My Washington Post subscription cancellation just got a temporary reprieve. It's still on probation. By Hal M. Brown

 

There he was. Jeff Bezos, the owner of both Amazon and The Washington Post, along with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and the less familiar owner of Google, Sundar Pichai, in Billionaires Row at the inauguration. 

If he only owned Amazon, all things considered with Trump's affection for oligarchs, it would make sense for him to be there. However, my outrage is that he owns one of the two most important and influential newspapers in the country. He's the one who spiked the editorial board's endorsement of Kamala Harris and a cartoon by Ann Telnais which was highly critical of him and these Trump butt kissing oligarchs. 

The owner of a newspaper, any newspaper, does not belong as a guest at the inauguration of a president. 

Rupert Murdoch was there, but -- well -- of course he was there. Jeff Bezos does not own a propaganda rag. I wonder if they talked to each other. If they did I'd like to see a photo.

I still have my subscription to The Washington Post. I have been vacillating on whether or not to keep it. I'd like to send my own infintensibly small message. However, I still find that it has opinion columnists who I admire, for example Alexandra Petre, Eugene Robinson, Phillip Bump, Catherine Rampell, Karen Tumely, Jonathan Capehard, and Ruth Marcus.

 (I have subscribed to Jennifer Rubin, who resigned in protest, and Norm Eisen's Substack "The Contratian.") They have put together a group of lesser known excellent opinion writers. I can only read so much so I can see a time when I do cancel my subscription.

This is what The Washington Post website looked like this morning:

Scrolling down to look at the opinion section this Editorial Board opinion is what I was eager to read. I was surprised that it wasn't on top of the opinion section. A column about Trump's crypto coin scheme is hardly more important than the opinion of the editorial board.

You can click above to enlarge the image.

I thought "okay, Bezos and Post, this is your last chance with me." I wanted to see if this was an exercise in Trump ass-kissing. It wasn't. Quite the opposite, it was an objective critical analysis. If you are one of who I expect are the few subscribers reading this you can read it here.

Some of the piece was straight reporting describing what Trump said. Below is the excerpt which was critical of Trump.

Trump on Monday also planned to sign a dizzying array of troubling executive orders. His administration will seek to end birthright citizenship in an attempt to empower his government to deport people living illegally in the United States who have citizen children, an affront to the 14th Amendment. He declared an emergency at the southern border to authorize sending troops there, and he will reinstate the “remain in Mexico” policy from his first administration, which forced asylum seekers to wait in squalid and dangerous tent cities south of the U.S. border as their claims were processed. Together, these policies threaten to do great harm, not only to migrants and their families but also to the American economy.

For the second time, Trump plans to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, again making it one of the only countries in the world not party to the global commitment to reduce carbon emissions. He also positioned himself in favor of loosening barriers to carbon-emitting projects, promising to “drill, baby, drill.” At the same time, he made clear his active opposition to clean energy. He was expected to pause all offshore wind leases, a step that might portend a broader ban, which would stop the United States from competing in this burgeoning industry.

It pays to remember that there is a limit to what any president can accomplish immediately. Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, for instance, will face strong court challenges, because the concept is written into the Constitution. His “remain in Mexico” policy can work only with cooperation from Mexico. And though Trump might no longer be subject to the moderating pressure that comes from wanting to be reelected, he is not immune to political reality. His legacy and his party’s future electoral success will depend not only on what he can manage to get done in the next four years — but also on how popular those accomplishments will be.

If you look at the illustration on the top of this page you will see this in the lower corner:

I wouldn't have seen this because it was in the Letters to the Editor section and it was nowhere on the main website page. 

All of the letters, with the exception of the last one, were highly critical of Trump. This is what that one said:

Weather forecast: scattered storms, mostly sunny for the next four years.

Tom Cutrofello, Woodside, New York

Some of the letters were long. Here's a shorter one which was critical of Trump:

If voters had been taking Donald Trump seriously all along, they would not be surprised by how he hit his targets with absolute precision in both speeches Monday. Either folks have been in denial that he is the authoritarian he said he would be on Day 1, or they are okay with it. Either way, it’s a poor outcome for the United States, and for our democratic republic. Mary Koller, Grand Haven Michigan

I found them because of the message on my computer screen. If I didn't get this I doubt I would have found them since they aren't anywhere on the main page. If you can find them click here and let me know where they are.

Today my subscription to The Washington Post is on probation. It still has many opinion columnists I like to read, for example Alexandra Petri, Eugene Robinson, Phillip Bump, Catherine Rampell, Karen Tumelty, Jonathan Capehard, and Ruth Marcus. If Bezo tries to make the paper into "The Trump Tribune" I expect more of their writers will quit and then I'll be cancelling my subscription. I'll keep my NY Times subscription and perhaps use the savings to subscribe to The Atlantic, Forbes, or Rolling Stone.

I post my Substacks (formerly blogs) on several platforms.  They are on Substack where, if you want to submit your email, you can be notified of all new blog posts. They are on HalBrown.org. They are also on Stressline.org  I also post them on Medium because this enables them to be easily found on internet searches.

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You can take the bully out of the schoolyard, but you can't take the bully out of the boy, by Hal M. Brown

 

When Trump finally falls asleep at night he may dream of vanquishing a group of attacking thugs or being in a boxing ring intimidating his opponent with his snarling face and rippling muscles. He may also have dreams about leading a SWAT team raid against undocumented immigrants.

He didn't need to be dreaming when he pretended to beat up Vince McMahan and shave his heard.

You've probably seen the video of Trump knocking Vince McMahon down, sucker punching him, and then shaving his head. Click here to see it again. Here's an article about it.

Here are some screenshots: 

I knew two or three schoolyard bullies in grade school. They literally pushed kids around or even punched them so hard they fell down. This gained them their status as rulers of the playground with their own posse of bully wannabes. 

They were what you'd call tough kids. They weren't among the popular kids, some of whom were athletic and played sports and the bullies didn't mess with them. Others were outgoing and had a clever sense of humor. Some drew other kids to them because of their empathy.

Few of the victims of the bullies fought back because the bullies rarely attacked people they thought could to put up a credible fight.

I don't see the young Trump as having had the personality to be popular with other kids. He was probably egotistical and was driven to prove himself and stand out among his classmates. Not having the disposition or social skills to be popular be turned to bullying.

Accounts of Trump's childhood say he was a bully when he was growing up. 

Trump can't literally beat up or push people to the ground anymore. Still, he wants to do this in other ways. 

Of course he did engage in faking it when he body slammed and sucker punched Vince McMahon and pretended to humilate him by shaving his head. It is worth watching him do this to consider he's about to be president again. His fake fighting meets a deep need in him for being like Bruce Lee taking on and beating multiple opponents at once.

I won't bother posting a collection of his absurdly priced NFT images depicting him as a muscle bound superhero. With him it's been about image and posturing over the past four years using words and intimidation to bend people to his will. 

Trump has revealed his fantasies about how he sees himself. He's old. He's out of shape. He has a lot of unhealthy execss fat. All this is relevant because as president he has effective ways to be a bully without getting down and dirty in a schoolyard fight.

He only wishes he could look like Pete Hegseth. It takes work to have a muscle-bound body like his, or Marjorie Taylor Greene's for that matter. Maybe it's naive on my part to think he'd be less malevolently dangerous if he actually was still reasonably physically fit. To compensate for this he now will be able to take vicarious satisfaction in expressing his cruelty by the deceptively benign sounding term "executive orders."

You can bet that if Trump looked like Putin with his shirt off, you'd have seen photos of him like these of Putin's famous shirtless horseback riding photos.  Still, Putin's physical fitness along with his martial arts expertise (he may or may not have a black belt) has the ability to beat up rivals if he needed to. This hasn't made him less of a ruthless despot, so there's this to consider.

I view Trump as someone whose insecurity is deeply buried in his unconscious. This is what Mary Trump said about him:

The deeper cause is his insecurity. This is a man who knows on an unconscious level that he is absolutely nothing of what he claims to be.” (Reference)

According to reports, by the time Trump was in the military academy he maneged to pull off becoming a bully:

One popular narrative about Donald Trump's early years, though, is that his stern workaholic father essentially rejected him when he was a young boy. When he was just 12 years old, the behavior issues of the boy who would become president prompted his father to send him away to the New York Military Academy in Upstate New York. There, as Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio wrote for Politico last year, the boy would be confronted with "an aggressive and isolate subculture that prized physical toughness and defined manhood in the basest terms" until he graduated and went to college.

By all accounts, Trump excelled in this environment, taking on leadership roles and playing baseball and basketball. Still, the boy he was before he enrolled at the military academy — often described by people who knew him as a bully — closely resembles the man he is today. Except for the fact that, now, Donald Trump arguably wields more power and influence than anyone else in the world as the president of the United States. Reference

Trump became more of a bully when his wealth enabled him to do this. Before he entered politics he bullied his way to becoming a billionaire. "The Art of the Deal" shows some of this. In addition in recommending using hyperbole and deception he reveals how he liked to be aggressive.  Here are examples:

On fighting back: "[W]hen people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard. The risk is you'll make a bad situation worse, and I certainly don't recommend this approach to everyone. But my experience is that if you're fighting for something you believe in — even if it means alienating some people along the way — things usually work out for the best in the end."

On competing: "I'm the first to admit that I am very competitive and that I'll do nearly anything within legal bounds to win. Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition." Reference.

You can see some of this bullying in this collection of clips from The Apprentice.

Like everyone, Trump's personality was shaped by his childhood experiences. Today the country is paying a price for the man whose father never gave him the unconditional love any child needs. I see him as wanting to please his bullying father. What better way to do this than become a bully himself. This backfired as a young child since he was sent away to boarding school when he was 12. 

Here's what Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio wrote:

Fred Trump was a fiercely ambitious man who worked seven days a week and devoted few waking hours to his role as a parent. Although he pushed his son Donald to prevail in every arena—to be a "killer" and a "king"—Fred didn’t actually tell the young man how to achieve this destiny. His way of paying attention to his children was to let them watch him at work. Reference.

This is what he wrote about Trump's bullying:

While Fred Trump was busy scheming and manipulating, his son developed into a bullying and out-of-control little boy. As Donald recalled to me, he loved to fight—“all kinds of fights, even physical”—and the teachers and administrators at the private school he attended in Queens, New York, couldn’t manage him. The situation was quite embarrassing to Donald’s father, who was a major benefactor for the school. In exasperation, he abruptly removed his son from the family home, which was a mansion attended by servants, and handed him over to the New York Military Academy in Upstate New York. Upon arrival, twelve-year-old Donald was put into uniform and assigned a tiny cell-like room. In the days, weeks and years to come he would have to cope with an all-male culture of competition and hierarchy where physical abuse, carried out by the students and the adults who supervised them, was part of the routine.

This is the man who will soon be president. Instead of a schoolyard posse to stroke his ego if he gets his way with his nominations he will have people like Kash Patel, Thomas Homan, and Pete Hegseth there to assist him in his bullying. His has his Congressional sycophants and the oligarchs beholden to him. They will be partners in his bullying.

The Trump we see today is someone whose personality was shaped growing up in dysfunctional family. 

For more about this read "Making the man: to understand Trump, look at his relationship with his dad" from the Guardian.

Update: Compare the 2017 photo of the smiling Trump which was selcted for the official photo with the one selected for 2025. It is similar to the defiant glaring mugshot photo. He seems to be saying like a bully would "mess with me at your own peril."

My version:

Personal story: My own experience with a bully was in eight grade when one of them got me in a bear hug and was squeezing me so hard I could barely breathe. Out of a need to survive, without any forethought, I instinctively kneed him in the groin as hard as I could. He crumbled to the ground in pain curled in a fetal position. A group of the most popular girls saw all this. I discovered from one who was a good friend that they were really impressed. That is until I got so frightened he'd get up and beat the crap out of me and then I started to cry. That ruined my chance of being the underestimated Mighty Mouse of the school. Long story short - he never messed around with me again. I only wish I could have restrained my tears.

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If only the entire country could divorce itself from a toxically masculine regime, By Hal M. Brown. MSW

 

I came across this in today's NY Times (subscription):

You can watch the video clip shown above here.

In the Times article the following is revealed:

Mr. Kennedy added that as part of an “anti-aging protocol from my doctor,” he also receives testosterone replacement therapy. “But I don’t take any steroids,” he said. “I don’t take any anabolic steroids or anything like that.”

The lines between supplementation with T.R.T. — a common practice among older men — and steroid use can get blurry for some because they are dealing with the same hormone in vastly different quantities. 

This kind of display of musculature is just one more representation of the toxic masculinity that has taken over the political scene thanks to Donald Trump. He obviously isn't about to allow himself to be photographed shirtless. He's convinced his cult that he really looks like the AI created superhero images he promotes.

We also had Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg making noise about fighting each other in a cage match. Jumping juvenile Jehoshaphat, these are grown men!  See: Billionaire brawl: all the latest on the cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. The cage match was cancelled (read article) with each man blaming the other. I expect on pay per view people would have tuned in.

More about Elon because, well, just because he's at least for now one of the most influential Trump whisperers. He made the best of a bad situation in 2022 and was able to joke about it saying publication of bathing suit photos were a good excuse to go to the gym (see article) when photos of him shirtless went viral.

Of course we had Trump beating Vince McMahon in a fake wrestling match and shaving his head. I won't subject you to photos of that. I also won't bother publishing photos of a horseback riding shirtless Putin.

Another toxic male Trumper who I doubt you pay any attention to, though you've heard his name, is Alex Jones who does the InfoWars website. He also likes to put shirtless photos of himself showing his muscles online.

Then we had Hulk Hogan literally ripping his shirt off to show off his muscles during Trump's final rally. Again, I won't subject you to including them in this blog.

I can see a woman doing this at a Trump rally. In fact, a woman was escorted out of a Trump rally after flashing her breasts in the stand. 

It is hard to image that we would have a president who would do what he did in these two photos:

Can you imagine a self-respecting woman doing the same thing?

Wikipedia's definition of toxic masculinity begins:

The concept of toxic masculinity is used in academic and media discussions to refer to those aspects of hegemonic masculinity that are socially destructive, such as misogyny, homophobia, and violent domination. These traits are considered "toxic" due in part to their promotion of violence, including sexual assault and domestic violence. Socialization of boys sometimes also normalizes violence, such as in the saying "boys will be boys" about bullying and aggression.

Wikipedia does not have a page for toxic femininity,  but it is a concept in psychology and social science. It has a very different meaning than toxic masculinity. Consider:

Toxic femininity refers to the adherence to the gender binary in order to receive conditional value in patriarchal societies. It is a concept that restricts women to being cooperative, passive, sexually submissive, gentle, and deriving their value from physical beauty while being pleasing to men. From VeryWell Mind.

Toxically masculine men, whether they have rippling muscles or, like Trump and Steven Miller (left), aren't muscle men, still have toxic male beliefs. For example, they tend to lack empathy and are prone to bullying. They often are sadistic and enjoy inflicting pain or discomfort on their enemies. In the past few days we saw Trump's total lack of empathy when talking about deporting entire families including children when only one or both parents were here illegally. Without weight lifting hardened biceps this is Trump flexing his muscles as saying "look how tough I am." 

This is Trump interviewed by Kristin Welker on Meet the Press (watch video here) talking about eliminating birthright citizenship and deporting entire families:

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Well, that way you keep the – well, I don't want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.

KRISTEN WELKER: Even kids who are here legally?

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Well, what you've got to do if they want to stay with their father – look, we have to have rules and regulations. You can always find something out like, you know, "This doesn't work. That doesn't work." I'll tell you what's going to be horrible, when we take a wonderful young woman who's with a criminal. And they show the woman, and she could stay by the law, but they show the woman being taken out. Or they want her out and your cameras are focused on her as she's crying as she's being taken out of our country. And then the public turns against us. But we have to do our job. And you have to have a series of standards and a series of laws. And in the end, look, our country is a mess.

This is just plain sadistically sick. How anyone with any sense of morality can read or watch Trump saying this thinks he is a decent person staggers me. How someone who says "Trump is a Christian" can utter these words with a straight face is a sad sign of the times.

In 2021 Adam Sewer of The Atlantic wrote a book about the Trump administration titled "The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America" with the first part of the title becoming a frequently used phrase to describe Trump's inhumane policies.

Cruelty is part and parcel of toxic masculinity. Trump and his ilk thrive on knowing people are afraid of them. This is not just because of the power they have over their lives, but potential victims know that they take satisfaction in being cruel.

Numerous articles like 7 Subtle Signs of Toxic Masculinity in a Relationship give advice to people who have men like this as their partners. If only it could be simple for an entire half of a democracy loving country to get a divorce. It could go into couples therapy to get help to gain the insight and self-esteem to get a divorce from a toxic partner. It is as if half the country has been forced into a marriage with a toxic, and abusive, partner. 

Previous list of blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)

There won't be a mea culpa big enough for those trying to normalize Trump if you're wrong. This means you, Jon Stewart. By Hal M. Brown

 

This RawStory article, "Trump's plan to jam through appointments enters new 'extreme' phase: says expert" prompted me to react.

Excerpt:

The plan already being discussed among a group of House Republicans involves Trump dismissing the Senate “against its will,” which would allow him to stack the government with whomever he chooses in the resulting "recess," wrote Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional law professor at Yale University. 

“This is flagrantly unlawful,” he told readers in an op-ed published Friday in The Atlantic. Even more than that, Amar said the threat from House Republicans should be exposed as “an autocratic move that is not just unlawful but contemptuous of constitutionalism.”

The scheme, according to the Yale professor, would see House Republicans manufacture an “illusory” disagreement to spark the president’s adjournment power.

“First, the House of Representatives would pass a resolution calling for a recess,” he wrote. “The Senate would then (in all likelihood) refuse to pass the resolution. Trump would then declare the houses to be in ‘disagreement’ and adjourn both houses for as long as he likes.”

The "recess-appointments spree" would ensue from there, Amar said.

He noted the other Washington maneuver gaining traction that Trump could pull to get his nominations through the finish line – through a Senate vote to recess itself after the incoming president’s inauguration, “allowing him to unilaterally make a series of ‘recess’ appointments.”

“That plan may formally be legal, but it is plainly improper,” Amar wrote.

My reaction:

What would keep Trump from pressing the fast forward button on becoming an American Hitler? If he is thwarted in his nominations by Congress his next step could be to dissolve the body permanently.

Whether Congress would stop meeting if ordered to do so would remain to be seen. If they did meet and voted against him he could ignore their votes.

This would certainly lead to mass protests and there's a good chance it would cause him to declare a national emergency and invoke martial law and order the armed forces to break up demonstrations. People  likely would die if his orders are followed. The Kent State Massacre would look like a picnic. 

The big if is whether the military would go along with this. If they decided not to this could lead to a quiet, that is a non-compliant coup, or an active coup. 

If it was a active coup, instead of tanks protecting the White House and attacking Congress they could be surrounding the White House with cannons pointing at it.

 

If all this came to pass, the generals would install a temporary president. I don't see Trump as being literally arrested. Trump, protected by the Supreme Court for these acts, could not be prosecuted but this would be still be a coup. 

Despite being protected by the Secret Service faced with an overwhelming force military would not be engage in battle. They would have no choice but to stand by if the White House was surrounded and soldiers demanded Trump be surrended or they would enter and remove him. 

Thus Trump, if he didn't leave voluntarily, would be physically removed by a cadre of soldiers who would allow his Secret Service detail to accompany him. They'd all be flown to Mar-a-Lago in a military transport, not Air Force One. The Supreme Court would probably call an emergency meeting and declare that this was unconstitutional, which it would be, but they'd have no power.

New presidential elections would be called to be held in six to nine months. Trump would be allowed to run but the elections would be supervised by the military and be fair. If the people who believed Trump's promises that he'd make their lives better decided they wanted a ruthless dictatorship the generals would have to accede and allow Trump to become president again. 

I would hope that by this time enough gullible Trump voters would have realized they'd been betrayed and misled, and that this was not what they voted for. Thus iff he did end up running he'd lose. The Republicans would be given a second chace to free themselves from Trump and MAGA and nominate someone else. This would also give the Democrats time to have an open convention and hopefully nominate a better candidate than Kamala Harris.

Of course Trump is making sure he is portrayed as Mister President-to-be Nice Guy Normal as evidenced by his meeting with President Macron to celebrate the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral today and having a a 60 Minutes interview with Kristen Welker tomorrow.

Maybe all of this glory will mute Trump's dictatorial desires to exact revenge against his enemies and spitefully ram though the 2025 Agenda to turn our federal goverment into a heartless freedom-chipping machine where people are like dead trees and would be reduced to wood chips and disposed of. 

I think Jon Stewart is naive and misguided when he rips into the media for scaring people about Trump (read article).

Excerpt:

Jon Stewart decried the media’s panicked coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming second term, saying that it’s not helpful to get the public “s***ting our pants this early.”

Before interviewing Vermont senator Bernie Sanders on his latest Weekly Showpodcast episode, the Comedy Central comedian, 62, opened the hour acknowledging that America is currently in a “transitional period where we are not sure about whether the ground we are standing on is solid.”

“Although the news media seems convinced that we are the Roadrunner and the Coyote and the Coyote has run over the cliff, and we just looked down and realized there’s nothing under our feet and now we are plunging to our deaths,” Stewart quipped in reference to the famous Looney Tunes characters. “Because the news media is always very circumspect.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen when Donald Trump takes over,” he said, adding that while “we should be prepared” for all outcomes, “I don’t know how helpful it is to get us s***ting our pants this much, this early.”

Using a metaphor to describe his feelings about the Democrats losing the election, he said: “In the joint custody agreement that we now have in America, the kids are going to live with Dad for the summer and you just have to f***in’ eat it.”

Jon, I hope you think about this. There is good cause for freedom loving Americans to be (no asterisks) shitting in their pants. Stewart's summer with Dad won't be merely three months of Hell. It will last at least four years.

There is a very good chance Stewart and everyone else trying to normalize Trump are dead wrong. Maybe in the next year or two they will rue the day they helped people let their guard down and helped pave the way for the end of the American experiment in democracy. 

Dishonorable mention for trying to normalize Trump: Joe Scarborough and MikeBrzezinski for going to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring, and kudos to Rachel Maddow for calling them out on this.

Trump, not merely through his words, but through his nominees, has shown us what he wants to do. There will be no mea culpa big enough to come from people not taking this seriously.

Previous list of blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)