Trump 2.0

[moXJO]

Turns out Bidens pardons may be void.
His name was signed by autopen and most likely didn't know who/what was in the pardons.

Lot of shtbags are about to start sweating.

 

[mullokintyre]

It would seem that despite all the calls about Trump Musk, and all the others on the right hand side of US politics being spawn of the devil, Naziz, destroyers of Democracy yada yada yada, such evilness and sin has not translated into a surge in Democrat popularity.
From CNN Poll

CNN —
The Democratic Party’s favorability rating among Americans stands at a record low, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, fueled in part by dimming views from its own frustrated supporters.

With many in the party saying publicly that their leaders should do more to stand up to President Donald Trump, Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents say, 57% to 42%, that Democrats should mainly work to stop the Republican agenda, rather than working with the GOP majority to get some Democratic ideas into legislation.

The survey was taken March 6-9, days before 10 Democratic senators — including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — voted with Republicans in the chamber to advance a GOP-authored spending bill to avert a government shutdown, much to the chagrin of many other Democratic lawmakers and progressive critics.

The majority’s desire to fight the GOP marks a significant change in the party’s posture from the start of Trump’s first term. A September 2017 poll found a broad 74% majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners saying their party should work with Republicans in an attempt to advance their own priorities, and just 23% advocating for a more combative approach.

Support fro Democrats has been steadily declining since those heady days in 2008 when they had a 50% approval rating, the decline in the last six months has been steep and deep.

However, despite such low numbers, that does not necessarily drive a support for Trump.

CBS Polling shows that

American voters are jittery, deeply divided, and have a distinct SOL analysis of their own country.
Mick

 

[DB008]

​

 

[basilio]

The Trump administration has told the US Judiciary to "xuck off" over the it's use of the 1798 Alien Act (meant to be used in wartime) to summarily throw out 200 Venezuelans because they say they are terrorists. (Not a shred of evidence presented).

They are now trying to get the Judge taken off the case and saying they will continue deport whoever the want, however they want. End of story. Does this even look close to a democratic country ?

Or is it far more accurate to compare what is happening now to 1933 Germany ?

​

Hey Democrats: Maybe Now *Is* the Time to Fight?​

Trump is racing to dismantle the rule of law before Democrats can make him unpopular enough so that other institutions can push back against him. Do the Dems understand this?​

Jonathan V. Last
Mar 18, 2025
∙ Paid






U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks alongside democratic senators to press in the U.S. Capitol on March 06, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

1. Asymmetry​

“Democrats should stop taking unpopular positions.” You have heard this suggestion before, even from me. And as far as these things go, it’s sound advice. Popularism is generally a sound strategy.

Or at least it used to be. The Biden administration did loads of popular stuff:

• The most pro-family tax credit in American history.
• A massive infrastructure program.
• Sensible gun reform.
• The restoration of domestic chip manufacturing.
• The successful rollout of the COVID vaccine.
• Supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

These were the big ticket items from the Biden administration and all of them were fairly popular. Yet Biden’s favorability ended up at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.1

I propose to you that “popularism” no longer works as a mode of operation in American politics. It has been supplanted by the power of what we can call either “leadership” or “demagoguery,” depending on the valance you want to give it.

And I can prove it to you with one chart:


That’s right. Two years ago Volodymyr Zelensky was massively popular among self-identified Republicans. If “popularism” was still a viable mode of politics, then elected Republicans would have supported Zelensky.

Instead, Donald Trump took the unpopular position that Zelensky was a thug and dictator. He hammered this idea home week after week. Republican voters followed him, dragging the entire national average down with them.

As recently as 18 weeks ago, Zelensky’s net favorability among Republicans was a wash. Today he’s close to -40. Donald Trump’s leadership2 moved popular opinion.

---

We’ve seen the same thing with vaccines. As recently as five years ago half of Republican voters said that childhood vaccinations were very important. But then Trump and elected Republicans provided leadership on the issue and we got this:

---

Now maybe all of these issues are idiosyncratic and you can’t draw lessons from one to the next. Maybe “leadership” can changes people’s minds on vaccines and Russian war crimes, but it can’t change their minds on immigration.

Or maybe there’s an asymmetry and the attitudes of Republican voters are uniquely amenable to “leadership” while the views of Democrats and independents are much less malleable.3

But maybe Democrats should test these questions by, you know, exhibiting some, uh, leadership of their own and trying to make Trump catastrophically unpopular?

---

2. Chuck​

In my wildfire parable last week, I tried to construct an alibi for Chuck Schumer’s capitulation. I think both strategies can be correct.

It’s possible that Schumer was right to keep the government open in order to prevent Trump/Musk from using a shutdown as pretext to speed up the dismantling of the federal government. At the same time, the Democratic party ought to be demagoguing exhibiting strong leadership by attacking the Trump/Musk administration, hammer and tongs. Part of that attack should be throwing Schumer under the bus. Maybe even removing him from his leadership position.

In other words: Tactically keeping the government open while strategically sending the message that we are in an existential crisis

---

This morning I got a note from a buddy who’s a famous historian:

I think if there’s one thing people need to know now is that this is happening very fast. It could be over in months or even weeks, if it isn’t already over now. Whatever people are saving up for the 2026 elections they need to throw it all in now. To drive up his negatives and pray a handful of Republicans really starts pushing back.

His email made me think of an important piece from the Atlantic about how Hitler used Germany’s laws to dismantle the rule of law in just 53 days.

Hans Frank served as Hitler’s private attorney and chief legal strategist in the early years of the Nazi movement. While later awaiting execution at Nuremberg for his complicity in Nazi atrocities, Frank commented on his client’s uncanny capacity for sensing “the potential weakness inherent in every formal form of law” and then ruthlessly exploiting that weakness. Following his failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler had renounced trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic by violent means but not his commitment to destroying the country’s democratic system, a determination he reiterated in a Legalitätseid—“legality oath”—before the Constitutional Court in September 1930. Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw fit. It was an astonishingly brazen statement.
“So, through constitutional means?” the presiding judge asked.
“Jawohl!” Hitler replied.

You see, the Nazis had ideas about the unitary executive, too. When they first took power, they had only a bare plurality: They held 37 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, which was enough to give them 51 percent of the ruling coalition government. Hitler believed that this plurality entitled him to total and absolute control of the government:

“37 percent represents 75 percent of 51 percent,” he argued to one American reporter, by which he meant that possessing the relative majority of a simple majority was enough to grant him absolute authority.

In claiming this executive authority, Hitler believed that he should be allowed to rule by executive order decree, without constraint from the legislature or courts:

He believed that an Ermächtigungsgesetz (“empowering law”) was crucial to his political survival. But passing such a law—which would dismantle the separation of powers, grant Hitler’s executive branch the authority to make laws without parliamentary approval, and allow Hitler to rule by decree, bypassing democratic institutions and the constitution.4

---

After the Reichstag fire, Hitler called for new elections and found that the new parliament was much more amenable to his enabling law.

When the delegates reconvened at 6:15 that evening, the floor was given to Otto Wels, the Social Democratic leader, who had returned from his Swiss exile, despite fears for his personal safety, to challenge Hitler in person. As Wels began to speak, Hitler made a move to rise. Papen touched Hitler’s wrist to keep him in check.

“In this historic hour, we German Social Democrats solemnly pledge ourselves to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism,” Wels said. He chided Hitler for seeking to undermine the Weimar Republic, and for the hatred and divisiveness he had sowed. Regardless of the evils Hitler intended to visit on the country, Wels declared, the republic’s founding democratic values would endure. “No enabling act gives you the power to destroy ideas that are eternal and indestructible,” he said.

Hitler rose. “The nice theories that you, Herr Delegate, just proclaimed are words that have come a bit too late for world history,” he began. He dismissed allegations that he posed any kind of threat to the German people. He reminded Wels that the Social Democrats had had 13 years to address the issues that really mattered to the German people—employment, stability, dignity. “Where was this battle during the time you had the power in your hand?” Hitler asked. The National Socialist delegates, along with observers in the galleries, cheered. The rest of the delegates remained still. A series of them rose to state both their concerns and positions on the proposed enabling law.

The Centrists, as well as the representatives of the Bavarian People’s Party, said they were willing to vote yes despite reservations “that in normal times could scarcely have been overcome.” Similarly, Reinhold Maier, the leader of the German State Party, expressed concern about what would happen to judicial independence, due process, freedom of the press, and equal rights for all citizens under the law, and stated that he had “serious reservations” about according Hitler dictatorial powers. But then he announced that his party, too, was voting in favor of the law, eliciting laughter from the floor. . . .

The next morning, U.S. Ambassador Frederic Sackett sent a telegram to the State Department: “On the basis of this law the Hitler Cabinet can reconstruct the entire system of government as it eliminates practically all constitutional restraints.”

The entire drama—from Hitler’s first swearing in to passage of the enabling law, which destroyed the German constitution—took 53 days.

These things can happen quickly. And the only real check on them that exists is popular will.

---

America is in a race between Trump’s attempt to tear down the federal government and rule of law and the Democrats’ attempt to make Trump so unpopular that other institutions are capable of resisting him.

Yet I fear that only the Trumpists recognize that they are in this race.

Today is day 55 of the second Trump administration.

Hey Democrats: Maybe Now *Is* the Time to Fight?

Trump is racing to dismantle the rule of law before Democrats can make him unpopular enough so that other institutions can push back against him. Do the Dems understand this?

www.thebulwark.com

 

[IFocus]

Rule of law no longer applies in the USA Trump is immune from prosecution does that mean he can ignore the next election results?

Where is the outrage?

Crickets…

 

[moXJO]

Rule of law no longer applies in the USA Trump is immune from prosecution does that mean he can ignore the next election results?

Where is the outrage?

Crickets…

Didn't "the law" actually rule on that?
Democrats played that game during Biden. Biden ignored judges rulings as well I thought.

 

[moXJO]

It would seem that despite all the calls about Trump Musk, and all the others on the right hand side of US politics being spawn of the devil, Naziz, destroyers of Democracy yada yada yada, such evilness and sin has not translated into a surge in Democrat popularity.
From CNN Poll


Support fro Democrats has been steadily declining since those heady days in 2008 when they had a 50% approval rating, the decline in the last six months has been steep and deep.
View attachment 195569

However, despite such low numbers, that does not necessarily drive a support for Trump.

CBS Polling shows that
View attachment 195570

American voters are jittery, deeply divided, and have a distinct SOL analysis of their own country.
Mick

It must suck being a Democrat politician. Just imagine having to please those schizo Karen's.

 

[JohnDe]

Rule of law no longer applies in the USA Trump is immune from prosecution does that mean he can ignore the next election results?

Where is the outrage?

Crickets…

Why should there be outrage over the hypothetical? That just seems a way to an early grave.

The USA, like most countries with a strong democracy and law system, has check and balances in place. If you read up on US history, you will find other interesting moments.

I think that most people, like me, are not going to get outraged at another countries political system. If we were, why not at the Chinese system which appears to be on a path of world dominance?

 

[IFocus]

Didn't "the law" actually rule on that?
Democrats played that game during Biden. Biden ignored judges rulings as well I thought.

Nah my understanding is that a judge ruled against deportation as there was no due process I know there are no sympathies for the gang members but this is what deep state politics looks like.

 

[JohnDe]

Nah my understanding is that a judge ruled against deportation as there was no due process I know there are no sympathies for the gang members but this is what deep state politics looks like.

Deep state politics, I had to look that one up to remind myself. Trump was a fan of that term -

The term deep state originated in the 1990s as a reference to an alleged longtime deep state in Turkey, but began to be used to refer to the American government as well, including during the Obama administration. However, the theory reached mainstream recognition under the presidency of Donald Trump, who has falsely alleged the "deep state" is working against him and his administration's agenda.​

 

[IFocus]

Apparently tariffs are a tax cut how does that work?
The Cult keeps cheering