Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:
Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 10:52 pm
Trump represents the American Fascist movement which coalesced under him. As long as Trump lives, the former GOP will goosestep behind him.
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Trump represents the American Fascist movement which coalesced under him. As long as Trump lives, the former GOP will goosestep behind him.
I would be looking for Michael Cohen to comment on this. I would have confidence in his assessment.Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 12:51 amThis is interesting:
“Former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res said on Wednesday night that, in her opinion, Weisselberg has flipped and was cooperating with New York prosecutors with two criminal investigations hanging over him.”
deetz: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ident.html
- Doc
I don't think this is just coincidental. There is abundant evidence that Trump is an actual admire of Hitler and his tactics. There are numerous people familiar with both Nazi Germany and Trump's tactics who have clearly pointed out the similarities between his modus operandi and Nazi Germany's.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/escape-hitlers-germany-taught-trumps-america/ wrote:What My Escape From Hitler’s Germany Taught Me About Trump’s America
Thirteen Similarities Between Donald Trump and Adolf HitlerTo those who say that comparisons of Trump’s presidency to Nazi Germany are hyperbolic, I say try telling that to the mothers whose infants have been torn from their arms. A president responsible for such an atrocity exposes a level of cruelty that has no limits. None. Trump has already told us that for him there is little difference between the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and the Americans who took to the streets to condemn their bigotry.
Unlike his apologists, Trump was entirely open about what he would do if he were to lose his 2016 bid for the presidency, an outcome he and the rest of the country fully anticipated on the eve of the elections. He issued thinly veiled threats that his loss would be seen by his supporters—the ones he assured us would continue to stand with him even if he shot a person on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight—as evidence of a rigged election that would trigger an insurrection. His pal Roger Stone went further, promising a bloodbath if Democrats were to steal the race. Although Trump lost the popular vote—a loss he attributed to massive electoral fraud that, like the unprecedented attendance at his inauguration, existed only in his own imagination—we were spared the promised bloodbath because he prevailed in the Electoral College.
The above examples are just a small sampling of the indications that Trump very likely admired and tried to emulate Hitler.Whether by design or by instinct, Trump has followed Hitler’s tactics in his path to power:
Hitler built his campaign around making Germany “great.” Trump’s rallying cry is “Make America Great again.”
Hitler gave the German people enemies — the Jews — to hate, blaming them for many of Germany’s problems. What he couldn’t blame on the Jews, he blamed on communists, socialists and liberals. Trump campaign of hate and fear blames our problems on immigrants, Muslims and Liberals.
Hitler had his own media outlets and attacked any media that showed him in a bad light as the enemy. Trump uses Fox News and an army of right-wing bloggers, talk hosts and commentators to deflect attention from his failings and shady activities while supporting his conspiracy theories. Any criticism of him, he labels as “fake news.”
Some German Christians believed Hitler was a gift from God because of his opposition to [anti-God] communists and his promise to restore Germany’s traditional values by coming out against, among other things, homosexuality, liberalism and abortion. Trump has gained the fanatical support of American evangelical Christians with much of the same arguments. They, too, consider Trump anointed by God to return America to its traditional [white-dominated] values and morals in spite of his demonstrated lack of morals and his consistent promotion of hate, fear and violence.
Hitler loved rallies of thousands of adoring fans to spread lies and propaganda. Trump clearly loves rallies. He uses these to rail against groups and individuals he identifies as enemies. These rallies serve to propagate his lies, misstatements and conspiracies. Since becoming president, he has told over 20,000 lies and misleading statements [as of July 13, 2020, documented by the New Your Times].
Hitler had a private militia he used to intimidate and inflict violence on his enemies. They were known as the “Brown Shirts” and were eventually replaced by the SS. Trump has already tested the concept of a private army when he sent what appeared to be law enforcement officers to harass peaceful demonstrators in Portland, Oregon. These officers had no organizational or personal identification and they arrived in vehicles that had no identifying marks. He has since made what are obvious overtures to unsanctioned white supremacist militias.
According to a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Ivana Trump once told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that her husband, real-estate mogul Donald Trump, now a leading Republican presidential candidate, kept a book of Hitler's speeches near his bed.
Goebbels probably would have questioned why Trump insisted on lying about everything, but he would have appreciated Trump being a disciple of The Big Lie.
Considering Trump's penchant for lying even when the truth wouldn't have hurt him, and even a few times when the truth would actually have served him better, you may well be right. I'm sure that even Goebbels would have thought it foolish of Trump to lie even when there were no clear benefit or advantage to be gained by doing so. Any clever con man knows it is impossible to establish any kind of credibility with his intended marks without telling easily verifiable truths a good part or even most of the time.
It's the transactional mindset: what works now. It got them elected. But Gunnar, I must admit that it is still baffling. The handwriting on the wall is getting easier to read, but no one seems to be reading.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that no one seems to be reading. There seems to be a slowly growing number of Republican defectors who are beginning to notice and understand "the handwriting on the wall", but I agree it is baffling how few of them there are, as well as alarming.
Unless Weisselberg has a mindset similar to Trump's (or perhaps, Albert Speer's whose biographical details you linked to), I find it at least equally baffling that he would genuinely love Trump. I fervently hope you are correct that his concern for his family will prevail. It would also be nice if his love for his country and fellow citizens and democracy would also prevail over his devotion to Trump.Jennifer Weisselberg (Alan's former daughter-in-law) told CNN she thinks Alan Weisselberg will flip. Why would she say that? It's possible she is trying to push her ex-husband's father towards that decision by making it a public possibility, because it then becomes more of an inevitability for him.
Look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars for private schools and summer camps, all provided by Grampa Alan. By not flipping, Weisselberg threatens the most important thing in his life: the wellbeing of his family. I think the man genuinely loves Trump, but his family will prevail.
I'm sure it has proved or will prove to be hard and painful lesson to him. I have a hard time having sympathy for him, though. He should have known better than to place so much stock in an obvious charlatan like Trump that he would willingly facilitate or overlook Trump's shady business practices, and thereby risk serious legal and criminal consequences to himself as well. I have much more sympathy for his family, who could wind up living with whatever embarrassment or disgrace they might feel for those consequences he might have brought upon himself.At this point in his life I think Weisselberg could consider suicide but for what it would do to his family. No, it boils down to loyalty to family or Trump. And by now, everyone is familiar with the deal. You give the government EVERYTHING.
On second thought, the real problem probably is not that most of them don't notice or understand "the handwriting on the wall." They are so cowardly and fear the very shadow of Trump so much that they don't dare acknowledge the increasingly obvious truth out of fear of Trump and his cult-like base and how they will turn on them if they do so.Gunnar wrote: ↑Sat May 22, 2021 12:29 amI wouldn't go so far as to say that no one seems to be reading. There seems to be a slowly growing number of Republican defectors who are beginning to notice and understand "the handwriting on the wall", but I agree it is baffling how few of them there are, as well as alarming.
This is a tragically sad state of affairs!Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, whose criticism of former President Donald Trump led to her ouster from House Republican leadership, said Friday that several Republican members of Congress had voted against impeaching Trump out of fear for their own lives.
Telling CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead" that there are "more members who believe in substance and policy and ideals than are willing to say so," Cheney cited the impeachment vote earlier this year, in which she was one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to hold Trump accountable for the Capitol riot.
"If you look at the vote to impeach, for example, there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security -- afraid, in some instances, for their lives," she said. "And that tells you something about where we are as a country, that members of Congress aren't able to cast votes, or feel that they can't, because of their own security."