Enter The Trump Kakistocracy…

[PenguinBoss]

13 minutes ago, katt_goddess said:

No no no, we said we'd like to skip to what happens to dictators in the END. 

He'd be dead long before the regime fell. I don't want to have to settle for Trump Jr.

[katt_goddess]

1 minute ago, PenguinBoss said:

He'd be dead long before the regime fell. I don't want to have to settle for Trump Jr.

I feel like if you toss a bag of blow out in front of a crowd of his biggest bigshot idiots, they'll take each other out trying to get the biggest amount. 

[Jman]

This is a cult, not a regime.  And cults don’t last without their Dear Leader.

[naraku360]

20 minutes ago, Jman said:

This is a cult, not a regime.  And cults don’t last without their Dear Leader.

Scientology.

[discolé monade]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

And this is exactly why I think there will either be a midterm landslide or a lot of violence.  Because something WILL break.

something is going to break. 

i just hope i'm aligned correctly to help as many people as i can. 

[Jman]

10 minutes ago, naraku360 said:

Scientology.

Surprisingly shrinking as an influential force in Hollywood, although unlike Trump, Hubbard did groom and de facto appoint his successor in David Miscavige, while Trump is too egotistical to establish a successor that his cult will accept.

Makes me want to watch Going Clear again.

Edited yesterday at 01:04 AM by Jman

[tsar4]

1 hour ago, PenguinBoss said:

Finally saying what the rest of us already knew he believed.

Well, he does have the Guard cleaning up DC.  There are videos of guys in fatigues with plastic bags picking up trash.

 

Edited yesterday at 01:06 AM by tsar4

[tsar4]

 

[discolé monade]

10 minutes ago, tsar4 said:

Well, he does have the Guard cleaning up DC.  There are videos of guys in fatigues with plastic bags picking up trash.

 

CO's seeing videos/pics/social media of guardsman just standing around. this came straight down the chain of command. MAKE THEM CLEAN AGAIN!

lmao

mess and maintenance week. lololol

a garden party indeed. 

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

[Jman]

14 minutes ago, tsar4 said:

Well, he does have the Guard cleaning up DC.  There are videos of guys in fatigues with plastic bags picking up trash.

 

To be fair this is probably the most productive thing they’ve done.  I just don’t think you needed to activate the National Guard for a big clean up project when it would have been cheaper to hire more city workers.

[tsar4]

11 minutes ago, discolé monade said:

CO's seeing videos/pics/social media of guardsman just standing around. this came straight down the chain of command. MAKE THEM CLEAN AGAIN!

lmao

mess and maintenance week. lololol

a garden party indeed. 

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

"MAKE WORK DAY!"

[PenguinBoss]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

This is a cult, not a regime.  And cults don’t last without their Dear Leader.

They just need the worst person in the room, and there's always one of 'em.

[Jman]

1 minute ago, PenguinBoss said:

They just need the worst person in the room, and there's always one of 'em.

They’re going to kill each other for the crown.  Especially since Rupert won’t be around to play kingmaker either.

[scoobdog]

16 minutes ago, PenguinBoss said:

They just need the worst person in the room, and there's always one of 'em.

Cults-of-personality are not like their historical Roman namesakes even if they’re derived from them (by way of Julius Caesar).  Trump is an unusual amalgamation of personality, bigotry/hatred and incompetence, so the disjointed coalition he heads tends to be galvanized, directionless, and distinctly not unified.  Jman is right that the coalition will dissolve as soon as he’s gone, but that does not mean the mechanism for the dissolution of our democratically cherished freedom, hyperpatisanship, will allow us to undo the damage readily.

[rpgamer]

While I don't entirely disagree (largely out of no desire to really think about or predict the future..), I would at least add the consideration that the mechanisms and ideologies that put Trump in this position were all in place long before Trump was a factor.

What the cult stands to lose the most of is media attention, and in effect, mass reach. But, as a whole, the cult leadership is still full to the brim with people in and adjacent to power enough to continue pushing their agenda, step by step.

This doesn't end with Trump. It just goes back to being quieter/slower. More erosions while they wait and set up for the next big destruction.

But, I mean, optimistically, if Fox News can be dismantled in the near future when the owner dies, maybe some of that effort can lose its effect..

Idk. I just sorta think Trump is still largely just a symptom of a country that has been fed and fueled on division, and that's not going to just stop and go away when the mouthpiece dies.

But also a disclaimer that I know a lot fuckin less about a lot of this than most of you. And am also often a pessimist. And sometimes dumb as fuck. And sometimes doomer. So

[Raptorpat]

 

[discolé monade]

Denmark summons U.S. envoy over Greenland influence campaign with Trump ties

[scoobdog]

13 hours ago, rpgamer said:

While I don't entirely disagree (largely out of no desire to really think about or predict the future..), I would at least add the consideration that the mechanisms and ideologies that put Trump in this position were all in place long before Trump was a factor.

What the cult stands to lose the most of is media attention, and in effect, mass reach. But, as a whole, the cult leadership is still full to the brim with people in and adjacent to power enough to continue pushing their agenda, step by step.

This doesn't end with Trump. It just goes back to being quieter/slower. More erosions while they wait and set up for the next big destruction.

But, I mean, optimistically, if Fox News can be dismantled in the near future when the owner dies, maybe some of that effort can lose its effect..

Idk. I just sorta think Trump is still largely just a symptom of a country that has been fed and fueled on division, and that's not going to just stop and go away when the mouthpiece dies.

But also a disclaimer that I know a lot fuckin less about a lot of this than most of you. And am also often a pessimist. And sometimes dumb as fuck. And sometimes doomer. So

To be blunt - without Trump, the bigotry he espouses would be kept at bay.

I get the pessimism and I certainly have no answers for what the rise of hard right idealization has on our institutions.  However, the sole reason it can be implemented is because Trump is an effective focal point at the nexus of power.  No one like Trump has been elected in the modern Union (basically since the end of the Civil War) - the demagoguery he employs rarely works outside of small political systems or in times of extreme instability (like a World War) and that's emblematic of how unique he is.  He can say absolutely wretched things to POC and still convince enough of them to elect him because he's cultivated a screen presence and a delivery that remains disarming despite its perilousness.  He knows how to command a stage, despite being senile.  He's smart enough to allow others to speak on his behalf when it's convenient for him.  He instinctively shows up at places, like sporting events, where his visibility is irrespective of his popularity.  At the same time, he's driven solely by an infantile desire to be praised. You just can't overstate how much or a unicorn he is in that dastardly respect - he's a convenient and uniquely versatile tool for literally anyone who can gain access to him.

At the same time, the likes of Fox News never existed to create this kind of dystopian future.  Murdoch had a model that worked within the guardrails of civilized society even when his on screen personalities were anything but.  He could platform extreme and thinly veiled bigotry without much danger to that having an impact on the everyday lives of the people who tuned into it.  It's something of a Pandora's Box - a naive and stupid Trump changes the complexion of this coverage by amplifying it in ways that it was never intended to be amplified.  The thing is, no one else has the ability to do so.  JD Vance lack any charm whatsoever.  Noem and Bondi are almost exclusively visual props.  The only other person with a platform that rivals Trumps is on the outs, and isn't even eligible to hold the highest office.

This is all to say that Trump isn't so much a symptom.  The awfulness he represents has always existed and will always exist, so it's misleading to suggest that he might be emblematic of a greater malaise that needs to be healed.  There is no question that polarization is a huge issue, but it's a naturally occurring condition that tends to will dissipate no matter how terrifying it is.  It only becomes a problem when its checks are removed.

 

[Raptorpat]

 

[1pooh4u]

Good read by Dr Heather Cox Richardson 

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/august-26-2025?r=kmtvs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
 

Today, for the second time in as many days, President Donald J. Trump suggested that Americans want a dictator. In a meeting in the Cabinet Room that lasted more than three hours, during which he listened to the fulsome praise of his cabinet officers and kept his hands below the table, seemingly to hide the bad bruising on his right hand, Trump said: “The line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, ‘You know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator.’”

With Trump underwater on all his key issues and his job approval rating dismal, the administration appears to be trying to create support for Trump by insisting that the U.S. is mired in crime and he alone can solve the problem. The administration’s solution is not to fund violence prevention programs and local law enforcement—two methods proven to work—but instead to use the power of the government to terrorize communities.

There is a frantic feel to that effort, as if they feel they must convince Americans to fear crime more than they fear rising grocery prices or having to take their children past police checkpoints on their way to school.

Last night, speaking with personality Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, widely believed to be the person behind the draconian immigration raids in the country, seemed to be angry that Washingtonians weren’t sufficiently grateful for Trump’s takeover of the streets. But Miller indicated that the administration is really focused on splitting Republicans and Democrats who disapprove of the administration's policies, demonizing the Democrats.

Miller asserted to Hannity that the “Democrat Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization…. The Democrat Party, Sean, that exists today,” he said, “it disgusts me.”

Now, with Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker taking a stand against the deployment of troops in Chicago, Trump appears to be nervous about sending troops on his own hook and instead trying to pressure Pritzker to ask for them. In the Oval Office today, he complained that Pritzker wasn’t asking for troops, and on social media tonight he called Pritzker “an incompetent Governor who should call me for HELP.”

And yet, for all their talk of dispatching soldiers to combat crime, National Guard troops today were picking up trash in Washington, D.C., and working on dozens of “beautification and restoration" projects.

The administration’s focus on crime to win back support for the president is going to have to overcome increasing uneasiness with Trump’s attempt to take control of the nation’s monetary policy.

In a letter posted to social media last night at 8:02 Eastern Time, President Donald J. Trump announced that he was removing Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook from her position “for cause.” That cause, he claimed, was the allegation from Trump loyalist William Pulte, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, that Cook had made false statements on a mortgage years ago. With Pulte’s help, the administration has gone after a number of Democrats with such allegations. Cook has not been charged with any crime. Historically, “for cause” has meant corruption or dereliction of duty.

Trump has been at war with the Federal Reserve for months. The Fed is an independent institution that oversees the nation’s economy and manages the nation’s monetary policy, which means the Federal Reserve sets interest rates for the country. Trump wants it to lower interest rates to make it easier to borrow money. Cheaper money will goose the economy, but it is also likely to spur inflation, which is already on the rise thanks to Trump’s tariff war and massive deportations of migrant workers. Trump has been pressuring Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates or, failing that, to resign.

Trump has mused about taking control of the Fed himself, but the politicization of the nation’s monetary policy so it responds to the whims of Trump rather than actual economic conditions makes economists and most elected officials recoil. Today in his newsletter, economist Paul Krugman wrote that if Trump’s illegal firing of Cook is allowed to stand, “the implications will be profound and disastrous. The United States will be well on its way to becoming Turkey, where an authoritarian ruler imposed his crackpot economics on the central bank, sending inflation soaring to 80 percent. And,” he added, “the damage will be felt far beyond the Fed. This will mark the destruction of professionalism and independent thinking throughout the federal government.”

In May the Supreme Court suggested it would overturn an almost century-old precedent saying that the president cannot remove the heads of independent agencies created by Congress. But even then, it protected the independence of the Fed, writing: “The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”

Trump administration officials appear to be trying to find a way around that ruling by going after Cook on trumped-up charges. After serving as a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University and on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Cook has been on the board of governors since 2022. She is the first Black woman to sit on the board and might have drawn Trump’s ire as well when she noted publicly that the jobs report earlier this month could signal an economic turning point.

Cook responded to Trump’s letter in a statement saying: “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022.”

The administration’s apparent persecution of undocumented immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom it unlawfully deported to the notorious terrorist CECOT prison in El Salvador in March and then refused to return despite court orders to do so, is a more immediate illustration of the lawlessness of authoritarian rule.

The government finally returned Abrego to the U.S., only to announce that it had secured an indictment against him in Tennessee for allegedly conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants for financial gain, charges stemming from a 2022 traffic stop for which Abrego was not charged with anything. He was jailed in Tennessee, and a judge ordered that he remain in jail to protect him from the government, which threatened to deport him again if he were released. He was finally released on August 22 and went home to his family in Maryland, but when he attended a mandatory check-in at the ICE facility in Baltimore, Maryland, on Monday, August 25, he was arrested.

Members of the administration routinely describe Abrego, who has no criminal convictions, as a gang member, a human trafficker, a domestic abuser, and child predator who is terrorizing the United States. Trump referred to him yesterday as “an animal.”

Now, as Jeremy Roebuck, Maria Sacchetti, and Dana Munro of the Washington Post explained yesterday, Abrego’s lawyers say the government is trying to coerce him into pleading guilty of human trafficking, offering to send him to the Spanish-speaking Latin American country of Costa Rica if he does, but threatening to deport him to Uganda if he does not. As legal analyst Harry Litman notes, deportation would enable the government to avoid “having to show their hand on what seems to be a very threadbare case.”

The official social media account of the Department of Homeland Security—a cabinet-level department of the United States government—trolled Abrego, whom the media often identifies as a “Maryland man,” by posting: “Uganda Man.”

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, whose order to return Abrego to the U.S. the government ignored for months, indicated she had no faith that the government would obey the law. She temporarily barred the administration from deporting Abrego until she can make sure the government follows the law, making Department of Justice lawyer confirm he understood that “[y]our clients are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States.”

Tonight, Democrat Catelin Drey won a special election for the Iowa state senate, breaking a Republican supermajority and flipping a seat in a district Trump won by 11.5 points in 2024. Drey won the seat by 10.4%, showing a swing of more than 2o points to the Democrats. And in a seven-way race in Georgia for the state Senate in a deep red district, the lone Democrat, Debra Shigley, came in first with 40% of the vote. Since no candidate won 50% of the vote, Shigley will face whichever Republican candidate comes out on top—the top two are currently hovering around 17%—in a runoff on September 23.

—

Notes:

 

[1pooh4u]

Prof Heather Cox Richardson piece from the night of 8/25/25

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/august-25-2025?r=kmtvs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

This morning, President Donald J. Trump talked to reporters as he signed several executive orders in the Oval Office. Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk as he has been doing lately, seeming to put its bulk between him and the reporters. Also as he has been doing lately, he kept his left hand over the right, seemingly to hide a large bruise.

Trump was there to announce an executive order charging Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with creating “specialized units” in the National Guard that will be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues,” apparently setting them up to take on domestic law enforcement as part of Trump’s attempt to take control of Democratic-run cities.

At the press opportunity, Trump claimed that he saved Washington, D.C.—where crime was at a 30-year low before he took control of the Metropolitan Police Department and mobilized the National Guard—from such rampant crime that no one dared to wear jewelry or carry purses. “People,” he said, “are free for the first time ever.”

Although in 1989 the Supreme Court ruled that burning a flag is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute anyone who burns a flag, claiming they would automatically go to prison for a year (he has no authority to make such an order). After seven European leaders rushed to the White House to stabilize the U.S. approach to Russia after Trump’s disastrous meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on August 15, Trump claimed that the seven leaders actually represented 38 countries and that they refer to Trump as “the president of Europe.”

Calling Chicago, Illinois, a “a disaster” and “a killing field,” Trump referred to Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker as “a slob.” Trump complained that Pritzker had said Trump was infringing on American freedom and called Trump a dictator. Trump went on: “A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what's happening to our cities, and then you send in troops instead of being praised, they're saying you're trying to take over the Republic. These people are sick.”

This afternoon, standing flanked by leaders from business, law enforcement, faith communities, education, local communities, and politics at the Chicago waterfront near the Trump Tower there, Governor Pritzker responded to the news that Trump is planning to send troops to Chicago.

He began by saying: “I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in the city and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.”

He acknowledged that “[o]ver the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against. And it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal, it is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”

Pritzker noted that neither his office nor that of Chicago’s mayor had received any communications from the White House. “We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did. We read a story in the Washington Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor or the police?”

“Let me answer that question,” he said. “This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection.”

Pritzker noted that every major American city deals with crime, but that the rate of violent crime is actually higher in Republican-dominated states and cities than in those run by Democrats. Illinois, he said, had “hired more police and given them more funding. We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stops, and high-capacity magazines” and “invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs.” Those actions have cut violent crime down dramatically. Pritzker pointed out that “thirteen of the top twenty cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top ten states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.”

If Trump were serious about combatting crime, Pritzker asked, why did he, along with congressional Republicans, cut more than $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants? “Trump,” Pritzker said, “is defunding the police.”

Then Pritzker turned to the larger national story. “To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country,” he said, “I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.”

Pritzker continued: “Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, ‘Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?’ Instead, I say, ‘Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.’”

The governor called out the president for his willingness to drag National Guard personnel from their homes and communities to be used as political props. They are not trained to serve as law enforcement, he said, and did not “sign up for the National Guard to fight crime.” “It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the guard, to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.”

Pritzker said he hoped that Trump would “reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city's sovereignty” and that “rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days.”

But if not, he urged Chicagoans to protest peacefully and to remember that most members of the military and the National Guard stationed in Chicago would be there unwillingly. He asked protesters to “remember that they can be court martialed, and their lives ruined, if they resist deployment.” He suggested protesters should look to members of the faith community for guidance on how to mobilize.

Then Pritzker turned to a warning. “To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your national guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people,” he said, “cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.”

He went on: “The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.”

“Finally,” he said, “to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching, and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now. And eventually, the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually.

“If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Humbly, I would add, it doesn't bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.”

—

 

[tsar4]

 

[1pooh4u]

Trump fining migrants +6bn dollars for defying deportation orders is the most hilarious shit I’ve read today 

RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES CLOWNS 

https://nypost.com/2025/08/27/us-news/trump-admin-fines-illegal-migrants-6-1b-for-refusing-deportation-orders-report/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=pasteboard_app