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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Who are those masked men? They certainly aren't Lone Rangers. By Hal M. Brown

 This is the first episode of the Lone Ranger TV show where the question “who was that masked man” was asked and then, by themselves in front of the sheriff’s office, Tonto asked the Lone Ranger if he’d ever take off the mask when they were fighting the bad guys and he explained why he wouldn’t. Watch the video here. In the early radio shows, the TV show, or movies, in closing scene just before the “hi-yo Silver away” someone always asked something along the lines of “who was that masked man?’

Follows is the creed of the Lone Ranger. It was written by the creator of the Lone Ranger Francis Striker. He also created the Green Hornet and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon:

I believe that to have a friend,

a man must be one.

That all men are created equal

and that everyone has within himself

the power to make this a better world.

That God put the firewood there but that every man must gather and light it himself.

In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.

That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.

That 'This government, of the people, by the people and for the people'shall live always.

That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.

That sooner or later... somewhere...somehow... we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.

That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.

In my Creator, my country, my fellow man.

Now we have a cadre of masked men and women who aren’t fighting for law and order. There’s no way they follow the Lone Ranger Creed, let along the U.S. Constitution. If they we wouldn’t see them trampling on the cherished rights of people accountable to nobody. They are behaving like the villains the Lone Ranger and Tonto (someone Trump and his anti woke minions would consider a DEI hire) brought to justice.

No doubt you’ve followed the story about the mayor of Newark and the members of Congress who tried to get into the New Jersey detention center and were arrested.

What made me sick inside and sick for my country was watching all the federal agents. 

Some had uniforms, some bullet proof vests with ammunition and others wore light jackets with names of various Trump SS-like agencies on the back, others just seemed to be in regular clothes. I wasn't able to count how many, but there seemed to be at least 20. They look like they might be preparing to raid a drug cartel hideout.

You can see them in action in the video on the left below.

A few of the agents had their faces exposed but most of them were masked. The simple explanation as to why these agents decide to be masked is that they want to hide their identities. I think there are other reasons. One is that this enables them to feel empowered to be more violent than they’d be if their face was exposed. The other is that it is more intimidating to be confronted by someone in a mask wearing dark sunglassed. When interacting with someone who has this kind of power you want to look them in the eyes, you want to see their face.

It was, to put it mildly, a chaotic scene:

.

Why doesn't the fashion conscious Trump and his psychopathic and sadistic Himmler, Tom Homan, get them all to wear the same uniform instead of a hodgepodge of outfits? After all the country is fast becoming Nazified. If they want their own SS or Gestapo they might as well all wear the same uniform. Camo fabric might be the most intimidating, but whatever they wear red arm bands with T on them would be appropriate.

Update from BlueSky:

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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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.Combine DOGE and ICE and we could have an American Gestapo armed with both guns and computers. By Hal M. Brown - Trump could be Hitler with a giant mainframe database of undesirables who are poisoning the blood of America.

 

American ICE agents don’t look like they are members of the Nazi Gestapo. They wore plainclothes. Even so, whether in their black body armor uniforms carrying assault rifles and enough bullets to take on a drug cartel’s lair, or wearing ski maks and in plainclothes, they instill terror in people.

The photo above is from an article about the Gestapo in The History Place.

This is an excerpt from the RawStory article “DOGE could be headed for a 'a new, more dangerous phase' as Musk steps away”

A decision by billionaire Elon Musk to restrict his involvement in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that he created so that he can tend to his ailing Tesla automobile company does not mean that the damage being done by the DOGE staffers will be coming to an end.

According to Guardian journalist David Smith, their work is not done and, with Musk out of the picture as the face of DOGE, things could get a lot worse.

Conceding there is a feeling among some that the "lull" that will follow Musk's department is reason for relief, Smith wrote instead it "presages a new, more dangerous phase."

The following is from Chaos unleashed by Musk’s Doge is starting to wane – what does that mean? in The Guardian:

Last week Musk announced that he is hanging up his chainsaw and stepping back from his role overseeing the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, to focus on Tesla, his beleaguered electric vehicle company. The news led some to hope the chaos unleashed by Doge is finally waning.

But it is just as possible that the relative lull presages a new, more dangerous phase. While Musk intends to reduce his schedule, he also said he would continue to work for Donald Trump for “the remainder of the president’s term”. On Friday CNN reported that Doge is building a master database to accelerate deportations of undocumented immigrants by combining sensitive data from across the federal government.

“It’s well established that they’re using the data not just to cut spending but to advance policy goals,” said Judd Legum, the author of Popular Information, an independent newsletter that maintains a Doge tracker. “As they realise there’s nothing left to cut that they want to cut or can cut, they’ll probably turn to more of those more policy-oriented initiatives.”

The actual Gestapo didn’t have the luxury of large mainframe computers and databases to track down their victims. At present the campaign to “purify” America depends on a variety of mechanisms to identify those it wants to get rid of. Some of them are hit and miss. They deport innocent people and even children who are citizens and this is bad PR. Damnit, they are inefficient!

DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency. The original idea was to save money and eliminate waste and fraud. 

Wiki defines efficiency as “the often measurable ability to avoid making mistakes or wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time while performing a task. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without waste.”

Trump has been upset, to put it mildly, that ICE hasn’t been as ruthlessly efficient as he promised it would be in his immigrant purge. DOGE created the fear and chaos he relishes at goverment agencies, but I doubt this has been enough for Trump.

Now it makes perfect sense for him to claim DOGE was a huge success in its original mission and to repurpose it to be the brains behind ICE. Of course, he’d never admit Tom Homan lacked the brainpower to do the job as Trump promised it would be done. After all, Trump never claimed Homan was an Einstein.

He just needed an assist from the INCEL DODE computer boys.

Consider what Hitler, and Heinrich Müller (shown below), who is not nearly was well known as Göring and Himmler, ran the Gestapo for most of the war, could have done with even the 1960’s computer below. Trump could be Hitler with a giant mainframe database of undesirables who are poisoning the blood of America.

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