Last week, it seemed as if every cartoonist wanted to draw something about the Baltimore Key Bridge, or about Trumpâs bibles. Hereâs the best of the lot.
Bridge collision brought some elephants to reality:
Some saw it as a metaphor:
Trump reduced to schilling:
It could have been worse:
The Biden Impeachment failed:
Suck it up, buttercup:
Capitalism is no longer ready for prime time:
Sorry that we couldnât publish a Saturday Soother yesterday, Wrongo, his two sons, granddaughter and son-in-law went to Barclayâs Center in Brooklyn NY to watch first round games in the NCAA basketball tournament. Hereâs a pic from the nosebleed section:
Turning to cartoons, the past week had an overabundance of thoughts about Trumpâs inability to find $500 million to bond the appeal of his fraud conviction. Weâll only show a few. On to cartoons.
Trumpâs legal woes impact the GOPâs funds raising:
Trump thinks he may be facing the inevitable:
The trials have kept his followers in the herd:
Rep. James Comer ends Biden impeachment:
Trumpyâs buddy Vladdy had a better week. Russian citizens? Not so much:
The Daily Escape:
Saucer magnolia trees, Smithsonian, Washington DC – March 2024 photo via Smithsonian Gardens
Trump has five days to come up with more than a half billion dollars in liquid assets or New York State could begin to freeze some of his bank accounts and seize some of his marquee properties. From the NYT:
âItâs crunchtime for Donald J. Trump….the former president must secure an appeal bond for roughly half a billion dollars in his civil fraud case in New York, a possibility that was called into question on Monday.
In a court filing, Mr. Trumpâs lawyers revealed that he had been unable to secure an appeal bond despite âdiligent effortsâ that included approaching about 30 bond companies.â
This would amount to about 20% of Trumpâs total net worth, but as Timothy Noah notes, much of the rest is already spoken for. Thereâs the $91 million bond he just secured from Chubb for his E Â Jean Carroll defamation appeal. And a lot more:
âThereâs $392,000 that Trump paid The New York Times…for filing a frivolous lawsuit. Thereâs $938,000 that a judge last year ordered Trump and his attorney to pay Hillary Clinton for filing a frivolous lawsuit. Thereâs $382,000 that a London judge earlier this month ordered Trump to pay Orbis Business Intelligence, founded by Christopher Steele (of the âSteele dossierâ), for filing a frivolous lawsuit. Thereâs the aforementioned $5 million that Trump paid earlier in the Carroll case. Thereâs $110,000 in contempt fees that Trump accrued for bad-mouthing New York Attorney General Letitia James during the civil fraud prosecution.â
On top of all that, Deutsche Bankâs loans to Trump require him to maintain $50 million in âunencumbered liquidityâ and a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion. Heâs likely already in default of those provisions. From Rick Wilson:
âFor decades, Donald Trumpâs public image as the dealmaker, builder, salesman, and showman was his brand, his most significant asset, and the key to his multifarious con games. He discovered the secret sauce of modern financial alchemy was making it up, relying on the greed and desire of investors and banks to get some of the….Trump glamour. The swagger, the gold leaf, the…biggest, best, tallest, sexiest adjective…of every Trump project attracted bankers and vendors, no matter how rickety…the property or project may have been.â
His serial bankruptcies werenât some fiendishly clever business practice; he was simply bad at making money on a legitimate basis. For all that, Trump is peerless at convincing people that he is a business genius with no need for their capitalâŠ[just] as he asks them for money.”
Did that take a lot of creative accounting? Of course. More from Wilson:
âWas there a yawning delta between what Trump claimed his properties were worth and market reality? Always. Did he tell the banks one thing about valuations when refinancing…and then turn around to tell local and state tax authorities that the same property…was practically…worthless…for their purposes? Naturally.â
Trumpâs most successful business has been his email money-raising business that was targeted at lower-and-middle class angry white voters. He asks them to send part of their payroll, social security, and disability checks to him. Now, that big con is falling apart, with the donor list getting exhausted. The Trump base has realized that heâs not financing his campaign, heâs spending the vast majority of their donations on his legal expenses and now, on his fines.
His financial house of cards is falling apart. His always highly-leveraged properties peaked in value pre-Covid, and none could be sold quickly enough or for enough cash to give him the lifeline he needs to pay his mounting judgements and court fees.
He managed to get the Chubb Group to underwrite his bond in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case(s), but 30 lenders turned him down in the business fraud case, and this week, the âbillionaireâ had to tell the courts he canât come up with the roughly $500 million he needs to stave off liquidation of some of his assets by NY AG Letitia James.
The truth is that thereâs no reason why large financial/bond companies won’t take real estate as collateral for a bond or loan to Trump. The problem is that they WON’T take real estate collateral without a true, accurate, and independent appraisal for the value of the real estate collateral.
But thatâs precisely what the NY fraud case found Trump was guilty of doing. Trump canât offer up those properties to the bonding companies, because it would prove again the state’s case that he fraudulently overstated the values of his NY properties on loan applications and financial statements. It wouldnât be difficult to sell one or more of the properties in a true arm’s length sale, but Trump would have to face the reality that he inflated their value.
NY AG James and all Democrats should remember that Trumpâs properties are physical manifestations of his ego. Trump Tower was the model of that ego for decades. Thatâs why when Rick Wilson tweeted âTake Trump Tower firstâ the MAGATs reaction was rage. Apparently this is how the authoritarian addiction plays on their minds; they see his long pattern of fraud as smart business and see Trumpâs facing the reality of losing in court as an attack on themselves.
No matter, Trump always portrays himself as a martyr, claiming the deep state is out to get him. But none of it will change that the facts are damning, that the pattern of fraud is explicit and vast, and that Trump is veering towards being cash-strapped. Just when he needs hundreds of millions to run his 2024 presidential campaign.
Depending on how the judgments pan out, Trump might become the first ex-president since Ulysses S. Grant to declare bankruptcy. But bankruptcy isnât going to save him from having to pay his pre-existing judgements.
The irony here is that even while Trump is being taken down to the studs, heâs still at least even money to win the election in November. What does that say about the American voter in 2024?
Finally, with Trump in financial extremis, anyone who swoops in now to save him by posting half billion dollars is going to do it expecting to be compensated in some way beyond simply the repayment of the loan, if/when he loses his appeal of the fraud conviction.
What would Trump be willing to promise to keep his considerable fat out of the fire? Would Russia do it? What would Putin want? What would Saudi Arabia want? Who else might see an angle in this?
After all, despite how large we think $500 million is, it would be a cheap price to pay for many around the world who would wish trouble on the US.
(The Wrongologist will not publish a Monday Wake Up Call column this week)
Last week ended with a New York judge handing Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of $355 million. In addition to the monetary penalty, Justice Engoron imposed a three-year ban preventing Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity for three years.
The verdict was civil, not criminal. That means Trump hasnât yet been convicted of a crime, but he has been declared a fraud by the state of New York. Heâs settled numerous fraud trials before this one, notably the Trump University case, in which he was barred from ever running another charity in New York after he defrauded little kids with cancer.
Itâs the Democratsâ job to see that this stays in the forefront of the votersâ minds. When youâre barred from running a business in New York, how can Republicans make the case that youâre qualified to run the country? Or if youâre in debt bigly, wouldnât it be tempting to take a few bribes? Or sell a few classified documents? On to cartoons.
Trump now has some thinking to do:
OTOH, heâs proving surprisingly difficult to kill:
The Kansas City Super Bowl parade becomes just another unsafe place:
The Ukraine city, Avdiivka fell on Friday because it didnât receive ammo from the US on time:
Trump offers gift to Putin:
RIP Alexy Navalny:
The Daily Escape:
Trillium Lake, with Mt. Hood in background, OR – February 2024 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography
In negotiations, there are four possible outcomes, two for âYesâ and two for âNoâ. The answers can come quickly or slowly. The fast âYesâ generally means that we offered more than we had to, while the fast âNoâ means there wasnât enough in the deal for the other side to truly consider it. The worst outcome is the slow âNoâ. It burns tons of calories, and delays work on other important things. It is the most frustrating result for a negotiation, always raising the question of whether the other side was really negotiating in good faith.
Welcome to Americaâs politics in 2024 where if it wasnât for bad faith, there would be no faith at all. Wrongo is speaking about the so-called border bill. Republicans had insisted that any allocation of funding for Ukraine be tied to an agreement about the border, saying that no money should go abroad until the US has addressed border security concerns here at home. They were also saying that the Democrats would need to agree to deal points that in the past, would have been very hard for the Dems to swallow.
But this past Sunday, Senate negotiators released the details of their hard-fought bipartisan border agreement which is harsher than we would have seen under any Democratic administration or Congressional majority in the last 40 years. The Dems agreed to the terms because it was the price House Republicans demanded in order to fund Ukraine. So naturally, House Republicans immediately declared it dead on arrival. This wasnât a shock because theyâve been saying that for weeks despite not knowing precisely what was in the language of the bill.
The bad faith started with House Speaker Johnson (R-Bible) lying to the media by suggesting that he wasnât consulted on the negotiations, a contention refuted by the principal GOP negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, (R-OK) who said that Johnson had declined his invitation to participate.
That led to an avalanche of slow âNoâsâ by Republicans in the Senate. The GOPâs default to âNoâ is for the moment, an election year strategy. They see border chaos as an important weapon against Biden in November. But the GOP often says âNoâ simply because it canât figure out what else that divided caucus wants to do. They sometimes prefer foaming rage to solutions, or to victories.
As Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) tweeted:
âIâve never seen anything like it….They literally demanded specific policy, got it, and then killed it.â
You canât engage in bad faith negotiations and expect that the other side will forget about it when the next issue comes along.
Itâs unclear if this is a moment of Republican/Trumpian desperation or madness. But they came out against a serious, bipartisan bill targeted at what they said was required in order to tackle our border challenges. The Border Patrol Union, which endorsed Trump in 2020, has endorsed the Senate bill. The WSJ editorial page has endorsed the bill. Neither of these are Biden supporters.
The GOP is now committed to a policy that will keep our borders, which they say are in existential crisis, in chaos. They believe that chaos serves their 2024 political goals of winning the White House, while sweeping the Senate and the House. Wrongo is re-upping his quotes from Ezra Klein about Americanâs desire to vote for stability:
âBiden and his allies are framing this election as order against chaos. The party that gets things done against the party that will make America come undone.â
And this:
ââŠDemocrats are right that voters are craving stability. ButâŠTrump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitchingâŠ.is a push for order â âI am going to be the one who secures the border. Iâm going to be the one that cracks down on crime. Iâm going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.ââ
So where do we go from here? It would be nice to think that if they really want stability, the American people will see through all this and realize how the Republican Party has grown so adept at holding hostages. Their MAGA wing represents a minority within a minority, yet our institutional rules permit them to veto decisions clearly favored by a majority of Americans.
But, with all the noise, itâs difficult to understand if voters can hear this even if theyâre paying attention. Walking away from the border bill has enormous implications for the presidential election. With Bidenâs economy going gangbusters (even Fox News admits that); with the inflation Republicans had expected to run on falling; with unemployment at historic lows and the stock market at historic highs; with the end of Roe trailing Trump like a dark cloud; he (and the GOP) have limited narratives left for waging his 2024 campaign, except fearmongering about border security.
Todayâs chaos will become tomorrowâs over the imminent need to fund the government. Speaker Johnson has until March 1 and March 8 to get deals with the Senate and the President if we are to avoid another government shutdown. Right now, itâs difficult to see how any good faith negotiations will occur after what has happened this week with the border bill.
The government funding chaos isnât on the votersâ radar just yet. So Democrats ought to go on offense about the border bill, describing whatâs in it, where the GOP is lying about it, and how even when you meet Republicans more than halfway, they move the goal posts. The Dems need to make every Republican House and Senate member defend killing the border bill vote every day between here and the election, by making the immigration bill a central message of Bidenâs reelection campaign.
As the Cato Institute reported last November:
âThe Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has removed a higher percentage of arrested border crossers in its first two years than the Trump DHS did over its last two years. Moreover, migrants were more likely to be released after a border arrest under President Trump than under President Biden. In absolute terms, the Biden DHS is removing 3.5 times as many people per month as the Trump DHS did.â
But those are facts, not feelings. Time to dust off this snippet of Stephen Sondheimâs song, “Send in the Clowns“:
Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want
Sorry, my dear
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here
The Daily Escape:
Sunrise, Todd, NC – January 2024 photo by Starr Henderson
Wrongo had no intention of writing about the Right-wingâs meltdown on the internet about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. You know, the mega pop star and the star NFL football player? Theyâve become a couple right before Americaâs eyes over the past few months. David Letterman called it:
â…a lovely thing.â He said Swift is â…a glowing, bright light of goodness in the world…â
The coupleâs deepening friendship seems to be just fine if you ask mainstream America, but the Right hate the idea. They say the coupleâs relationship has been fabricated for ratings and political advantage.
Their latest conspiracy is that NFL games were fixed to ensure that the Kansas City Chiefs (Kelceâs team) would appear in the Super Bowl. Their reasoning is that Swift supports the reelection of Joe Biden (she endorsed him in 2020). And since she has been conspicuously attending many of the Chiefsâ games this year, she will have a huge platform for endorsing Biden, perhaps at halftime in the Super Bowl.
Conservatives are afraid of her influence, because Swift represents a constituency that the GOP is losing big time: Young women. Scott Shapiro of Yale Law School said it succinctly:
A few bullet points about Taylor Swiftâs influence:
Trump sources, meanwhile, told Rolling Stone that they intend to declare a âholy warâ on Swift to undercut her influence. The idea that Taylor Swift, Joe Biden, Travis Kelce, and the NFL, (whose teams are mostly owned by Trump supporters), rigged the Super Bowl to defeat Trump is absurd. From Dan Pfeiffer:
â…there is something notable about the Right Wing picking a fight with Americaâs most popular singer, one of its most popular athletes, and the most popular sport by far on the occasion of what will be the most watched television event of the year.â
More: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âAt their core, most political campaigns boil down to trying to label the other side as outside of the American mainstream…..Typically, Republicans have been more aggressive in these efforts. When you are on the wrong side of the most important issues, the only option is to âotherizeâ your opponent…..But those days are no longer. Republicans are on the wrong side of public opinion and backing themselves into a corner by picking some truly bizarre fights.â
Still more: (brackets by Wrongo)
âWhat ties baseball, football, Bud Light, [and] Taylor Swift…together is that they are all things that appeal to a majority of Americans. They are…well-respected brands, and beloved by millions. They are quintessentially a part of the fabric of American life.â
Swift is by far the worldâs most popular and successful entertainer. Travis Kelce is well-known to football fans, and the NFL is the most dominant source of entertainment in America. According to the Sports Business Journal, 93 of the 100 most watched television programs of 2023 were NFL games.
More from Pfeiffer:
âTo put this in perspective, 56 million people watched the San Francisco 49ers beat the Detroit Lions on Sunday night and a little more than 2 million people watch Sean Hannity on a nightly basis.â
When the history of the MAGA cult is written, it will note that despite Trump, it was a decentralized movement. Instead of centralized leadership, theirs was distributed among various wingnut social media influencers, all of which orbit around Trump.
There is nothing new about this, weâve always had political conspiracy theories. Wrongologist reader Terry McK reminded us that his dad received pamphlets from the John Birch Society, who are described as ultraconservative, far-right, extremist, and fringe by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Birchers are still around, enjoying a resurgence since the 2010s.
One difference is how frictionless communication is today. It used to be that the Klan, the Birchers and Ufologists had to pass around dogeared mimeographed manifestos in person or by mail, and they looked as crazy as their pamphletâs contents. But today, any whack job can spew their bigfoot, contrails (or Taylor) information via social media and it will look legit.
And that includes social media pros who are members of the Republican Party.
Wrongo has heard friends and family members complain about how much time television devotes to Swift when she attends Chief games. An analysis of the Chiefs playoff game last Sunday showed Taylor Swift was on screen for 24 seconds out of a 3 hour and 45 minute broadcast. Itâs doubtful that constitutes over exposure or “ruining the NFL“.
Itâs possible to laugh at the Republicans about the Taylor Swift thing. But, it’s also symptomatic of a dangerous, growing instability that holds a huge chunk of America. For these people, the entire world has become some enormous, fantastically complex conspiracy aimed at them and EVERYTHING is evidence of it. Nothing is fringe and nothing, no matter how bizarre, is taken at face value.
This is what they hate:
The Swift/Kelce relationship contrasts the coupleâs âbright light of goodnessâ and the ugliness of what Trumpâs MAGA movement represents to the US. The difference couldnât be more stark. The right sees it through their lens and recoils. Swiftâs good-girl image and her new and seemingly committed relationship is damaging the Right in America.
Hereâs the last word from Pfeiffer:
â…having a bizarre meltdown over Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and the Super Bowl is fucking weird and Americans donât elect fucking weirdos….The Right picking fights with Bud Light is weird. Their opposition to vaccines (which is why they hate Kelce) is weird….The fact that the Right focuses on all of the wrong and weirdest things makes them unrelatable to most people.â
Wrongo doesnât have many Taylor Swift songs on his many playlists. He isnât a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. But the Rightâs obsession with tearing them down has made him like both.
The Daily Escape:
Shiprock, NM – January 2024 photo by Matt Farber
Does the law matter anymore to Trump and his MAGA followers? As Heather Digby said, the MAGAs:
â…now believe that the law is what Trump says it is.â
That seems patently true if you read anything on Xitter by Right-wing Trump apologists, since they throw all sorts of pasta at the wall hoping some will stick. The latest is about the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case Lewis Kaplan and Carrollâs lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation) having worked together in the early 1990s. Somehow that constitutes a conflict of interest in the minds of the MAGATs.
Roberta Kaplan joined the firm in 1992 and left in 2016. Judge Kaplan was a partner there until 1994, so there was a two year overlap that occurred 30 years ago. Theyâll try to make chicken salad out of this chicken shit.
A more serious attack on the law is occurring in Texas. Vice News is reporting that:
âA trucker convoy of âpatriotsâ is heading to the US border with Mexico next week, as the standoff between Texas and the federal government intensifies. The organizers of the âTake Our Border Backâ convoy have called themselves âGodâs armyâ and say theyâre on a mission to stand up against the âglobalistsâ who they claim are conspiring to keep US borders open and destroy the country.â
Godâs Army. Vice quotes Ruth Braunstein, professor at the University of Connecticut:
âWhen people believe that they are working on behalf of God, they might be willing to resort to relatively extreme measures….And so you have a politically volatile situation that could become much more so, in part because of this rhetoric.â
The Godâs Army website is âSecure Our Borders.â It is calling on:
â…all active & retired law enforcement and military, veterans, mama bears, elected officials, business owners, ranchers, truckers, bikers, media and LAW ABIDING, freedom-loving Americans…â
To join in the march on Texas. This has stoked civil war fantasies on fringe forums, as well as favorable comments on the social media accounts of GOP lawmakers and right-wing political commentators. And no surprise, this has bled into politics. The Daily Beast reported that on a news show, Oklahomaâs Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and Newsmax host Carl Rigbie mused about the possibility of a âforce-on-force conflictâ erupting between the federal government and the Texas National Guard.
They should be careful what they wish for. Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-TX), was quoted in the Dallas Morning News saying he expects to see continuing escalation in the legal battles between the state and the Biden administration:
âItâs striking that Texas Democrats are willing to side with Mexican drug cartels invading the state of Texas over their own governor and over the people of Texas…â
And most Republican governors recently signed a statement backing Abbott:
âWe stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border….We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally.â
Wrongo has written many times about the faction of MAGATs who sport flag lapel pins and show you copies of their pocket Constitutions. The irony is that these (mostly) dudes havenât really accepted the words of the Constitution and its Amendments. They want to interpret the law based on referendums orchestrated by Trump and Fox News.
What Abbott, Trump, and the MAGAs are attempting with the âsouthern border resistanceâ is testing to see how much buy in they can get from red state governors, truck drivers, law enforcement, and âpatriotsâ. Can they sow enough chaos that the presidential election is difficult to conduct?
Hereâs a theory: Trump doesnât expect to win in November. In fact, he may not even care about the November election. Why wait until November 2024 and/or January, 2025 to make his move? What if he can mobilize his followers to strike now? How would Biden and the federal government respond to multiple domestic attacks occurring simultaneously within our borders?
If the GOP and Trump canât beat Biden one-on-one, why wait? Waiting means that Trump will likely be incarcerated. Both Trump and the GOP certainly know that time isnât on their side.
It’s time for the federal government to step in and knock this shit off before somebody gets killed. All Guardsmen at the border should be federalized immediately and then ordered to assist other federal officials in enforcing the Court’s decision.
Thatâs the only legitimate authority in play here. The GOP Constitutional reading favoring the states against the federal government is laughable. What would the fallout be if the National Guard, federalized by Biden attacks Texas law enforcement along with guys who drove their pickups to the border?
Time to wake up America! The Gospel According To CB Radio isn’t an authority on anything! Ask Trump and Abbott how many federal law enforcement officers enforcing a Supreme Court ruling are you willing to kill for your political stunt?
To help you wake up, we recognize the passing of the 1970s singer Melanie Safka who died this week at 76. Melanie was one of the surprise stars at Woodstock in 1969. To Wrongo, her best tune was âLay Down (Candles in the Rain)â. She would later say that the sight of people in the Woodstock crowd lighting candles in the rain inspired her to write the song which she recorded with gospel-style backing from the Edwin Hawkins Singers. It was released in 1970 and became her first hit.
Here she performs it live with the Edwin Hawkins Singers in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1970:
The song was anthemic, in the same way the Edwin Hawkins Singersâ âOh Happy Dayâ had been the summer before. And the Edwin Hawkins Singers are also the chorus on âLay Down (Candles in the Rain).â The song is alternately hugely upbeat and dark.
Sample Lyric:
We were so close there was no room
We bled inside each otherâs wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace
Lay down, lay down, let it all down
Let your white birds smile up at the ones who stand and frown
Lay down, lay down, let it all down
Let your white birds smile up at the ones who stand and frown
From Paul Thornton of the LA Times: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âI know the story of Trumpâs march to a third GOP nomination barely registered among those whoâve closely followed political news since 2015 â but still, please let it surprise you. Please let the fact that a man who tried to topple American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021, is now the second-most likely person to lead it after noon on Jan. 20, 2025, shake you to your core. German democracy held out for nine years after Hitlerâs Beer Hall Putsch in 1923; Trumpâs likely nomination puts us on course to halve the time it took Germany to empower (or in our case, re-empower) its fascist leader of a failed coup.â
It was a bad week for Trump and a good week for Biden. Trumpâs week was bad enough that he may soon be renting Mar-a-Lago from E. Jean Carroll. Also, it shows us that Trump can lose to an 80-year-old. On to cartoons.
Bidenâs âbadâ economy continues to set records:
Elephant reacts badly to Decemberâs GDP numbers:
When it comes to Trump, the Elephant is all talk and no tusk:
House Republicans say immigration deal is dead on arrival:
Why isnât the media covering Abbottâs insurrection?
Trump loses:
The Alabama execution:
The Daily Escape:
Lenticular clouds over Mt. Washington, with Mt. Washington Hotel in foreground, Bretton Woods, NH – January 2024 photo by Terri Stinn
âThose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.â– George Santayana
âWe are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.â – Gore Vidal
Wrongo and Ms. Right watched an American Experience offering on PBS called âNazi Town USAâ. The video tells the story of the German American Bund, (Bund) a pro-fascist, pro-Nazi organization that at its peak in the late 1930s, had some 100,000 US members.
The Bund (bund is German for âorganizationâ), was founded by German immigrant Fritz Kuhn in Buffalo in 1936. His vision was to create a pro-Nazi ideology within the US. Kuhn and his people used patriotic images of George Washington and the American flag to attract Americans of German descent as members. But the organizationâs goals were wider: To create a âsocially just, white gentile-ruled United Statesâ and a âgentile-controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination.â
He sounds nice. The US in the 1930s was a hotbed of the fascist-curious. Coming out of WWI and heading into an international economic depression, America was as polarized as it had been since the Civil War. There were racist, antisemitic, anti-Catholic, anti-immigration and anti-democratic viewpoints that werenât quietly whispered but were yelled. Americaâs greatest threat, many feared, were the Communists. Millions, (including members of Congress), belonged to the KKK. Father Coughlin was on the radio. Henry Ford had financed the publication of âThe International Jew,â an antisemitic tract. And in New York, the Bund was fomenting a coup, and filling Madison Square Garden with followers. In Yaphank, a town on Long Island, tract homes for Bund members were going up on Adolf Hitler Street.
According to historian Bradley W. Hart, who gives commentary in the documentary:
âThis was a period of incredible turmoil in the US. You have the Great Depression, you have people who have lost everything….At this moment…you have…people like Hitler and Mussolini, who are preaching hate and preaching that they have a solution to the real pain that people are feeling, itâs inevitable, unfortunately, that some will be attracted to that message.â
The Bund was just one of hundreds of right-wing and fascist-friendly groups in the US in the 1930s. The video linked above includes a chilling clip (@12:39 minutes) of Italyâs then-Prime Minister Mussolini, reaching out to his fascist friends in America: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âI am very glad to be able to express my friendly feelings towards the American nation, my fellow citizens who are working to make America great…â
For Wrongo, that revealed a shocking throughline to 2016, and then on to America today.
The Bund had chapters all across the country. Their high point was holding a Swastika-bedecked rally attended by 20,000 at Madison Square Garden in 1939. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, despite instructions from FDR, had little interest in investigating the Bundâs head, Fritz Kuhn. Hoover was far more concerned with Communism. Back then, âJewish Communismâ was a catchphrase used by Kuhn.
The documentary uses scenes from the Academy Award-nominated short documentary âA Night at the Garden,â of the 1939 âPro-American Rallyâ at Madison Square Garden held by the Bund. When Kuhn takes the stage at the rally, an announcer says:
âWe love him for the enemies he has made…â
Doesnât that sound disturbingly familiar? And you then learn that Kuhn supporters beat up a demonstrator who ran on stage, are you surprised that we see the same at Trump rallies today? Subsequently, Charles Lindbergh emerged as head of a supposedly non-partisan group, âAmerica Firstâ that urged the US not to oppose Hitlerâs war in Europe.
Trump embraced the âAmerica Firstâ rubric starting right after his inauguration.
After Nazism and Fascism were defeated in Europe in WWII, there wasnât much of a reckoning inside the US with those who were Fascists or Nazis. There was a wish to simply forget about the fractious politics of the 1930s. Kuhn was deported to Germany, and the Bund collapsed.
But the Bund members and fellow travelers didnât disappear. They simply blended back into the social fabric of Americaâs towns. And the ideas certainly didnât disappear, theyâre still with us today. Weâre seeing them re-emerge not just in the US but also throughout Europe. There will always be citizens who when they see a threat, prefer having a strongman around to uproot it.
Tom Nichols, a Never Trump conservative who writes for the Atlantic, offers this:
âEarly last month, he echoed the…language of Adolf Hitler by describing immigrants as disease-ridden terrorists and psychiatric patients who are âpoisoning the blood of our country.â
Nichols quotes from Trumpâs talk in Claremont, NH:
âWe will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country….On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible…legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.â
As the New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat said in the WaPo about the same speech, Trump is populating this list of imaginary villains (which she sees as a form of projection) in order âto set himself up as the deliverer of freedom. Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.â
Itâs possible that Trump doesnât really understand what heâs saying. But when he uses terms like âverminâ and expressions like âpoisoning the blood of our countryâ, weâre not required to spend a lot of time trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And you can be certain that the people around Trump completely understand what heâs saying.
Time to face up to the truth. Trump is a fascist, even if heâs too ignorant to label what he is. Heâs naturally gifted at propaganda and heâs demonstrated amazing political power with his Big Lie. Others on the extreme Right have noticed and see the potential of using him for fascistic purposes.
Fascism is back in America, whether we call it by its name or not.
The Daily Escape:
Old Stone Church, West Boylston, MA – January 2024 photo by Demi Pita
As Wrongo said in his last post, there was an 80th birthday celebration for him over the MLK weekend. It was a very gratifying experience spending time with friends and family from many parts of the country. Here are a few quick comments on the Iowa Caucuses and whatâs coming.
First, turnout was low. From Dan Pfeiffer:
âIn 2016, Republicans set a turnout record with 186,000 caucus participants â up from 119,000 in 2008. Last night, the Iowa Republican Party estimated about 100,000 Iowans â a big drop from just four years ago.â
Many will attribute this shortfall to the frigid weather. But weather alone doesnât explain why turnout was cut by 46% since 2016.
Second, Nikki Haley finished third with about 20% of the vote, but a significant percentage of her voters said that they wouldnât vote for Trump in the general election. From Simon Rosenberg:
âIn the NBC News/Des Moines Register poll released this past weekend more Haley voters – 20% of Iowaâs GOP vote – said they would support Biden in the general election than Trump.â
Hereâs MSNBCâs Steve Kornacki with the details:
More from Rosenberg:
âLetâs review the math here. If 43% of Haley voters said they would vote for Biden over Trump, thatâs about 8% of the GOP electorate, or 3-4% of the national vote.â
This is consistent with general polling that suggests that between a third and 40% of Republicans are anti-MAGA. That may be something the Biden campaign can exploit in November if itâs representative of the feelings of GOP voters across the nation.
The breathless media reaction to the Trump win is laughable. From political twitterer Mueller, She Wrote:
Think about it: 56,000 Iowans voted for Trump. Thatâs 0.000168% of the population of the country, so the media shouldnât be making it seem as if this was a victory for the ages. As John Fugelsang put it: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âPeople, can we stop negatively harping on how only 14% of Iowa GOP showed up to vote? And not dwell on how this means only 7% of Iowa GOP voted for Trump? Let’s TRY to be positive & just remind the media how this means 93% of registered Iowa Republicans didn’t vote for Trump.â
Despite all of these thoughts, Trump will easily win the GOP nomination. If either Haley or DeSantis were a better candidate, it may have made Iowa look a little more respectable, but Trumpâs opposition was always sure to lose.
So, take your minds off of the media hype around the Iowa caucuses. Remember that going forward, should “Not Biden” get 49% of any Democratic primary vote, the media will go completely ape-shit over it.
Finally, it may be that Republicans are less enthusiastic this time around. Trump doesnât ever say anything new, and Republicans have lost almost every significant election since 2016, and no one likes always being on the losing team. The 91 counts against him are also a factor. Nikki Haleyâs message that Trump simply had too much baggage seems to be resonating.
Instead of thinking about alternatives to Trump, think about how you can help take back Democratic control of the House of Representatives.