Donald Trump lost his friend Viktor Orban in a Hungarian democratic election!

Here’s How to Defeat Trumpism

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by The Editorial Board: The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Trumpism❗

Budapest, Hungary:  Peter Magyar’s landslide victory in Hungary this week offers inspiration to Americans hoping to overcome Donald Trump’s corrupt, authoritarian approach to politics. The key question is precisely how Mr. Magyar conducted such a successful opposition campaign.

He faced long odds. Viktor Orban had been prime minister for 16 years, during which he changed election rules, installed loyalists in once-nonpartisan government jobs, undermined judicial independence, repressed political opponents and hounded independent media and universities. 

Orban tilted the political system in his favor, yet Mr. Magyar nonetheless crushed Mr. Orban in voting on Sunday. 

Indeed, Mr. Magyar’s party appears to have won a two-thirds❗ supermajority in Parliament and 53 percent of the popular vote, compared with 38 percent for Mr. Orban’s party.

Hungary is obviously a very different country from the United States. But, Orban’s rise and his (mis) use of power were long models for Donald Trump. Now, Orban’s demise can be a model for America's Democratic Party and any other party that is trying to defeat an authoritarian right-wing threat, as evidenced by Trumpism.

Two aspects of Mr. Magyar’s campaign strategy were especially important. First, he focused on the bread-and-butter issues that often guide the decisions of swing voters, and not just in Hungary. In the United States, these voters soured on Trump after his first term and helped elect Joe Biden in 2020, only to become frustrated with inflation and they voted (wrongminded 🙄💢)  in 2024, to return Trump to office.

The campaign platform of the party Mr. Magyar leads, Tisza, was titled “Foundations of a Functional and Humane Hungary.” 

The campaign strategy criticized the inefficiency of government services. Its agenda included tax cuts for working-class families, expanded health care, increased pensions, larger child benefits and a pay increase for support staff members at schools. It said it would help pay for these programs through both a wealth tax on the very rich and the recovery of European Union transfer payments reduced because of Orban’s anti-democratic policies. Mr. Magyar’s party spread its campaign themes in innovative ways through social media, making Orban’s state-run media messaging look old and tired.

Crucially, Mr. Magyar made corruption a core campaign issue. 

Mr. Magyar spent more than 20 years as a member of Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party, rising to senior roles in state-controlled institutions. But Mr. Magyar quit Fidesz in early 2024, to protest a scandal involving the government’s pardon of a well-connected former official who had sexually abused boys. Mr. Magyar said he was disgusted by the corruption, and he gave a viral interview in which he claimed that “a few families own half the country.” He then joined the Tisza party and rose to become its leader.

On the campaign trail, he linked Orban’s corruption to Hungarians’ frustration with their stagnant living standards. 

In his victory speech on Sunday night, Mr. Magyar promised a country where citizens could rely on their government to help provide good medical care, a decent family life and a dignified retirement. What should matter, he said, was not political connections but the kind of person somebody was.

It is easy enough to imagine an American version of this strategy.  Trump, like Orban, used his office to enrich himself, his family and his friends. He issued pardons to political allies who have committed violent crimes, including one accused of sexually abusing children after receiving his pardon. He cut taxes for the affluent and made it harder for working-class Americans to receive health care. (Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins 😔supported this horrible policy❗) Trump's illegal war in Iran has increased gas 💲prices.

Trump's populism is fake. It serves a small slice of wealthy, well-connected people at the expense of most Americans, and it leaves him and his party (including Senator Susan Collins) politically vulnerable to an opposition that can credibly use government as a force for good. Mr. Magyar’s victory highlights the Democratic Party’s need to develop an ambitious agenda that goes far beyond criticizing Trump and charts an alternative vision for the country. Democrats do not yet have that agenda, but many in the party ​recognize that they need one.

The second lesson may be harder for Democrats — and center-left parties in Europe — to absorb. Mr. Magyar, who identifies as center right, won partly by avoiding the social progressivism that dominates elite left-leaning circles and alienates many voters. He ran as an economic progressive and a cultural moderate if not conservative.

He used patriotic symbols like the flag and benefited from having a last name that means “Hungarian.” (Imagine a candidate named “Joe American.”) He portrayed himself as a nationalist and suggested he might expel Slovakia’s ambassador over its treatment of Hungarians living there. He campaigned in rural areas that Mr. Orban’s previous challengers had overlooked. Mr. Magyar promised not to send troops or weapons to Ukraine. He declined to attend a Pride march in Budapest, making it harder for Orban to paint him as captive to L.G.B.T.Q. activists.

On immigration, which has shaped recent elections around the world, Mr. Magyar called for even tighter restrictions than the Orban government had imposed. He said he would keep a border fence, repeal a guest-worker program and allow no guest workers from outside the European Union. Tisza’s party platform claimed that guest workers “drive down wages, inflate real estate prices and cause social problems.” (Unlike in the United States, crime rates among immigrants in Europe tend to be higher than among native citizens.) Immigration is vital to electability in many countries because it is the issue on which mainstream politicians have most sharply diverged from public opinion, permitting many more arrivals than voters want.

We certainly do not endorse all of Mr. Magyar’s tactics, and we hope no American politician would feel the need to avoid a Pride march. Yet anyone who opposes Orbanism should examine the full Hungarian campaign, not only the convenient parts.

Mr. Magyar is one of many contemporary politicians who have won elections with a mix of economic progressivism and social moderation. Other national candidates have done so in the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark and elsewhere. In the United States, as we have documented, congressional Democrats who have won tough races in recent years almost all offered feisty economic messages while rejecting far-left positions on crime, immigration and other subjects. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton each used a similar approach to win the presidency twice. Only deep blue areas tend to elect down-the-line cultural progressives.

The success of the more heterodox approach is no mystery. In the United States and much of Europe, it is consistent with public opinion. Most voters are frustrated by slow-growing incomes and want the government to help. They are also unhappy with an elite cultural progressivism that has moved rapidly to the left on many difficult questions. They are looking for politicians who authentically share their outlook.

If the stakes involved only the outcome of individual policy issues, these debates would have less urgency. But they involve the health of democracy itself. In many countries, a radicalized political right has taken an authoritarian turn and sought to entrench itself in power while using state power to enrich its allies and repress its critics. Too often, the mainstream left has aided the far right’s rise by clinging to positions that are supported by only a narrow slice of the electorate.

Orban’s defeat is not nearly the end of the story, not even in Hungary, where his allies will continue to work in many parts of government. But his defeat is significant. Many people assumed he was unbeatable. He was Vladimir Putin’s biggest ally inside the European Union and the original 21st-century model of Western illiberalism. Mr. Trump openly admired him, and Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary last week to campaign for him.

Mr. Magyar thoroughly defeated this far-right giant. The free world should take an honest look at how he did it.

No Kings peaceful protests reawakened American Resistance to oppose cruel Donald Trump and Republican extremism

Opinion published in the Seattle Times by Michelle Goldberg

Trump reawakens the resistance

Before this Saturday’s enormous nationwide No Kings protests, 

Leah Greenberg, a founder of Indivisible, one of the groups behind the demonstrations, worried that too many people had lost faith in their collective ability to stop President Donald Trump from remaking America in his tawdry autocratic image. 

Her group realized that they needed “to reverse the sense that Trump is inevitable, that he’s going to win,” she told me.

When Trump first took office in 2017, it seemed to much of the country a shocking fluke caused by the democratically dubious Electoral College, and his stunned opponents rose up in furious rejection. Trump’s inauguration weekend set the tone for the years to follow: Turnout at the event itself was underwhelming, while millions of impassioned people attended the Women’s March, at the time the biggest single-day protest in American history. The energy of the resistance was so strong it reached into Trump’s own administration, where several officials devoted themselves to trying to curb his worst excesses.

This time around, there’s less hope and more resignation. In the last election Trump won the popular vote, and most demographics shifted rightward. The resistance has seemed exhausted and demoralized, and leaders in business, law and academia have adjusted accordingly. “One of the dominant differences between 2017, and 2025 is the degree of elite collapse in particular,” Greenberg said. “People who have power in different institutions that have some role in upholding democracy overwhelmingly, from November on, have been operating to secure their own safety and position under the Trump administration.”

Tech barons lined up to kiss the ring at Trump’s swearing-in. In response to Trump’s flimsy lawsuits, media conglomerates offered millions in what seemed like protection money. Law firms and college presidents buckled.

Such acquiescence, Greenberg thought, was rational if people assumed that Trumpism would triumph. The No Kings protests, held on the same day that Trump was hosting a military parade in Washington, were meant to challenge that assumption. They succeeded, with Trump’s help.

There were protests in more than 2,100 cities and towns, from New York and Los Angeles to tiny hamlets in Alaska. Trump almost certainly helped juice attendance by sending the military into Los Angeles; as Greenberg told me, about 500 of the events were organized just in the last week. Data journalist G. Elliott Morris estimated that 4 million to 6 million people turned out, which would make No Kings the largest day of protest America has ever seen. Even if his figures are inflated, the day left little question that the resistance to Trump has been reawakened.

The crowds in big cities were, unsurprisingly, huge, but local news outlets also reported thousands of people protesting in places like Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and in The Villages, the famously conservative Florida retirement community.

But what really made No Kings feel like a potential turning point was the juxtaposition with Trump’s anemic parade in Washington, which fell on his birthday, though it was ostensibly held to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary. Videos showed tanks squeaking down the street in front of viewing stands that were more than half empty. The Wall Street Journal, no left-wing rag, described the crowd as “sparse” and “subdued.” A display that was meant to be bombastic and menacing instead looked pathetic.

The contrast between the protests and the parade reflects a larger political reality. Trump returned to office much stronger than he’d been in his first term, but Americans seem to be remembering why they disliked him. A Quinnipiac poll from last week had his approval rating at 38%. In a survey conducted last Tuesday by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School, only 37% of respondents approved of the president’s handling of immigration enforcement. Some politicians and pundits assumed that Trump would benefit from deploying soldiers to Los Angeles, imagining that voters would see him as tough and decisive. So far, there’s little evidence of that.

Now Trump seems determined to heighten the cruelty and chaos that are repelling so many Americans. In response to complaints from farmers and owners of hotels and restaurants, his administration ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE)to suspend many workplace raids. But to keep his mass deportation project alive — while punishing his political enemies — he’s ordered ICE to redouble its focus on big American cities, calling them, on his website Truth Social, the “core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State.” He’s seeking a nakedly political crackdown on urban America, designed to create more furious confrontations like those in Los Angeles.

Indeed, the more he feels his position weakening, the more he’s likely to lash out. This dynamic is terrible for the country, but it might also end up being bad for him. Trump will keep trying to tear this increasingly fragile and beleaguered nation apart. But as Saturday showed, if and when he does so, he may not end up with the biggest piece.

Michelle Goldberg has been a New York Times Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018, for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

Donald Trump is creating a dangerous regime by eliminating institutional guardrails in place to prevent his incompetent leadership

Echo opinion published by The New York Times Editorial Board:

Donald Trump has demonstrated his lack of fitness for the presidency in countless ways, but one of the clearest is in the company he keeps, surrounding himself with fringe figures, conspiracy theorists and sycophants who put fealty to him above all else. This week, a series of cabinet nominations by Trump showed the potential dangers posed by his reliance on his inner circle in the starkest way possible.

For three of the nation’s highest-ranking and most vital positions, Trump said he would appoint loyalists, with no discernible qualifications for their jobs (❗), people manifestly inappropriate for crucial positions of leadership in law enforcement and national security.

The most irresponsible was his choice for attorney general. To fill the post of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, the president-elect said he would nominate Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida.

Yes, that Matt Gaetz.

The one who called for the abolishment of the F.B.I. and the entire Justice Department if they didn’t stop investigating Trump. The one who was among the loudest congressional voices in denying the results of the 2020, election, who said he was “proud of the work” that he and other deniers did on January 6, 2021, and who praised the Capitol rioters as “patriotic Americans” who had no intention of committing violence. The one whose move to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023, paralyzed his own party’s leadership of the House for nearly a month.

Gaetz, who submitted his letter of resignation from Congress after his nomination was announced, was the target of a years long federal sex-trafficking investigation that led to an 11-year prison term for one of his associates, though he denied any involvement. 

The Justice Department closed that investigation (❓-why), but the House Ethics Committee is still looking into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, improper acceptance of gifts and obstruction of government investigations of his conduct. 

Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, blamed Gaetz for his ouster, on the grounds that Gaetz “wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old.”

Gaetz is the man Trump has selected to lead the 115,000-person agency that he has called the most important in the federal government, a position whose enforcement role could cause the most trouble for any president with corrupt intent. 

Even for Trump, it was a stunning demonstration of his disregard for basic competence and government experience and of his duty to lead the executive branch in a sober and patriotic way. It will now be up to the Senate to say he has gone too far and reject his unqualified nominations.

Trump’s list of appointments is just getting started, but already includes two other unqualified nominations that he announced this week: former Representative Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense.

Gabbard, who previously represented Hawaii in the House and regularly appears on Fox (Fake ❗) News, is not only devoid of intelligence experience but has repeatedly taken positions in direct opposition to American foreign policy and national security interests. She has appeared on several occasions to side with strongmen like President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Hegseth, a co-host of “Fox & Friends,” is perhaps even more unqualified, given the gravity — not to mention the budget — of the post he would assume. He enjoys some support from enlisted service members and veterans, but outside of serving two tours as an Army infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as time at Guantánamo Bay, Hegseth has no experience in government or national defense.




“He’s never run a big institution, much less one of the largest and most hidebound on the planet,” the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote Wednesday. “He has no experience in government outside the military, and no small risk is that the bureaucracy will eat him alive.” The board went on to call Mr. Hegseth a “culture warrior” at a time when there are much bigger security issues for the Pentagon to be focused on.

It’s far from certain if Hegseth could even obtain the security clearances required for the job. He has said he was one of a dozen National Guard members removed from service at President Biden’s inauguration in 2021, because of concerns that he was an extremist — possibly because of a tattoo he wears that is popular among white supremacists.

These are some of the most consequential roles in government, protecting the country from military and terrorist threats, investigating domestic criminal conspiracies and prosecuting thousands of federal crimes every year. Yet to fill them, Mr. Trump has resorted to people whose only eligibility for office is an apparent willingness to say yes to his every demand.

Gaetz in particular has joined Trump in expressing a commitment to exacting vengeance against anyone they believe has done them wrong. Trump began his campaign by saying “I am your retribution,” and Gaetz broadcasts nothing so much as that. He has no business leading an agency with the role of combating crime, fraud, violations of civil rights and threats to national security, among many other things.

In Trump’s first term, the department was protected by career prosecutors and other civil servants who understood that their primary obligation was to the dictates of the Constitution, not to the whims of the president. But, Trump has promised to purge people like that from his second administration.

The possibility of extreme appointments like these was the reason the Constitution gives the Senate the right to refuse its consent to a president’s wishes. Last week, Republicans won control of the chamber. Now they will be confronted with an immediate test: Will they stand up for the legislative branch and for the American system of checks and balances? Two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have already expressed strong skepticism about the Gaetz’s nomination - of course, he has since withdrawn- and others have declined to express their support.

Trump clearly expects the Senate to simply roll over and ignore its responsibilities. He wants to turn the leaders of major important agencies into his deputies, remaking the federal government into a Trump Inc. organization chart entirely subordinate to him. He recently demanded that the Senate give him the ability to make recess appointments, a way of bypassing the Senate’s consent process when the chamber is adjourned for 10 days or more.

Even Republican senators refused to consent to that demand during his first term, to preserve their constitutional role, and Senate Republicans on Wednesday voted to reject as their leader Rick Scott of Florida, who said he would have no problem allowing recess appointments. Instead, they chose John Thune of South Dakota, who is far more likely to uphold his chamber’s right to refuse consent of president nominations.

In Trump’s second term, senators will immediately be confronted with an extreme set of appointments, even worse than those of the first term. That makes it all the more important that they preserve the ability to say no. 💥

If Speaker Mike Johnson really reads Scripture then he must know Matthew 23: 27-28

An echo opinion published in The New York Times by Charles M. Blow:  ...."second wave Trumpism..."? (It boggles my mind to try and understand the "un-understandable", i.e., how it is that Trumpism is a euphemism for Christian Nationalism.....in other words, smokescreen etymology for "smokescreen rhetoric")

I Grew Up in Mike Johnson’s District, Where Kindness Can Mask Cruelty

Cruelty masked in Christian nationalism

I don’t know Mike Johnson, the brand-new speaker of the House of Representatives, but I feel as if I do because we’re from the same neck of the woods. He’s from Shreveport, in Caddo Parish, Louisiana., where I was born and where one of my brothers died.

Johnson’s district encompasses my childhood hometown, Gibsland, about 40 miles east of Shreveport, and home parish, Bienville, which is where most members of my family have lived for as long as I can track them back. My mother and two of my brothers still live there.

He graduated from Louisiana State University. A few years earlier, I had turned down a scholarship to L.S.U. to accept one at Grambling State University, a historically Black college about a half-hour east of Gibsland. He also wrote opinion essays for the newspaper where I cut my teeth as a working journalist, The Shreveport Times.

We never crossed paths, but we came of age politically in the same locality, a place I know better than almost any other on Earth, shaped by many of the same cultural forces.

And for that reason, I believe that he’ll most likely be able to avoid being tagged as an extremist — at least in the short run — as America gets to know him.

In a statement after Johnson was elected speaker, the Democratic National Committee castigated him as an “election-denying, anti-abortion MAGA extremist” who was “a mastermind behind House Republicans’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election” and “is a loyal foot soldier to the real leader of the Republican Party — Donald Trump.”

All that is true, but unlike Trump’s, Johnson’s efforts to undermine American democracy are served like a comforting bowl of grits and a glass of sweet tea. He is not abrasive. He is likable- (like a used car salesman.....).

He is from a part of the country where your nemesis will smile at you and promise to pray for you, where people will quickly submit that they “love the sinner but hate the sin,” where one hand can hold a Bible while the other holds a shackle. He is from a place where people use religion to brand their hatred as love so that they act on it cheerfully and without guilt.

He is what many have feared: an example of second-wave Trumpism — politicians rising in Trump’s wake who come with the same policy priorities and ideological proclivities, but in a far more congenial and urbane package, propelled by something more than personal grievance. Trumpism is a religion (i.e., cultism❗) developed to serve a man (not a deity). What happens when it evolves into a pillar of an established creed and is viewed as a way to serve God?

Johnson has taken that ethos into his politics.

In an interview last week on Fox News, Johnson said: “Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.’ That’s my worldview.”

Johnson tried to create some daylight between his zealotry and his politics, saying that not all lawmakers’ deeply held beliefs can become law. He also said that when the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was constitutionally protected it became “settled” law and “the law of the land,” and as a constitutional lawyer, “I respect that.”

But does he?

Anticipating that decision in 2015, he introduced a failed religious exemption bill in the Louisiana State Legislature aimed at blunting the ruling’s effect. He said at the time about the court’s eventual ruling, “It is difficult to overestimate the damage this will do to our culture and deep religious heritage that has defined America since its founding.”

On another occasion, he said the court had decided “to usurp the authority of the people and force same-sex marriage on all 50 states by judicial fiat.”

Mike Johnson's religious crusade. He is leading a second wave of Trumpism shrouded in religious fanaticism.

Does that sound like respecting a ruling to you? Of course not. It’s an example of Johnson’s fundamentalism in action: his Captain Ahab-like obsession with opposing L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

He has a longstanding friendship with Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana legislator who is the president of the Family Research Council, an organization whose website says that “homosexual conduct” — not just same-sex marriage — is not only “harmful to the persons who engage in it” but “also harmful to society at large.”

Like Perkins, Johnson is on a crusade to advance a religious agenda, even when it comes at the expense of constitutionally protected liberty.

As Peter Wehner wrote for The Atlantic, Johnson “uses his Christian faith to sacralize his fanaticism and assault on truth.” Johnson’s worldview seems to be that the will of God is greater than the rights of man — a view nurtured by the place that nurtured him.

The year after same-sex marriage became legal nationwide, the American Bible Society ranked Shreveport the country’s fourth most “Bible-minded” city, a measure of Bible reading habits and beliefs about the Bible.

Bibleism and Trumpism

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean." Matthew 23: 27-28

This patina of piety affords Johnson a sense of cheerfulness, the sense that he’s a harmless, happy warrior in the conservative Christian cause: After Johnson’s bill was killed in the State Legislature in 2015, he smiled for photos with two of the activists who had helped kill it.

Where he and I are from, even would-be oppressors can be affable. It’s not just good manners; it’s the Christian way, the proper Southern way. And it is the ultimate deception.

Florida's Governor DeSantis wasting time and money in political no man's land. He should stay home and take care of Floridians.

Obviously, I am not a political strategist. Nevertheless, Florida's Ron D. Santis should have considered consulting with me.....

Based on my humble political advocacy experience 101~ this is what I know: "Thou shalt not run a presidential campaign against a political colleague who is the former president of the United States and who is also a constituent who lives in the state where you are  the governor. But if you do make this wrongminded decision, then you must behave like a candidate instead of a one trick pony." 

Echo opinion by Michelle Cottle published in The New York Times:

Admitting you’ve made mistakes is tough for anyone!

For a hard-charging, hyper-scrutinized political candidate who presents himself as infallible, it can be as excruciating as a root canal without anesthesia.

But, Ron DeSantis clearly has hit the point where his presidential quest is crying out for a serious course correction. 

• I know it !
• You know it. 

Anxious Republican strategists and donors know it. And Team DeSantis knows it, no matter what kind of happy talk the candidate was spewing in his interview with CNN last week. (Tip: If you find yourself babbling about being one of the few folks who knows how to define “woke,” you are not nailing your message.😒 )

If things were going well for DeSantis — if he were catching fire as the less erratic, unindicted alternative to Donald Trump — there’s not a snowball’s chance he would have set foot in CNN. 

But. as things stand, consorting with non-conservative media outlets, which he, until recently, avoided, like a pack of rabid raccoons, is part of a bigger overhaul.

Team Trump intends to have some fun with this.

 “Some reboots were never going to be successful, like ‘Dynasty,’ ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ or even ‘MacGyver,’” the campaign mocked in a statement last week. “And now we can add Ron DeSantis’s 2024, campaign to the list of failures.”

DeSantis campaign is wasting money trying to reset a loosing campaign strategy. Thou shalt not be a candidate running against your own "former guy" constituent!

But campaign reboots are nothing to be ashamed of. Honest! They are a common, even healthy, part of the process. Handled properly, they give candidates the chance to show off their decisiveness, tenacity, adaptability, unflappability — you name it.

Not all overhauls are created equal, of course. Ronald Reagan’s in the 1980 presidential race? Golden. Jeb Bush’s in 2016? Oof. 

And plenty have fallen somewhere in between: John Kerry 2004, John McCain 2008, Hillary Clinton 2008. As the DeSantis campaign starts down this path, it has an abundance of recent cases to consult for potential tips, tricks and red flags.

While every floundering candidacy is floundering in its own way, there are a few foundational moves common to presidential campaign reboots:

1. Slash spending, which typically involves cutting campaign staff and salaries.
2. Shake up the leadership team.
3. Shift the focus toward more grass roots stumping in the early voting states.

Spending issues are almost a political rite of passage. So many campaigns get carried away early on with high-priced advisers or an overabundance of staff members, especially with front-runners eager to project an aura of inevitability.

The DeSantis campaign is still doing solidly with fund-raising, but there have been warning signs (especially in the small-donor department) that have it cutting staff and rethinking priorities. (Even more Iowa!) This is obviously no fun and may presage even less fun to come. 

But it is better to start making these adjustments before things get really ugly. During the summer of 2007, the struggling McCain campaign found itself nearly broke, prompting massive layoffs and pay cuts and causing general upheaval as the high-level finger-pointing spiraled.

Money matters aside, a campaign’s top leadership not infrequently requires tweaking — or tossing. The candidate needs to lock down savvy people he trusts and will listen to, even as he jettisons the troublemakers. When making such assessments, there is little room for sentimentality. Sometimes even (maybe especially) longtime friends and advisers need to be … repurposed … particularly if the chain of command has become confused and internal bickering is taking its toll. This can lead to even more tumult. When Mr. McCain cut loose a couple of his top advisers in 2007, several senior staff members followed them out the door.

But a failure to deal with such a situation can leave the whole enterprise feeling increasingly dysfunctional, as was often the case with Hillary’s 2008, campaign. So much infighting and backbiting. So many competing power centers. This is when a candidate really needs to step up and impose order.

In many cases, a reboot may call for pushing out a new narrative. Postdownsizing, Team McCain sought to reassure donors and supporters with a plan to get lean and mean and start “Living off the land.” The candidate doubled down on wooing New Hampshire (Iowa’s social conservatives were never a natural fit for him), playing up his bus tours and broadly aiming to recapture the underdog, maverick spirit of his 2000, presidential run. 

John Kerry, way down in the polls behind Howard Dean in 2003, wanted to create a comeback-kid narrative by notching back-to-back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire; he lent money to his campaign and basically lived in Iowa for weeks to help execute his one-two punch.

It’s hard to say how a DeSantis variation of something like this would work. He plans to start talking less about his record leading the state “where woke goes to die” and double down on an “us against the world” theme, according to NBC. This latter bit sounds very Trumpian, maybe a tad too much so, considering Mr. Trump himself is still running with a version of that line. DeSantis’s heavy investment in Iowa, along with his chummy relationship with the state’s governor, could bring Kerry-like benefits. Then again, multiple candidates are campaigning hard there and could wind up splitting the non-Trump vote.

The harsh reality of reboots is that some presidential hopefuls are just too out of step with the political moment to rescue. Mr. Bush strode into the 2016 race as the man to beat. But Republicans were in no mood for his policy-heavy, mellow style of politics. (Mr. Trump’s “low energy” insult was brutally resonant.) By the fall of 2015, Team Jeb was slashing staff and hoping for the debates to help him win free media. No one cared.

To be sure, "D. Santis" (or whatever he renamed himself) proved himself willing to get much nastier and more reactionary than did Mr. Bush in appealing to his base’s basest instincts. (That Trump-trashing anti-L.G.B.T.Q. video his campaign shared on social media — at once homophobic and homoerotic — was certainly something special.) No way anyone is going to catch Gov. Pudding Fingers being squishy on a culture-war hot topic like trans rights or immigration.

Yet the governor does carry a whiff of out-of-touch wonkiness. He can’t help but get all right-wing jargony at times — “accreditation cartels”? Really? — and his bungled, Twitter-based campaign announcement was clearly designed more to impress the online bros than the working-class voters he needs to woo away from Mr. Trump. Someone really should be working with him to fix this.

In the end, of course, it may be that Mr. DeSantis is on track to crash into that highest and hardest of reboot hurdles: likability.

This was, fundamentally, what kept the presidency just out of Mrs. Clinton’s reach. Even beyond the Republican haters, too many voters found her off-putting. She was not a natural retail politician. She struck people as standoffish and inauthentic. Time and again, her advisers tried to address this, but to no avail. Presidential contests have a lot to do with vibes, and she never quite managed to radiate the ones needed to go all the way.

DeSantis seems to be in a dangerously similar spot. He is famously awkward on the campaign trail — and with people in general. He stinks at the whole backslapping, glad-handing thing. He has trouble making eye contact. He presents as brusque, impatient, uninterested. He’s got the obnoxious parts of Trumpism down, without the carnival barker fun.

This doesn’t mean his presidential dreams are doomed. But it does suggest that a key element of his reboot should be figuring out how not to come across as a stilted, smug jerk who doesn’t care about voters.

Hey, no one said this would be easy.

Maine Writer P.S.:  Meanwhile, Floridians are suffering political, and heat related exhaustion while their governor is wasting time and money in the quick sand of a floundering Iowa campaign.  

Racism and unknown risk consequences for democracy

Echo opinion published in the History News Network by Donne Levy, a retired community college history instructor. 

The term “Trumpism,” alluding to a cult of personality surrounding the #FormerGuy, has penetrated the American vernacular. 

(Maine Writer: Trumpism is the modern euphemism for Naziism)

So much about the Trump presidency has been weirdly unprecedented. 

But, the cult phenomenon is not new.  

Apparently, a cult of personality also engulfed Ronald Reagan. Although the two men are very different from one another in character, their cults of personality share similar qualities. Both were not always truthful, both made serious mistakes and both were tinged with racism.

A political cult of personality means a strong and irrational admiration and devotion to a leader. Frequently, the leader spreads fame widely through mass media. Followers become enamored to the point of idolizing the leader, while overlooking or ignoring shortcomings. This characterizes the public life of both Trump and Reagan.

Familiar to millions of Americans by appearing in movies and hosting the weekly General Electric Theater on Sunday night television, Ronald Reagan began a political career on October 27, 1964 with a nationally televised speech on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. It was a week before the election. The speech was filled with false claims about the overbearing U.S. government and unverified anecdotes. This was all to support Reagan’s view that government needed to get out of the way of the economic freedom of the American people. Reagan created #fakenews by falsely claimed that farmers could be imprisoned who did not cooperate with federal government programs, and that the Federal Reserve Board planned inflation.

Reagan also said, “We were told four years ago that seventeen million people went to be hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.” (OMG!) Due to his building a cult of personality, this particularly callous and inaccurate quote was overlooked. When Reagan spoke, more than 36 million Americans were living in poverty, nearly one-fifth of the country. Following the formula of that speech, Reagan won the California governorship two years later by a landslide and would go on to win the presidency twice, by equally impressive margins. The Reagan cult of personality enabled him to remain popular with his followers even when violating his own conservative principles. Throughout his political career, Reagan railed against big government deficit spending. But when the national debt rose by 189 percent, he suffered no political consequences. When Reagan admitted to misleading Americans during the Iran-Contra scandal, his popularity went down temporarily, but bounced back by the end of his presidency.

Donald Trump, like Reagan, gained fame with the American public through show business. Trump starred in a reality television show called The Apprentice. Many Americans assumed that Trump was the “boss” starring in his own program, but in reality Trump was an actor employed by a television production company, just as Reagan was an actor employed by the General Electric Company. 

Trump's strangely favorable celebrity status leading toward a political cult of personality was supported by the appearances on The Apprentice. While Reagan launched his political career with a televised speech, Trump began his with a nationally televised (racist!) accusation that Barack Obama should not be president because he was not a natural-born U.S. citizen. With no proof other than his words, Trump claimed to have investigators in Hawaii uncovering evidence that Obama was not born there as his birth certificate indicated. “They couldn’t believe what they’re finding,” Trump asserted. Several years later, shortly before winning the presidency, Trump admitted that he believed Obama is a U.S. citizen.

When Trump announced his presidential candidacy, he declared, “Sadly the American dream is dead.” The campaign slogan became “Make America Great Again” That is not unlike Reagan’s decrying big government for destroying our freedom. The Reagan 1980 campaign slogan “Morning in America” is not very different in meaning from the Trump 2016 slogan. Like Reagan, Trump deviated from facts to support political points. Examples of this are legion, from Trump’s assertion that he saw thousands of Muslims on 9/11 cheering the collapse of the twin-towers to his claim of Obamacare imploding. One difference however is that Reagan’s factual deviations usually served to buttress his political points, while Trump’s were often to boost himself, from the false claim to have graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania at the top of his class, and the boast of being a “very stable genius.” That arrogance was not in Reagan’s character.

Trump’s personality cult protected him to some extent as it did Reagan. Trump’s popularity was never high as Reagan’s was. But his approval ratings always remained in the middle 40s, not dropping precipitously as in the case of Nixon and Carter for example. That is despite numerous scandals, including the Russia investigation, and a poorly-handled pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Unfortunately, in the end, 74 million Americans (incredulously!) voted for Trump. The cult of personality remained intact.

Another and more sinister similarity in the Reagan and Trump cults of personality is white racism. Both men saw an opportunity to advance their political careers by appealing to white voters in a racially prejudicial way. In Reagan’s 1966 campaign for governor he appealed to white voters disgusted with the “beatniks, radicals, and filthy speech advocates” as Reagan termed it. In his 1976 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Reagan frequently told the “welfare queen” story about a woman on welfare who allegedly defrauded the U.S. Government of $150,000. The story was significantly embellished, but was in keeping with Reagan’s political views. He once called welfare recipients a “faceless mass waiting for a handout.” He did not mention race, but the implication was abundantly clear that the welfare queen is black. In his 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan after winning the nomination, traveled to Mississippi to give a speech at the Neshoba County Fair to a white audience glorifying states’ rights, which has long been the cry of white Southerners fighting civil rights. Neshoba County is the site where three civil rights workers were infamously killed in 1964.

Donald Trump’s appeal to white racism has been more blatant. In August 2017, the Unite the Right rally occurred with one counter-protester killed. Trump said that “you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.” One side had neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, and Alt-Right people. In the last presidential campaign, Trump in numerous ways appealed to racism attempting to win re-election. For example, he condemned NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag. He condemned Black Lives Matter and predicted the “beautiful suburbs” will be destroyed by low-income housing if Biden wins. He blamed big city Democrats and their black voters for stealing the election, ignoring the fact that he lost battleground states because too many whites in the suburbs deserted him.

Two recent presidents have had cults of personality, although that is antithetical to democracy. That enabled both to win their party nominations and the general election. It gave both men the luxury of deviating from truthfulness and enabled Reagan to survive a severe scandal and Trump to be incompetent, scandalous and profane while maintaining a base of popularity. This also indicates something ominous about America. If a candidate has a cult of personality, and develops a large number of devoted followers who believe he or she can do no wrong, it could potentially make white supremacy or other malignant elements of politics seem permissible, with unknown consequences for democracy.

Donald Trump adds farmers to the the exit door line up

Paul Krugman echo opinion published in East Oregonian newspaper:

Economists, reports Politico, are fleeing the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service. 

Six of them resigned on a single day last month. The reason? They are feeling persecuted for publishing reports that shed an unflattering light on Trump policies.

But these reports are just reflecting reality (which has a well-known anti-Trump bias). Rural America is a key part of Donald Trump’s base. In fact, rural areas are the only parts of the country in which Trump has a net positive approval rating. But they’re also the biggest losers under his policies.

What, after all, is Trumpism? In 2016 Trump pretended to be a different kind of Republican, but in practice almost all of his economic agenda has been GOP standard: big tax cuts for corporations and the rich while hacking away at the social safety net. The one big break from orthodoxy has been his protectionism, his eagerness to start trade wars.

And all of these policies hurt farm country.

The Trump tax cut largely passes farmers by, because they aren’t corporations and few of them are rich. One of the studies by Agriculture Department economists that raised Trumpian ire showed that to the extent that farmers saw tax reductions, most of the benefits went to the richest 10%, while poor farmers actually saw a slight tax increase.

At the same time, the assault on the safety net is especially harmful to rural America, which relies heavily on safety-net programs. Of the 100 counties with the highest percentage of their population receiving food stamps, 85 are rural, and most of the rest are in small metropolitan areas. The expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which Trump keeps trying to kill, had its biggest positive impact on rural areas.

And these programs are crucial to rural Americans even if they don’t personally receive government aid. Safety-net programs bring purchasing power, which helps create rural jobs. Medicaid is also a key factor keeping rural hospitals alive; without it, access to health care would be severely curtailed for rural Americans in general.

What about protectionism? 

In fact, the U.S. farm sector is hugely dependent on access to world markets, much more so than the economy as a whole. American soybean growers export half of what they produce; wheat farmers export 46% of their crop. China, in particular, has become a key market for U.S. farm products. That’s why Trump’s recent rage-tweeting over trade, which raised the prospect of an expanded trade war, sent grain markets to a 42-year low.

It’s important to realize, by the way, that the threat to farmers isn’t just about possible foreign retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. 

One fundamental principle in international economics is that in the long run, taxes on imports end up being taxes on exports as well, usually because they lead to a higher dollar. If the world descends into trade war, U.S. imports and exports will both shrink — and farmers, among our most important exporters, will be the biggest losers.

Why, then, do rural areas support Trump? A lot of it has to do with cultural factors. In particular, rural voters are far more hostile to immigrants than urban voters — especially in communities where there are few immigrants to be found. Lack of familiarity apparently breeds contempt.

Rural voters also feel disrespected by coastal elites, and Trump has managed to channel their anger. No doubt many rural voters, if they happened to read this column, would react with rage, not at Trump, but at me: “So you think we’re stupid!”

But support for Trump might nonetheless start to crack if rural voters realized how much they are being hurt by his policies. 

What’s a Trumpist to do?

Trumpzism might be cracking, especially with farmers who are not wealthy and the trade war is harming their ability to trade.

Trump repeats zombie lies. A few weeks ago Trump told a cheering rally that his cuts in the estate tax have helped farmers. This claim is, however, totally false; PolitiFact rated it “pants on fire.” The reality is that in 2017 only about 80 farms and closely held businesses — that’s right, 80 — paid any estate tax at all. Tales of family farms broken up to pay estate tax are pure fiction.

Another answer is to try to suppress the truth. Hence the persecution of Agriculture Department economists who were just trying to do their jobs.

The thing is, the assault on truth will have consequences that go beyond politics. Agriculture’s Economic Research Service isn’t supposed to be a cheering section for whoever is in power. As its mission statement says, its role is to conduct “high-quality, objective economic research to inform and enhance public and private decision making.” And that’s not an idle boast: Along with the Federal Reserve, the research service is a prime example of how good economics can serve practical purposes.

Now, however, the service’s ability to do its job is being rapidly degraded, because the Trump administration doesn’t believe in fact-based policy. Basically, it doesn’t believe in facts, period. Everything is political.

And who will pay the price for this degradation? Rural Americans. Trump’s biggest supporters are his biggest victims.

Paul Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times.

Transcript of George W. Bush - alert to the nation

Full text: George W. Bush speech on Trumpism- (In my opinion, this text by the former president is the moral equivalent of the Martin Luther King clarion calls for freedom.)

"We know that free governments are the only way to ensure that the strong are just and the weak are valued. And we know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy."~ George W. Bush

George W. Bush

Below is a transcript of George W. Bush's speech delivered Oct. 19, 2017 at the at the “Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In The World" event in New York.

Thank you all. Thank you. Ok, Padilla gracias. So, I painted Ramon. I wish you were still standing here. It’s a face only a mother could love – no, it’s a fabulous face. (Laughter.) I love you Ramon, thank you very much for being here.

And, Grace Jo thank you for your testimony. And, big Tim. I got to know Tim as a result of Presidential Leadership Scholars at the Bush Center along with the Clinton Foundation, with help from 41 and LBJ’s libraries.

I am thrilled that friends of ours from Afghanistan, China, North Korea, and Venezuela are here as well. These are people who have experienced the absence of freedom and they know what it’s like and they know there is a better alternative to tyranny.

Laura and I are thrilled that the Bush Center supporters are here. Bernie [Tom Bernstein], I want to thank you and your committee. I call him Bernie. (Laughter.)

It’s amazing to have Secretary Albright share the stage with Condi and Ambassador Haley. For those of you that kind of take things for granted, that’s a big deal. (Laughter and Applause.) Thank you.

We are gathered in the cause of liberty this is a unique moment. The great democracies face new and serious threats – yet seem to be losing confidence in their own calling and competence. Economic, political and national security challenges proliferate, and they are made worse by the tendency to turn inward. The health of the democratic spirit itself is at issue. And the renewal of that spirit is the urgent task at hand.

Since World War II, America has encouraged and benefited from the global advance of free markets, from the strength of democratic alliances, and from the advance of free societies. At one level, this has been a raw calculation of interest. The 20th century featured some of the worst horrors of history because dictators committed them. Free nations are less likely to threaten and fight each other.
And free trade helped make America into a global economic power.

For more than 70 years, the presidents of both parties believed that American security and prosperity were directly tied to the success of freedom in the world. And they knew that the success depended, in large part, on U.S. leadership. This mission came naturally, because it expressed the DNA of American idealism.

We know, deep down, that repression is not the wave of the future. We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to, or owned by, any culture; it is the inborn hope of our humanity. 

We know that free governments are the only way to ensure that the strong are just and the weak are valued. And we know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.

This is not to underestimate the historical obstacles to the development of democratic institutions and a democratic culture. Such problems nearly destroyed our country – and that should encourage a spirit of humility and a patience with others. Freedom is not merely a political menu option, or a foreign policy fad; it should be the defining commitment of our country, and the hope of the world.

That appeal is proved not just by the content of people’s hopes, but a noteworthy hypocrisy: No democracy pretends to be a tyranny. Most tyrannies pretend they are democracies. Democracy remains the definition of political legitimacy. That has not changed, and that will not change.

Yet for years, challenges have been gathering to the principles we hold dear. And, we must take them seriously. Some of these problems are external and obvious. Here in New York City, you know the threat of terrorism all too well. It is being fought even now on distant frontiers and in the hidden world of intelligence and surveillance. There is the frightening, evolving threat of nuclear proliferation and outlaw regimes. And there is an aggressive challenge by Russia and China to the norms and rules of the global order – proposed revisions that always seem to involve less respect for the rights of free nations and less freedom for the individual.

These matters would be difficult under any circumstances. They are further complicated by a trend in western countries away from global engagement and democratic confidence. Parts of Europe have developed an identity crisis. We have seen insolvency, economic stagnation, youth unemployment, anger about immigration, resurgent ethno-nationalism, and deep questions about the meaning and durability of the European Union.

America is not immune from these trends. In recent decades, public confidence in our institutions has declined. Our governing class has often been paralyzed in the face of obvious and pressing needs. The American dream of upward mobility seems out of reach for some who feel left behind in a changing economy. Discontent deepened and sharpened partisan conflicts. Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.

There are some signs that the intensity of support for democracy itself has waned, especially among the young, who never experienced the galvanizing moral clarity of the Cold War, or never focused on the ruin of entire nations by socialist central planning. Some have called this “democratic deconsolidation.” Really, it seems to be a combination of weariness, frayed tempers, and forgetfulness.

We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. 

At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions – forgetting the image of God we should see in each other.

We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism – forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America. We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade – forgetting that conflict, instability, and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism.

We have seen the return of isolationist sentiments – forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places, where threats such as terrorism, infectious disease, criminal gangs and drug trafficking tend to emerge.

In all these ways, we need to recall and recover our own identity. Americans have a great advantage: To renew our country, we only need to remember our values.

This is part of the reason we meet here today. How do we begin to encourage a new, 21st century American consensus on behalf of democratic freedom and free markets? That’s the question I posed to scholars at the Bush Institute. That is what Pete Wehner and Tom Melia, who are with us today, have answered with “The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In The World,” a Call to Action paper.

The recommendations come in broad categories. Here they are: First, America must harden its own defenses. Our country must show resolve and resilience in the face of external attacks on our democracy. And that begins with confronting a new era of cyber threats.

America is experiencing the sustained attempt by a hostile power to feed and exploit our country’s divisions. According to our intelligence services, the Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other. This effort is broad, systematic and stealthy, it’s conducted across a range of social media platforms. Ultimately, this assault won’t succeed. But foreign aggressions – including cyber-attacks, disinformation and financial influence – should not be downplayed or tolerated. This is a clear case where the strength of our democracy begins at home. We must secure our electoral infrastructure and protect our electoral system from subversion.

The second category of recommendations concerns the projection of American leadership – maintaining America’s role in sustaining and defending an international order rooted in freedom and free markets.

Our security and prosperity are only found in wise, sustained, global engagement: In the cultivation of new markets for American goods. In the confrontation of security challenges before they fully materialize and arrive on our shores. In the fostering of global health and development as alternatives to suffering and resentment. In the attraction of talent, energy and enterprise from all over the world. In serving as a shining hope for refugees and a voice for dissidents, human rights defenders, and the oppressed.

We should not be blind to the economic and social dislocations caused by globalization. People are hurting. They are angry. And, they are frustrated. We must hear them and help them. But we can’t wish globalization away, any more than we could wish away the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution. One strength of free societies is their ability to adapt to economic and social disruptions. 

And that should be our goal: to prepare American workers for new opportunities, to care in practical, empowering ways for those who may feel left behind. The first step should be to enact policies that encourage robust economic growth by unlocking the potential of the private sector, and for unleashing the creativity and compassion of this country.

A third focus of this document is strengthening democratic citizenship. And here we must put particular emphasis on the values and views of the young.

Our identity as a nation – unlike many other nations – is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. 

Being an American involves the embrace of high ideals and civic responsibility. We become the heirs of Thomas Jefferson by accepting the ideal of human dignity found in the Declaration of Independence. We become the heirs of James Madison by understanding the genius and values of the U.S. Constitution. 

We become the heirs of Martin Luther King, Jr., by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

This means that people of every race, religion, and ethnicity can be fully and equally American. It means that bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed. (Applause.)

And it means that the very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation.

We need a renewed emphasis on civic learning in schools. And our young people need positive role models. Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children. The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.

Finally, the Call to Action calls on the major institutions of our democracy, public and private, to consciously and urgently attend to the problem of declining trust.

For example, our democracy needs a media that is transparent, accurate and fair. Our democracy needs religious institutions that demonstrate integrity and champion civil discourse. Our democracy needs institutions of higher learning that are examples of truth and free expression.

In short, it is time for American institutions to step up and provide cultural and moral leadership for this nation.

Ten years ago, I attended a Conference on Democracy and Security in Prague. The goal was to put human rights and human freedom at the center of our relationships with repressive governments. The Prague Charter, signed by champions of liberty Vaclav Havel, Natan Sharansky, Jose Maria Aznar, called for the isolation and ostracism of regimes that suppress peaceful opponents by threats or violence.

Little did we know that, a decade later, a crisis of confidence would be developing within the core democracies, making the message of freedom more inhibited and wavering. Little did we know that repressive governments would be undertaking a major effort to encourage division in western societies and to undermine the legitimacy of elections.

Repressive rivals, along with skeptics here at home, misunderstand something important. It is the great advantage of free societies that we creatively adapt to challenges, without the direction of some central authority. Self-correction is the secret strength of freedom. We are a nation with a history of resilience and a genius for renewal.

Right now, one of our worst national problems is a deficit of confidence. But the cause of freedom justifies all our faith and effort. It still inspires men and women in the darkest corners of the world, and it will inspire a rising generation. The American spirit does not say, “We shall manage,” or “We shall make the best of it.” It says, “We shall overcome.” And that is exactly what we will do, with the help of God and one another.

Thank you.