This criminal trial is unprecedented. And it will only really matter if a wider population grasps its seriousness. That's up to the media and all of us.
Here is where honest coverage by local news media is vital. Some people watch only that. Where I live, they showed only the "saner" parts of his recent rally in PA. They do not show the truly nutty, deranged, fascistic blather which he spouts. The dishonesty is scary.
Joseph Biden was re-elected to work in Congress for 36 years. His constituents believed he was doing a good job, and he was still working in Congress when he was tapped to become the Vice President to Barak Obama - a man who is already ranked among the top ten Presidents of all time. Biden's record in the last four years has been outstanding - again, putting Americans first with guaranteeing jobs and touting the lowest unemployment rate in many years. Our economy is now the fastest growing in the entire world while he has paid down the national debt by one trillion dollars. Considering he inherited a fiscal disaster from Trump, his rating should be way above 50%. It isn't however, due to the "dirty politics" publicized by Trump and the Russian cyber interference and hacking to denigrate Biden's performance.
In today's substack you said "None of us know exactly what will be the outcome of this trial in a Manhattan criminal courtroom, a poetic location for the real estate developer from Queens who always dreamed of being accepted by Manhattan’s elite—and largely failed to do so. Most Manhattanites rejected him over the years, with nearly nine out of ten voting against him in 2016 and 2020; those who witnessed him at close range understood his low caliber and how unfit he is to be anywhere near the levers of power." This is relevant because he is running against a man who was re-elected and loved by his constituents for decades.
Trump, whose entire life has been spent chasing money, will most likely be convicted of one or two or more of the 91 criminal charges against him. In civil court, he has already been convicted of FRAUD and RAPE - labeled a sexual predator.
He sold his soul and our country to the Russians decades ago, and I lived in Moscow during his many visits and wild escapades to places like the Beverly Hills nightclub, casino, and restaurant. My oldest daughter was the manager of this joint venture who's partners were Mayor Lyushkov of Moscow and Chuck Norris - a place known for it's corruption, naked women, and famous faces. I witnessed Trump's "low caliber" up front and close. He is repulsive and disgusting and treats women atrociously.
And while many Trumpers say they will not vote for him if he is convicted, time will tell. When I think of the term "low caliber," I think of a lack of education.
Time Magazine (May 15, 2024) wrote an excellent article called "Red States Least Educated in the U.S." It goes on to say "Red states fall 1.5 percentage points below the national average for high school completion and 3.3 percentage points below the national average for college degree attainment. . . four red states fall into the category where a high percentage of residents hold NO high school diploma - Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Texas. . . and Texas was rated the worst in the U.S. with 19.2% without a high school degree." If education is an indication of the level of - or lack thereof - deductive reasoning, then this is consistent with those red voters who choose Trump. These same voters rejected President Obama, not necessarily because he was a Democrat, but because he was a highly educated Black man.
There is a direct dotted line between a lack of or no education and individuals who are vulnerable to coercive mind manipulation. Brainwashing, as it is known in the West, began in totalitarian countries about a hundred years ago. It was used in many autocratic countries such as Germany, China, Russia, Italy, Hungry, Poland, and so on. It is defined in Wikipedia as "telling lies over and over until they are perceived as the truth." Several recent polls tell us that over 50% of the Republicans still believe Trump's "big lie" that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump filed 60 law suits to attempt to prove this lie, but lost ALL 60 court cases - no evidence. If the lies contain hatred - which was used by Hitler against Jews and by Trump daily against anyone who is not a Trumper, it releases a chemical in the human brain to enact violence - like what we saw on Jan. 6th. Take a minute and look at the glazed faces of those individuals who were breaking Capital windows, defecating on the floor or stealing documents and artifacts. They believed that they were "saving democracy" where in reality they were destroying our form of government. Hundreds of these Trumpers are now in prison for their illegal actions. Trump, who lives in a delusional world, and he also believes things that could not be and are not true.
Trump's criminal trial - the first against a previous U.S. President - is unparalleled in our history. He lacks the deductive reasoning to understand the graveness and solemnity of this historical event. And, he expects his loyal followers, MAGA, and Republican members of Congress to agree with his faulty assessment. Perhaps the abundance of solid evidence will change a few of these controlled minds, but the cult of Trump is large and they have been hypnotized. Once a person is "propagandized" they believe what their leader says and doubt all else. Even if Trump is convicted and sent to prison, these people still will not alter their beliefs. On January 6th, it was ONLY after Trump went on TV and told the insurrectionists that "he loved them" but they needed to go home that they packed up their stolen items and their weapons and left. Plain and simple - their minds are controlled by Trump and they are no longer capable of independent thought.
Donald Trump's many-sided destructiveness reaches far and wide across our nation. He is dangerously unfit to be our President, yet almost half our country believes his lies and are controlled by his coercive mind-control techniques. Brainwashing works. Hitler converted an entire peaceful nation into mass murderers and over six million humans were murdered. Jim Jones was a cult leader who thought he was God. He order his followers - over 900 persons - to drink KoolAid laced with poison, and they all died. Stalin is reported to have killed over 20 million people. Putin is well on his way to repeat Stalin's history and is proud of this assessment. Trump shows all the signs of being compromised by Russian KGB/FSB. I personally lived through the Russian "wining and dining and flattery" in an attempt to convince me to work for the Russian government. I managed to elude their capture - but Trump apparently did not.
Putin blames the U.S. for the downfall of the Soviet Union. In 1997 a book was published in Russia called The Foundation of Geopolitics which outlines Putin's revenge and plans for the destruction of the United States. This includes placing a man in power who is loyal to Russia, i.e. Trump. The shadow cast by Putin over the landscape of American democracy and his influence and control over Trump is what we see happening NOW. Our democracy hangs in the balance.
It’s undeniable that Trump cheated the State of New York. It’s undeniable that he lied about it, perhaps not directly but in the way he does to cry “witch hunt”. Follow the evidence. Whether or not this turns into a conviction, the court of public opinion must hold him accountable by denying his bid for the Presidency. He has brought dishonor to the office, he has thumbed his nose at propriety. And in case anyone forgot, he’s a liar who cannot be trusted to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Yes, and why isn't this trial being televised so the average person can make up their own mind, no have to rely on a reporters interpretation? There can be no reasons, only excuses.
This really will be a test of "bothsidesism." I suspect that most media, MSM or Alt-Fact, will lead with trump's own antics in the courtroom rather than reporting about what the evidence being presented is, its strengths or weaknesses. We may well have to rely on Substackers following the legal beat to find out what is really happening in the basics of the trial.
If this happens, one thing we CAN do where we have the opportunity to comment is to post comments which link to those Substacks, pointing out that this is where one can find out what is actually important about each day's events.
It would help if everyone, and I mean those who should know better, would stop immediately referring to this case as the hush money case. Lazy journalism and sloppy editors who allow such to be printed. Same goes for the glut of talking heads who continue to spew the airwaves with this untruth. As Jeff TIEDRICH wrote in his Substack today, “…..cutting a Trump Org check and then falsifying business records in order to hide the true nature of why the funds were paid out — congratulations, bro, you just crossed the line into Crime Town.
and doing all this while running for president, in order to keep the voting public from learning what a vile shitbag you are? welcome to the wonderful world of election interference — settle in, my dude, you’re now squarely in Felony Land.”
That’s the long and short of it. It wasn’t the paying off of a porn star but everything else that followed. So simple to understand really.
My hopes are the judicial system we witness in these trials will be one we all can believe was Honest, Truthful, and Thorough. Irregardless of outcome(I certainly have my own bias), may Justice be served.
Thank you, again, Steven, for yet another insightful and stunningly lucid description of what’s at stake, in the days ahead.
At the risk of requoting your entire work, I found two paragraphs that really “ jumped out” at me:
“We should all hope that the courtroom proceedings in the weeks ahead will help more Americans understand the unfitness of this man to ever again be near the White House and the nation’s highest office.”
And,…
“ It’s up to all of us who are narrating these strange and dangerous times to tell the truth about how and why this is an unprecedented moment in our country. Failing to do so may mean that this moment of chaos and crime will become our collective future for years to come. Each of us can help prove in November that this outcome was not inevitable.”
Thank you for your clear headed and concise descriptions of these perilous times!
Except for the few we have come to depend on to tell it like it truly is, the highlight of the media will be trump's ranting & raving before & after each daily session and the rally around the trump flag bunch that will form to cheer him on.
Brokow's greatest generation will be joined by a second if he is convicted. The 1st saved the world, the 2nd, the US. Fortunately, historians write most of the books, and there will be hundreds. To me, he will only be worth a couple of paragraphs. Today is the end of the begining or the beginning of the end. In trump's case, either way works. We can only hope the media would remember that it is the truth that matters.
Beautifully stated! I could not agree more with this description of how we must all be involved in seeing that Trump never enters the White House again for any reason!
The MSM is sorely lacking in its unbiased but necessary treatment of TFG. Tell it like it is. There are nothing wrong with him that it can be discussed in an unbiased way. He’s bad. There’s nothing biased about that. It’s a fact. And the MSM to get shit together and do this right. Biden and Trump are not equals, even though they’re both running for president it’s as simple as that.
Donald Trump is out now, and I find myself bizarrely bereft. He was a genuine beast—a creature sprung from some mad alchemist's lab, fusing the brazen gall of a boardwalk hustler with the delusional zeal of a televangelist during sweeps week. Trump could tweet you into oblivion and kiss your baby in the same breath. He cheated at golf, swindled his base, and served up his family for political gain with a showman's grin. Even his own vice president, a man so loyal he might as well have been carved out of cream cheese, found himself dodging the metaphoric—and nearly literal—bullets in the end. Trump's presidency was like a bad acid trip with no discernible peak, just an endless plateau of bizarre tweets, chaotic rallies, and caps-lock calamities.
But now he's slipped off the main stage, his curtain call as chaotic as his tenure, leaving a trail of bewildered followers and a nation rubbing its eyes, as if waking from a particularly perverse dream. There's a collective sense of eerie silence, like the vacuum of sound after a mighty explosion, as America, its allies, and its enemies all pause—a brief respite—to collectively wonder, "What on earth was that?" Mike Pence, who once gazed at Trump as if he were a mix between a father figure and a golden calf, now admits in hushed tones at quiet Indiana diners that he feels like he's purged a malignant spirit. "It's like an exorcism," he mutters into his coffee, "both liberating and deeply, deeply disturbing."
Here is where honest coverage by local news media is vital. Some people watch only that. Where I live, they showed only the "saner" parts of his recent rally in PA. They do not show the truly nutty, deranged, fascistic blather which he spouts. The dishonesty is scary.
MSM has failed America every step of the way since 2015. Do not expect them to save democracy or the USA taxpayers and citizens.
Joseph Biden was re-elected to work in Congress for 36 years. His constituents believed he was doing a good job, and he was still working in Congress when he was tapped to become the Vice President to Barak Obama - a man who is already ranked among the top ten Presidents of all time. Biden's record in the last four years has been outstanding - again, putting Americans first with guaranteeing jobs and touting the lowest unemployment rate in many years. Our economy is now the fastest growing in the entire world while he has paid down the national debt by one trillion dollars. Considering he inherited a fiscal disaster from Trump, his rating should be way above 50%. It isn't however, due to the "dirty politics" publicized by Trump and the Russian cyber interference and hacking to denigrate Biden's performance.
In today's substack you said "None of us know exactly what will be the outcome of this trial in a Manhattan criminal courtroom, a poetic location for the real estate developer from Queens who always dreamed of being accepted by Manhattan’s elite—and largely failed to do so. Most Manhattanites rejected him over the years, with nearly nine out of ten voting against him in 2016 and 2020; those who witnessed him at close range understood his low caliber and how unfit he is to be anywhere near the levers of power." This is relevant because he is running against a man who was re-elected and loved by his constituents for decades.
Trump, whose entire life has been spent chasing money, will most likely be convicted of one or two or more of the 91 criminal charges against him. In civil court, he has already been convicted of FRAUD and RAPE - labeled a sexual predator.
He sold his soul and our country to the Russians decades ago, and I lived in Moscow during his many visits and wild escapades to places like the Beverly Hills nightclub, casino, and restaurant. My oldest daughter was the manager of this joint venture who's partners were Mayor Lyushkov of Moscow and Chuck Norris - a place known for it's corruption, naked women, and famous faces. I witnessed Trump's "low caliber" up front and close. He is repulsive and disgusting and treats women atrociously.
And while many Trumpers say they will not vote for him if he is convicted, time will tell. When I think of the term "low caliber," I think of a lack of education.
Time Magazine (May 15, 2024) wrote an excellent article called "Red States Least Educated in the U.S." It goes on to say "Red states fall 1.5 percentage points below the national average for high school completion and 3.3 percentage points below the national average for college degree attainment. . . four red states fall into the category where a high percentage of residents hold NO high school diploma - Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Texas. . . and Texas was rated the worst in the U.S. with 19.2% without a high school degree." If education is an indication of the level of - or lack thereof - deductive reasoning, then this is consistent with those red voters who choose Trump. These same voters rejected President Obama, not necessarily because he was a Democrat, but because he was a highly educated Black man.
There is a direct dotted line between a lack of or no education and individuals who are vulnerable to coercive mind manipulation. Brainwashing, as it is known in the West, began in totalitarian countries about a hundred years ago. It was used in many autocratic countries such as Germany, China, Russia, Italy, Hungry, Poland, and so on. It is defined in Wikipedia as "telling lies over and over until they are perceived as the truth." Several recent polls tell us that over 50% of the Republicans still believe Trump's "big lie" that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump filed 60 law suits to attempt to prove this lie, but lost ALL 60 court cases - no evidence. If the lies contain hatred - which was used by Hitler against Jews and by Trump daily against anyone who is not a Trumper, it releases a chemical in the human brain to enact violence - like what we saw on Jan. 6th. Take a minute and look at the glazed faces of those individuals who were breaking Capital windows, defecating on the floor or stealing documents and artifacts. They believed that they were "saving democracy" where in reality they were destroying our form of government. Hundreds of these Trumpers are now in prison for their illegal actions. Trump, who lives in a delusional world, and he also believes things that could not be and are not true.
Trump's criminal trial - the first against a previous U.S. President - is unparalleled in our history. He lacks the deductive reasoning to understand the graveness and solemnity of this historical event. And, he expects his loyal followers, MAGA, and Republican members of Congress to agree with his faulty assessment. Perhaps the abundance of solid evidence will change a few of these controlled minds, but the cult of Trump is large and they have been hypnotized. Once a person is "propagandized" they believe what their leader says and doubt all else. Even if Trump is convicted and sent to prison, these people still will not alter their beliefs. On January 6th, it was ONLY after Trump went on TV and told the insurrectionists that "he loved them" but they needed to go home that they packed up their stolen items and their weapons and left. Plain and simple - their minds are controlled by Trump and they are no longer capable of independent thought.
Donald Trump's many-sided destructiveness reaches far and wide across our nation. He is dangerously unfit to be our President, yet almost half our country believes his lies and are controlled by his coercive mind-control techniques. Brainwashing works. Hitler converted an entire peaceful nation into mass murderers and over six million humans were murdered. Jim Jones was a cult leader who thought he was God. He order his followers - over 900 persons - to drink KoolAid laced with poison, and they all died. Stalin is reported to have killed over 20 million people. Putin is well on his way to repeat Stalin's history and is proud of this assessment. Trump shows all the signs of being compromised by Russian KGB/FSB. I personally lived through the Russian "wining and dining and flattery" in an attempt to convince me to work for the Russian government. I managed to elude their capture - but Trump apparently did not.
Putin blames the U.S. for the downfall of the Soviet Union. In 1997 a book was published in Russia called The Foundation of Geopolitics which outlines Putin's revenge and plans for the destruction of the United States. This includes placing a man in power who is loyal to Russia, i.e. Trump. The shadow cast by Putin over the landscape of American democracy and his influence and control over Trump is what we see happening NOW. Our democracy hangs in the balance.
Elizabeth
www.democrazy2020.org
It’s undeniable that Trump cheated the State of New York. It’s undeniable that he lied about it, perhaps not directly but in the way he does to cry “witch hunt”. Follow the evidence. Whether or not this turns into a conviction, the court of public opinion must hold him accountable by denying his bid for the Presidency. He has brought dishonor to the office, he has thumbed his nose at propriety. And in case anyone forgot, he’s a liar who cannot be trusted to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Thank you Steven!
I hope the MSM is up to the task.
Fingers crossed!
Yes, and why isn't this trial being televised so the average person can make up their own mind, no have to rely on a reporters interpretation? There can be no reasons, only excuses.
This really will be a test of "bothsidesism." I suspect that most media, MSM or Alt-Fact, will lead with trump's own antics in the courtroom rather than reporting about what the evidence being presented is, its strengths or weaknesses. We may well have to rely on Substackers following the legal beat to find out what is really happening in the basics of the trial.
If this happens, one thing we CAN do where we have the opportunity to comment is to post comments which link to those Substacks, pointing out that this is where one can find out what is actually important about each day's events.
It would help if everyone, and I mean those who should know better, would stop immediately referring to this case as the hush money case. Lazy journalism and sloppy editors who allow such to be printed. Same goes for the glut of talking heads who continue to spew the airwaves with this untruth. As Jeff TIEDRICH wrote in his Substack today, “…..cutting a Trump Org check and then falsifying business records in order to hide the true nature of why the funds were paid out — congratulations, bro, you just crossed the line into Crime Town.
and doing all this while running for president, in order to keep the voting public from learning what a vile shitbag you are? welcome to the wonderful world of election interference — settle in, my dude, you’re now squarely in Felony Land.”
That’s the long and short of it. It wasn’t the paying off of a porn star but everything else that followed. So simple to understand really.
My hopes are the judicial system we witness in these trials will be one we all can believe was Honest, Truthful, and Thorough. Irregardless of outcome(I certainly have my own bias), may Justice be served.
Thank you, again, Steven, for yet another insightful and stunningly lucid description of what’s at stake, in the days ahead.
At the risk of requoting your entire work, I found two paragraphs that really “ jumped out” at me:
“We should all hope that the courtroom proceedings in the weeks ahead will help more Americans understand the unfitness of this man to ever again be near the White House and the nation’s highest office.”
And,…
“ It’s up to all of us who are narrating these strange and dangerous times to tell the truth about how and why this is an unprecedented moment in our country. Failing to do so may mean that this moment of chaos and crime will become our collective future for years to come. Each of us can help prove in November that this outcome was not inevitable.”
Thank you for your clear headed and concise descriptions of these perilous times!
Except for the few we have come to depend on to tell it like it truly is, the highlight of the media will be trump's ranting & raving before & after each daily session and the rally around the trump flag bunch that will form to cheer him on.
Brokow's greatest generation will be joined by a second if he is convicted. The 1st saved the world, the 2nd, the US. Fortunately, historians write most of the books, and there will be hundreds. To me, he will only be worth a couple of paragraphs. Today is the end of the begining or the beginning of the end. In trump's case, either way works. We can only hope the media would remember that it is the truth that matters.
Beautifully stated! I could not agree more with this description of how we must all be involved in seeing that Trump never enters the White House again for any reason!
The MSM is sorely lacking in its unbiased but necessary treatment of TFG. Tell it like it is. There are nothing wrong with him that it can be discussed in an unbiased way. He’s bad. There’s nothing biased about that. It’s a fact. And the MSM to get shit together and do this right. Biden and Trump are not equals, even though they’re both running for president it’s as simple as that.
Here:
Donald Trump is out now, and I find myself bizarrely bereft. He was a genuine beast—a creature sprung from some mad alchemist's lab, fusing the brazen gall of a boardwalk hustler with the delusional zeal of a televangelist during sweeps week. Trump could tweet you into oblivion and kiss your baby in the same breath. He cheated at golf, swindled his base, and served up his family for political gain with a showman's grin. Even his own vice president, a man so loyal he might as well have been carved out of cream cheese, found himself dodging the metaphoric—and nearly literal—bullets in the end. Trump's presidency was like a bad acid trip with no discernible peak, just an endless plateau of bizarre tweets, chaotic rallies, and caps-lock calamities.
But now he's slipped off the main stage, his curtain call as chaotic as his tenure, leaving a trail of bewildered followers and a nation rubbing its eyes, as if waking from a particularly perverse dream. There's a collective sense of eerie silence, like the vacuum of sound after a mighty explosion, as America, its allies, and its enemies all pause—a brief respite—to collectively wonder, "What on earth was that?" Mike Pence, who once gazed at Trump as if he were a mix between a father figure and a golden calf, now admits in hushed tones at quiet Indiana diners that he feels like he's purged a malignant spirit. "It's like an exorcism," he mutters into his coffee, "both liberating and deeply, deeply disturbing."
CBS et al are not going to change. It's up to the DNC to get massive paid advertising up.
Why isn't Trump questioned when he says stupid lies like "all legal scholars…"??!