Trump is suing an Iowa paper and a polling company, what's next if polls show his approval ratings tanking? Will he sue the polls? By Hal M. Brown

 

This is from the Raw Story article above:

President-elect Donald Trump managed to cobble together a popular vote-winning coalition and he did so by making notable but modest gains with certain minority groups. 

But the problem for him, wrote Ronald Brownstein for CNN, is that he won the election with a group of voters who broadly don't like him, and may not even agree with some of his core policies like mass deportations. They simply took a chance on him over economic discontent, he wrote — and it won't take much for that to come crumbling down.

The portion that caught my attention is highlighted below:

"If Trump provides his most controversial nominees – such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Kash Patel as director of the FBI – a 'blank check' to pursue polarizing agendas, [GOP pollster White] Ayres said, 'we are going to be looking at Joe Biden level-job approval numbers before we turn around' for Trump," Brownstein wrote.

 

If you follow the news (above, discussion about it is on MSNBC as I write this) you know about Trump suing the Des Moines Register and a polling company (here's a CNN article):

I wrote this last week:

Here are excerpts:

There's a part of me that I don't really know what to make of when it comes to wishing the absolute worst for the country during the next four years so people who voted for Trump suffer.  In order for this to happen lots of good people will also suffer. In fact it is the good people will initially suffer more than the typical Trump voter. I don't want to see people suffer, not just know they are suffering, but literally see them suffering on television. But for the country to turn around this has to happen.

I offer for your consideration my Trump Tesla analogy.

I know that the people who thought Trump would usher in a a world of bluebirds and happiness for them personally are going to at some time be poleaxed with the realization that they bought the lemon of all lemon cars from a slick psychopathic salesman. The Trump car, let's say for obvious reasons that it is a Tesla, looked great in the showroom. Maybe they took it on a test drive and were impressed with the head snapping acceleration (one model will do 0-60 in less than two seconds and has a top speed of 200) and all electonic gewgaws. 

Perhaps in time these buyers will eventually discover the transmission had a nasty habit of freezing up. They might discover the hard way that there were faulty airbags, that the navigation system didn't know north from south, that the air conditioning is faulty, and there's a glitch in the automatic locking system that may engage trapping them inside. Back to the consequences of this at the end of the blog.

I concluded:

The pragmatic part of me knows that for the country to change and for compassionate democracy and a moral society to be embraced by enough voters to swing the next two elections to Democrats things have to go very very badly for those who voted for Trump. The Trump promised shiny new Trump Tesla has to be exposed as a junker. Things not only have to go so badly that the Democrats take control of Congress in two years and the presidency in four, but enough of the conservatives on the Supreme Court also must realize what evil they have enabled and the court has to take steps to put America back on course.

If enough voters realize they bought a slick looking junker named Trump they could vote Democratic in the next election and not only wrest control of Congress from Republicans but win in statewide elections. 

Trump wants to control the media. His rich friends are helping him. It wasn't just Jeff Bezos refusing to let The Washington Post publish an editorial endorsement for Harris prior to the election. For example, today we have the story of the Trump-supporting owner of the Los Angeles Times turning the paper into more of an outlet for Trump propaganda. Here's a report from another Trump propaganda paper, the New York Post, about this:

LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong tells editorial board to ‘take a break from writing about Trump’

If people who voted for Trump because they were gullible and believed his lies, how will they learn that they are among many who are angry about this? Perhaps it will take talking to friends about increasing grocery prices or other effects they can see in their everyday lives. But if Trump has his druthers they won't find out about his growing unpopularity from the approval numbers provided by polling companies very possibly because every time they show his popularity dropping he will sue the companies. This will instill doubt in the veracity of the numbers. Obviously this would be Trump's intention.

He will use his usual technique of claiming the opposite of any inconvenient truth and saying his numbers are soaring and he is the most popular president in history. After all, he's managed to spread the word far and wide that he won a mandate in the election and thus is empowered to do anything he wants to do.

Consider: 

The first U.S. presidential poll to use modern statistical methods was a Gallup poll in 1936. But the first known presidential straw polls date to 1824—over a century before. 

These early straw polls were regional and informal. Newspapers reported the results as information about local opinions rather than possible predictions about how the national election might play out. Local straw polls continued throughout the 19th century. Then in 1916, The Literary Digest launched a national presidential poll. The magazine’s methods were flawed, but for five consecutive presidential races, the winner of The Literary Digest poll was also the winner of the actual election. 

This streak ended in 1936, when George Gallup predicted Franklin D. Roosevelt would win reelection and The Literary Digest said he wouldn’t. Gallup’s poll was a victory for statistical survey methods, and paved the way for modern presidential polling. From History.com

What would happen if Trump sued or threatened to sue every polling company and any media who published the results of the polls if they showed he was becoming unpopular. What if there were no more public opinion polls? The public would have no way of knowing about the national sentiment about what he was doing aside from talking to their friends unless there were street protests covered by the media. But then what if Trump sued companies that covered the protests? 

Going even further, perhaps coming from my own Trump hopefully not a derangement syndrome which I believe is based on a knowledge of history and my own rational fears, what if Trump declared a national emergency, outlawed protests, and called in the military to break protests up?

Going even further into Trump exercising dictatorial control and going full-on despot, what if an incident like the Kent State massacre happened and the regular media and social media couldn't publish photos like these?

The worst of the worst may not happen. It is possible that Trump's consuming need for revenge will lessen in time and his deep desire to be seen as both the most deeply loved and most horribly feared person in history will be satisfied.

I hope, if I live to see the day all of this plays out, and that I am not writing blogs saying "you were warned" but rather issuing a mea culpa.

Consider yesterday's blog with two Venn diagrams illustrating why I have such fear about what Trump may do to our democracy.

Click above to enlarge image. Click here to read blog.

Related:

ABC News capitulates to Donald Trump. Is this the future of American media? Salon

Excerpt (my highlight):

If past is prologue, people who want unadulterated news about the coming Trump administration will probably have to listen to podcasts and watch independent political coverage on YouTube and read independent blogs on the internet.

Previous list of  all 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)

 

Trumpian Venn diagram: life imitates dystopian art. By Hal M. Brown

I found the Venn diagram below in a Facebook post. Then I made a version with a DonkeyHotey caricature of Trump in the middle. I was planning to end the blog without making my own version but changed my mind and made one which you can see below.

Click above to enlarge.

I don't know who made the original with the names of movies and books. Some company made it into a sticker:

It has been republished in a number of places:

I wasn't familiar with Brazil. It is a 1985 dystopian science-fiction black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam, focusing on a bureaucrat named Sam Lowry who dreams of escaping his oppressive reality. The film is known for its satirical take on bureaucracy and surveillance, drawing comparisons to George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four."

I'd heard of Gattaca but never saw it. It's a dystopian film set in a future society where people are genetically selected and then discriminated against based on their DNA.

Most people are familiar with the other flms and books shown.

You can use your imagination and judgment to add your segments. 

I had Tucker Carlson (who is said to be influencing Trump's choices). Some say Donald Trump Jr. exerts substantial influence over his father so I used him. 

Previous list of  all 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)

Anti-Trumpers made a big mistake calling Trump just a convicted felon. By Hal M. Brown

Consider how public perception might have been changed if all the articles and signs saying "Donald Trump becomes the first convicted felon to be elected president" instead said "Donald Trump becomes the first convicted rapist or sexual abuser felon to be elected president" or billboards were put up like my version of the one below:

The E. Jean Carroll trial is again in the news, today with many articles like this in HuffPost with the link on top of their main page:

Here's another article, with a video, about it:

'What is going on!' MSNBC host stunned by new Trump legal settlement

The upside I see is the timing of the ABC action. It brings this into the news again, especially at a time when Trump is pushing his nomination of Pete Hegseth, who  someone accused of sexual assault, to be Secretary of Defense. The country needs to be reminded of Trump's sexual assault history and how he has treated women as unwilling objects for his sexual gratification. 

While I think ABC took the chicken shit route and should have stuck with the law suit this isn't the point I want to make today. Everyone who followed the E. Jean Carroll trial knew it was technically about defamation. However, it was really about Trunp sexually assaulting Carroll. There was debate mired down in legalise about whether what Trump did was technically a rape or a sexual assault.  How one decides to define rape may depend on whether one is looking at a lawbook or a dictionary. Here's a dictionary definition:

Cick above to enlarge

Note the seocnd part of number two above: The crime of using force or threat of force to compel a person to submit to some other sexual penetration (my emphasis).

This is from Wikipedia's entry for E. Jean Caroll v. Donald J. Trump.

Carroll's accusation of rape was in a different category from claims of any other women. Regarding this accusation of rape, the judge gave to the jury "the narrow, technical meaning of that term" under New York law as it existed at that time, which defined rape as forcible penetration with the penis, as Carroll had specifically alleged. The jury rejected her rape claim, but found Trump liable for a lesser degree of sexual abuse than rape. In July 2023, Judge Kaplan said that the jury had found that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word which did not require the alleged penile penetration. In August 2023, Kaplan dismissed a countersuit and wrote that Carroll's accusation of "rape" is "substantially true".

Wiki, ever up to date, includes the following:

In December 2024, Trump settled a defamation case with ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely stated that Trump was found liable of rape in the case. ABC News agreed to pay Trump $15 million for his presidential library and $1 million for his legal fees, as well as issue a public apology.^[17][18]

I think that a large part of Trump's rage and drive for revenge is rooted in this case and his having to sit through day after day in court. This may have been the first time in his adult life that Trump was forced to be somewhere he didn't want to be day after day, and worse than this, somewhere he was being charged with a crime. This is a side aspect of what I want to say here. 

While the trial was all about what Trump did to E. Jean Carroll anti-Trumpers kept calling Trump a convicted felon which left out the salient fact that it was sexual abuse that led to the case being brought in the first place. His supporters turned his conviction to their advantage making him into a hero with his mugshot a badge of defiant honor, and other in-your-face depictions showing how little his cult cared about his convictions.

Trump friendly media, like the Murdoch New York Post, also had their own slant on the conviction.

Consider what would have happened if the anti-Trumpers as well as the objective press publishing articles, about the conviction and those making billboards and signs never used the word felon without prefacing it with at the least the words "sexual abuse" and preferably the single word "rapist." 

If there was true justice Trump would have been tried and convicted for rape in a criminal trial rather than in a defamation civil trial related to a rape allegation. If this happened the headlines would have been very different and Trump could have gone to prison. If convicted of Forcible Touching, ie.  one who forcibly touches the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person, or for the purpose of gratifying the actor’s sexual desire, He could have been senetenced to a year in jail:

Forcible Touching, Penal Law Section 130.52, is a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to 1 year in jail. However, the opportunities for a plea agreement are more limited than in most misdemeanor cases. The District Attorney may not offer a non-criminal plea, even for a first offender. And, if some form of conditional discharge is offered, it will typically depend on completion of a mandated treatment program or sessions with a private therapist.

Trump can factually be called a person who was found liable for sexual abuse and what was really the far less egregious crime of defamation by a jury of his peers.

I am just one small voice trying remind people of this. Hopefully the media addressing the $15 million ABC settlement will remind more people about this.

In 2016 people elected a man who uttered a few words which were recorded and replayed hundreds of time and which if said by any other candidate would have lost him the election. Voters just didn't care enough.

He hasn't changed. He is proving this by the choices has made for people to serve in his administration. He is turning it onto a phallocentric manosphere ruled by the ultimate mad megalomaniac manly monarch.

Read related blog: For some MAGA manly men, Hegseth's sexual assault and drinking charges are badges of honor worthy of a medal.

and this blog: 

If only the entire country could divorce itself from a toxically masculine regime.

If only the entire country could divorce itself from a toxically masculine regime

Previous list of  all 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)

Apple CEO's visit to Mar-a-Lago caused my iPhone to throw up on my Mac laptop, by Hal M/ Brown

This was the the top HuffPost story this morning.

It prompted me to spend some time using AI to create an illustration of Cook bending at the knees before King Trump. AI created a king and I added Trump's rather large head. Oddly, the gods of AI made the man on his knees resemble Tim Cook so I left this alone.

On the left is the original AI image:

This is what I posted on BlueSky:

I was hoping to upgrade my iPhone and Mac laptops in a year or so to the newest Apple devices. Now I am rethinking this. If another company becomes the BlueSky of tech I may buy those products. 

I can see a company which makes cell phones and laptops, probably a much smaller company than Apple, promoting themselves as a company not beholden to the autocratic leader of the United States. 

Click to enlarge

Some day in the not too distant future we may look back at these people the way the industrialists who collaborated with the Nazi's are viewed today. Consider the following sample of articles about this:

In the Room Where German Tycoons Agreed to Fund Hitler’s Rise To Power

Hitler's millionaire backers: how Germany's elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis

How Big Business Bailed Out the Nazis

A tragic tale of what can go wrong when profits are entangled with politics.

Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 from Wikipedia

Addendum:

In case you missed it: Trump Taps Anti-Trans Lawyer Harmeet Dhillon to Lead DOJ Civil Rights Post

If you aren't familiar with BlueSky, here's an article from Z NET: 

7 things to know about Bluesky before you join - and why you should

Yesterday I wrote a science fiction fantasy about the drones really being an advance force from an alien civilization preparing humans for an intervention which would reset our world and set it back on a course of peaceful coexistence between neighbors and countries. Today there are reports of more sightings and there has been no explanation as to what they are. Could it be that after decades of sci-fi writers speculating about what form an alien invasion would take it is finally happening? Read the blog here:

Previous list of  all 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)

The delightful distraction of the dastardly drones, by Hal M. Brown

 

Constructed by the autocratic Galactic Empire, the Death Star was capable of obliterating entire planets. It served to enforce the Empire's reign of terror. It was protected by twin ion fighters (below) which the heros of the Star Wars stories had to battle in their Starfighters in space dog fights.

Now we have these drone sightings in New Jersey making the news. Marjorie Taylor Greene is speculating that they are coming from an Iranian mother ship. 

We are hearing that they may be remotely operated drones or, like the Empire fighters, that they could be manned.

Now America is on the brink of becoming something like the autocratic Galactic Empire with its own version of Darth Vader leading it. 

I find making up a science fiction alternative story can be a delightful distraction to thinking about the horror show about to come. 

I've put together this tall tale about these to spin a science fiction scenario.

Maybe at long last aliens, not the ones Trump wants to deport, but the ones from a galaxy far, far, away, have gotten fed up with the United States and other autocracies and decided to intervene once again. 

Once again, you might ask. 

The first time could have been when they seeded Earth and planted the ocean with the DNA that led to the first life forms coming out of the primal ooze. 

The second would be when, as depicted at the beginning of 2001, they gave primates human intelligence. 

The third could have been when they sent several shape shifters (Jesus, the great philosophers and religious leaders, and perhaps Einstein) to try to make a difference. 

It is possible that the current plethora of drones over New Jersey (shown below) are being controlled by Bruce Springsteen, the alien primary shape shifter on Earth today and soon to be emissary from his home in Northern New Jersey.

Now perhaps they are trying again to prepare for an outright invasion, or better call it an intervention, by preparing earthlings to accept that they must change their ways or else... which brings us to the Death Star. 

What if these so-called drones are the advance scouts for numerous mother ships all with planet destroying capabilities. 

I don't think these aliens want to cause human suffering or annihilate us, but since they've been studying earthlings since the dawn of mankind they know how set in our beliefs we are. 

They know about every human atrocity.

I think they are aware that a demonstration would be necessary to convince skeptical humans, so the next step would be having these drones demonstrate alien capabilities proving them to be extraterrestrial. This hasn't happened yet. This is phase one. 

Phase two should be occurring soon. They may have a drone hover a few feet above the podium during Trump's inauguration while the Secret Service tries to shoot it down in a fusillade of bullets to no avail. Then it would take off straight up with blinding speed. It would be an image seen around the world. I'd like to see Trump raising his fist defiantly after this.

The aliens would then take over all media and in all languages lay out their demands for reform. The demands would sound very much like the "love thy neighbor" and "do unto others as you would have them do to you" messages of Christianity and all the world's great religions.

If this didn't lead to an end to cruel inhumane autocratic regimes the next phase would be to have the actual motherships appear over all major cities like in the TV Series V.

The aliens would give humans one final chance to peacefully coexist with each other. They might have to demonstrate that they aren't kidding around. Vaporizing the Moon into dust as dramatic as this would be might do it but there would be major consequences (read article) such the disruption of the tides which would cause loss of human and aquatic life.

Better they announce they will vaporize Mars giving time to the media to assure they have powerful telescopes televising the event.

Yesterday:

Recent blogs: A decidely unempathic fantasy about what I wish for Trump voters, addressing Hegseth and his toxic masculinity, another about Trump and MAGA toxic masculinity, and a sign Trump may have dementia.

Previous list of  all 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)