Is Trump's agenda really stumbling? By Hal M. Brown

 I had no idea what to write about this morning until I saw the chyron on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” when the panel was gleefully talking about various setbacks which Trump was having in implementing his agenda.

The word that jumped out was “struggling.” The agenda may be “struggling” in the sense that it hasn’t been implemented in its entirety the way Hitler took over all of Europe is a 54 day blitzkrieg. Trump’s army doesn’t have tanks, aircraft, artillery, and millions of armed troops (ICE is a pipsqueak force in comparison). Still, considering what Trump’s army accomplished in just over 100 days, he has done a damn good job with the resources he had. Even Hitler would probably admire him.

Sure, there have been some bumps in the road. In his arroagance, some of these may have taken him by surprise. Certainly, a number pissed him off while others he shrugged off. From lawsuits to Springsteen to stock prices to poll numbers to DOGE not delivering as promised, they all add up to a few flys at a picnic which you hoped to be absolutely perfect. 

Trump has henchmen with fly zappers to deal with these pesky annoyances. I had a chance to use the zapper I bought a few weeks ago and it worked, although the odor of a fast-fried fly was noxious. The smell disappated in a couple of minutes and was replaced by the savory aroma of chicken being cooked. So it has been with Trump moving past the blowback from his setbacks. He moves on to the sweet smell of success.

Moving along in their discussion about politics, the MSNBC panel added James Carvelle and they were all smiles when they talked about Democratic hopes for 2026.

Their optimism springs eternal. For example, how they celebrate the struggles the Trump adminstation is experiencing, they can’t admit that the country is well and truly fucked. They are assuming that even Democratics winning both houses of Congress in the midterms will make a difference. By then there’s a good chance Trump will be ignoring Congress altogther. 

The same goes for court rulings which go against him.

Back to the Nazi 54 day blitzkreig, if Trump is ever able to use our military to take over the country we are well and truly fucked.

On another but related subject, I occasionally read The Contrarian, a Substack I had such high hopes for I paid $500 to be a Founding Member of when Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen started it.

Now they are so awash in what I see as false optimism and their celebrating their victories in court that I hardly ever read it. I can’t figure out what they fancy themselves to be what with their Pet of the Week and their weekly recipes.

I did check out “How YOU Helped Knock Musk Out of DC–& of Politics” by Norm Eisen. Eisen often is on MSNBC talking about cases against the Trump initiatives which he and his associates won in court. Jennifer Rubin is also a frequent MSNBC guest.

That Substack begins:

The end of this week brought two of the most dramatic scenes yet in the decline and fall of Elon Musk—and of his and Donald Trump's failed DOGE effort to remake government. Despite all the damage that they have done (and that Trump will continue to do) we should take a beat to appreciate the milestone. It speaks to the power of the patriotic opposition—and of the role you’ve played, dear Contrarians.

The first of those two dramatic scenes came on Thursday in a New York courtroom, where a Perry Mason moment took down DOGE. My colleagues and I had sued over DOGE agents running rampant through sensitive government data at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), illegally accessing data about tens of millions of current and former federal employees, contractors, and job applicants. We made that case on Thursday in what the press accurately called a “mini-trial” of DOGE. The highlight was our almost 3-hour cross-examination of the administration's main witness (grilled by my colleague, Andrew Warren). We elicited several concessions: the witness all but admitted OPM was not following the law in granting access to DOGE!

Below are the comments I added:

Is your arm hurting from trying to pat yourself on the back? Nobody filing lawsuits helped knock Musk out of DC. If anybody did this it was those who boycotted Tesla and those who unloaded their Tesla stock. Basically, though, Musk knocked himself out of DC by failing to fulfill his promise of ginormous savings DOGE would bring in.

…and…

In the first two paragraphs Eisen compares a court victory to a Perry Mason moment... cringe... and then there's more self-congratulation. The YOU of the title is how being a Contrarian YOU helped in ways that aren't clear except through your contributions. By the way, the reason you can read this is that I am one of them and thus can comment, and I am one who paid to be a founding Contrairian at that.

I don't totally dismiss his lawsuits and those from others, but I see them more as slowing down the Trump blitzkrieg. Trump still hasn't decided to declare himself a total monarch who can ignore court rulings which go against him with impunity.

I have critiqued this Substack's contributors before for being purveyors of optimism unlike those savvy truth tellers like Timothy Snyder, Thom Hartmann , Sabrina Haake

The Haake Take

Exercising the First Amendment while we still have it.

By Sabrina Haake

Steve Schmidt,

The Warning with Steve Schmidt

Explains what is happening, and why in our turbulent era. Speaks truth to power. 1 written & 1 broadcast commentary/day 6x/week.

myself, 

Hal Brown's Substack

I'm a retired psychotherapist who writes about politics.

and others who are trying to sound the alarm that we are as far down the road to dictatorship as the Nazis were when they invaded Poland and were poised to take over Europe which they did in 54 days.

It took four years until the Allies were strong enough to mount D-Day. As for the Perry Mason comparison, fans know that in the TV series he only lost three cases. His clients are always innocent and when he gets them off they go free. When Norm Eisen and others go after Trump, who is always guilty, and they are victorious he never goes free. His illegal and/or unconstitutional actions may be stalled by the side of the road but he has his own personal auto club in the waiting whether a higher court or the Supreme Court who will eventually give him a jump start and he'll be embarked on his juggernaut to destroy democracy again. He'll keep doing this until he's strong enough to ignore courts altogther. See: Law and Justice in the Third Reich - 

That’s it for my dark view today. Happy Sunday…

Update":

By Robert Reich from RawStory - Tide turns on Trump: Musk out, tariffs crushed, ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ crumbles. My comment: with photo is below.

Oh yeah, tide turns, so many optimists, so few realists. It hurts to face the fact that no tide has turned. This is just a series of setbacks like a flat tire on a few Stryker 8-wheel military vehicles in Trump's blitzkrieg to impose his dictatorship.

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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.

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