ARE WE NOT DONE WITH THIS? TRUMP AND CRONIES JUST KEEP POURING ON THEIR FOUL ABUSE OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM AND AMERICAN PEOPLE
Dr. Common Good
Yes, it is tiring to keep repeating, or should I say, expanding, the list of Trump’s daily outrages against democracy and any sense that we have a country run and governed by people who are part of the American tradition. But I must. Here is a recent litany:
- In one of the most mind-bending and twisted actions by any president, ever, Trump, as president and head of the executive branch, filed a lawsuit back in January against the IRS and Treasury Department (which are of course part of the executive branch) and then tried to “settle” it. I refer here to the $10 billion dollar lawsuit for allegedly allowing a contractor to release tax information of his. (The individual who released that information, by the way, was prosecuted and jailed for 5 years.) This was followed by the charade of “dropping” the lawsuit in lieu of a $1.8 “settlement,” in other words, this was a fraudulent “settlement” with himself which would create a fund to compensate January 6 rioters. Piling on the surreal was the component of the settlement that would bar the IRS from auditing or prosecuting President Trump, his family members, and affiliated businesses for tax returns filed prior to the agreement. Wow. The brazenness. Thankfully, a federal judge ultimately declared this scheme “part of Mr. Trump’s pattern of misusing the courts to serve political purposes,” stating that Trump and company “pursued this lawsuit in bad faith for the improper purpose of dishonestly advancing a political narrative.”
- Trump is pushing to have his acting Attorney General (AG) and former personal attorney Todd Blanche confirmed as the permanent AG. Yet Blanche is accused by multiple judges, in multiple proceedings, of bad faith and/or vindictive prosecution (e.g., the case against James Comey). The judge in the IRS case referred Trump’s personal attorneys to the Florida Bar for disciplinary action. Blanche and Assistant AG Stanley Woodward were similarly referred for discipline to the State Bar of New York and District of Columbia Bar.
- In June, on the heels of another shortsighted Supreme Court decision, Trump fired remaining Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission and accepted the resignation of the one remaining Republican member, leaving that Commission essentially nonexistent. This is yet another notch in his strategy to eviscerate election monitoring and open the door for whatever means he chooses to exert control over the midterm elections. As part of the same effort, Trump is also trying to get an emergency Supreme Court hearing for his bid to block mail-in voting, which was ruled down by two different Federal courts.
- More ICE shootings, all with the same excuse — Does anyone believe that the recent ICE killings in Maine and Texas happened because the drivers really tried to “weaponize” their vehicles and harm the ICE officers? That is of course the same excuse used in the Minneapolis shootings. And, like those shootings, there is no evidence at all that any such “weaponizing” occurred. It is the Trump/DHS’ shameless, go-to lie.
- A dizzying litany of continued corruption, conflict of interest, and profiting off the Presidency by Trump, his family, and cronies. A few examples: 1) In April, Trump’s sons acquired stakes in a construction firm that merged with a mining company right after it secured $1.6 billion in U.S. government backing for a Kazakhstan tungsten project; 2) In May, the U.S. Air Force signed a contract to buy drones from Powerus, a company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump; 3) in June, Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, intervened to secure a $620 million Pentagon loan to Vulcan Elements, a small startup company, just a few months after Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm acquired a stake in the company; 4) the infamous White House Ballroom, which Trump promised would not involve any taxpayer funding, is now costing three times what he promised and will likely use up to $1 billion from taxpayers, per a Republican proposal; 5) the also-infamous Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool re-do, which was done via a no-bid contract to a Trump friend and supporter who had no experience with such work – and we know what a disaster that has been, costing taxpayers at least $16 million; 6) in July, a South Korean aluminum company paid $2 million to Trump’s holding company as a bribe to hold off on a trade investigation – actually a drop in the bucket when considering that at least $125 million in payments went to Trump’s holding company just last year directly from foreign sources in Britain, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Oman, the Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates; 7) as discovered in a CNN investigation (July 16), Trump has promoted more than 20 companies on his Truth Social account days after buying stock in those firms – even announcing government actions that could benefit those companies (he claims that his trades are conducted by “outside financial managers,” but he has not put his assets in a blind trust, as other presidents have); 8) the Qatari Air Force One scandal, with a luxury 747 given to Trump as a “gift,” yet costing taxpayers up to $1 billion to retrofit for use (while Trump is in office) as Air Force One; 9) and just today, news reports of a planned $20 billion FIFA deal with a Jared Kushner-backed operation to run the World Cup. This is just a selection. There is much more.
- Attempted suppression of the press, by threatening to subpoena journalists, forcing media companies to censor news or other content critical of Trump under threat of non-renewal of licenses and by other means, and restricting journalist access to briefings.
- Venezuelan oil exports, controlled by the Trump administration since the attack in January, have brought in around $8 billion according to a recent Council on Foreign Relations analysis. There has been no transparency or oversight about where all this money has gone.
- Continued prosecution of a disastrous, illegal war on Iran, which Trump began without cause and without any strategy other than ludicrously false and bloated social media posturing, costing the American taxpayer at least $35 billion (though most likely a lot more), and resulting in thousands of casualties as well as serious damage to alliances and global relationships.
- And while so many people face rising costs of living from Trump tariffs, loss of access to health care because of Trump’s tax giveaways to the wealthy, disruptions in business (again, because of Trump’s tariffs and war on Iran), and violations of basic rights from Trump’s ICE, Trump himself fritters away American’s hard-earned tax dollars on vanity projects in the nation’s capital, renaming buildings for himself, taking over a public golf course so he can create a Trump-branded luxury property, destroying White House grounds, and much more.
On the 250th anniversary of the United States, it is way past time to recognize the existential threat posed by this poisonous presidency and its parasitic sycophants and toadies. IT IS TRULY, ONCE AGAIN, PAUL REVERE TIME!