Donald Trump only wakes up when he can bully, lie and denigrate Americans and people he wrongly perceives as being weak

Echo opinion letter published in The Virginian Pilot newspaper:

Trump’s ugly coercive style rarely has positive results

Donald Trump is the American bully — and nobody likes a bully. Throughout his political career, his communication style has heavily relied on public humiliation, aggressive behavior and personal attacks. When dealing with individuals — including political rivals, journalists and private citizens — he frequently uses derogatory nicknames and targeted social media campaigns to isolate and disparage his targets.

Internationally, this confrontational approach translates into a transactional foreign policy — everything is a deal.

What kind of deal can he make❓ Rather than relying on diplomacy using professional negotiators, he frequently uses public threats, tariffs and the withholding of foreign aid to pressure both adversaries and allies. This behavior often undermines international agreements and strains traditional diplomatic alliances.

This pattern is starkly visible in Latin America, where his playbook is designed to force sovereign nations into submission. His approach in Venezuela was to arrest President Nicolas Maduro on narco-terrorism charges and then dictate the terms under which Venezuela can participate in global oil markets. 

In Cuba, he has boasted about an imminent friendly takeover or military intervention. Trump recently used federal indictments against former Cuban President Raul Castro to try to force political collapse in the country.

This bullying coercive style usually just makes people mad and want to dig in their heels. It rarely results in positive outcomes.

From David M. Grochmal, in Virginia Beach, Virginia

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are supporting the evil commander in THIEF greed!

New York Times echo opinion by Thomas Friedman

 Trump Has Failed as Commander in Chief❓Who knew❓🙄

With each passing month, Donald Trump behaves more like America’s commander in thief than its commander in chief.

How so❓ Let me count the ways. We are a nation at war today, with tens of thousands of troops deployed near Iran. 

Generally, when our nation has been at war, the commander in chief’s top domestic priority is to keep the country united. Because there is nothing more demoralizing for U.S. troops fighting abroad than to look back and see our country ripping itself apart at home. And, there is nothing that encourages an enemy to hold out for better terms for ending a war with America than seeing America at war with itself.

But, how has Trump risen to that commander-in-chief unifying duty❓ He has not lifted a finger to bring the Democrats behind his war. Instead, he’s prioritized acting like an autocratic monster  "in thief". At the same moment Trump was asking our men and women in uniform to make the ultimate sacrifice, he engaged in a brazen, in-your-face attempted heist of the U.S. Treasury to benefit himself, his family and his political allies, which could include those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. It was so outrageous that even some of his most reliable Republican Party sycophants couldn’t accept it.

Trump conspired with his own Justice Department, headed by his former personal lawyer, to use taxpayer money to create a 💲1.776 billion political slush fund, supposedly to compensate those Trump supporters who “suffered weaponization and lawfare” at the hands of his predecessor. In fact, as this paper’s editorial board noted, it would “reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.”

Fortunately, a federal judge put a temporary hold on the scheme that no one described better than the Republican former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops❓ Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.” In the face of all that opposition, Trump’s acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said on Tuesday he was withdrawing this terrible plan.

If Trump had an ounce of integrity, instead of scheming to set aside 💲1.776 billion to potentially pay off these phony defenders of freedom’s frontier — loyalists who ransacked and defecated in the halls of Congress — he would direct Congress to spend that exact amount to support today’s real defenders of freedom’s frontier: the Ukrainian Army. It is both resisting Vladimir Putin’s attempt to crush Ukraine’s democracy and sapping Russia’s ability to threaten the other free countries of Europe. God bless Ukraine’s fighters.

Alas, though, Trump apparently wants money only for people who tried to overthrow our Constitution at home, not for those who want to emulate our constitutional democracy abroad.

In addition, the Trump-directed Justice Department quietly inserted, as a supplement to that slush fund deal, a one-page document signed by Blanche stating that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Trump, his family members or his businesses. That measure remains in force, Blanche said on Tuesday.

Trump has another moniker suggesting his ethical challenges: “trader in chief,” as The Associated Press recently proposed. Why❓ Because “recent presidents have stayed away from trading stocks in companies whose fortunes they could lift or scuttle with the stroke of a pen, but Donald Trump smashed that precedent in the first quarter of this year with more than 3,600 buy and sell orders,” The A.P. (Associated Press) wrote, “many of them involving companies whose profits have been directly impacted by his decisions as head of the government.”

That was an average of 50 trades a day in stocks that included U.S. military suppliers affected by the Iran war. “If he were defense secretary, he would be committing a crime,” Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics adviser in the George W. Bush administration, told The A.P. “Technically he can do this, but it is a fundamental breach of trust.”

Not only has Trump choked off virtually all U.S. financial aid to Ukraine, but he is also reducing U.S. troops on the ground in NATO countries right when Putin, sensing he is losing the war, is increasingly threatening them.

Just as Americans are starting to realize that Trump is becoming a predator on our system — trying to manipulate the justice system to generate cash available to his Jan. 6 pirates and immunity from ongoing inquiries into taxes for himself and his family — our allies are concluding that Trump’s America is becoming a dangerous predator on them.

Indeed, something is happening with America’s traditional allies that I never thought I would see in this lifetime or the next. In the post-World War II era, we and our allies together embraced the doctrine of “deterrence” against the Soviet Union, and later Russia, to prevent any attempt by the Kremlin to forcibly expand its influence into the free world or put neighbors under its thumb.

Not any longer.

• Our allies watched Trump threaten to make Canada the 51st state and to seize Greenland from Denmark. 
• Our allies have watched him start a war with Iran without consulting NATO and then demand that NATO help rescue us from what has turned into a mess. 
• Our allies watched Trump slash U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine, but put the Russian aggressor on the same moral footing as that country 
• And then, top it all off with reckless, ill-conceived tariffs on all our allies.

As a result of all that, something unprecedented is happening: “Deterring Trump’s America is now becoming a strategic priority of our allies as much as deterring Russia was,” Nader Mousavizadeh, the chief executive of Macro Advisory Partners, a geopolitical consulting firm, and a former senior adviser to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, told me.

And how could it not❓ When you look at how Trump has hammered Canada with tariffs, it is hard not to conclude that the worst position for a country to be in during the second Trump administration “is to be America’s closest ally and have integrated your economy, energy systems and military with that of the United States,” Mousavizadeh said. Everyone can now see, he added, that Trump will “weaponize any country’s dependence on America and use it to extract whatever he can in the narrowest and most tactical and transactional definition of American power.”

No wonder that after Trump stepped up his rhetoric about taking over Greenland, European NATO members — Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland and the United Kingdom — all announced plans to send small military contingents to Greenland to bolster the Danes.

Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, noted in an essay for the Atlantic Council that though these NATO allies tried to frame their move as necessary to bolster Arctic security, they also “have used the word ‘deterrence.’ For Europeans to speak in such terms about the United States, even implicitly, is a low point, but it is needed.”

Let’s not forget that early on Trump forced Ukraine to give the United States access to critical minerals in return for U.S. help against a Russian Army trying to overrun it. This is the real “Trump Doctrine”: Oppose America, and I will tariff you; depend on America, and I will extort you.

The only rational response for our allies is to try to “deter and diversify,” Mousavizadeh concluded. And if Trump keeps this up for his full four years, he added, “no NATO leader can ever again responsibly agree to the degree of dependence on U.S. technology, U.S. defense systems or financial systems” that NATO countries long took for granted.

I have been in Portugal this week and I have been shocked by the degree to which European business executives speak of having lost faith in American institutions ❗and in America as the guarantor of global legal norms — something they have always taken for granted. It is literally disorienting for them, like hikers who have lost their compass.

In short, having a president who behaves like a commander in thief — not a commander in chief — is costing us dearly at home and abroad. This perversion of the American presidency is undermining the very alliance structure that won two world wars and the Cold War and generated one of history’s longest ages of peace and prosperity. Every day we tolerate such behavior we endanger our children’s future.

P.S. Senator Susan Collins where are you❓ Impeach Trump now❗

By Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign affairs Opinion columnist. 

Donald Trump and maga cult supporters want to steal $1,8 billion of our tax money to create a slush fund and tRump is not backing down!

Echo opinion letter published in the Sun Sentinel, a South Florida newspaper:

On the infamous date of January 6, 2021, as I settled in to eat lunch and watch Congress count the presidential electoral vote on TV, I became an eyewitness to one of the worst days in our history.

I saw every frightening, disturbing moment unfold live, and I was distressed for hours. I wondered where the cavalry was to stop this violent insurrection by traitors and torture of the poor police officers and terrible threats to members of Congress running and hiding in terror.

So what insanity reigns that these dangerous violent convicted criminals, including Nazi sympathizers and racist white supremacist extremists, not only were pardoned by Trump, but now will be given $1.8 billion? It’s beyond belief.

Trump has taken huge sums of money that could pay for food for children, education and healthcare for the poor, and is giving it to vicious traitors. A special “MAGA tax” is in order to pay this outrageous loyalty payoff. The rest of us should refuse to pay taxes, like the Trump, but now will be given 💲1.8 billion❗ It’s beyond belief.

Trump has taken huge sums of money that could pay for food for children, education and healthcare for the poor, and is giving it to vicious traitors. A special “MAGA tax” is in order to pay this outrageous loyalty payoff. The rest of us should refuse to pay taxes, like the Trumps do.

From Elin Shusterman, in Boynton Beach, Florida

Voters must take back American democracy. Donald Trump dishonors those who died to protect our democracy!

Echo opinion letter published in the Sun Sentinel, a South Florida newspaper: 

Over Memorial Day Weekend, while reflecting on the brave men and women who died protecting our democracy, I found renewed strength to fight back and not allow Donald Trump and others who are in power to steal our democracy.

Each day, multiple news sources report brutality endemic in the Trump administration. The daily reporting of corruption, theft of taxpayer funds for illegal purposes, insider trading by high-level leaders and repeated violations of our Constitution and the laws. 

If you look at more than one news source, you will readily see that where there’s smoke, there’s 🔥fire.

These corrupt actions are allowed by the three branches of government, controlled by so-called fiscally conservative Republicans. I say so-called, because fiscal conservatives claim to support limited government, lower taxes, reduced spending and minimal public debt. What happened to those beliefs?

On Meet the Press, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican-S.C., reacted to the defeat of a Senate candidate in a Republican primary after Trump backed his rival, saying: “This is the party of Donald Trump.” Is this your Grand Old Party (aka "Growing Old Party"), or is Graham correct that it’s ruled by one man who acts like a 👑king❓

On Nov. 3, please vote for candidates who promise to take back the Congress and protect our Constitution. Otherwise, your votes will sadly reflect that you favor money over all else, or wear blinders to bigotry. Or else, are you simply brainwashed by right wing organized religion or Fox (aka "Fake❗" News❓

From — Candice Clausell, Jupiter

Donald Trump does not care about you or anything else he campaigned on he only cares about himself. Impeach Trump Now!

Echo opinion letter by Stan Livingston, in Vancouver Washington, published in The Columbian

Donald Trump Does Not Care❗

Well, it’s official. Donald Trump clearly stated without any possibility of claiming “fake news” that

• He doesn’t care about you. He said so.
• He doesn’t care about the midterms in November,]He doesn’t care about gas prices,
• He doesn’t care about killing innocent people, (175 innocent school children in an Iran tomahawk bombing❗)
• He doesn’t care about international law (or the laws of his own country which he swore to uphold),
• He doesn’t care about the fact that he has broken his promise about “no more forever wars.”
• He doesn't care about Epstein's victims who were abused by Trump and his pedophile friends who are named in the Epstein Files.
  

Trump only cares about himself. He is forcing a false legacy by establishing an obsession about building a massive ballroom, a gigantic arch and all of the signs to which he adds his name, and he only cares about what his own “morality” guides him to do.

Donald Trump just doesn’t care …😔😐😟😡

A suggestion for our sick leader: If Trump wants to save the government money, I suggest he fire the entire corrupt White House staff (except the butlers, cooks and staff who bring him McDonald’s hamburgers), his Cabinet and all of the “advisers” from which he refuses to accept advice. Could be big savings that would help pay off the national debt.  #ImpeachTrumpNow❗

From: Stan Livingston, in Vancouver, Washington state

Message to Republican maga cult groupie Senator Susan Collins- it is time to "do something"!

Message to all 🐘Republicans especially to Maine Senator Susan Collins.

Senator Collins has more seniority than practically anybody else in the House and Senate; but she is now full cult maga in a frozen kowtow position of fealty to Donald Trump. She is "always concerned but never courageous", she will not criticize Trumpzi-ism.

A message to all sane 🐘Republicans from Gianl1974 on X/ formely Twitter: 

• He pardoned 1,600 violent criminals. You said nothing. 
• He bulldozed the East Wing. You said nothing. 
• He interfered with the release of the Epstein Files. You said nothing. 
• He took over the Kennedy Center and renamed it after himself. You said nothing.
• He accepted a 💲400 million airplane as a personal gift. You said nothing. 
• He threatened Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. You said nothing. 
• He tariffed just about everyone but Russia, causing inflation and instability worldwide. You said nothing. 
• He attacked Iran, a nation, during mediated negotiations. You said nothing. 
• His ill-conceived war killed 175 children on day one. You said nothing. 
• He alienated and insulted our allies. You said nothing. 
• His ICE Army terrorized and murdered U.S. citizens. You said nothing. 
• He committed murder on the high seas. You said nothing. 
• He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. You said nothing. 

It’s time for 🐘Republicans to start talking❗

#ImpeachTrumpNOW

Donald Trump crime family will leave a legacy of corruption - It is time to dump the tRump!

Echo opinion letter published in the Cap Times, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Dear Editor: Donald Trump is busy trying to get his name on airports and buildings throughout the country in an attempt to secure a positive legacy. Trump’s name on such facilities will not adequately reflect how history will describe his legacy.

Trump, his crime family and his Cabinet are among the most incompetent and corrupt in American history. They make millions while the middle class suffers. Trump’s illegal tariffs and his ego-driven war against Iran have raised the costs of gasoline, groceries and other everyday expenses paid by the average person and family. 

Donald Trump has insulted our nation’s allies and then he wonders why they won’t help get him out of messes he created in Iran.

There are facilities appropriate for the Trump name and legacy. Each should be called the Donald J. Trump Cesspool.

(Maine Writer P.S. - It is time to name recycling centers the Donald J. Trump Trash Services Centers.)

From Gene Lillge in Madison, Wisconsin

#ImpeachDonaldTrump: it is time to "dump the tRump", attention Senator Susan Collins.  

Donald Trump's slush fund, "like breaking into Fort Knox and driving off with a truckload of bullion", editorial

Sun Sentinel: Slush fund is the biggest heist in history | Editorial

The man who boasted that he could get away with murder on Fifth Avenue is pulling off something just as brazen. 

The $1.8 billion slush fund from which corrupt Donald Trump intends to reward people who tried to steal the 2020, election for him is the biggest heist in our history. (Maine Writer- he will also grift that money to use against Republicans who he declares are "unloyal", because his use of the tax money would be unrestricted.)

It’s like breaking into Fort Knox and driving off with a truckload of bullion.

Todd Blanche, his obsequious unethical acting attorney general, also agreed to immunize America’s real-life Goldfinger, his entire family and their business from IRS audits, fines and penalties or prosecution for whatever tax violations they may have committed.

That corrupt bargain may save the Trumps $100 million, by some estimates. Al Capone’s ghost must be green with envy.

Trump was already by far the most corrupt American president. But his grifting had been largely at the expense of foreign governments and other interests.

No more. His “anti-weaponization fund” is a new frontier in graft, a direct theft from taxpayers. The most corrupt act in presidential history lacks even the pretense of the lawsuit that Trump withdrew when a federal judge saw it for a sham.

The Big Steal-  Trump deserves a third impeachment — another reason to elect a Democratic Congress in November — and one more indictment when his term ends, as this Big Steal has nothing to do with any official duty.

As for unethical Todd Blanche, he should be disbarred as fast as New York authorities can manage it. Trump is his former personal client as well as his present boss; there couldn’t be a more glaring conflict of interest for any lawyer.

Of note: Blanche’s Department of Justice is suing the District of Columbia Bar to thwart discipline of two other Trump stooges. And it proposes a regulation to suppress bar proceedings anywhere, against any present or former DOJ lawyer such as Blanche himself.

A federal court has, thankfully, already put a temporary hold on the fund until a June 12, hearing. The courts are Americans’ only hope of stopping this theft; Trump owns Congress through his control of MAGA voters who decide Republican primaries.

He’s been on a roll on that front, gloating over the defeat of such principled politicians as Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to remove him from office in 2021; Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who fought to publish the Epstein files; and Brad Raffensberger in Georgia, who as Secretary of State refused to “find” phony votes for Trump in 2021, and who just ran for governor.

The coup de grace: Texas- The climax came Tuesday in Texas with Senator John Cornyn’s defeat by criminal Ken Paxton, the sleazy state attorney general, a leading election denier for Trump who had been impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature over allegations of bribery and obstruction.

Trump’s revenge tour also took down five Indiana state senators who had voted against the midterm gerrymandering to which Florida’s gutless Republicans have agreed. South Carolina’s GOP legislators deserve a special medal of courage for refusing to redistrict Jim Clyburn, a widely respected senior Black Democrat, out of his seat, too.

Belatedly, some GOP senators seem to have finally had it with Trump. They were shouting at Blanche behind closed doors last week when he refused to rule out payments to the hoodlums who tried to kill police officers protecting them on January 6, 2021.

Republican Thom Tillis, who is not running for re-election in North Carolina, called the slush fund “stupid on stilts.” He and others see the GOP losing the midterms on Trump’s account, as they should, for indulging him.

Scandals, incorporated- There’s no short list of Trump’s corruption scandals; more than 100 by one count. Some of the most glaring:

• Crippling the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to lay off the prediction markets and the cryptocurrency industry in which the Trumps are deeply involved;
• Easing AI chip sale restrictions for the United Arab Emirates after it invested 💲2 billion in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto business;
• Accepting a 💲400 million luxury jet from Qatar, a foreign government, and promising to defend it from attacks (Yet, Trump did nothing when Qatar was attacked by Iran during the launch of the Trump world war of choice❗); and
• Pardoning Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, who had been in prison for serious banking law violations. The pardon lets him run Binance again and benefit the Trumps’ crypto business.

An honest president and a responsible Congress would put a quick stop to the corruption. (Where is Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins❓) Repairing Trump’s vandalism of the economy, the treasury, almost every agency and institution of the government, our foreign relations and our national reputation and, not least, our national self-respect, will take much longer.

None of it — not even the slush fund — is as dangerous as the political legacy Trump has created by cultivating MAGA into a cancer on the Republican Party and on the country.

Trump saw and exploited a significant bloc of voters who do not care about democracy the way Americans are supposed to. They will still be there when Trump is gone, ready for the next man on horseback to point them in the direction of their bigotries and fears.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant.