"We are no longer at a 'tipping point' or 'an inflection point.' We are no longer 'sliding' toward autocracy. Donald Trump no longer 'aspires' to be an autocrat. Last week, in case you had any doubt, the Trump regime went full-bore authoritarian. We cannot accurately describe the current United States government as a functional democracy."

~ Jennifer Rubin

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater #ApprovalRating
/2

"Over the weekend, on his Truth Social, Trump shared a video purporting to be a segment on Fox News — it wasn’t — in which an AI-generated, deepfaked version of himself sat in the White House and promised that 'every American will soon receive their own MedBed card' that will grant them access to new 'MedBed hospitals.'”

~ Robert Reich

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater #healthcare #dementia
/3

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-isnt-the-media-reporting-on-trumps-d1e

"Trump also posted (again, without any basis in fact) that the FBI 'secretly placed … 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during' the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, during which they were 'probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists.'"

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater #healthcare #dementia
/4

"Trump also announced Saturday that he intends to send the U.S. military to Portland, Oregon, authorizing 'Full Force, if necessary' to 'protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.' …

What’s been the media’s response to Trump’s bonkers postings and announcements this weekend? Nada."

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater #healthcare #dementia
/5

"Are his acts those of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac?

Even if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be central to the coverage of his presidency? At the very least, shouldn’t the media be actively investigating?"

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater #healthcare #dementia
/6

"[Liza] Goitein told me that 'presidents have deployed troops domestically to quell civil unrest or enforce the law only 30 times in our nation’s 250-year history, yet if Trump follows through in Portland, he will have done it three times in nine months. This is wildly out of step with our nation’s principles and traditions.'"

~ Joyce Vance

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/7

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/the-week-ahead-47a

"Donald Trump, whose desire to deploy the military was stymied by senior Pentagon leaders after demonstrations around the country against the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, has no such constraints on him now."

~ Lucian K. Truscott

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/8

https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/will-portland-be-trumps-first-step

"The first thing he did this time around was to appoint a puppet Pentagon chief, the execrable mock-Nazi tattooed Pete Hegseth, who almost immediately started firing military commanders he alleged were 'woke.'"

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater #Hegseth
/9

"Now that Trump has, or thinks he has, a military command structure loyal to him, he’s been deploying soldiers to Democratic Party-controlled cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to 'fight crime' and 'protect ICE agents.'”

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/10

"While most normal people try to avoid chaos and uncertainty, a narcissistic chaos agent like Trump thrives on it. When everyone else is thrown off their game, then Trump can be exactly where he wants to be: at the center of the storm, grabbing all the attention."

~ Jay Kuo

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/11

https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/holding-our-collective-breath

"For the sake of our own mental health, it’s better to predict and understand the likely outcome of any background investigation of a killer: If he’s white and conservative, it will be forgotten among the thousands of examples we have of such shooters; if he’s Muslim/minority/trans, we won’t hear the end of it for a long time, if ever."

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/12

"Trump is desperate, as he grows more unpopular, his government fails and his powers ebb, to find ways to make him feel STRONG and POWERFUL and MANLY. It is almost impossible to imagine something more authoritarian, more illiberal, more mad - & more dangerous - than the use of the military on our streets to fight a fictional enemy in an imaginary war."

~ Simon Rosenberg

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/13

https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/we-must-keep-the-military-off-our

"He's either too confused to recognize AI-generated videos of himself, or he just doesn't care. Neither option is reassuring. ...

We’ve reached a point where the President of the United States is posting AI-generated videos promoting conspiracy theories about miracle cures —"

~ Parker Molloy

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/14

https://www.readtpa.com/p/trump-shared-some-ai-slop-about-miracle

"either because he can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake anymore, or because he simply doesn’t care. And this happened while he’s actively working to gut actual healthcare protections that millions of Americans rely on."

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/15

“'I spoke to the governor, she was very nice. But I said, "Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different." They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place … it looks like terrible.'"

~ David Kurtz

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/16

https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/p/new-purges-continue-to-hollow-out

(continued from /16)

" — a befuddled President Trump, feebly trying to square the difference between the real world reports from Orgeon’s governor on a peaceful Portland and the propaganda he’d been fed before announcing a plan to send troops to the city he described as 'War ravaged'”

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/17

"In recent days new polls from the Associated Press, Gallup, Quinnipiac, Reuters, and The Economist all show Trump’s approval rating in terrible shape. The polling averages show the same. He’s in the toilet on specific issues too: On the economy and trade he’s polling in the thirties, and he’s deeply underwater on immigration, his 'best' issue.

~ Greg Sargent

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater #polls
/18

https://newrepublic.com/article/201031/trump-weak-failing-president-brutal-new-polls-confirm-it

"Two days before next year’s midterm election will be the 50th anniversary of the New York Times’ first profile of Donald Trump.

In retrospect, it was quite an embarrassment, and it set the stage for many more embarrassments to come as lazy journalists depicted Trump as a colorful character instead of the business scammer, sex predator, and pathological liar that he is."

~ Mark Jacob

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #media #PoliticsofDistraction
/19

https://www.stopthepresses.news/p/the-medias-kissing-up-to-trump-started

"Trump is lying about antifa to justify his authoritarian crackdown. Too easily dismissed as hyperbole, the Antifa myth is being used as a weapon to destroy domestic opposition."

~ Jeet Heer

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/20

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-antifa-portland-lies/

"The actions and rhetoric of the administration have prompted a dire comparison to the mechanisms of historical fascist regimes, leading many to sound the alarm on a precipitous slide toward authoritarianism."

~ Danielle Moodie

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/21

https://daniellemoodie.substack.com/p/escalating-authoritarianism

"Far from being a hyperbolic exaggeration, the systematic steps taken—from the militarization of domestic law enforcement to the explicit targeting of political dissent—mirror the alarming blueprints used by 20th-century dictators to consolidate absolute power."

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/22

"The strategy to crush opposition and unify power relies on a chillingly familiar playbook, one that historically leverages manufactured crises and the dehumanization of enemies. …

The evidence—from the open talk of mass detention centers for dissenters to the aggressive targeting of states and cities that oppose federal policy—compels the use of the term fascism."

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/23

"The fact is, of course, that Trump is completely, ludicrously wrong about what’s going on in Portland. He has been for nearly a month, ever since he watched a deceptively edited Fox News segment that depicted the city as a war zone. And his advisers have apparently been complicit in his hoodwinking."

~ Dan Froomkin

#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #Epstein #military #PoliticsofDistraction #PoliticsofTheater
/24

https://criticalread.substack.com/p/trump-am-i-watching-things-on-television