It's not hyperbole to invoke Hitler, albeit with qualifications, anymore, by Hal M. Brown

When we compare Trump with Hitler, we aren’t comparing him to Hitler in the 1940’s. We compare him to Hitler when he was coming into power in the 1930’s. It is never a literal comparison. Both were psychopaths. Both didn’t value all human lives equally. Both demonized certain groups of people including regular people and their enemies. Trump has plans to deport people and makes veiled threats to imprision enemies and not exterminate them. 

It is chilling that reasonable people like us, who avoid using hyperbole just for the sake of using hyperbole, say things like "what they will do when Trump starts ordering Putin-style assassinations? Some will try to thwart him and some will pull the trigger, as they have throughout centuries." This is from a Sabrina Haake reply to a comment I made on one of her Substacks.

I think the "Putin the assassin” analogy is appropriate. So are many Nazi analogies as long as they are qualified and explained.

It isn't just the wrtten word where Nazi comparisons are made. Sometimes we just post photos. Do a Google Image search for Stephen Miller and Joseph Goebels:

Some of us, me for example, put Hitler moustaches on Trump and Tom Homan on BlueSky:

There may be a time when even mockery like mine, above, isn’t remotely amusing. If things get as deadly serious as they might become so dire that even those desperate to find something to smile about will realize that they are trying to fiddle while the country burns. For example, two weeks ago I wrote that it was time for Rachel Maddow to stop chuckling and get deadly serious. Now things have gotten so much worse that even smiling over a major Trump failure or faux pas is, at least to me, disquieting.

Part of my sensitivity to this is being Jewish and growing hearing my partent talk about the Holocaust. I think about a Jewish family in Nazi German listening to a comedy show on Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (Nazi radio)) while they see that down the street the Gestopo is dragging their neighbor’s family into a van.

As for the “Morning Joe” show, I see a time when they will eliminate their sports chatter and show biz coverage. 

While on the topic of MSNBC I found something I approved of. Joy Reid had Nayyera Haq on this morning. She was a senior advisor in the State Department and also worked in the White House ( Here's her website bio: https://www.nayyera.com/about The panel was discussing how Vance met with the far-right German party leader and not the chancelor. What I found gratifying and noteworthy is when another panelist asked her what she made of this, she said it was an embrace of Nazis and Nazism. This is the first time I've heard the word Nazi on an MSNBC show.

Here in our Substack-sphere many of us don't hesitate to say, basically, that if someone walks like a Nazi, talks like a Nazi, and acts like a Nazi, they are Nazi.

Obviously, I don’t mean one of those wackos like Hitler loving Holocaust denying Kanye West. I mean small “n” nazi:

From my online dictionary here’s the defintion of Nazi “Not a member of the far-right National Socialist German Workers' Party, rather a person with extreme racist or authoritarian views. or a person who seeks to impose their views on others in a very autocratic or inflexible way.”

Because most people aren't that familiar with the abbreviations for the agencies that replaced the KGB - the SVR, FSB, FSO, and GRU, I always use the term Gestapo to describe the personal enforcement group of thugs Trump wants at his command to carry out his psychopathic orders.

Hitler had Himmler, Göring, and lesser known names, to run his Gestapo and SS. We will have Thom Homan and, if he is approved, will have Kash Patel.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't replay the final scene of "Apocalypse Now" in my mind with a dying h Brando saying "the horror, the horror."

Addendum:

There is a place for finely honed satire and humor devised to send a message to a population which is being propagandized by a despotic regime. Here’s an article about how the British did this during World War II.

Excerpts:

The BBC’s German Service used satire to reach ordinary Germans in World War Two. Its aim was to break the Nazi monopoly on news within the Third Reich.

It’s a late night in London in 1940, and Austrian exile Robert Lucas is writing at his desk. Bombs are raining down on the city every night, Hitler’s army is winning throughout Europe and the invasion of England has become a genuine prospect. In spite of the air-raid sirens and, as he put it “the hell’s noise of the war machinery" going off all around him, Lucas is focused on the job at hand: to “fight for the souls of the Germans”. He is composing a radio broadcast aimed at citizens of the Third Reich. But this is not a passionate plea for them to come to their senses. This is an attempt to make them laugh.

Example:

The quirky content of the programmes should be understood in the context of this curious alliance. Adolf Hirnschal is a series of fictitious letters written by a German corporal on the front line to his wife. The protagonist reads the letters to his fighting comrade before they are posted. On the surface Adolf Hirnschal is devoted to his “beloved Führer”. Yet so far-fetched are his exclamations of loyalty that the intention is clear: to expose the shallowness and mendacity of Nazi proclamations. In his first letter after war is declared on Russia in 1941 he tells his wife how he welcomed the news from his lieutenant that they are being transferred to the Russian border:

I jump up in joy and say: ‘Mr Lieutenant, kindly asking for permission to express that I am tremendously pleased that we are now fraternising with the Russians. Did not our beloved Führer already say in 1939 that our friendship with the Russians is irrevocable and irreversible?’

Thus Hirnschal exposes the hypocrisy of Hitler’s policy towards Russia, all under the cover of absolute loyalty.

Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference for an audience of one, Donald Trump, By Hal M. Brown

 ..

Vance didn’t give a hoot about what the people in the room thought about his speech at the Munich Security Conference when he went on and on lambasting our allies for things like arresting protesters who violated the no-protest zone at abortion clinics.which he decribed as an affront to free speech. Of course there was no mention of the country which was the home of Alexei Navalny where exercising free speech can get you poisoned and imprisoned. 

Considering that this is a security conference and there’s a war raging in Europe, what did the audience hear about Ukraine? We barely heard crickets.

Fom Vance’s speech.

Now Yeah. I hope that's not the last bit of applause that I get, but we, we gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security and normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America. Now I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too. Now these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard, and I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.

As you see above according to Vance “the threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within.”

Here’s another piece of pro-Russian propaganda Trump will like:

Now we're at the point of course that the situation has gotten so bad that this December Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors. Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections, but I'd ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few $100,000 of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with. 

Clearly the real audience for his speech was primarily one person, Donald J. Trump, his lord and master. The message to Trump is that he is saying that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to Russia. Secondly, it was the anti-woke and pro-life members of MAGA who bother to tune in to morning television.

Vance is deluded if he thinks Trump actually cares about any of the pro-life falderal. Nobody who thinks rationally would doubt that the notoriously cheap Trump would readily pay for an abortion for a woman he inconveniently impregnated. Mathematicians don’t have a number infinitesimal enough to measure how little Trump cares about aving the life of the unborn.

I listened to Vance for as long as CNN was broadcasting it. That gave methe the idea for this Substack. Then I found the entire text. If I was a real journalist I’d read the entire thing and comments on all the thingsI thought were relevant. Instead I just searched for the words “Ukraine” and “Russia.” 

Addendum on reviewing the entire speech I found this part just plain weird:

And trust me, I say this with all humor. If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg's scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk. 

UPDATES: 

From Vance Tells Europeans to Stop Shunning Parties Deemed Extreme, NY Times

Vice President JD Vance told European leaders on Friday that their biggest security threat was not military aggression from Russia or China, but their own suppression of free speech — including efforts to block hard-right parties from joining governments.

An audience that was largely expecting Mr. Vance to lay out the Trump administration’s priorities for the trans-Atlantic alliance, NATO military spending and negotiations with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, instead received a lecture on what Mr. Vance described as the continent’s own failures in living up to democratic ideals.

Those failures, Mr. Vance said, included efforts to restrict so-called “misinformation” and other content on social media and laws against abortion protests that he said unfairly silenced Christians.

Perhaps most strikingly, the vice president called on Europeans to drop their opposition to working with anti-immigration parties, calling them a legitimate expression of the will of voters angered by high levels of migration over the last decade. Those parties include the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, parts of which have been classified as extremist by German intelligence.

Excerpt:

None of this was particularly well-received by Europeans at the conference listening to the speech — and according to Politico's White House reporter Dasha Burns, the anger and derision burst out in the overflow room. The audience reportedly groaned as Vance highlighted the "threat from within," and one woman in attendance shouted out, "he's such a puppet!"

"In the end, there was palpable shock and anger," Burns concluded.

Trump and his associates have often not been met with the reactions they were hoping for when speaking on the world stage. In one of the most well-known incidents, diplomats openly laughed at Trump as he gave a speech to the United Nations in 2018 — though after the fact he insisted they were simply "laughing with me."

If you want to see what I am thinking throughout the day follow me on BlueSky here.

For those who want to wade through the entire speech, below. I added paragraph breaks where I thought they made sense from CSPAN is the text of Vance’s speech.

00:00:12

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. It is now my honor and pleasure to welcome the Vice President of the United States, Mr. JD Vance, who was here last year as senator, and we are very happy that he has come back to Munich, and we are very much looking forward to his speech. Please welcome Vice President JD Vance.

Show More 00:00:54

Well, thank you and thanks to all the gathered delegates and luminaries and media professionals and thanks especially to the hosts of the Munich Security Conference for being able to put on such an incredible event. We're of course thrilled to be here. We're happy to be here. And you know, one of the things that I wanted to talk about today. is of course our shared values and you know it's great to be back in Germany as you heard earlier. I was here last year as a United States senator. 

I saw a Foreign Minister, Foreign Secretary David Lammian joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now, but now it's time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been Fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples to use it wisely to improve their lives, and I want to say that you know I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours, and I've been so impressed by the hospitality of the people even of course as they're reeling from yesterday's horrendous attack. And the first time I was ever in Munich was with, was with my wife actually who's here with me today on a personal trip, and I've always loved the city of Munich and I've always loved its people, and I just want to say that we're very moved and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community. We're thinking about you. We're praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come. 

Now Yeah. I hope that's not the last bit of applause that I get, but we, we gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security and normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America. 

Now I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too. Now these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. 

For years we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard, and I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them. 

Now within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not. And thank God they lost the Cold War. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, invent, to build, as it turns out, you can't mandate innovation or creativity just as you can't force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe, and we believe those things are certainly connected. And unfortunately when I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War's winners. 

I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be hateful content. Or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action. 

I look to Sweden, where 2 weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden's laws to supposedly protect free expression do not in fact grant, and I'm quoting, a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief. And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. 

A little over 2 years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 m from an abortion clinic and silently praying for 3 minutes. Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son, he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 m of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution. 

Now I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person, but no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones. Warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. 

In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat. And in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation like for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leak leaked from a laboratory in China. 

Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth. So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that. In Washington there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump's leadership we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer in the public square, agree or disagree. 

Now we're at the point of course that the situation has gotten so bad that this December Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors. Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections, but I'd ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few $100,000 of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with. 

Now the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear, and I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still, which of course brings us back to Munich. Where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. 

Now again, we don't have to agree with everything or anything that people say, but when people represent, when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them. Now to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation who simply don't like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid vote a different way or even worse, win an election. 

Now this is a security conference, and I'm sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that's great. Because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. 

We don't think you hear this term burden sharing, but we think it's an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger. But let me also ask you, How will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don't know what it is that we are defending in the first place? I've heard a lot already in my conversations, and I've had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room. I've heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course that's important, but what has seemed a little bit less clear to me and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe is what exactly it is that you're defending yourselves for. 

What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important. And I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years. 

Have we learned nothing that thin mandates produce unstable results, but there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. If you're going to enjoy competitive economies, if you're going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains. Then you need mandates to govern because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things, and of course we know that very well in America. 

You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that's the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society. And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost 1 in 5 people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It's a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all-time high. 

The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone, and of course it's gotten much higher since, and we know the situation, it didn't materialize in a vacuum. It's the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And of course I can't bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. 

But why did this happen in the first place? It's a terrible story, but it's one we've heard way too many times in Europe and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction? 

No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants, but you know what they did vote for. In England, they voted for Brexit, and agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they're voting for political leaders who promised to put an end to out of control migration. 

Now I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don't have to agree with me. I just think that people care about their homes. They care about their dreams, they care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children, and they're smart. I think this is one of the most important things I've learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don't generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy, and it's hardly surprising that they don't want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. 

It is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. And speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference, even when people express views outside your own country and even when those people are very influential. 

And trust me, I say this with all humor. If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg's scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk. But what German democracy, what no democracy, American, German, or European, will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't. 

Europeans, the people have a voice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future. Embrace what your people tell you, even when it's surprising, even when you don't agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence knowing that the nation stands behind each of you, and that to me is the great magic of democracy. It's not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It's not even in the great institutions that we built together as a shared society. 

To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice, and if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little. As Pope John Paul II, in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said, Do not be afraid. We shouldn't be afraid of our people even when they express views that disagree with their leadership. 

Thank you all. Good luck to all of you. God bless you. Yeah

Government by thugs and thuggery, By Hal M. Brown

 

Can I be blunt? Sure, Hal, why not? Another way to put what Trump & Co, have done is put us on the very slippery slope of having governemt run by thugs who delight in their thuggery. From Musk's 20-somethings in DOGE, one of whom brags about what might be a case of Epididymitis (look it up) to the more intimidating J6 insurrectionists who probably will be hired as FBI agents once Kash Patel takes over, they are all thugs.

We already have ICE agents who think they are police officers (who should be protecting and serving everyone) because it says police on their body armor. They even used flash-bang grenades to round up some immigrants. Why, one might ask. Because it was a good show which was meant to intimidate, to send a message. Thom Homan and, of all people, Dr. Phil the bloodthirsty psychologist could have been imagined by Bram Stoker, might as well be weilding bludgeons. Even nicey-nice Goldlocks Pam Bondi might as well be Queen of Cruelty Catherine de Medici.

Add every calculating Jame Bond villain together and throw in steel-tooth Odd Job and we have the cast of villainous characters Trump and Musk (I don't know which one would be Auric Goldfinger), with the help of Stephen Miller and the Heritage Society, have put together to destroy or dominate the world.

I wish this was like a James Bond movie where, with daring do, and in the early movies with a little Walther PPK pistol (which perhaps Ian Flemming meant to be ironic because it was the handgun of the Gestapo and German police) and a little help from his CIA friend Felix Leiter and the Bond girl of the day, because he always prevailed. Anyway, I doubt MI6 will save us now.

This isn't fiction. Jack Reacher isn't going to help us (New series season Feb 20th for fans). The GOP managed to elevate their hero to the presidency. Love him or hate him he sold himself as a superhero and even sold AI images of himself as a muscle bound hero. That, and as someone ordained by Jesus. I wanted to believe Kamala was our Wonder Woman. She couldn't pull it off although in one of the comics she actually ran for president and won. (I had a copy of the cover on my fridge door until she lost.)

Lacking a superhero we have to win the coming battle through sheer numbers and smarts. Being righteous isn't enough. Perhaps we have tp learn how to be ruthlessly righteous.

Trump and Musk's effort to expose fraud is all sizzle and no steak. They are preeminent American fraudsters themselves, but it's worse than this. By Hal M. Brown

'A tiny drop in the bucket': DOGE claims of fraud fall apart under WaPo scrutiny

Here’s the excerpt that prompted me to take the photo on top of the page:

Despite claims from Donald Trump, Elon Musk and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has uncovered massive fraud being committed against taxpayers, an analysis by the Washington Post called the assertions all sizzle and no steak.

In an analysis by the WaPo's Aaron Blake, he made a distinction between accusations of criminal fraud –– of which there is little evidence –– and waste which has long been an obsession on both sides of the aisle.

More importantly, he noted that Trump and his allies are conflating fraud with programs the president "simply doesn’t like or agree with."

The bullet points below are the sizzle from The Washington Post:

By Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was pressed on the supposed evidence of fraud — and seemingly came prepared.

“As for the actual receipts, we are happy to provide them, and I actually brought some today,” Leavitt said, as she waved around printouts.

She proceeded to mention four things:

• A $36,000 contract for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

• A $3.4 million contract for “inclusive innovation” at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

• $57,000 for climate change programs in Sri Lanka.

• A limestone mine in Pennsylvania where federal employee retirements are processed on paper.

Truly, in a huge government, where’s the steak? I’d say this is barely even a sizzle.

Hiring an honest hacker to catch hackers makes sense, so why not have a fraudster expose fraud? To answer this question we have to consider the difference between a hacker and a fraudster and look at their motivations. Some hackers hack for fun and to feel superior, not for profit or nefarious reasons. Fraudsters generally commit fraud for profit or, like both Trump and George Santos did about their accomplishments, for personal gain. Trump managed the fraud, possibly of all time, that propelled himself to the presidency. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, he convinced voters he was a genius businessman.

The word "irony" has become as ubiqiutous as the word "coup" when writing about the Trump and MAGA march to monarchy.

Leaving aside why I'd rather not call what Trump is doing a coup, prefering the word blitzkreig (I explained this here), let me call out the fraudsters who have declared themselves, not in so many words, to be like big game hunters gunning down stampeding elephants who are about to crush innocent villagers.

They want to convince us that they are gunning down rampaging fraudsters before they trample over innocent taxpayers.

In the legal sense, Trump is a convicted fraudster. Musk is a fraudster too.  This is still on the SEC website. I'm going to post it on the bottom of the page so if it is taken down you can refer to it.

Both Trump and Musk are fraudsters in much more important ways than this. They both have, and continue to, perpetrate a fraud as deadly to democracy as lethal as Zyklon B on freedom loving American people.

They believe, and want you to believe, that they are the smartest people in the world who, uniquely, are the only people who have the answers which will solve all of the country’s, and all of the world's, problems.

Trump, the fraudster who lies about crowd sizes, has repeatedly bragged about his "very, very large brain (here for example). Musk is secure enough so he doesn’t feel the need to brag about his intelligence. On an IQ test Musk might score in the very superior range, in my opinion Trump would, at best, score above average, though I have some doubt about this. (Here’s what IQ tests measure.)

Hitler has been considered by experts to have been very smart, but not a genius. (Reference). Putin is considered to have an IQ of 145. This puts him in the very superior range, smarter than 2% of all people. (Reference)

IQ’s aside, both Trump and Musk are frauds in other ways. They are spewing out lies like unrelenting projectile vomit to convince the public that there is rampant fraud in the federal government that justifies eliminating entire departments and agencies. Musk just said that this is akin to making sure you pull out the roots of a weed to make sure it doesn’t grow back. He wants everyone to believe that because there may be some fraud (he won’t call it waste) in a department or agency the entire department or agency must be eliminated.

What Trump and Musk are really trying to do is an extension of the war on Woke and DEI. They want to get rid of any government entity which works to foster compassion and empathy. They know that the employees in certain agencies are either Democrats or anti-MAGA Republicans. Once they are done with this, they will purge other departments and agencies of anyone who isn’t a MAGA loyalist. They will make sure agencies like the SEC and IRS bend to their will. Worse, they intend to turn the Department of Justice and the FBI into their own Gestapo. 

Virtually everything Trump and Musk are working together as president and his smarter co-president are trying to do is to turn America into a dictatorship ruled by toadies, psychopaths, and oligarchs.

When it comes to the claimed fraud, there is barely sizzle. When it comes to the effort to destroy democracy, there are flames coming out of the skillet.

Addendum:

From the SEC: Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges; Tesla Charged With and Resolves Securities Law Charge

Settlement Requires Musk to Step Down as Tesla’s Chairman; Tesla to Appoint Additional Independent Directors; Tesla and Musk Agree to Pay $40 Million in Penalties

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2018-226

Washington D.C., Sept. 29, 2018 —

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that Elon Musk, CEO and Chairman of Silicon Valley-based Tesla Inc., has agreed to settle the securities fraud charge brought by the SEC against him last week. The SEC also today charged Tesla with failing to have required disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musk’s tweets, a charge that Tesla has agreed to settle. The settlements, which are subject to court approval, will result in comprehensive corporate governance and other reforms at Tesla—including Musk’s removal as Chairman of the Tesla board—and the payment by Musk and Tesla of financial penalties.

According to the SEC’s complaint against him, Musk tweeted on August 7, 2018 that he could take Tesla private at $420 per share — a substantial premium to its trading price at the time — that funding for the transaction had been secured, and that the only remaining uncertainty was a shareholder vote. The SEC’s complaint alleged that, in truth, Musk knew that the potential transaction was uncertain and subject to numerous contingencies. Musk had not discussed specific deal terms, including price, with any potential financing partners, and his statements about the possible transaction lacked an adequate basis in fact. According to the SEC’s complaint, Musk’s misleading tweets caused Tesla’s stock price to jump by over six percent on August 7, and led to significant market disruption.

According to the SEC’s complaint against Tesla, despite notifying the market in 2013 that it intended to use Musk’s Twitter account as a means of announcing material information about Tesla and encouraging investors to review Musk’s tweets, Tesla had no disclosure controls or procedures in place to determine whether Musk’s tweets contained information required to be disclosed in Tesla’s SEC filings. Nor did it have sufficient processes in place to that Musk’s tweets were accurate or complete.

Musk and Tesla have agreed to settle the charges against them without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations. Among other relief, the settlements require that:

• Musk will step down as Tesla’s Chairman and be replaced by an independent Chairman. Musk will be ineligible to be re-elected Chairman for three years;

• Tesla will appoint a total of two new independent directors to its board;

• Tesla will establish a new committee of independent directors and put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications;

• Musk and Tesla will each pay a separate $20 million penalty. The $40 million in penalties will be distributed to harmed investors under a court-approved process.

“The total package of remedies and relief announced today are specifically designed to address the misconduct at issue by strengthening Tesla’s corporate governance and oversight in order to protect investors,” said Stephanie Avakian, Co-Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division.

“As a result of the settlement, Elon Musk will no longer be Chairman of Tesla, Tesla’s board will adopt important reforms —including an obligation to oversee Musk’s communications with investors—and both will pay financial penalties,” added Steven Peikin, Co-Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division. “The resolution is intended to prevent further market disruption and harm to Tesla’s shareholders.”

The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Walker Newell, Brent Smyth, and Barrett Atwood and supervised by Steven Buchholz, Erin Schneider, and Jina Choi in the San Francisco Regional Office and Cheryl Crumpton in the SEC’s Home Office.