Dangerous Trump wants to take revenge on the Constitution freedom of the press. He must be defeated!

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Robin Abcarian:  Was it just a little joke when Orange Jesus declared to Sean Hannity that, in the event of his political resurrection, he would be a dictator on “Day One”? I didn’t take it that way. You shouldn’t either. 

Believe Trump when he vows revenge on the media. MAGA shock troops are already on the attack.

Former guy President Trump’s MAGA shock troops have been announcing all over the place that a second Trump term would be dedicated to punishing enemies real and imagined, especially journalists who have dared speculate about how he would set about torching the Constitution.

Trump intends to torch the U.S. Constitution!

In the dictator’s playbook, demonizing the press is Job No. 1, and it’s something Trump is long familiar with: He not only calls news he doesn’t like “fake,” he claims he invented the term “fake news.” (No hat tip to the Nazis, I guess.) Mainstream news outlets, he’s often said, are “truly the enemy of the people.” Reporters are “scum,” “the absolute worst.”

For years, Trump has said he wants to weaken our country’s libel laws, making it easier for him to sue outlets for negative coverage. (Nothing to do with principle, of course. It’s all about him.)

Some of our Supreme Court justices have intimated that they agree and would like nothing more than to overturn the court’s unanimous 1964, ruling that made it difficult for public figures to win libel cases.

This country’s political system is flawed, no doubt about it. A presidential candidate can win the popular vote in a landslide and still lose the White House. 

Broken democracy!  Think of the power of a man who gets himself elected president despite indictments, courtroom appearances and perhaps even conviction? Would he even obey a directive of the Supreme Court? Or would he instead ask how many armored divisions the chief justice has? (Robert Kagan)

Scheming partisans can draw maps designed to keep them in power endlessly and pass laws designed to depress voter turnout to their benefit. But haven’t we always believed, deep in our bones, that the American free press could never be silenced, that the 1st Amendment protects us from government censorship, and that a well-functioning Fourth Estate really is what keeps democracy safe?

You might think the motto of the Washington Post is kind of silly — “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” I find it profound.

It’s true that American reporters have been jailed many times over the years — most often for refusing to comply with court orders to identify their sources. We don’t put reporters in jail for telling the truth or for giving their opinions. But Trump would.

He and his allies have already laid the groundwork for a war on the free press in the event that he wins a second term.

Kash Patel, for example, was a onetime aide to former California Rep. Devin Nunes, who rose through the ranks of the Trump administration. He eventually landed a job as chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, one of the Trump loyalists who was installed after the then-president purged Defense officials who refused to deploy military troops to quell George Floyd protests. 

Then, on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Patel, whom Trump is reportedly considering for CIA director in a second administration, vowed revenge on Trump critics, including reporters.

“We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government but in the media,” he told Bannon. “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections…. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

The name of the relatively obscure MAGA Republican attorney Mike Davis, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and worked for Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, has reportedly been bandied about for the position of attorney general in a second Trump administration. Davis is a walking, talking testosterone-poisoned MAGA caricature, promising to “rain hell” on Washington if he gets a Cabinet appointment. “We’re gonna put kids in cages,” he told a MAGA Republican YouTube host in September. “It’s gonna be glorious.”

He threatened to put in jail and deport the left-wing MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. “I already have his spot picked out in the DC gulag,” Davis tweeted last month.

The latest Trumpian attack on the press comes from Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a Yale Law graduate and member of the elite university MAGA Republican faux populist cartel that includes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (Princeton, Harvard Law), Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (Harvard, Harvard Law), Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (Stanford, Yale Law).

J. D. Vance once decried Trump as “cultural heroin.” Now he’s won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Ohio by peddling Trumpism. "He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” he wrote in The Atlantic in July 2016. (Report by David A. Graham)

Vance, once derided Trump as “cultural heroin,” was offended by a widely read Washington Post essay by the neoconservative scholar Robert Kagan, that warned against a second Trump term. “Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality,” the essay began. “There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day.”

Kagan, who left the Republican Party over its embrace of Trump, laid out a dark vision of what would happen if Trump clinches the GOP’s 2024, presidential nomination and his fellow Republicans and big-dollar donors fall into line. “Think of the power of a man who gets himself elected president despite indictments, courtroom appearances and perhaps even conviction,” Kagan wrote. “Would he even obey a directive of the Supreme Court? Or would he instead ask how many armored divisions the chief justice has?”

Could blue states provide a meaningful bulwark against a Trump dictatorship, Kagan wondered. “States with Democratic governors and statehouses could refuse to recognize the authority of a tyrannical federal government,” he mused. “But not even the bluest states are monolithic, and Democratic governors are likely to find themselves under siege on their home turf if they try to become bastions of resistance to Trump’s tyranny.”

Vance, getting the jump on Trump 2.0 media revenge, asked Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to investigate Kagan.

“I suspect,” wrote Vance, “that one or both of you might characterize this article as an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war.”

I suspect that Vance is either off his rocker, or more likely, simply making a disingenuous attempt to minimize Trump’s orchestrated effort to overthrow President Biden, a crime against democracy that culminated in the violence of Jan. 6, 2021.

I mean, come on people, what’s the difference between inciting a violent riot that left at least five people dead, pressuring a vice president to violate the Constitution, trying to strong-arm Georgia’s secretary of state into finding more Trump votes, orchestrating slates of fake electors and writing a thought experiment op-ed for a newspaper?

If your answer is “nothing,” then you just might have a promising future in a second Trump administration.

Utah view about failed Donald Trump leadership

I have appreciated reading columns by Michael S. Robinson Sr, published in The Salt Lake City Weekly:

Another writer documents Donald Trump's failures

"Trump's (failed) meetings at NATO and his badly mannered height-of-rudeness visits with British Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II, demonstrated that, just when we think we've seen the worst of his behavior, he is soaring to new heights as the ultimate negative superlative. True to form, Trump insulted May, broke every protocol during his audience with the Queen and managed to get caught in yet another of his well-documented lies"

Robinson writes:

While his mini-ninnies huddle beneath the White House tables like a Midwest clan awaiting the touchdown of an EF5 tornado, the storm of President Donald Trump's verbal and behavioral abortions continues to wreak havoc in the civilized world.

I find myself asking, "Why couldn't he have just stopped at the familiar boundaries of his sick little world—grabbing pussies and frolicking with hookers in his Moscow hotel room while his "stellar" art-of-the-deal business interests crumbled and burned in the bankruptcy courts?

That's what Trump was; that's what he is today. The only thing that's changed is his title, expanding the audience for his theatrics and inviting the scrutiny of 300 million Americans and the duly-disgusted billions around the world.

At least Trump was in his own element back then, before his Soviet buddies got him launched into shoes too big to fill. For Trump, there's no growing into that mantle of presidential dignity. He needs to go back where he belongs.

The most disturbing truth is not that he is a monster. That's bad enough, sure. He doesn't seem to be able to do anything but stir controversy and sow misery and pain. But, even more horrific, is the matter of inexcusable congressional abdication in dealing with a president who has become the worst blow to America since its inception. Trump's reckless diplomatic missteps and his bull-in-the-china-shop antics have precipitated international tragedy, tortured the innocent young, insulted all of our friends, threatened the demise of our democracy and ensured highly-predictable political and economic repercussions for our allies.

We elected our senators and representatives—not to kowtow to their suspected Russian-operative-president, but to take stands on issues that are important to the future of our country. 

Well, Sen. Orrin (Hatch), Mike, Rob, Chris, John, Mia, now's a good time to take the appropriate action for your constituents. 

Somehow transformed into a sorry-ass bunch of deaf-mutes, even the otherwise seemingly-respectable most honorable congressmen aren't saying "boo." You'd think that, in an organization so large, at least a few would stand up and be heard. That simply isn't happening. Congress is a disgrace to the values of our Founding Fathers, and Utah's own senators and representatives are as bad as they get. Instead of forging ahead to drain Washington's ugly swamp, they are swimming with the crocodiles and mating with the swamp's ugliest residents. Every one of them should be sent packing in the November elections for failing to stop Trump's ongoing carnage.

Stuck in the clear understanding that their country is now led by a gigantic juvenile ego driven by a pea-sized brain, Congress is silently hoping, like the rest of us, that this hideous nightmare will somehow end. 

Congress has the power but lacks the integrity to rein in the president. Even the eternal optimists' hopes are being dashed by the events of the past month—a time during which Trump has solidly completed the alienation of other world powers. While the matter of NATO countries underfunding the defense coffers is largely legitimate, Trump essentially told our allies to go fuck themselves. 

In his usual Whack-A-Mole style, Trump offered no suggestions for compromise. He seeks no resolution. (I guess that's the art of the deal.)

Late and truant from some of his scheduled meetings, he didn't even have the decency to apologize. Trump's meetings at NATO and his badly mannered height-of-rudeness visits with British Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II, demonstrated that, just when we think we've seen the worst of his behavior, he is soaring to new heights as the ultimate negative superlative. True to form, Trump insulted May, broke every protocol during his audience with the Queen and managed to get caught in yet another of his well-documented lies. While he claimed #FakeNews over a London newspaper report of his demeaning censure of May, his denials were derailed. This time he can't point his finger, accusing the American press of alleged dishonesty. The publication responded with a tape of Trump's interview. Bingo, gotcha! And, in Trump's characteristic worship of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, he muzzled the mainstream American press at a briefing, claiming that he would only respond to questions from his own news service: Fox.

The week's steady faux pas stream was crowned by his bungled and abrasive visit to the U.K., but the damage Trump did at NATO will live in infamy for years to come. While I quite like the moniker, "The Rabid Orange Raccoon," his awful behavior has inspired yet one more: From now on I'm going to call him "The Dictator," but I'm dropping the last two syllables.

I can't wait until Americans finally take action, delivering Trump's favorite line to the man himself: "You're fired!"

Retired business owner Michael S. Robinson Sr.