May 30, 2025

Should we laugh at things like this, should we cry, or should we scream? By Hal M. Brown

I had nothing to write about a few minutes ago, but then Ann’s sister, Nancy, sent her this and she showed it to me. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream.

I had the same feeling when I saw online what, with my perverse sensibility, I thought was the best anti-Trump protest sign (click for footnote: 1

Look at the editorial cartoons by Ann Telnaes (here).2 They are definitely not amusing They are somewhere between cry or scream inducing. Don’t look to Ann Telnaes or any of these editorial cartoonists to get a good laugh. If you want to laugh look at these New York cartoons.

Editorial cartoons reflect where the country is. Consider these cartoons and Biden. Here’s a search for Obama cartoons.

While many are critical none suggest that Biden or Obama were hellbent to utterly destroy democracy.

Whether in cartoons (some with words and others without words) protest signs, in articles, or on TV, the messages about what Trump is doing to wreak havoc on both democracy and what used to be considered the underpinnings of social order and common sense must be sent out across the nation in a way that the people who need to hear it pay attention before it is too late. It has to come as if it is the thundering word of God from sky.

Our rights to tell in any way we choose to do so what we sincerely believe is true are embodied in the First Amendment.

This is the relevant, the crucial part, related to my Substack today:

Freedom of Speech / Freedom of the Press

The most basic component of freedom of expression is the right to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech may be exercised in a direct (words) or a symbolic (actions) way. Freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . The right to freedom of speech allows individuals to express themselves without government interference or regulation . The Supreme Court requires the government to provide substantial justification for interference with the right of free speech when it attempts to regulate the content of the speech. Generally, a person cannot be held liable , either criminally or civilly for anything written or spoken about a person or topic, so long as it is truthful or based on an honest opinion and such statements.
A less stringent test is applied for content-neutral legislation. The Supreme Court has also recognized that the government may prohibit some speech that may cause a breach of the peace or cause violence. For more unprotected and less protected categories of speech see advocacy of illegal action , fighting words , commercial speech , and obscenity . The right to free speech includes other mediums of expression that communicate a message. The level of protection speech receives also depends on the forum in which it takes place.
Despite the popular misunderstanding, the right to freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment is not very different from the right to freedom of speech. It allows an individual to express themselves through publication and dissemination. It is part of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. It does not afford members of the media any special rights or privileges not afforded to individuals in general.

As long as we have a democracy this means we can get the message out that Trump is trying to undermine democracy. We can use whatever methods and means we have to educate, motivate, and inspire people to wake up from their “what me worry” sleepwalking through life and realize they must actually do sonething before the First Amendment, and in fact the entire Constitution, is rendered irrelevant.

Update:

My friend Sabrina Haake and I must have a cosmic connection since we wrote about similar topics today. Like I wrote yesterday (here), when it comes to a later stage of the round-up of Trump enemies the MAGA Gestapo will be knock at (or busting down) out doors. Read Sabrina’s Haake Take here.

She also references the First Amendment:

Social media vetting is viewpoint discrimination under the 1^st A
When the government engages in viewpoint discrimination, it singles out a particular opinion, perspective or “viewpoint” for treatment that differs from how other viewpoints are treated. Viewpoint discrimination, where the government persecutes or otherwise punishes someone for expressing views it dislikes or disagrees with, is illegal.
In 1995 the Supreme Court explained: “When the government targets not subject matter but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant. Viewpoint discrimination is thus an egregious form of content discrimination. The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.”

She concudes:

Scared yet? Sabrina has a link to NPR story about Trump jailing and deporting US citizens abroad.

This post is public so feel free to share it. I always appreciate it when you do.

Read all my Substacks here. Don’t forget that comments are always welcome.

Recent (click image to enlarge)

You have to scroll down Stormy Daniels’ X page to find any posts about Trump. Mostly she promotes her shows there. I keep posting to her account hoping that she reposts something I write. This could get me many more followers.

Telnaes made the news when she quit as the editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post when Jeff Bezos spiked this cartoon showing him to be a Trump tool. That backfired big time on Bezos since prior to that only subscribers could see the cartoon and then it was all over the news (Google search here).

May 28, 2025

There's only one good thing about Stephen Miller.

When I looked at this RawStory article, even before I read it, I was struck by the photo they used.

Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler’s closest allies and the Nazi propaganda minister who advocated for the extermination of Jews (as Wikipedia tells us) was known for his public speaking. We don’t see Stephen Miller making speeches. We don’t know why this is. It may be because Trump doesn’t trust him not go on a full-bore Nazi-like propaganda rant about ridding the country of the vermin scum without the pesky annoyance of their having the right of habeas corpus.

Nonetheless, Miller makes the news frequently. Here’s a Google News search.

I am far from the first person to compare Miller with Goebbel based on how they look. These are Google Image searches.

Here’s a Google Image search for cartoons about Stephen Miller.

This is one of the best. It is from The Week.

Trump, with a few exceptions, has selected people to be in the public eye who look good on TV. Kristi Noem is a notable exception.

As Trump gets older and finds it more and more difficult to look like the studly hunka-hunka burning love this vain preening narcissist fancies himself to be, he compensates by surrounding himself with reasonably good looking people and Miller doesn’t fit this mold.

He also surrounds himself with plated crap. If you subcribe to the NY Times look at the photos in Trump’s Oval Office Is a Gilded Rococo Nightmare. Help.

Somehow he thinks that surrounding himself with gold (and getting that palace in the air 747) will gild away the actual fact that he’s a jowly old man with thinning hair and a crepe paper neck who wear orange pancake makeup. But Trump, who says truly evil things, doesn’t really “look” evil the way Miller does.

Miller remains in the background at Cabinet meetings, but in the photo above you can see how he watches the man he has incredible influence over like a hawk.

Pictures of Miller should be front and center in more articles and TV coverage so it sinks in to more and more people, even those who don’t see him as a Goebbels clone and think Hitler wasn’t a good guy, that he just looks like an evil fuck. They need to ask whether they’d trust him to babysit their children.

This post is public so feel free to share it.

Read all my Substacks.

Recent:

May 27, 2025

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.

Read all my Substacks here.

Most recent:

May 26, 2025

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.