of Trump’s insane fascist tariffs next to the price of products on its e-commerce site. The order came after Dear Leader Donald got “pissed” and called up Bezos to let him know who’s in charge.
Robert Reich made an important observation two days ago: “The leaders of American business — starting with Jamie Dimon, the chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who in normal times has assumed the role of spokesperson for American business — have been conspicuously silent. Of course they fear Trump’s retribution. Of course, they hope for a huge tax cut. But these hardly excuse their seeming assent to the destruction of American democracy and our economy.”
Big Fascist Chill at “60 Minutes”
An especially chilling indication of how bad things could get was viewed by millions last Sunday night. Scott Pelley, a reporter with CBS’s venerable news show “60 Minutes,” announced that the broadcast’s longtime producer had recently resigned because he no longer possesses editorial independence thanks to CBS parent company Paramount’s fear the Trump could his use his power over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cancel its hoped-for merger with the media giant Skydance. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” Pelley told viewers, and “Bill lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
The States and the High Trump Court
Don’t forget the states, many of which have, over the years, emerged as little fascist laboratories for the national fascist project. One among many examples: the bright flashing red state of Indiana is currently executing what amounts to a thoroughgoing takeover of the state’s universities including the effective cancellation of faculty tenure.
Never forget the critical role of the far-right Trump-Roberts US Supreme Court. Last year the fascist Supreme Court majority approved Trump’s right to run for the presidency despite the US Constitution’s explicit banning (in section 3 of the 14th Amendment) of former insurrectionists from public office (unless that disability is removed by Congress). Most menacingly of all, that Court granted Trump blanket immunity from criminal prosecution for any transgression he commits – nor matter how egregious – under the official imprimatur of the presidency.
This far right high Trump Court has horrifyingly agreed to hear the Trump fascist regime’s case for its day one executive order claiming to cancel the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to all persons born in the United States. The hearing begins in two weeks on May 15th. It is a sign of the dark times we now inhabit that Trump is being permitted to actually and potentially change the constitutional structure of the United States without initiating the actual constitutional process for the making of constitutional amendments.
Trump’s Gotta Go
Imagine what this horrific fascist regime would do with a new terror attack on US soil or an actual war involving US troops and major antiwar protests. We are far too close to fascist midnight here in the world’s most dangerous and lethal country – a grave menace not just for Americans but indeed for all of humanity.
This morning (I am writing on Thursday, May 1), I heard Mary Dixon, a newsreader with Chicago’s NPR affiliate (WBEZ) give the following statement on the purpose behind today’s planned big May Day protests: “to push back against the billionaire class takeover of our government.” Ms. Dixon then interviewed the editor of the libera-left journal In These Times, who spoke about and against something rather different than Sanders’ oligarchy – Trump’s executive order targeting sanctuary cities for protecting immigrants against deportation and rendition.
Insofar as the WBEZ talking head’s characterization of May Day protest organizers’ goal is accurate, I’d have to say the aim goal is far short of the current historical moment. As I wrote above, there’s nothing remotely new about oligarchic billionaire class rule in the USA (please see my 2014 book They Rule: The 1 v. Democracy) and what’s distinctive about the current period is the attempted consolidation of a new form of governance – fascism, Amerikaner-style – in the US, something far too many oligarchs would be fine with, to be sure. Those reigning parasites need to face something far more militant than mere “pushback” – something along the lines of “expropriate the expropriators.” We badly need the beginning of a revolutionary movement and process to move beyond the exterminist and apocalyptic path of capitalism-imperialism and the intimately related pathologies of white supremacism, patriarchy, xenophobic nationalism, ecocide, religious fundamentalism, and militarism/war.
But guess what? It’s pretty damn difficult to move forward on that agenda with arch-counterrevolutionary fascism in power. Everything goes underground under the iron heel of fascism, which is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie/capitalism without the outer shell and sinews and substance of previously normative rule of law and electoral democracy: the open rule of “ruthless men” with no pretense of civic concern and decency.
So Trump’s gotta go, for starters. Now. Future elections are set far too late and the Republifascists don’t accept election outcomes they don’t like anyway. It’s questionable that the Reichmost party can replace Trump with a leader who has the same perversely potent relationship with the fascist base that Trump has so sickeningly developed with millions of MAGAts over the last nine years. But even if the Republifascists could find Trump expendable, they and all of us would be looking at a whole new political situation and balance of forces in the wake of a great popular movement that united across social divisions and disparate issues to force him out. The urgently needed development of a mass movement with the capacity to unseat a president of the United States – and not merely to “push back” against different and selected aspects of his fascist/authoritarian/“oligarchy” agenda could be a radical game-changer for US society and politics. It could set new terms for the nation and world’s moral and political life, bringing “the power of the people” to bear and to the forefront in ways more than coincidentally consistent with the radical political and societal restructuring we so desperately need.
Let’s find out. In the meantime, in “the fierce urgency of now” (Martin Luther King, Jr.), the goal of removing Trump from power as soon as humanly possible through mass nonviolent action is worthy indeed. All who can be united under this goal – all who abhor the potential consolidation of fascism atop the world’s most dangerous nation – need to join hands across their differences in a “national civic uprising” (David Brooks) to begin to put out the five-alarm fire of fascism by removing from power the man who Noam Chomsky rightly described five years ago as “the most dangerous criminal in human history.”
