Trump told The Atlantic that he runs the country and the world. Take him seriously. Hitler could have said the same thing. By Hal M. Brown -- Jennifer Rubin expresses optimism but also reminds us of how long it took to defeat the Nazis.

By the end of the day today anyone paying attention to the news on all but Trump TV will know about the interview Trump gave to The Atlantic and the two grandiose Trumpian things he said. 

The one that The Atlantic had on their cover and RawStory featured in their article about this (here: 'I run the country — and the world': Inside Trump's bombshell sit-down with The Atlantic) makes the second look hoohum. That was about his teasing the idea of running for third term.

This is an excerpt from Rawsotry’s article with the two parts I think are the most telling in bold:

“'I’m having a lot of fun, considering what I do,' Trump said in a phone call. “'You know, what I do is such serious stuff.'”

“The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive," he added later. "I had all these crooked guys, and the second time, I run the country — and the world.”

The reporters asked Trump about a rumor they'd heard about him tasking the Justice Department to examine whether he could legally run for a third term, which he denied but left open as a possibility.

“'That would be a big shattering, wouldn’t it?'” Trump said, laughing, according to the report. “'Well, maybe I’m just trying to shatter [democratic norms].'"

He noted that supporters often shout out for him to seek a third term, but he expressed a recognition that wasn't a possibility.

“'It’s not something that I’m looking to do, and I think it would be a very hard thing to do,'" he said.

Taking the second statement about shattering democratic norms first, this tells me that Trump knows very well that when democratic norms are shattered democracy is destroyed. What’s left is autocracy. Who, then is in charge? He is, of course. What does that make him? It makes him a dictator.

What Trump said sbout running the country is true. Despite what optimists want to believe about all the defeats in court, his dismal showing in the polls, and the large anti-Trump protests, he is still running the country. For example, Jennifer Rubin lists numerous Trump failures in “Trump is worse off than he was 100 days ago. The battle for democracy, however, is not yet won.” The subtitle about the battle not yet won contradicts the illustration shown below.

We see a faded odd looking MAGA hat with weird orange straps in three pieces on a dirt road with tire tracks over it. 

Presumably this hat thingy represents Trump and Trumpism.

Rubin is more realistic in what she writes. She begins:

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. 
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

– Winston Churchill, 1942

We therefore cannot tell if the last week or so leading up to the 100-day mark of Donald Trump’s assault on democracy, decency, and truth has definitively shifted momentum toward the pro-democracy movement or just temporarily sidetracked Trump’s march to autocracy. If and only if pro-democracy forces draw the right lessons, cement their alliances, and pursue their MAGA assailants relentlessly will recent events come to be recognized as the end of the beginning of the fight to preserve the American experiment.

She goes on to describe 10 failures or setbacks Trump has had. She concludes with something I have written about:

In short, Trump lost the first 100 days, but democracy has not won the war. Had the Allies not gone on to prevail on D-Day and win WWII, their victory in North Africa in 1942, which inspired Churchill’s memorable observation, would have been viewed in retrospect as a bump in the road on the way to Nazi victory. Without persistent, ongoing opposition, recent victories on multiple fronts cannot end the MAGA threat.

Regular readers of my Substack know I have written about the Nazi blitzkreig and how Hitler invaded Europe, and then how long it took for the Allies to build their military might to the point where they could start the D-Day assault. The Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 marking the beginning of World War II. Churchill made his comment on November 10, 1942. 

Trump has four years to consolidate his power, two if you want to believe the Democrats winning control of Congress will make any difference to him. 

At present Trump has armed agents doing his bidding. He has already used ICE, the FBI, and other federal law enforcement agencies to arrest people he sees as enemies. Consider what happened yesterday when DEA agents and other law enforcement were used in Colorado (link)

The real test of whether he has Hitlerian or Putin power will be if he tries to use the military on US soil by declaring martial law to stop protests and round up and imprison protestors. He could attempt to do this by declaring martial law. This is what Wikipedia says about martial law in the United States.

Assuming the military went along with this we will have a true totalitarian country. There will be no coalition to mount a D-Day to save us.

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You don't have to be another Hitler to be Hitlerian, by Hal M. Brown Trump's agenda is Hitler without death camps and starting a war that would kill 75 million.

Today Sabrina Haake wrote Contempt of Court (here).

She references Hitler twice:

Bukele’s ‘States of Exception’ are the legal cover he employs to silence his critics and send people to concentration camps with no legal process. States of Exception were also Hitler’s initial cover for controlling the media, dispatching SS henchmen, and sending millions of innocent people to unthinkable deaths.

Like Bukele, Hitler, and other autocrats throughout history, Trump is also fond of declaring “national emergencies,” which are precursors to states of exceptions. After only three months in office, Trump has already declared six new national emergenciesranging from the “US border emergency” to a “National Energy Emergency,” to a national emergency designating “Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”

For my own Substack today I am expanding on what I posted as a comment to her Substack:

For some time people like Sabrina and me have not been reluctant to compare Trump, and people like Bukele, to Hitler when appropriate. Others with a public forum treat mentioning his name like uttering the name of the evl Voldemort. Only Harry Porter dared to do this. When Trump does something Hitlerian and we point this out we do so knowing full well that to say that this does not diminish the worst in history genocide and a war that killed some 75 million people. One doesn't have to be literally a modern day Hitler to be Hitlerian which is defined as "relating to or characteristic of Hitler or the policies of the Nazi party."

Wiki defines blitzkrieg as follows:

Blitzkrieg is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack, using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, together with artillery, air assault, and close air support. The intent is to break through an opponent's lines of defense, dislocate the defenders, confuse the enemy by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht: a battle of annihilation.

Ironically, considering the failed Russian attempt to defeat Ukraine in their own blitzkrieg, this is the photo Wiki used as their illustration:

The German bliztkrieg began in 1939 and had achieved the Nazi goal of conquering Europe by 1941. It included the invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.

Trump, in a matter of months, has been engaged in his own blitzkrieg to achieve the Hitlerian end of turning the country into his dictatorship where the rule of law is what he says it is.

Trump is engaged in a juggernaut to cement his power. A juggernaut, in current English usage, is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as merciless, destructive, and unstoppable. (Wiki). (The word may sound German but it is really an English version of Jagannath, an important deity in the Hindu traditions of eastern and north-eastern India. The meaning originates from the Hindu temple cars.)

Trump has decided to flex his 78 year old golf tournament winning muscles by coming up with things to attack that have little if anything to do with achieving his ultimate goal. Chief among them are the entire DOGE agenda and his trying to wipe DEI from the country. Neither of these needed to be done to become ruler of an authoritarian country. But, back to Hitler, I wonder if the Nazis needed to exterminate the Jews to take over Europe.

What that seems to add up to is my concluding, not as an historian, but as a psychotherapist, that ruthless dictators are a strange breed with both quirks and psychopathology that may differ from one to another. For example, I doubt Hitler ever had anything like a Trump Cabinet meeting, with cameras rolling, going around the room having everyone praise him effusively. I haven’t read anything about Hitler being a grandiose narcissist needing to be effusively praised by his subordinates. He was, however, ruthless in using the force of arms to achieve his goals.

Trump’s armed troops don’t enforce his dictates by rumbling down the streets in tanks. Instead they drive up in black SUVs and his ICE version of the SS are just as intimidating as the Waffin SS were.

Imagine ICE officers like the SS troops below standing on your street and wondering which of your neighbors they were coming to take away, or whether it might by you.

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How a few comments to a HUFFPOST article comparing Trump to Hitler is a snapshot of divided America, By Hal M. Brown (The article is about Trump's anti-trans rants, but comments may show that a lot of men suffer from castration anxiety.

 

I read The Nazis Made A Horrifying Move In 1933. I'm Terrified Trump Is Now Doing The Exact Same Thing.

“Until recently, the question remained theoretical. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that President Trump is running plays straight out of Hitler’s playbook.”

The author, Ali Moss has a Substack where she also published this article.

I made this comment on HUFFPOST:

Then I looked over the comments and got the idea for today’s Susbtack.

The comments section of HUFFPOST continues to be an accurate representation of the dichotomy of viewpoints between Americans. On the one side we have those who condemn the author of this article and the entire idea that transgender children actually are born that way. These posts are sometimes crude and angry. They sometime say any comparison of Turmp with Hitler is, not always in these words, Trump derangement syndrome.

On the other side we have people who agree with the author that what Trump is doing has horrifying similarities to what Hitler did. These commenters tend to be both well thought out and respectful.

I looked at the comments and found a thread in response to what Roberta Powell posted. She was responding to a comment I can’t see because it was removed:

You can read it below. There are several typos.

• Roberta Powell

  We are there. He has labeled the same people as criminals, nonexistent or enemies. LGBTQ, DEI, foreign born, the press, the universities, libraries and liberals are lunatics destroying the American dream. And just like 1933 Germany he found a violent minority who agree. He oiks very elserlyfound more that join him for their own gain. Hitler was not 80 years old. Trump is. Trump's Reich ls led by the elderly but enforced by the middle aged. They have no limits. What laws they do not remove they break. This is a far right lunatic political party with an opposition that sits back to let the right do damage and lose support. We know we are not represented in Congress by either party. Unless we join the right wingers we are alone. We are there. It is 1930 Germany here in the U.S.A. and a depression is being set up. It's going to get very bad here.

  • LAXMAN FIVE

    So you like males on female sports teams and in their locker rooms right liberal? Only a Nazi would be against that. Right.

    • Two term Papaw

      All three of them!!!!

      Meanwhile MAGA can’t afford groceries without a second low wage job

    • Roberta Powell

      It's sports. I see huge muscular "born girls" and dainty, feminine "born boys" being used as an excuse to destroy every freedom our ancestors fought for. It's insane. I don't see the point. Why force girls to compete with transgender boys? It's not fair. Any athlete born female could take hormones and go through surgeries and compete against girls according to Trump. And they are? Just to win a high school trophy? That's nuts. And when girls compete with boys the girls still win sometimes. I think that is your real objection. Get over it and try harder.

  • undefined undefined

    DEI is racist and a man can't be a woman princess.

    • Roberta Powell

      But they can! DEI and transgenders can do their jobs.

• Susan Ortiz

  Some how her trans 11 year old had the freedom of speech intact to address the crowd under this nazi regime. How does that work?

  • Trump's Fascist Regime

    Ask the Columbia university protesters...

• Daniel Pedraza

  30 minutes ago

  Of course he is. His own daughter said he sleeps with copy of mine kempf by his bed. The entire DEI fraud that is a major Republican talking point is just a clever way to move towards white supremacy That's all it is.

  • Halle Piño

    You think that's "clever"?!

    Seems pretty transparent to me.

• Beef Supreme

  Another woman emotionally manipulated by the Big Media Propaganda Machine into feeling terrified. How sad.

Roberta Powell replied to something I added to the comments:

Ha! How is Trump different than Hitler?

• Hal Brown

  The similarities outweigh the differences. Hitler was a stable psychopath. Trump is an unstable psychopath. I am writing my Substack and knowing if you are the person I think you are will add more to it.

Just added:

Trump has had so many big lies beside the one about him really having won the 2020 election that led to his re-election that there’s no one lie we can pick out as the biggest of the big lies. My choice is that the biggest election outcome defining big lie was that the reason he servived the assassination attempt was that God ordained this. When I saw the photo of him with his fist raised I knew he couldn’t lose. 

There were other big lies such as that the MAGA thugs who assaulted the Capitol were patriots. Trump has also managed to make the entire trans issue into a big lie. In the inconvenient fact don’t mater MAGA-sphere it is a big lie that there are only two genders. What the hell does the Mayo Clinic know?

As a psychoanalytically informed psychotherapist I see things like this through a Freudian lens. My analysis of why Trump’s anti-trans fear-mongering resonates with so many men is that they are insecure about their own masculinity. They have a deeply buried unconscious fear of castration. I would venture to speculate that this manifests itself in symbolism in their dreams.

This is how Wikipedia defines castration anxiety:

Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the penis—a derivative of Sigmund Freud's theory of the castration complex, one of his earliest psychoanalytic theories.The term refers to the fear of emasculation in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

Freud regarded castration anxiety as a universal human experience. It is thought to begin between the ages of 3 and 5, during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. In Freud's theory, it is the child's perception of anatomical difference (the possession of a penis) that induces castration anxiety as a result of an assumed paternal threat made in response to their sexual proclivities. Although typically associated with males, castration anxiety is thought to be experienced, in differing ways, by both sexes.

In the literal sense, castration anxiety refers to a child's fear of having their genitalia disfigured or removed as punishment for Oedipal desire

I wonder whether if there was the research into gender identity and gender reassignment surgery in Freud’s lifetime whether he would have considered how he interpreted dreams about castration.

It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to come up with a Freudian explanation about someone’s unconscious fears when they lied and obsessed about the size of crowds that came to hear them speak. Likewise, if someone depicted themselves in computer generated images as muscular superheros sometimes carrying big guns, you don’t have to be Freud to speculate about their unconscious fears. Fake pro-wrestling crap, and the very worst, his need to sexually dominate women… I could go on but I will spare you.

Read my recent Substacks.

.Holy F*cken Sh!t, Sabrina Haake!!!! My comment to you has become most of my Substact today.

In order to understand my title and my entire Substack today you have to read Sabrina Haake’s “Haake Take” today. Yesterday, my friend Sabrina asked me via email how I came up with ideas for my Substacks. I said that generally as I looked over the news an idea I hoped was an original take or perspective popped into my head. This morning the idea came from what she wrote in her Substack. 

 The oligarch takeover is America's tall ships moment 

 She uses a photo of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Tesla’s Elon Musk at Donald Trump's second presidential inauguration for her illustration. She uses them to represent the tall ships. 

 She begins: 

 According to the theory, natives literally couldn’t “see” the ships, because they had no experiential familiarity with them. Quoting from What the Bleep do we know?, a paradigm-shifting take on human perception, native people ignored the huge ships because “their highly filtered perceptions couldn't register what was happening, and they literally failed to see them.” When Captain Cook/Columbus/Magellan sent their men ashore in smaller longboats loaded with guns, the natives registered what they saw and began their futile resistance. 

 She concludes: 

 I have wondered all my adult life how the Germans let Hitler happen. And now, like the man who couldn’t live without knowing how his wife died until he met her same fate in The Vanishing, I know. People didn’t react because most couldn’t see what was happening. Those who could see Hitler--Germany’s tall ships--didn’t believe what they saw. And those who both saw and believed their own eyes thought there would be a sane stopping point. There wasn’t then, and there won’t be now. 

 I used to live a couple of towns over from Plymouth, Mass. and often we went to the harbor where the replica of the Mayflower is moored. We visited Plimoth Patuxet (previously called Plimoth Plantation). I decided to use a painting of the Mayflower, the colonists, and members of the Wampanoag tribe from a Britannica article as my illustration. Read her Substack. 

Then read my slightly edited comment below: 

 Holy Fucken Shit, Sabrina!!!!!! 

 You nailed it in one analogy, one I haven't heard before. Then you segued into a comparison we all have used. The Native Americans couldn't see the tall ships. Even if they were bristling with 50 cal. machine guns, had cruise missile launchers, and the colonists had Marines with M-16 assault rifles, they would have been invisible. 

 I also grew up wondering about how everyday Germans could let Hitler happen. This may have because of being Jewish or just because my father served on a hospital ship in the war. The playbook for what is happening here, now, and may very well happen in a short period of time isn't Mein Kampf or Project 2025. It is in the history books but we don't need to look at them. It is common sense. 

Trump, his minions, and his enablers have already begun their blitzkrieg to turn us into some yet precisely undetermined kind of combination of a cruel dictatorship, a police state, and an oligarchy. Even Trump doesn't know exactly what it will be except that whatever it turns out to be he intends to be the absolute ruler for as long as he lives. 

 Those of us who understand his psychopathology aren't surprised by anything he does. Speaking of tall ships (and those container ships are tall), the latest order to have the military submit a plan for invading Panama, fits with his need to be a saber rattling ruler who strikes fear into everyone he aims his wrath at. Putin invaded Ukraine, Trump wants to invade Greenland and Panama. He's ready to declare war on NATO. 

 Democracy loving Americans protesting won't stop him. He wants to find an excuse to declare martial law to stop them. Court rulings won't stop him. He wants to defy the court proving they are impotent. Outraged Democrats in Congress and the outrage of media critics feed his cruel narcissistic hunger. 

Another Kent State Massacre won't stop him. He's a sadist. Bloodshed in the streets won't stop him. All this adds up to only one hope - aside from his death - to stop this. 

It is for the military to initiate a coup. Last week I thought it could be a what is referred to as "a soft coup." (From Wikipedia) "This is also known as a silent coup, an illegal overthrow of a government. Unlike a classical coup d'état, it is achieved without the use of force or violence." Now I am leaning towards a classical coup. 

This would entail, among other actions, tanks around the White House and the 82nd Airborne landing troops on the lawn. A general would be the acting president. The new administration would hold free and fair elections when the county was stabilized. 

 Additional thought: 

 Our tall ship moment is a combination of two groups of powerful people. One are the oligarchs who we knew had incredible control over our politics, but we did not know how malevolent they were. The other group are Trump, Musk, & Co. We knew they were malevolent, but weren’t sure they were all that malevolent. From what I can tell the oligarchs, with the possible exception of Musk, don’t call many of the shots. 

The shots may literally become real bullet shots since Trump controls the people with guns. It is still metaphorical, but when Trump and Musk say “shoot here” the oligarchs put on their noise suppressors and pretend nobody is getting hurt. 

Hitlerism as a word never became popular. There is now such a thing as Trumpism. Move over, Nazism. This is the ism that will describe America. By Hal M. Brown

 

This is the Wikipedia entry for Trumpism. The term is a part of the current lexicon.

Hitlerism never became a popularly used word. Nazism did. I am not sure why. Hitler achieved a cult of personality the same way Trump has done. Maybe it is just that the term didn't have a ring to it.

This is from Wikipedia:

Nazism, formally named National Socialism (NS; German: Nationalsozialismus, is the far-right totalitariansocio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitler Fascism (German: Hitlerfaschismus) and Hitlerism (German: Hitlerismus). The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War and therefore after Nazi Germany collapsed.

Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. Its beliefs include support for dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, anti-Slavism, anti-Romani sentiment, scientific racism, white supremacy, Nordicism, social Darwinism, homophobia, ableism, and the use of eugenics.

It took Trump the four years leading up to the election to position himself to achieve his dictatorial power. He did it differently than Hitler, but the result is the same. Read: 

In January 1933, Hitler did not immediately become a dictator. When he became chancellor, Germany’s democratic constitution was still in effect. However, Hitler transformed Germany by manipulating the democratic political system. Hitler and other Nazi leaders used existing laws to destroy German democracy and create a dictatorship.

In August 1934, President Hindenburg died. Hitler proclaimed himself Führer (meaning “leader”) of Germany. From that point forward, Hitler was the dictator of Germany. Read entire article.

If you are reading this Substack, and have read my previous essays recently, it probably needs no further explanation as to why I have posted the excerpt from this article.

I watch people on TV and in Substack videos and many of them are still smiling as they report on one or another victory against Trump and Trumpism. I only manage to smile, and even laugh these days, when playing pool volleyball and watching a good comedy on TV. I never smile when learning about a victory achived by the anti-Trump movement.

One of the first articles I read this morning was Trump 'clearly' threatening his own people in public: CNN analyst.This is how it begins:

CNN political analyst Mark Preston on Thursday said that President Donald Trump appeared to be openly threatening his own cabinet officials not to get in the way of X owner Elon Musk's efforts to take a wrecking ball to the federal government.

During an interview with host Sara Sidner, Preston said that Trump's first gambit to shut down the United States Agency for International Development looks like just the opening salvo in a broader attack on the government as a whole.

"I think this spells trouble, because this is going to be the first step in really Donald Trump successfully dismantling the government," he said. "Now, everything that he does try to do, Sarah, is not going to be successful but in this first step, he appears to be successful."

The last paragraph is what jumps out. I won’t explain why.

It is hopefully no longer considered by anyone reading this, and many others, to be hyperbole to compare what happened in Germany in the 1930’s to what has happened in the United States in the previous 10+ years. Those of use who see the parallels do not suffer from the pseudo-psychiatric disorder Trump and his allies called Trump derangement syndrome. This legitimately made it into Wikipedia (here), not because it is a real disorder but because it was a political reality.

Coining this term in regard to Trump was an attempt to gaslight his critics, i.e., to manipulate them into questioning their own perception of reality.

What we do suffer, actually suffer from, is seeing things clearly and as a consequence experience anxiety and depression, real disorders, because we see the fate of our democracy.

Addendum:

It isn’t reassuring that the report that a Trump official moved to change the poem on the Statue of Liberty was only deemed partially true by Snopes. Lady Liberty and Hitler are two of the most common themes political cartoonist are using these days.

None of the cartoons which you find when you do an image search for Trump and the Statue of Liberty are funny (Google image search): 

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me.