Every honest paper in the country should have headlined yesterday's Memorial Day story "Trump Destroys Democracy. Thom Hartmann said it very well today.

 

Thom Hartmann is one of the most read and listened to progressive writers and broadcasters in the country. (SeeWikipedia profile) 

He has a five day a week call-in radio show broadcast on numerous stations and on Free Speech TV.

He begins his Substack today, When a President Spits on Unity: The ‘Scum’ Speech That Should Warn Us All

Once you’ve labeled your opponents as subhuman, how do you work with them? How do you compromise? You don’t.

as follows:

Trump opened Memorial Day in the most disgusting way possible, not by praising our fallen heroes but by attacking Democrats. He wrote on his Nazi-infested social media site on Monday morning:

“Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds…”

When the President of the United States calls members of the oldest political party in the world and a former president “scum,” it’s not just another ugly outburst that embarrasses America before the rest of the world: It’s a warning sign. A bright red flag.

It tells us that something far more sinister than partisan posturing is afoot. Something our media has already decided to overlook in their perpetual effort to normalize the abominable.

Hartmann concludes:

We can’t afford to normalize this. We can’t laugh it off as Trump being Trump. We can’t wait and hope that someone, somewhere, will step in and draw a line. We have to be that line. We have to call this what it is: a deliberate, dangerous assault on the core of American democracy.

Words matter. In every fascist movement of the 20th century, it started with the words. Before the arrests, before the beatings, before the camps, there were the words. And in every case, those words went unchallenged until it was too late.

It’s not too late now. But we are closer than we’ve ever been. We must push back hard against this dehumanizing rhetoric, demand better from our leaders, and defend the democratic principle that every citizen, no matter their party, is entitled to dignity, voice, and full participation in the political process.

Because once a president gets away with calling fellow Americans “scum,” it’s only a matter of time before he treats them that way.

I urge you to read his entire essay. He is saying it loud and clear, but despite the fact that he’s one of the top progressive voices in the country he’s not the mainstream media. How, then does the mainstream media paly this? 

Not unexpectedly Fox News glorifies Trump here:

Just looking at the other titles of the articles about the speech ( click here) you see how none got it right and how most or all of them got it wrong. Those that said he honored fallen solderiers got it TOTALLY wrong even though they may have said he peppered the speech with political attacks. USA Today for example: "Trump honors veterans at Arlington National Cemetery after lashing out at political opponents in Memorial Day post." At least The Guardian led with

"Trump peppers Memorial Day speech with personal boasting and partisan attacks" but their subtitle was "President paid tribute to fallen soldiers at Arlington cemetery, and also veered off into rally-style remarks."

Trump dishonored the people he was supposedly honoring. In doing so he dishonored democracy and when you do this you debase the sacrifice of those who gave their lives fighting for it.

As Hartmann notes, the speech (and the commencement address at West Point where he wore a MAGA hat) was testing the limits of how much he could get away with in his Hitlerian rehetoric.

Trump was reading words someone wrote for him off the teleprompter which he barely glanced away from to look at the camera and audience showing he probably didn’t rehearse at all and possibly hadn’t even read the speech at all before hand. He read it in what only could be charitably called a wishwashy monotone. Trump, ever the performer, couldn’t even manage to pull off a half-way decent performance showing he cared about those words. The only time he showed any passion was when he called his enemies “scum” and went off on his usual vicious tangents. I doubt these words were on the teleprompter. 

Of all the titles I look at in a Google News search only NorthJersey.com got it in the ballpark:

What was Donald Trump's Memorial Day message? What he said about 'monsters' and 'scum'

So did The Independent:

Trump can’t resist attack on Biden during Memorial Day speech honoring fallen heroes

The newspaper headlines should have shouted out "Trump declares democracy dead on Memorial Day."

This is a follow-up to my Substack from yesterday.

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What kind of leader sends a message like this on their country's day set aside to honor fallen soldiers?

 

There’s no way Donald J. Trump, who the world knows holds the position of President of the United States of America, knows or cares who Terry Edward Honeycutt, Jr. was. I do and I expect you do too. His tombstone at Arlington National Century was shown on the top of the website The Warhorse (here)

I looked him up:

Here’s an excerpt from the obituary from his hometown newspaper:

On Wednesday, October 27, 2010, Lance Corporal Terry Edward Honeycutt, Jr., of Waldorf, MD passed away from injuries sustained in the Helmund Province of Afghanistan while serving in the United States Marine Corps. He was just 19 years old and attended North Point High School, where he walked across the stage with the first graduating class of North Point in 2009. Terry had many interests and talents, but was most passionate about his drums and guitars, both acoustic and electric. He spent many hours practicing in the basement of his family home and became a very talented and skilled musician. Since his pre-teen years, Terry knew that his path in life was to follow his dream of being a United States Marine. He spent four years in North Point's Junior ROTC program and at age 17 he signed up in the Marine Corps Delayed Entry Program and spent the following year preparing for boot camp. Upon graduation, the day before his 18th birthday, he began that dream, standing on the yellow footprints at boot camp at South Carolina's famous Parris Island. Terry graduated boot camp on August 28, 2009 and went directly to the Marine Corps School of Infantry, where he trained to be an Infantry Machine Gunner. From there he was stationed at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune, where he awaited his first deployment, leaving for Afghanistan on July 22, 2010. We are very grateful and happy that he achieved his dream of becoming a U.S. Marine. Although our hearts will forever ache and he will be deeply missed, we are truly filled with pride, joy, and happiness that he set his own course in life and did things his way. Terry always said he wanted to join the Marine Corps because he wanted to make a difference and that's exactly what he did.

Following the slap in the face he gave to the military by appointing Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense, then making cuts to VA services, Trump put on a bizarre MAGA hat wearing show at the West Point graduation ceremony in his commencement address. Each and every one would want to honor Lance Corporal Honeycutt’s memory. Today with his Truth Social message he dishonored every soldier and sailor who sacrificed their life to protect democracy. He spit in the face of millions of veterans who consider this day sacred. He sneered at the family members of the fallen.

After his 4:22 AM post Trump pulled himself away from what I imagine he would be doing to prepare to play a round of golf, and then to try not to look bored today when he put a wreath in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

This is a PBS article which includes a 10 minute video. It was about his visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Jan. 19, 2025 prior to going a campaign style rally to celebrate his reelection. You may recall this visit because of the following:

A cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” during the altercation with Trump’s staff during a wreath-laying ceremony but declined to press charges. A statement from an Army spokesman said the cemetery employee was trying to ensure those participating in the ceremony were following the rules.

The incident was reported to the police, but the employee decided not to press charges. The Army said it considered the matter closed.

Trump has provoked the ire of veterans for using their service as a political prop before. Consider the following:

'Furious': Veterans slam Trump team's altercation at Arlington National Cemetery

Excerpt:

Some veterans reacted with alarm to reports of an altercation between a member of Donald Trump's entourage and a top official at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, with a retired Army general calling the incident "repugnant."

Two sources told USA TODAY the incident occurred when a member of Trump's team pushed his way into recording in a part of the cemetery, known as Section 60, where photography is prohibited.

Video from Section 60, where recently buried U.S. service members are interred, later appeared in a Trump campaign Tik Tok in which he criticizes President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival for the presidency.

There aren’t too many things that Trump does which he’d rather not do. I expect that having to put on a show which will be barely covered by the media as newsworthy like honoring veterans at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier falls into this category.

Update:

Trump has figured out a way to make the news and assemble the a large crowd. As I write this it’s been announced that he will be giving a Memorial Day speech. Stay tuned…

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This is one of the most depressing articles I've ever read. The only hope I see is if that enough of these voters didn't really want Trump to be a ruthless dictator. By Hal M. Brown

 

Since you're reading this you're one of the people Trump voters see as a smug privileged snob.

You don’t even have to read “How Donald Trump Has Remade America’s Political Landscape in today’s New York Times (subscription)” to get the gist of it. You can just look at the graphics. Here are four more of them:

There are graphics showing that even in primarily Black or Hispanic communities Trump has made more gains than Democrats.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

These counties, which we are calling “triple-trending,” offer a unique and invaluable window into how America has realigned — and still is realigning — in the Trump era. They vividly show, in red and blue, the stark changes in the political coalitions of the two parties.

The scale of Mr. Trump’s expanding support is striking. While roughly 8.1 million Americans of voting age live in triple-trending Democratic counties, about 42.7 million live in Republican ones.

Even more ominous for the Democrats are the demographic and economic characteristics of these counties: The party’s sparse areas of growth are concentrated almost exclusively in America’s wealthiest and most educated pockets.

Yet Mr. Trump has steadily gained steam across a broad swath of the nation, with swelling support not just in white working-class communities but also in counties with sizable Black and Hispanic populations.

Trump has managed to divided the country into as us against them, or as the “them” would put it, “them against us.”

Those reading this are members of the more highly educated and more affluent “us.” I think you more likely than not can read the NY Times article because you have a subscription. The other “us” would read the previous sentences and say “see, that’s what we mean, these people are a bunch of smug privileged snobs.” 

We have to admit that the so-called party of the working class is no longer the Democratic Party. It is now the Trump Republican Party. For decades since the decidely upper-upper class FDR was president for three terms, Democrats won elections because the working class believed that the candidates from the professional class and upper class, even upper-upper class, would make their lives better. They believed that they really cared about them. Jimmy Carter pulled off being seen as being just a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia even though his peanut farm was between 2000 and 3000 acres.

The cruel irony of this is that these candidates really did care about people less affluent than them. 

Then along came Donald J. Trump. While he was not only a member of the upper class, he was an in-your-face member of the upper-upper class. 

He took his cruel Apprentice “you’re fired” persona and turned it into his brand. Millions of people ate it up. None of the people who got the “you’re fired” treatment were villains. In fact they were even horrible potential job candidates like many of the performers on The Gong Show who got the gong.

By way of comparison, Gong Show star and creator Chuck Barris (who once lied about being a CIA assassin) actually was the creator of the show while 13 time Emmy Award winner Mark Burnett deserves credit for the successful casting of Trump as a business genius on “The Apprentice.” 

Trump isn’t an Einstein level genius like he thinks he is. He is a genius at some things like marketing and unabashed lying. In other areas he is as dumb as a post.

His most recent dumb as a post example is a demonstration of his segmented intelligence. This was in his comments about stealth aircraft. They were made at his weird trophy wife West Point commencement address (from below reference):

However, one avenue of free-associative speculation Trump meandered along while speaking about military investment seemed to confirm that one of his much-derided beliefs remains intact: the president seems to genuinely believe that so-called “stealth” fighter jets—military aircraft designed to be difficult to detect by radar—are actually invisible.

“We are buying you new airplanes, brand new beautiful planes, redesigned planes, brand new planes, totally stealth planes,” Trump said, speaking to a proposed record increase in defense spending.

“I hope they’re stealth. I don’t know, that whole stealth thing, I’m sort of wondering.

“We shape a wing this way, they don’t see it. But the other way they see it? I’m not so sure, but that’s what they tell me!

Trump’s supporters don’t give a shit about any of this. While I doubt that if we could give them all IQ tests we would find that they aren’t what you could label “dumb” meaning having significantly below average scores. However if they answered honestly I think they would score fairly high on this gullibility test.

I took the test:

Trump sold himself as a man of the common man. He appealed not only to the gullibility of a large enough segment of the population to win, but hid his true intention to become a ruthlessly cruel dictator throughout the campaign. He made his bigotry clear, but he never said “vote for me and I will destroy democracy” for everyone including most of you in my adoring audience.

If enough people decide that this isn’t what they want their country to be there’s a chance there will be enough blowback to lead to an active resistance that will derail his blitzkrieg to Trumpify America. It took the Allies four years to undo what the Nazis did following their blitzkrieg to take over Europe. Alas, it may take this long for democracy loving Americans to undo what Trump is doing.

Addendum (nothing to do with the above):

Trump’s supporters don’t care that he is a grandiose narcissist who needs to hang pictures like this in the White House. 

I just wonder what foreign leaders think about him when they see it. They don’t even have to be there in person as many stories are being published about it including this one in The Irish Star.

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Caught on Kremlin camera: Putin reads his daily intelligence briefing. By Hal M. Brown

 

I don’t think I need to explain more why Vlad was cracking up for the umpteenth time since Trump was reelected beyond posting this CNN article from yesterday: More than 100 National Security Council staffers put on administrative leave.

Whether this in particular was a Putin plan or not is impossible to determine. If it was, pour another shot of his favorite vodka for him the celebration when Putin and his pals put this Google News search on a TV screen:

I don’t know if Putin watches MSNBC. If he does, this is what he’d have seen on The Weekend today:

While we can’t prove that it is true that Trump and Putin are conspiring together for mutual benefit, it isn’t a lunatic conspriacy theory to suggest that this is at least a somewhat plausible explanation for much of what Trump has done to undermine democracy here. It also would be one explanation as to why the war in Ukraine rages on.

Do you have a few extra rubles? You might consider betting on how long it will take for Trump to do something that really makes Putin laugh. Apparently the Russians are a betting people. Consider how many betting websites they have.

You can place your bet and play this. 

Addendum: These are some of the comments to the Rawstory article about this. One of them posted a link to the Russian national anthem as I did:

There are other comments suggesting Trump is in cahoots with Putin.

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