Sam Smith - I've been afraid to run this headline but the fact is Donald Trump is not only the first felon and biggest liar to win the White House, he also wants to run the country regardless of what laws, accepted principles or the Constitution would do otherwise.
Today, a journalist I highly respect, Thom Hartmnn, wrote these words
Many of us have long suspected or even predicted that Donald Trump would betray America, gut our democracy in favor of a police state, and align us with Russia....
We’re now there.
It’s the most under-reported story of the year, perhaps of the century: under Trump, the United States is abandoning advocacy of democracy (shutting down Voice of America, etc.), abandoning our democratic allies in Europe, and for the past year has abandoned Ukraine to the tender mercies of the Butcher of Moscow.
At the same time, Trump’s building ties to Middle Eastern dictatorships, adopting Russia’s explicit worldview, trashing civil and human rights at home, and now handing to China our most valuable military-potential technology.
In other words, we’ve been betrayed by Donald Trump and the people around him in ways that would have made Benedict Arnold blush.
So it is perhaps safe to now say that Trump is not only a crook and a liar but the president who most opposes or ignores the legal and moral standards that created the America he is trying to suppress.
I have some background for my judgement with a father who worked for FDR and my own journalistic background starting in the 1950s. I have never seen anyone so awful chosen to run our democracy.
Further, I have come to realize that many of those active in the media or politics have little memory or connection with the past and traditions that made America great. For example, what other president presumed to tell others who should own a major news channel, yet Bloomerg reported
Trump signaled he’ll oppose a Warner Bros. Discovery purchase that doesn’t include new ownership of CNN, a news network that’s long been the subject of derision from the Republican president. It also turns out that David Ellison, son of Trump donor and Oracle chief Larry Ellison, has a plan for the news organization should he get hold of it.
The Paramount Skydance chief executive, according to The Wall Street Journal, promised Trump sweeping changes at CNN if he took control of the network’s parent company. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been involved in setting up financing for Ellison’s competing offer against Netflix.
Ellison previously remade the leadership of CBS News after taking over its parent, bringing in officials seen by critics to be more closely aligned with the White House. It’s all part of what some media experts contend is an unprecedented campaign to impose political control over traditionally independent American news organizations.
The idea that the president gets to help decide who owns two of the largest news outlets would have seen absurd in pre-Trump politics.
And the thought that the president can start a war against Venezuela without the constitutionally required approval of Congress is another example of how America is drifting towards dictatorship. As the NY Times noted, "Venezuela’s government called the seizure [of a vessel] a 'barefaced robbery and an act of international piracy.”
We live in a time when our laws and Constitution are considered trivial and replaceable. This is not something we voted on but rather something we have accepted in part because our media and public figures decline to speak of the real horror that is happening, namely the collapse of the world's once greatest democracy.
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