On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) stood up in front of the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, at a gathering to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.
In it she cites many lies by the many lying Republican oafs, fools, and mountebanks covering for the liar-in-chief and his Putin-sponsored campaign for white supremacy in the U.S. as in Russia, and for the additional levels of concentration camp cruelties in the U.S. modeled on the Nazis of WWII and on the Russian gulags then, before, and after.
She’s got the details, from the illegality Donald-appointed judges will sign off on to the torture built into these camps by denial of medical services, from the rank profit-making to the private-industry prison subsidies to the new sets of lies covering Donald’s vengeance campaign against blue states.
Most charming in this last is Heather’s quote from another of Donald’s cult members on how “ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S.” – when we all know his private armies of murderers and thugs will never bother anyone in any red state – where most brown-skinned immigrants actually are.
Maybe you could actually not make it about you, Mr. Balla, skewing the conversation to wherever you would like to take it, but about Heather's newsletter tonight instead -- what it might mean, and why now.
There's a larger lesson in re-examining Joseph McCarthy's sordid history (and that of his sidekick, Roy Cohn, who we all know ended up being Donald Trump's mentor). In the middle of chaos, we seem to be finally approaching that magical 'have you, at last, no decency at all, Senator' moment that finally caused the entire phenomenon of McCarthyism to turn, almost on a dime, the way it did. Our demented president, decomposing and decompensating with each passing day, has exhausted his own political capital. The only thing keeping the whole Rube Goldberg contraption together is inertia and fear. It's ripe to be flipped on a dime. The murders in Minneapolis may be heralds of that coming moment.
The fear is certainly real, as the cornered rat (and his minions) fight even harder. But a day is coming, perhaps sooner than many of us realize -- to echo and paraphrase Liz Cheney -- when the memory of this entire era will be but a distant memory. Quite a few Republicans are now thinking very hard about that day. 39 of them in the House have already announced a sudden need to spend more precious time with their families rather than seeking to be doxxed, pizza-ed, their children threatened, or getting primaried by somebody even loonier and dumber than they are. Even now, the current GOP majority is only about 2 or 3. It needs lock-step obedience and a strong Speaker to pass anything, since a tie vote in the House fails. (Last time I checked, no strong House speakers could be found.)
As Pete Buttigieg says, if Republicans are thinking about what comes next, so should we. Those who don't plan their coming moment in the sun very carefully aren't likely to get the chance to influence it.
I keep hoping that a couple of Republican resignations from the House – or the divine intervention called "mortality" – will make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House even before the November Midterm Elections.
Or deaths from a couple of the old long serving Republicans in the House. These are the ones that bought Newt's BS about Democrats being the enemy and never work with them. They are the biggest hypocrites of all.
Yup, good thoughts, Arctic! And to add to the hope of Republican resignations, there is the hope of a Democratic takeover of the House via the mid-term elections. Right now, if “something” happens to Trump, JD Vance becomes the President and Mike Johnson becomes the Vice President. If the Dems take over the House, by this time next year, the Order of Succession could put someone like Speaker Jeffries as the new VEEP! Yikes, huh?
What a totally delicious outcome that would be. I had read somewhere that the GOP holds a one vote majority and there's the special election to replace MTG to be held. That the ranking member over DHS is retiring is fantastic as well.
A dangerous fool with too much power. I would like to be a fly on the wall after trump tells Europeans " You have to end it now. I can tell I'm really good at this stuff". I would be interested in hearing comments said in private after this idiot speaks- anywhere.
Papa, Johnson would only ascend if both the president and vice president were to go in one fell swoop, or if the new president were to die before a vice president could be appointed. T here was no method of appointing a vice president until the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967 that an appointment process was outlined.
There are not enough "cleansing agents" to clean up the massive destruction" they continue to create against our nation and the future, in every area ie education, health care, being able to purchase a home, to have parks remain for the enjoyment and appreciation of fellow citizens and visitors from other countries...etc.
They live for every dollar they can steal from us. They invest in "brainwashing" not caring for each and every human being we have welcomed (LADY LIBERTY) into this great and huge nation!
I feel like we have been captured by criminals who have taken over our government in Washington , DC as well as within the leadership within many states.
We have also treated allies with total disregard and disrespect!!!!
We once worked together to solve problems....now we are acting so insane towards our once friends...they cannot trust anything that comes from our highest levels of governance!!!!
Think about the deciding vote in tie in the Senate - the major thing a VEEP does. Mike Johnson or Hakeem Jeffries. Skip the technicalities of the title.
I agree that Speaker is an important position; I was simply addressing the line of presidential succession which is different than the important role of Speaker of the House.
PPP, respectfully, I think you may be in error; upon the death of a president, the VP remains vacant until the House and Senate have their say. Personally, I doubt seriously that it ever will be Johnson.
Really? Better check out that former Speaker of the House can become Vice President, Papa’s Pancake House. Isn’t that post vacant until the next election?
What has been dawning on more and more Americans? The Trump administration has completely failed the American people. Failed economically, failed legally, failed constitutionally, failed internationally, failed morally and is now failing politically. The bodies of x-Trump supporters and administration members keeps piling up.
And Trump, following his standard strategy, denies everything, nothing is wrong, it's just his enemies attacking a poor, misunderstood public servant working hard for the American people.
But it's more and more obvious, not just to American's, but to the whole world, that Trump is a fool. A dangerous fool with too much power. But a fool indeed. Thankfully, he has failed to take a 250 year old Democracy and bend it to his fascist will.
I cannot predict how Trump/MAGA will collapse. But like the trynanny of Joe Mccarthy, it surely will. The American people are coming back together. As a nation, we don't agree on everything. But we certainly agree. The more we see it, the more we don't want to live in a police state ruled by a King Trump, Duke Vance, Duke Miller and the whole gang of miserable human beings humiliating America.
I can't help but think in the end, it will be the economy. Probably an implosion of crypto and AI and this strange cycle of the rich investing in each other while the rest of us watch from the sidelines. Scott Galloway suggests if we want to fight, cancel subscriptions to OpenAI, Amazon and/or Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney, etc. Keep only one streaming subscription. Maybe our NATO allies will join us in the fight. The only thing T cares about more than power is his money.
I've been thinking a lot about this. Maybe of the direct action of citizens to protest are having an effect. Also, the legal system has been kicking butt. We have to intensify our pressure on Congress and start bringing much more citizen pressure on Blue State governors to use their powers to resist, including the National Guard which create a wonderfully ironic constitutional crisis at SOCTUS!
Yes. It does seem the "legal system" is quite intact, though one has to look closely to see that. On the "front page" bad news sells, so we struggle to find what is really happening. We're like mushrooms. Kept in the dark.
First. Do not 'enable the goons' so they arrest you and detain you and take you off the street! Getting yanked off the street plays right into "Divide and Conquer". If we're going to get out of this mess we need our "boots on the ground", and not in some Fort Bliss detention facility with 70,000 others. Gov Waltz, Janet Mills, or Mayor MamDami, say they have our back.., hohohoo, but they aren't able to yank that Federal Chain to get us out of the jail once we've been hauled off. If they even know we've been hauled off. Let's make things better, not worse.
Oooops, regarding the news we receive: In my "mushroom" comment, I forgot to mention we are being treated like mushrooms.., kept in the dark, and fed manure (BS).
Merrill, what you write is interesting, however "the proof" .., meaning 'the voter turnout'.., will be "in the pudding." Of that, I am really afraid - aren't you? It does not appear to me, at least, that those who don't bother to show up at the polls have been moved off of their dead-ass or comfy-recliner and big-screen TV. For them, they don't think their vote amounts to a yellow-hole in the snow, so why bother. The price of gas is all they look at, along with FAUX News and the constant barrage of Savannah Guthrie photo-ops (yo.., could that be a distraction?).
Absolutely! Trump's Roy Cohn-style McCarthyism, unsubstantiated charges, "witch hunts," adultery, and clamor for headlines will fade. He can't keep Americans at odds with each other forever. Some day, his supporters will realize he's trying to create a permanent underclass by killing the American Dream. https://www.epi.org/publication/47-ways-trump-has-made-life-less-affordable-in-his-first-year/
Bad Bunny's halftime show last night was a fabulous antidote, celebrating ALL of America at the table. We can still be those people. I LOVE Lady Gaga's and Bruno Mars' song, and it was SO appropriate!
Demented..decomposing... and decompensating you say... Now there's an alliteration that only those in this moment of time can appreciate... This is far from the innocent "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers"... Decomposition might have to wait until he's dead, but I certainly look forward to it...
"ding , dong the witch is dead" sang the townspeople . His flying monkeys will pass with him, never to be seen again.
I look forward to the day America steps out of his ugly demented shadow and the Good Witch of The West reminds us:
"You've always had the power, my dear. You've had it all along," and instructs her to "Close your eyes and tap your heels together three times. And think to yourself, 'There's no place like home'
America is our home, NOT trump's home.
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The entire world will celebrate his death...time to splash some water......
Even the flying monkeys reveled at her death. The flying monkeys, in this case, the republican house and senate, will not mourn his passing. Cowards as they all were, their cowardice will be all the more on display after they are pressed to explain themselves to our nation for the malfeasance of their representation to all their constituents.
Trump getting doused with a bucket of water--that would make headlines! I can just imagine that thin hair flattened, revealing the baldness, and that orange pancake melting off his face onto his suit.
History has seen this act before. Accusations without evidence. Loyalty over law. Noise mistaken for power. From McCarthy to MAGA, the pattern is clear and so is the ending. Demagogues burn bright, exhaust their audience, and leave behind an empty podium where authority once pretended to stand.
''Loud Men Fade: The McCarthy Pattern and the Coming MAGA Collapse''
Donald Trump did not invent a new political movement. He revived an old one and amplified it with better microphones. The playbook is familiar to anyone who remembers the Red Scare, or who has bothered to read history instead of shouting over it. Accusations without evidence. Enemies everywhere. Loyalty elevated above law. Performance replacing governance. America has seen this before, and it did not end well for the man who tried it first.
The original architect of this approach was Joseph McCarthy, a junior senator who discovered that fear travels faster than facts. McCarthy understood something timeless about mass psychology. You do not need proof if you can produce panic. You do not need coherence if you can dominate attention. You do not need to govern if you can accuse. Once he grasped this, he weaponized paranoia and wrapped it in patriotism.
Trump has followed this script almost beat for beat. The only real innovation is scale. Cable news replaced Senate committee rooms. Social media replaced press briefings. Outrage became a 24-hour business model. But the substance remained unchanged. Claims without verification. Enemies named but never proven. Institutions labeled corrupt the moment they resisted personal loyalty.
McCarthy thrived on insinuation. Trump thrives on volume. The effect is the same. When everything is a conspiracy, nothing needs to be demonstrated. When disagreement equals betrayal, accountability becomes impossible. When loyalty tests replace policy, the state stops functioning, and the spectacle takes over.
What MAGA did was industrialize this dynamic. McCarthyism was once a man and a moment. MAGA turned it into a culture. Suspicion became a shared identity. Grievance became a bond. Anger replaced analysis. The movement trained millions to see institutions not as flawed systems to be improved, but as enemies to be destroyed if they failed to serve a single leader.
This is why MAGA reacts so violently to courts, elections, journalists, and civil servants. These institutions do something demagogues cannot tolerate. They slow things down. They ask for evidence. They require process. And process is fatal to performance politics.
For a while, fear works. It always does. McCarthy cowed senators, terrified bureaucrats, and dominated headlines. Trump bullied rivals, bent media coverage, and turned outrage into brand loyalty. Both mistook this moment for permanence. Both believed attention equaled authority.
History has little patience for that mistake.
McCarthy’s downfall did not come from a heroic uprising. It came from exposure and exhaustion. The Army McCarthy hearings forced his behavior into the open. Televised questioning revealed the cruelty, the emptiness, and the repetition. The public saw the act for what it was. Not strength, but insecurity. Not leadership, but abuse. America did not suddenly become wise. It became tired.
Trump and MAGA are heading toward the same wall. The pattern is already visible. Repetition dulls outrage. Claims grow more extreme as credibility shrinks. Each new accusation sounds like the last. Each promised revelation fails to arrive. The movement becomes louder because it is weaker.
The most dangerous phase of demagoguery is not its rise but its decay. As belief erodes, the leader demands more loyalty and less reality. Failure is blamed on sabotage. Losses are declared victories. Law becomes persecution. This is not confidence. It is desperation.
Trump’s central flaw is the same one that destroyed McCarthy. He believes the performance is the power. He assumes the crowd will never notice the absence behind the noise. But spectacle requires novelty, and novelty cannot survive endless repetition. Eventually, the audience sees the strings.
When that moment arrives, the collapse is rarely cinematic. It is administrative. It happens through court rulings, financial records, sworn testimony, and slow institutional grind. It happens when allies distance themselves. When donors vanish. When media attention moves on. When the performance no longer produces fear but fatigue and ridicule.
MAGA’s greatest vulnerability is not electoral defeat alone. It is historical demotion. Movements that claim destiny often end as case studies. They are remembered not for what they promised, but for what they revealed about human susceptibility to fear.
That is McCarthy’s legacy. He is not remembered as a defender of America. He is remembered as a warning label. A lesson about how easily a republic can be rattled, and how ultimately it resists being ruled by paranoia.
Trump risks the same fate. So does MAGA. The louder they shout, the clearer the pattern becomes. Accusations without evidence. Enemies everywhere. Loyalty tests as governance. These are not signs of strength. They are symptoms of a movement that cannot survive scrutiny.
The American Republic has endured worse men than this. It has survived louder voices, darker moments, and deeper divisions. Its endurance does not come from perfection, but from structure. Courts outlast bullies. Records outlast lies. Memory outlasts noise.
Demagogues burn bright and fast. Institutions move slowly and last longer. History is not written by those who shout the loudest. It is written by what remains when the shouting stops.
McCarthy fell not with a bang, but with a verdict from history. Trump and MAGA are moving toward the same judgment, one document, one hearing, one exhausted audience at a time.
Michael, thanks for your comment. The through line is right there staring all of us in the face. McCarthy - Cohn - Trump, you don't even need to connect the dots. It also, to me at least, proves the point of republicans holding office don't care about governance, just power, because if they did care this would not have happened. If we can see this plainly what the fuck is wrong with their eyesight.
Without doubt, Bill, your take on the "through line" is as accurate as can be. My thoughts revolve around where the through line ends; there are still people like Vance, Miller, and of course, the Heritage Foundation, which one can accuse of putting the final touches to what truly looks like a republican conspiratorial scheme. After this is all over, where do we go from here. Democrats are famous for resisting to prosecute past presidents for obvious crimes to the nation. Nixon for instance, never was prosecuted for his role in Watergate; his reformation, however, was a welcome sight when he admitted the power of hate and what it can do to a person. Bush II, however, was never prosecuted for the approximate 4,000 US military deaths caused by the Iraq war. Vincent Bugliosi, in writing his book: "The Prosecution of George W bush for Murder" illustrates very convincingly the crime of, murder, but certainly at least, manslaughter in sending US troops on a wild goose chase for WMD. I should also mention the approximate 100,000 Iraqi civilians that were killed literally, for no reason. Blackwater has never been held to account for the atrocities that they committed during this war. As for the leadership of the Heritage Foundation, what consequences will they face? All of this needs to be born out to the public. The proof of Trump's guilt is certain. The Jan. 6 Committee and Jack Smith have already processed the proof which I believe can be tied in with Project 2025. All we need is the will to do it. Vance and Miller, to name just two, will need to answer for their crimes of corrupting our Constitution to their own ends. This should not be over yet and so easily.
The power: ie money and influence of The Heritage Foundation has taken years to build. As a former Republican, I too saw it as a positive force for freedom.
It was when Trump was nominated for President of the United States of America that I immediately changed political parties. I saw it as ,"The Republican Party has lost their soul...and they claim to be so religious!"
My father passed away when I was 12 years old. He was always a strong Democrat. He would say, " The Democrats will help to care for the poor." I should have taken the "Dems" seriously even as a young person. I regret every vote I gave to a Republican!!!!
I grew up in rural America. I wasn’t interested in public politics because it was a business of levers like the old trip rake . You drag those tines along gathering a bunch of hay and when it was in the right line you pulled that lever. Then along came a politician with a gawd awful buck rake and run off with all the hay. It was like that back in the last century. Republicans were hard to like. They always lied, took the most, hated everbody. Nothing was ever done right. Eventually they ended up with most everything. They were always sure they were right and deserving of more than anyone. They hated the “lazy Indians.” They hated the rare men who were democrats. I don’t really remember why we as kids avoided them. I guess they were no fun at all. Wanna be politicos had to buy a cowboy hat and have it shaped by that old gal in Great Falls. Get yourself some shit kickers with a bulldog heel and learn to rope a little bit. If you won the election in no time at all you had herself a big spread and could pass yourself off as authentic snap button cowboy stock. I reckon now days you get yerself a couple three helicopters and a flight jacket and earphones and chase livestock from hell to breakfast. The you get in yer corporate jet and fly off to a big city telling your constituents you are going there on important business meetings destined to make Montanans part of the modern scene. We probably will never get another Mike and Maureen Mansfield or even a Max Baucus but at least the new guys can play billionaire poker with tax player money. Yup. With a rope in the hand and a cow by the tail…
Vance and Miller? Uh huh. And, what will be their sentence, once found guilty? Stocks? The Rack? Kaning? Chained to a post in a NE town square, and stoned? What? Und.., Der Leader?
49.7% doth not a mandate make. I just hope that this collapse occurs before this group of psychopaths causes a blood bath at the midterms or a nuclear incident isn't employed to create another spectacular diversion. I don't believe this regime has a moral driver other than winning at all costs. It is their god. No matter how punic it may be.
They certainly don't care about their children or grandchildren's world! I guess an apocalyptic climate change doesn't bother them, as long as they can makes $$$$$$ funding pollution producing now.
Yup. Let's not blow it up. This door will fall off its hinges, provided we let it. It's built to fail, not last. Gotta be smart about this. We're watching Snidely Whiplash in action. (Snidely, a stereotypical villain whose caricature existed first in silent 'movies'.) For those of us here, who remember.
ICTT I admire your optimism but I don't share it. What has struck me more than anything in the last two weeks of our now quotidian sh*tshow is the revelation that much of the activities displayed in the Epstein files might have been designed for the purpose of enabling Vladimir Putin to have blackmail intel on powerful men in America. The pearl clutching going on about the abuse, torture, and degradation of girls and women displayed in these millions of pages (and apparently far more graphic in those that the DOJ refuses to disclose) is laughable because the torture, abuse, and degradation of women and girls is a CONSTANT in the history of human civilization. Indeed, it is the HALLMARK of human civilization. So to hear all the men scramble to deflect the anger that women and girls swallow daily and are now feeling slightly more emboldened to express makes me want to slap them all upside the head. As long as patriarchy is protected by men in power, nothing is going to change.
Vladimir Putin is a formidable "enemy" and we make it easy for him . There are many Americans working WITH HIM. They both fear him and respect the control he holds over his people.
Linda agree: "As long as patriarchy is protected by men in power, nothing is going to change."
Even so, I am very proud of the brave women working throughout our world for "the people" everyday, under difficult circumstances.
We should never forget that Trump, his efforts to legitimize white-male-supremacist genocide, the resultant ChristoNazi conquest and its MAGAstapo terrorism is the triumph of a multi-generation, bi-partisan scheme more than a century in the making, To learn of the carefully hidden roots of the crisis, the documentation of which include a PBS film about the enormous support for Hitler here in the '30s and additional, meticulously footnoted documentation of the plutocracy's support for Nazism, go here: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-25-2026?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=205274486
Evidently, Europeans have a sense of morality that is missing in America. People in high places are stepping aside, or being asked to, because they have been named as part of the Epstein horror show. Here, no big deal, at least so far.
History does seem to repeat itself. So went that scourge of the Senate, McCarthy, as will go Donald Trump. It well appears that most republicans will sign on to anything that is about *them* rather than the nation, only to find out......oops.... better to think about this some more and see what the other side has to offer. Their penchant for retractability is very...... well...... so very republican.
I have often wondered why it is taking so many people so long to say "Enough, Stop!" and finally turn on Trump. He is so clearly operating on McCarthyist tactics and always has. Wasn't Roger Cohn, working for both men, the direct throughline? It seems like is is taking longer to turn it around this time. Perhaps people are more jaded. But even back then, a large portion of Americans simply did not want to bother to do the work necessary to maintaining democracy. So instead they let democracy degrade to the point it is now, where that maintainance work is exhausting. And rebuilding is even more exhausting and tenuous. Destruction is easy and emotionally simple.
Pursuant to your first paragraph, ICTT, I had a reaction to the actual words of HCR's Letter, but can find nowhere to express it because the conversation here has headed off into a completely different direction.
The general theme of the Letter, as I read it, is about the long thread of conservative white panic that they might not always be in charge. McCarthy's "red scare" was a roundabout way of getting to the kernel of his fear and that of far too many Americans: loss of white power.
It was on this foundation that Republican operatives forged an alliance with evangelical leaders to create a new wedge issue. In the beginning, it was a choice between criminalizing same-sex relationships or criminalizing abortion. In the end, the abortion issue won out because LGBT persons were universally hated by Christians already. No division was to be had there.
More importantly, abortion was causing concern for Republicans. In the new affluence of the 1950s abetted by new rights for women, including being able to own property and get credit, white women were flexing their independence. They were deferring marriage, getting jobs, deferring or declining motherhood. The birthrate among white women was declining rapidly, causing a dramatic shortage of future white Republican voters.
With the help of evangelical leaders, the GOP launched the campaign against abortion, touting it as a moral issue. But it was never about morals; it was about numbers. Forced birth of white babies would insure future Republican voters.
Interesting. Balla starts off by saying he is still processing. You start off by taking a dig at him, and then skew the conversation the direction you want to take it.
Hi Phil. American Prison: An Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment. A book about contract, for profit prisons that document the kind of treatment that detainment camps that mirror these prisons in poor facilities with insufficient food, poor quality food, unsanitary conditions, lack of medical care, abusive guards and little to no oversight.
Don't forget the ownership of such by former Alabama senator then U.S. Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. Is it a coincidence that he bet on investing in prison systems ? Any 'dots' to connect there ?
That’s something I didn’t know. Even though I live in Alabama, I have paid little attention to state politics. Since I lean slightly left of center and Democratic, paying attention to Alabama politics is an exercise in futility. I have voted with intent on Alabama politics to elect Doug Jones and vote for Harris. For all his faults, Sessions was a good bet in advocating for veterans. Not a good choice for Attorney General, but better than Pam Bondi. You probably know that Tuberville lives in Florida and maintains a house in Auburn.
When Tuberville was first elected, and I heard him say the three branches of government were the House, the Senate and the presidency, I saw that he represented perfectly two stereotypes: the goober and the coach who knew about only one topic.
I happened to see this when it formed the ending to Stephen very much enjoying his banter with Sir Ian.
And just before the speech here -- never in fact performed during Shakespeare's lifetime -- Stephen and Sir Ian set it up perfectly, as if the latter unbeknownst to him got coaxed serendipitously into doing it.
He'd done it onstage somewhere not long ago -- making him then the first actor ever to recite these lines from the bard.
Sorry , Phil . that damn arrow again😡…that rape is realized is not a sexual ‘thing’ but that of anger -shortened- many a crime or criminal needs the discipline exacted ( consequence) as somehow their upbringing was punishment and/or lack of proper raisin’ ( high, very high percentages). Justice needs thorough revamping too , as well as immigration policy ,etc etc etc. We have a country young in existence showing the mistakes, needing improved, as as well pointed out “longest Democracy surviving” (ty Katy).
That American rally I do believe so well exampled in times of danger to us A m e r i c a n s …is showing up…applaud, join, be your brilliant bad-ass selves…the names we will remember and duly jail for criminal endeavor are yup ‘it happened here’ reality.
Remember that Good ship “Principle” forever … many have died to preserve it…
Profound. It is that love prevails. Good…poetry in her last words. “I’m not mad at you”…that we realize discipline means tough love at times , not cruelty..in as much as rape is not a sexual thing’
Trump and his lying cadre of fools is reneging on what were to be signing bonuses to the ICE agents. I know I know, catch your breath. Trump, Miller, Noem, Homan and all of their Nazi recruiters lying to the newbies. This is from the far right leaning Yahoo News -
ICE Agents Whine That They Aren’t Getting Their Massive Bonuses
New hires at Immigration and Customs Enforcement are complaining that they haven’t yet received the massive bonuses promised to them for agreeing to brutally arrest immigrants.
In multiple Reddit posts reviewed by the International Business Times UK, federal immigration agents complained that they’d yet to see their signing bonuses materialize. Others complained that when their bonus arrived, it was only a few thousand dollars after taxes. One person claimed that they were unable to cover medical costs for their sick child due to an insurance coverage gap.
The Trump administration had promised a payout of up to $50,000 for anyone who joined the ranks of so-called homeland defenders.
Following a massive recruitment push, the Department of Homeland Security has boasted an incoming class of 12,000 new ICE agents, putting a clear strain on the agency, which received more than 220,000 applications. One administration official previously said DHS’s hiring influx had caused a “shit show” at ICE.
Meanwhile, morale among ICE agents is already plummeting after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse attending a protest in Minnesota. In addition to being roundly hated by the public they spend their work days terrorizing, ICE agents are also complaining of long working hours and high arrest quotas.
So 220,000 applied to be racist thugs that take innocent 5-year old boys and ruin countless legal American citizens lives. So the thugs already doing the dirty work of the reich are moaning about not receiving their promised bonuses, the long hours, the huge quotas, and, surprise surprise, one of these thugs had to face the reality that the republicans in congress created by making health insurance unaffordable. I hope they all see what they're doing is inhumane and start walking out, quitting.
IMHO, methinks there are many cosplaying gamers in the bunch. Maybe they are discovering it isn't the constant adrenaline rush they experience in their cushy gaming chairs. Gee, being on your feet out in the elements is ssooooo tough!!
A gap in your employment history is always a red flag for potential employers at least in my experience.
They can lie about their employment history, but most companies take the time to verify employment in my experience. I was working with a computer operator one time and he was fired as soon as they found out he lied on his resume about his employment.
Liked (as usual) for your sentiments and use of words. I particularly enjoyed seeing the word "mountebank" in your post. It's a perfect label for our POtuS.
Ice has been welcomed by Bradley Little our governor. He proposes to work closely with them. His lips will eventually be surgically removed from trps nether region. Front or back I’m not sure which. But Bradley is one of those cool dudes. He will hang with the money. Keep in mind Idaho agriculture is critically dependent on Mexican labor. Our populous is rapidly becoming a Hispanic majority, so our political affiliations will slowly see the end of Republican control. Progressive whites see that as inevitable as our demographics shift.
Currently, there are 26 Republican governors and 24 Democratic. Hopefully that will finally shift the other way. Trump had a meeting with just the Republican governors recently and didn't invite the Democratic governors.
If you live in a state with a Republican governor make sure you link their actions to the Trump administration. There are no longer ANY conservative Republicans. If there were, they would be calling out the $2.5 trillion that the Republicans added to the national debt in 2025.
The oligarchs definitely are winning. We need to fight back with our credit cards and our check books. The Hilton and Marriott hotel chains are housing ICE agents in Chicago, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine and other places. These Fascists receive a reduced Federal rate. Why aren't the ICE agents staying in warehouses with the detainees? All they need is a cot and a shower once a week, right?
Idaho remains about 46% Republican but only about 12%Democrats. The primaries are closed so one has to declare one’s affiliation to vote. If you declare democrat then you receive a Democrat ballot.
Relatively new field. How many inmates are on fire crews as well. What are the demographics of such crews? I don’t know. I long hauled potatoes from Idaho across the country and the familiar scene was a work force speaking Spanish from both farms across the state and processing plants freezing hash browns,tots, and French fries. Bulk potatoes went straight from the farm to mid west potato chip producers. Land was usually under the stewardship of a Spanish speaking foreman who handled the planting and harvesting. Gradually both land ownership and processing plant ownership has tended to become non white. The white kids grew up and left home. That has been my hands on assessment. I could go on in fruit and beans. Same shift. I have worked with prison crews only on fires. That was a Montana thing. That seems beneficial to me.
Eat more potatoes? Had the chance to be in Idaho on a work assignment three different times. Part of my visit was to the World Raptor center near the Snake River valley. The climate of the high desert was exhilarating. Thanks for the update on the farmers.
We do have a plethora of raptors. Even peregrines. Yesterday three pairs (6) goldens were circling at tall cottonwood height when a bald started circling among them. Out of no where from high up a pair of osprey dive bombed the goldens. We had quite an aerial battle ground as a 747 went over the top of it all. I live 1/2 mile from established colony of blue herons. Sandhills like to walk the pastures and leave their young here while they forage. Red tails always seem to find you as do 40 or so turkey vultures occasionally dot the skies. They seem to sweep through as in migrating, crossing the continental divide into the Big Hole. (live in Salmon)
To clarify my point, @Pat Cole: They don't send ICE to Idaho "to crack down on protestors," like they have in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and Minneapolis. This is what I meant to convey, a comment on reported ICE outrages. @Phil Balla, don't know what "JAA" means.
Yes, JAAD -- sorry I erred with your moniker earlier.
I've corrected that via the three dot-edit function.
But I got, "liked," your intended meaning regarding ICE and its only mission: Donald's thuggish harassment, cruelty, chaos, and murder in areas of Democratic populations.
Donald Trump is running the same McCarthy script, louder, sloppier, and with cable news instead of a Senate hearing room. Accusations without evidence, enemies everywhere, loyalty tests as governance. It worked for a while for McCarthy too, until sunlight, testimony, and exhaustion caught up. Demagogues always mistake attention for power and noise for legitimacy. History suggests the ending is not triumph but collapse, televised, humiliating, and remembered less as strength than as a cautionary footnote.
Its stats suggest the older ICE bureaucracy, those parts legitimately doing their work in those states with, in fact, more immigrants per capita.
These legitimate parts of ICE bear no relation, however, to the roving bands of thugs who form Donald's advance front for his police state and concentration camp gulag.
I was only addressing the comment that ICE wouldn't invade red states.
Interesting that you make a distinction of ICE legitimacy. The implication being that the illegitimate agents are working where there are serious protests and the legitimate agents are working in mostly peaceful locales. I don't know how ICE poobahs could arrange that
and yet, in these states, one does not see video of roaming gangs of masked, military armed thugs or smashed car windows, or kicked in doors with underclad old men dragged into the street, or people with their face pressed to the pavement, or shot in the back 10 times. Wonder why?
Try imagining places where the local authorities don't go out of their way to impede ICE operations. Places like Fla and Tx where their governors say to locals, "Thou SHALL work with ICE".
It's going to be interesting here in Appalachia. What with our legendary history of cooperation with law enforcement and all. They're putting up statues around town now of people who ratted out their neighbors and grandpas so their evil stills could be destroyed.
When the people speak, "madhatter," it's in defense of neighbors.
Do you really dismiss Donald's criminal intentions, his goal of police state answerable only to him, his mass gulag of concentration camps to make Putin proud.?
Please cite some examples of the local police in Minneapolis "going out of their way to impede ICE operations."
In fact the local police were not informed by ICE of where they were going to "patrol". The local police had nothing to do with impeding ICE from disingenuously luring people to offices under the pretense of administrative compliance only to detain them, often against court order.
What specifically did local authorities do to impede ICE?
Thank Goodness our local police and authorities do not participate in violating the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments of people.
Perhaps to be more clear, when top level authorities (think Walz, Frey, Ellison) call for more resistance, it can only be interpreted as impeding operations. Local cooperation means that most apprehensions would occur by handing over those illegals who are already in hand, rather than having to scour the streets for them after they have been released.
I'm glad to read you are distinguishing between impeding and cooperating, as they very different things, especially when understanding our Federalist system of government and that certain authorities are restricted between Federal and local. For example, FBI agents cannot write traffic tickets and local law enforcement cannot enforce immigration laws.
Can you cite some examples of Walz calling for actions that would impede ICE? Again non-cooperation is not impeding, opining is not impeding.
Can you provide quotes that any of these men have encouraged people to impede ICE?
You are correct, however it's how they operate in those states. Are there more arrests in Texas, of course that's where the border is. More in Florida, sure, Florida being on the Gulf of Mexico with incoming boats. Southwest states, yup.
The difference, the are arresting persons crossing or recently crossing the borders.
In the effected Blue states they are arresting people who have been here years, following the process and attempting to do the right thing. They are doing it at schools, churches, homes, with random patrols in neighborhoods, stopping people simply because they "look" illegal.
Trump is using thuggish tactics as a tool to intimidate those he perceives as enemies.
This is a revelation to me, madhatter. I live in the boondocks south of Little Rock, AR, and drive into town for all my shopping needs. The southwest section of the city has become predominantly Latino with numerous tiendas and taquerias lining the main thoroughfares. Businesses in all parts of the Little Rock metro employ Latinos, and I see them working and shopping with no apparent fear.
Neither do I ever hear of any ICE raids at any local operations, nor do I see ICE-marked vehicles on the streets.
If ICE is active in Arkansas, they must be doing their work in a low-key, legal manner. Possibly this is because the governor is Donald's former press liar, Sarah Huckleberry Sanders. She doesn't need intimidating. Also, there are no five-star accommodations in Arkansas, so the corporate media couldn't be coaxed in here to cover any manufactured drama.
Thanks for sharing. From his post: "When identity fuses this tightly within a group, disagreement with the group stops being informational. Any type of challenge to a belief is seen as a threat to the self.
This is why facts bounce off.
This is why opposing views escalate anger.
This is why loyalty matters more than reality.
Once belief becomes identity, the goal is no longer to be right. It’s to be affirmed. "
No need, however, for Frank George to agonize over group fixation.
It logically always follows -- by quite logically linear chronology -- whenever souls and schools void themselves of access to humanities. Whenever people lack access to individuals, whether in humanities or in anecdotal real life.
Phil Balla, I read your post and reread yesterday’s HCR’s Feb. 7 Newsletter. If anything, it was more shocking this time. It’s another Far Right-Wing challenge to the rule of law, can't be ignored, and needs to be stopped. I hope the judge's decision will be thrown out on appeal (if that’s what would happen with a successful appeal. I’m no legal scholar).
They showed up at a daycare last week to grab a father who had only a misdemeanor on his record, for which he spent time in jail and later community service. Not a "criminal" and this was Idaho, aka red state.
I sat next to a guy on a flight to Bozeman once who in polite chat admitted he worked for the for profit prison industry and was going to a new site they'd purchased in eastern Montana. I told him he should have flown into Billings as it was closer and he said Bozeman was a much nicer place.
I told him no doubt Bozeman wouldn't have allowed such a thing to be built there and got up and moved.
From journalist and preacher Dr. Stacey Patton, who writes on Substack about the Black experience in America, a prayer for Black History Month in the time of Trump:
Teach us, Black Jesus, how to build soft places for each other. Teach us how to speak gently to our own people. Teach us how to release the burden of defending our humanity to those who refuse to see it. Help us spend our days pouring into Black joy, Black safety, Black brilliance, and Black rest. Help us remember that we were never a mistake, never an afterthought, never a problem you were trying to solve, but a people you called good from the very beginning.
Bless the creatures that walk beside us and teach us presence. Bless the spaces where we can finally exhale. And as we move through Black History Month, help us not just remember struggle and survival, but practice joy, rest, and belonging in real time. And bless us with the courage to live like we belong here, because we do.
Dr. Patton wrote this in her weekly sermon on the Sunday after Trump posted a meme that disrespected the Obamas.
It comes at the end of a sermon about the nature of dignity in animals and our love for them, specifically the winner of the Westminster Dog Show. In every Patton sermon there is satire, but the punch in the gut always comes at the end.
It's so interesting you used the example about the nature of dignity in animals and our love for them. When my dog was dying I was in despair I would not know when the right time was to end his life. People told me my pup would tell me.
Sure enough it was during an incident when I rushed to protect 'his dignity' that I knew the time had come.
Georgia, thanks for attempting to build soft (based on compassion and factual accuracy) places for the people of this forum. It is becoming an increasingly hard and strident place, even as the letters remain calm and reasoned.
Of course, this hardness is fear-based. There is much to be fearful of right now. Fear can either focus our minds on effective, creative options or blind us to them. One ear-mark I use to discern the blind from the focused is to note the frequency of derogatory names for Trump a poster uses. The more derogatory names, the more fearful the poster is, and generally the less focused and valuable the posts are. The name-calling has its place (I've certainly done my share), mainly as a relief valve. Now, however, we need to focus on what works; writing congress-critters, educating our neighbors, texting any family or friends in police or military, showing up for protests, etc, etc. Thanks again, Georgia.
You bring up some good points, Steve. I think that the "hard and strident" tenor of some comments here are a reflection of people's perceptions of danger to both self and country coupled with the abject violence that we are all witnessing at the hands of an out of control rogue agency that is killing our residents. We are being inundated with the horrors that our government is inflicting upon our neighbors coupled with the unfathomable acquiescence of family, friends, and other people in power who (in our collective minds) should know better.
Heaven knows that I am by turns scared, angry, outraged, despondent, and royally pissed off at what I see not only from our government, but people who used to be my friends and now am forced to conclude they are no friends of mind as they support what ICE is doing in our communities. I try to keep my comments more measured and reasoned, but two things I do on a regular basis: I utilize MAGAt (those initials refer to the regular MAGA with the "t" representing either "trope" or "turd", depending on my mood at the moment and whether I need a noun or an adjective. I also use either "current occupant" or "ffpotus" to refer to 45-47. ffpotus is "first felon president of the united states" in lower case to indicate my disrespect.
Yes, agreed, and thank you for mentioning the shifting tenor of this community. I used to read and participate here because of the wise and thoughtful comments. I often learned as much from the community as I did from the letters. There has been a shift towards anger( fear), name calling, and pejorative statements against groups that leaves me unsettled. We have seen how divisive sentiment has hurt our nation, and despite HCR’s generally level headed discourse the division lives large and growing in this community. The angry left is not the solution. We need the big tent. We need the rational mind, circumspect ideas, a unifying cry to bring the masses together and fight this un-American administration.
Stop voting for white men. They are going extinct anyway. The future of America is bad bunny and Liam Ramos. He is a brave American boy! He is back in Minnesota after a judge ruled that the ice fascists could not deport his family. I wrote a poem inspired by him: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/liam-ramos-poem
The problem now is that the AG agrees with the replacement theory, and she is allowing racial profiling stops, also allowing ICE to be above the law, even when they kill people. That administration just got two judges to say that they can continue to harass, beat, and even shoot people who interfere with their mission.
The Republicans are not living up to their agreement to negotiate new limits on ICE. Again, they can never be trusted.
There will be a partial government shutdown.
We will see who cares.
Meanwhile, Trump is making more corrupt deals for himself.
This policy of detaining people based on their ethnicity is now known as 'Kavanaugh Stops', after the concurring opinion of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. It was just the opinion of a single justice but it's given the Trump administration the green light to continue this highly objectionable practice.
I like to think that right now he's like The Grinch, and that both his heart and brain are two sizes too small. And, like The Grinch, that he can be redeemed. But I'm not confident that he can be.
Oh he doesn't have a heart... but he does have a brain. He didn't get where he is entirely by Leonard Leo's money.
Not only are 'Kavanaugh Stops' blatantly unconstitutional but I'm sure that the other Federalists were pissed off that Brett just tore the veil of decency off their game. He realized that he was going to go down in history as another McCarthy. Not someone who just made a 'mistake' but someone who is openly evil.
He tried walking it back.. but the Government is still doing Kavanaugh Stops so I don't think it helped him at all.
He knows that when this all goes down. He will be the first one to be impeached.
To use a pun, Kavanaugh's record of corruption pales in comparison to Clarence's. If there's a line forming for justice impeachments, I'm pretty sure Clarence should be Number One.
I suspect he is like many/most white privileged males; he simply did not think it through because it has zero relevance to his rarified experience. Many such privileged White males can't be bothered to consider realities beyond their own narrow perspective (Trump, Miller, Bessent, Witkoff, the list goes on and on).
That's a good point that I hadn't considered. I should have remembered his original borderline-delusional remarks that gave birth to term "Kavanagh stops." Thank you.
Trump has pretty much checked out of running anything except withholding previously allocated funds to blue states.
On Saturday, he bragged that Ozempic has gone from $1000 to $199, a 578% decrease in price thanks to him. None of these facts were close to being accurate and the 578%???. That's not how math works DonOLD.
Fox News cut him off which is rarer than an honest Republican and switch to a story about Savannah Guthrie's mom. When Fox News walks away, you know it's really bad.
His attention has been diverted to other ways to waste taxpayer dollars, like rebuilding the Kennedy Center and a giant marble arch. White and cold, just like him.
Yeah, GJ, it would be great if “the media” (meaning “the news”) walked away from silly Trump, but, the huge difference from the McCarthy era and today is COMEDY! It is going to be difficult to have Colbert, Kimmel, SNL, Stewart, etc. walk away from such rich material that simply writes itself. Plus, I, for one, love to laugh at the stupidity. I guess we need to come up with different fun, huh?
No. Trump doesn't have the intelligence to appreciate comedy. It's when he's the butt of the joke he becomes unhinged. If anything we need to make it more fun of him! It enrages him!
I totally agree! Ridiculing him enrages him. Remember when Obama was roasting him at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner? I swear he decided to run for president that night.
He can brag that he literally removed healthcare, err I mean 'fraud', from veterans and their families. But the Mara Lago crowd can get their Ozempic cheap. Leaving them more cash for their plastic surgery.
I will likely lose my sight because I can no longer afford the $600 a month eye drops. But Muffy and Buffy can now snack on hors d'oeuvres and not worry about their designer dresses not fitting.
Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled for the person that actually uses GLP-1's to control their diabetes. But the number of those people is miniscule compared to the weight loss crowd.
Oh, wouldn't that be the dream-come-true moment with this current prevaricating, blubbering, whiny, self-pitying, demented loudmouth bully in the White House...
Which reporters? The internet has completely changed this as has the current ownership of legacy media. Just look at the WH Press Room. Listen to the set up questions from podcasters and rightwing sycophants. Check out the mean girl antics and the mega misogynistic presidential smack downs.
I think you missed the point. The quote refers to reporters ignoring McCarthy after he lost the public, and ICTT is wishing that to be the case with the dictator. Reading comprehension is a good thing.
ICTT, every time, EVERY TIME, he insults woman reporters, I get so upset that the entire group doesn't turn a walk out!
And as those who read Jeff Tiedrich know of his challenge, I keep waiting for one of the reporters to take that challenge. Yes, they might lose their job, but I have no doubt that a GoFundMe for them would reach double-digit million$ within a week!!
Nixon Was another red baiter. McCarthy's kit of dirty tricks has been riding with the GOP for some time now. Now it's all lies all the time. We so need to raise the bar.
Ike Eisenhower did not speak out against McCarthy until he had successfully won the Presidency. And even then, it took a lawyer to ask McCarthy in the Army- McCarthy hearings, "Have you no shame?" before Ike would speak against him. Had McCarthy not been a severely mentally unstable person, physically taken out of the Senate screaming, he would have done a lot more damage. Trump has the mask of sanity though bits of it appears to be falling away. Read the book The Mask of Sanity to meet Trumpesque folks.
NEVER EVER BACK DOWN TO A BULLY or they will continue to chase you FOREVER!!
NEVER EVER TRUST A BULLY because they are SO insecure narcissistic and paranoid that sooner than later EVERYONE becomes one of their enemies and targets!!
VOTE ALL maga MURDEROUS PEDOPHILE PROTECTORS OUT!!
They OBVIOUSLY CARE NOTHING about AMERICA or AMERICANS!
RESISTANCE REARS ITS HEAD AND ROARS...as the Superbowl " Epstein survivor "ad" sends a chillingly effective message to the world, to the Trump regime, and specifically to Pam Bondi. "Stand with us. Tell Attorney General Pam Bondi IT IS TIME FOR THE TRUTH." Those women in their bravely persevering solidarity are showing us just how powerful a strategic and creative approach to Resistance can be and how vital it is for us to utilize all our collective resources to fight for our Democracy, to fight for truth over lies, and as Timothy Snyder reminds us - to never give up in advance.
Our country's racist past...and our country's racist present. Not far removed from one another, are they? But never before has such a clearly racist president who has no compunction about demonstrating his racism presided over the country--and been given free rein and remained unchecked by his own party. But the rest of the country is standing up to his vile attempts to introduce white supremacy. He--and his MAGA sycophants--will continue lashing out until he is gone from office. That cannot happen soon enough...and we must put an end to the sycophants' tyranny as well and hold them all accountable.
"The great Klan revival of that time [late 1920s] was sparked by active racist Woodrow Wilson, who promoted Birth of a Nation, film that argued for the KKK as an ICE force of its time, hunting and murdering anyone they chose."
One of my ex-students was working on a paper that covered the era of Birth of a Nation and so we got the film and watched here at home with him. And some of us always recommend the book Fever in the Heartland which covers the KKK in the 1920s, mainly in my home state of Indiana, a place still full of racists.
Wilson was well-known as "a narrow minded Southern bigot." He was the one who nationalized Jim Crow by bringing it into the federal civil service. How he ever became a progressive hero is beyond me. His famous 14 Points only applied to the white people trying to create nations our of the German and Austrian Empires after WW1, as a young Vietnamese named Nguyen Ai Quoc discovered when he tried to use the 14 points to get Vietnamese independence from the French Empire. (Later better-known to history as Ho Chi Minh). But then the Democrats - as late as the 70s - used to celebrate Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Wilson as Great Democrats - what did those three have in common?
My alternate-reality theory is Trump's Tech Bros will engineer a false-flag assassination of POTUS and put the blame on antifa in order to install the more compliant suck-ass J.D. (Junior Dictator), once Trump looses the mid-terms for the Republicans.
I'm not certain of the details of how they will bring it about...but I am certain that if trump makes it through the midterms, shortly after he will be pushed aside by the tech bros. He's been their useful idiot--and his usefulness will expire with the midterms.
That is so, of course. My comment was really about our more recent (20th century) past, as Heather outlined. And, while Johnson was racist and his followers were racist, he didn't have the "apparatus of government" behind him (because it didn't exist that way at the time) in the same way that modern presidents like trump have.
Woodrow Wilson was certainly a clearly racist president; there wasn't the media amplification of that time. The post WWI era was a horribly racist time in America.
Yes, he was. And so was the country. And you are absolutely correct about the role of the media in amplifying the racism we face now. However, a differentiating factor between Wilson and trump is that I don't think Wilson had the "apparatus of government" behind him the way trump does. I don't know whether there was a trifecta of White House-Senate-House of Representatives the way there is today. While the executive branch was smaller then, I don't think Wilson wielded as much out-of-control power over his departments or that his cabinet was a house of sycophants as it is today.
I was born in 1951, one year after McCarthy went on his rage against innocent people. His accomplice was at one time, Trump’s really close friend, Roy Cohn. Those two men were a disgrace (Trump’s favorite word) and look, they both died shortly afterward. One died of alcoholism and the other, of AIDS. So really, this is a lesson for us to never support the jerk-in-chief nor his minions. We are seeing all of this being played out again as if it is a game. I don’t appreciate the irony🙄from these monsters.
Last Friday, a majority of judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (which Adam Klarsfield of All-Rise News has called "the most conservative federal appellate court in the United States") approved Trump's mass detention policy without offering a chance for bond, even if they have no criminal records and have resided in the country for decades. They had clearly been sought out by the administration to deliver the result it wanted.
The withering dissenting judgement from judge Dana Douglas, a Biden appointee, said:
“Straining at a gnat, the majority swallows a camel. The government’s proposed reading of the statute would mean that, for purposes of immigration detention, the border is now everywhere. That is not the law Congress passed, and if it had, it would have spoken much more clearly.”
She noted in her dissenting opinion that some of the detainees were "spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
The border is now everywhere. That's the chilling fact of the matter now unless the Supreme Court is disposed to overrule this court.
The Fifth Circuit has always been conservative, sometimes to the point of being right wing racists. BTW, Trump is not a conservative in the true sense of the word in a political context. He is an authoritarian grifter.
Trump is not in any way conservative with a small "c', nor is his party, nor, apparently, is the Fifth Circuit majority. They are reckless beyond measure.
The idea that the border is now everywhere is a useful one for us to encompass the Administration's use of CBP everywhere. This needs to stop, but it can't be stopped until lawmakers opposed to the administration can keep it in mind
My mother told us a story of Sen. McCarthy giving a speech at Smith College around that time in which he pulled the same stunt - holding up a list of Americans he claimed had communist affiliations and worked in the government. She said the students roundly booed and hissed. Ultimately, as you say, it was the decency of the American people that brought him down. I think it is beginning to dawn on many of us that no institution or protector is coming to save us. If we value this country and its ideals, we cannot expect to be saved by Mueller, Jack Smith, Garland, impeachment, the Supreme Court or even Congress. Similar to the McCarthy period, we must save ourselves- organizing, protesting, speaking out and voting!
Bad Bunny broke X while Heather Cox Richardson was writing/posting tonight's letter. The symbolism in tonight's half-time performance was awesome! Congratulations, Seahawks!
My great grandfather came to this country in the1850s from China. He spent a few years building up a savings and returned to his village near the city of Canton. He came back to SF in 1864 and started the first herb shop in Chinatown. His son took over the business and eventually my father took the helm. In 1957 it was no longer legal to have any business with China. My father was arrested for "trading with the enemy" since all the herbs came from mainland China. The government burned 93 years of inventory, and the family lost its business overnight. My uncle was responsible for taking a physical inventory every year, and he told me that we had $750,000 in inventory at that time.
Eventually my father was found not guilty, and the government prosecutor who headed the case against my father was reprimanded by the judge for misusing the rule of law (trading with the enemy). He was scolded for trying to gain political recognition through the use of fear of communism. Of course, by that time, we, including our extended family from the village, had lost all our savings and investments. All the employees had to resort to whatever jobs they could find. My mother told me that my father had to work 3 jobs at one time. His hobby was photography and that was how he wound up working in that field. My uncle passed away in 2019, and he wanted to sue the government until his last days. He was 98 years old.
I always learn something new from these Letters. In this case, it was the role of the Chicago Tribune in amplifying McCarthy's lies. I was just a small boy when all this happened and have always been curious as to why this kind of rubbish found such fertile soil. Little did I know how much the Red Scare was to affect my own life. There are direct links between that phenomenon and the Vietnam War.
And as always, the excellent Dr. Richardson highlights themes that echo into our own times.
It's still a mystery -- why rubbish like that manages to keep worming its way to fertile soil.
Socialism -- at least the concept of public involvement in, and oversight of, the private market -- has been with us at least since the New Deal as a part of the overall 'general welfare' clause of the Constitution. The evidence is overwhelming -- socialism saved capitalism from itself in the 1930s (and perhaps saved the country from demagoguery and dictatorship), and was instrumental in the entire postwar period of prosperity, growing social equality, public accountability. Given that, it's even more of a puzzle why there remain such fertile grounds that suddenly bloom -- like algae or something -- every so often. The evidence does not support these people's malignant hatred of the concept.
One of the larger messages of tonight's lesson from history was that we're approaching that moment of 'have you, Senator, at last, no decency whatever?' that brought Joseph McCarthy down. Despite everything, history does tends to move in cycles. Our current one is simply exhausting itself in the form of a demented, loony tunes President so utterly disconnected from reality I'm surprised he can put his own pants on in the morning.
Great post, ICTT. Your conclusion seems to me to be exactly correct. What concerns me is that not enough people may care enough about their own, our country’s, and this administration’s glaringly obvious lack of decency that a question like that put to McCarthy by Welch will simply get lost in the noise.
I worry we have become so accustomed to lying by all (including state) government officials, plus the violence and open hate-spewing trump engages, we’re not going to call it out now—and be outraged—or in the future.
McCarthy was brought down by: "Have you, Senator, at last, no decency whatever?"
That was then, this is now…
A key problem is that MAGA Republicans are fully aware of, and in fact applaud, the malignantly-increasing indecency of their Dear Leader, Donald J. Trump.
ArcticStones, as you've implied, our national lexicon has been turned upside-down. Words no longer mean what they once did, and frequently mean the opposite. "Decency," for instance, no longer means respectability or consciousness of others. It means "weakness; a quaint irrelevance." Nobody wants to be weak and quaint.
Gregg, I have, on more than one occasion, not only eaten that sandwich on the fly, but while driving in great excess of the posted speed limit because I know that if I don't eat that sandwich, I make bad decisions, and that is a risky business.
(I was on my way to an in-progress weapons involved dispute with a 15 minute response time. I was also talking on the radio and the phone, coordinating a multi unit response.)
McCarthy’s gave up when the press ignored him. That’s what the legit press should have done with Trump from the beginning. Instead, they followed him around breathlessly asking for his “thoughts” about where Obama was born.
Yes. As if anybody needs more "interviews" with this obtuse, grotesque charlatan who sits in his chair, waving his little hands back and forth, forth and back, pumping that invisible concertina for everything it's worth, when anybody "asks" a question. You don't have to be a psychiatrist to see a prevaricating liar going 'don't say that, stop right there, go away, don't ask anything, no, no, no, go away.' Why the press does not make more of these constant physical gestures of obvious guilt and deception I've no idea.
How I long for the President who spoke in well-structured sentences, even logically-construed paragraphs! Instead we’ve got a Mad (wannabe) King who is limited by the vocabulary and rage of a nine-year-old forever deprived of the approval of his father.
I’ve said it before: Trump’s single redeeming trait is that his malevolence is tempered by massive incompetence.
The press may yet catch on. The IMDB movie rating system allows the public to submit their assessments on a scale of 1 to 10 (no zeros). The database includes 29 million titles, only two of which have a current average rating of 1.2. None have a lower average rating than 1.2. Bezos’s recently released Melanomia documentary has racked up 50,000 public assessments, so far, averaging 1.3. There is still plenty of time for it to sink to the lowest average rating of all 29 million titles, though. We can hope. (Reported in the Tannenbaum blog)
I’m still processing Heather’s from yesterday.
In it she cites many lies by the many lying Republican oafs, fools, and mountebanks covering for the liar-in-chief and his Putin-sponsored campaign for white supremacy in the U.S. as in Russia, and for the additional levels of concentration camp cruelties in the U.S. modeled on the Nazis of WWII and on the Russian gulags then, before, and after.
She’s got the details, from the illegality Donald-appointed judges will sign off on to the torture built into these camps by denial of medical services, from the rank profit-making to the private-industry prison subsidies to the new sets of lies covering Donald’s vengeance campaign against blue states.
Most charming in this last is Heather’s quote from another of Donald’s cult members on how “ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S.” – when we all know his private armies of murderers and thugs will never bother anyone in any red state – where most brown-skinned immigrants actually are.
Maybe you could actually not make it about you, Mr. Balla, skewing the conversation to wherever you would like to take it, but about Heather's newsletter tonight instead -- what it might mean, and why now.
There's a larger lesson in re-examining Joseph McCarthy's sordid history (and that of his sidekick, Roy Cohn, who we all know ended up being Donald Trump's mentor). In the middle of chaos, we seem to be finally approaching that magical 'have you, at last, no decency at all, Senator' moment that finally caused the entire phenomenon of McCarthyism to turn, almost on a dime, the way it did. Our demented president, decomposing and decompensating with each passing day, has exhausted his own political capital. The only thing keeping the whole Rube Goldberg contraption together is inertia and fear. It's ripe to be flipped on a dime. The murders in Minneapolis may be heralds of that coming moment.
The fear is certainly real, as the cornered rat (and his minions) fight even harder. But a day is coming, perhaps sooner than many of us realize -- to echo and paraphrase Liz Cheney -- when the memory of this entire era will be but a distant memory. Quite a few Republicans are now thinking very hard about that day. 39 of them in the House have already announced a sudden need to spend more precious time with their families rather than seeking to be doxxed, pizza-ed, their children threatened, or getting primaried by somebody even loonier and dumber than they are. Even now, the current GOP majority is only about 2 or 3. It needs lock-step obedience and a strong Speaker to pass anything, since a tie vote in the House fails. (Last time I checked, no strong House speakers could be found.)
As Pete Buttigieg says, if Republicans are thinking about what comes next, so should we. Those who don't plan their coming moment in the sun very carefully aren't likely to get the chance to influence it.
I keep hoping that a couple of Republican resignations from the House – or the divine intervention called "mortality" – will make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House even before the November Midterm Elections.
Or deaths from a couple of the old long serving Republicans in the House. These are the ones that bought Newt's BS about Democrats being the enemy and never work with them. They are the biggest hypocrites of all.
Saw an instagram post yesterday that said McConnell is in the hospital. On death’s doorstep. I will not mourn him!
Susan Collins voted in lockstep with McConnell the entire time he was SML. This means that what her constituents wanted didn't mean a thing.
And now she is begging the Trump administration to release Federal funding that they are holding up.
It's like setting fire to a house and then getting praised for calling the fire department.
Well, Gary, Susan Collins was "concerned." That counts for something . . . .
And Susie from Maine was re-elected, so not ALL of her constituents were against her. Most liked her an the Republican message.
Denise, I knew he was in the hospital, but not how ill. I certainly will not mourn him. I might have a wee dram of single malt neat to celebrate.
Michele, as a former Laphoig lover, I’ll drink some of my Freakshow Cabernet to that. (Really decent for CA.)
Here you go...circling the drain?
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2026/02/05/around-the-nation
None of us should.
Have you seen Heathers video where she points out that 23 Republicans could bend all this right now?
Yes, saw that Annamarie. Republics do have down sides. 'A handful of senators won't pass legislation'.
Yup, good thoughts, Arctic! And to add to the hope of Republican resignations, there is the hope of a Democratic takeover of the House via the mid-term elections. Right now, if “something” happens to Trump, JD Vance becomes the President and Mike Johnson becomes the Vice President. If the Dems take over the House, by this time next year, the Order of Succession could put someone like Speaker Jeffries as the new VEEP! Yikes, huh?
What a totally delicious outcome that would be. I had read somewhere that the GOP holds a one vote majority and there's the special election to replace MTG to be held. That the ranking member over DHS is retiring is fantastic as well.
A dangerous fool with too much power. I would like to be a fly on the wall after trump tells Europeans " You have to end it now. I can tell I'm really good at this stuff". I would be interested in hearing comments said in private after this idiot speaks- anywhere.
Who was the comedian that said 'Wipe that foam from around your mouth'?
Any time trump says “I’m really good at this stuff” you know to do the exact opposite.
Papa, Johnson would only ascend if both the president and vice president were to go in one fell swoop, or if the new president were to die before a vice president could be appointed. T here was no method of appointing a vice president until the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967 that an appointment process was outlined.
Ally House (beautiful Oregon),
This hellish Republican administration must go!
There are not enough "cleansing agents" to clean up the massive destruction" they continue to create against our nation and the future, in every area ie education, health care, being able to purchase a home, to have parks remain for the enjoyment and appreciation of fellow citizens and visitors from other countries...etc.
They live for every dollar they can steal from us. They invest in "brainwashing" not caring for each and every human being we have welcomed (LADY LIBERTY) into this great and huge nation!
I feel like we have been captured by criminals who have taken over our government in Washington , DC as well as within the leadership within many states.
We have also treated allies with total disregard and disrespect!!!!
We once worked together to solve problems....now we are acting so insane towards our once friends...they cannot trust anything that comes from our highest levels of governance!!!!
Think about the deciding vote in tie in the Senate - the major thing a VEEP does. Mike Johnson or Hakeem Jeffries. Skip the technicalities of the title.
I agree that Speaker is an important position; I was simply addressing the line of presidential succession which is different than the important role of Speaker of the House.
Ally, I wondered about that. Thanks for how replacing the VP would work.
PPP, respectfully, I think you may be in error; upon the death of a president, the VP remains vacant until the House and Senate have their say. Personally, I doubt seriously that it ever will be Johnson.
Riad, it will never be sweaty little johnson. He should retire to a Louisiana swamp and meet some hungry alligators.
LOL 😂!
Yes Vance becomes POTUS. Johnson does not become VP by default. Vance selects his own VP.
Really? Better check out that former Speaker of the House can become Vice President, Papa’s Pancake House. Isn’t that post vacant until the next election?
Oh! That would be WONDERFUL!!!
What has been dawning on more and more Americans? The Trump administration has completely failed the American people. Failed economically, failed legally, failed constitutionally, failed internationally, failed morally and is now failing politically. The bodies of x-Trump supporters and administration members keeps piling up.
And Trump, following his standard strategy, denies everything, nothing is wrong, it's just his enemies attacking a poor, misunderstood public servant working hard for the American people.
But it's more and more obvious, not just to American's, but to the whole world, that Trump is a fool. A dangerous fool with too much power. But a fool indeed. Thankfully, he has failed to take a 250 year old Democracy and bend it to his fascist will.
I cannot predict how Trump/MAGA will collapse. But like the trynanny of Joe Mccarthy, it surely will. The American people are coming back together. As a nation, we don't agree on everything. But we certainly agree. The more we see it, the more we don't want to live in a police state ruled by a King Trump, Duke Vance, Duke Miller and the whole gang of miserable human beings humiliating America.
I can't help but think in the end, it will be the economy. Probably an implosion of crypto and AI and this strange cycle of the rich investing in each other while the rest of us watch from the sidelines. Scott Galloway suggests if we want to fight, cancel subscriptions to OpenAI, Amazon and/or Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney, etc. Keep only one streaming subscription. Maybe our NATO allies will join us in the fight. The only thing T cares about more than power is his money.
Martha,
"crypto" is fake. Never trust anything the Trump family touches!!!
Merrill,
So what are we going to do about theses incompetent goons????
I've been thinking a lot about this. Maybe of the direct action of citizens to protest are having an effect. Also, the legal system has been kicking butt. We have to intensify our pressure on Congress and start bringing much more citizen pressure on Blue State governors to use their powers to resist, including the National Guard which create a wonderfully ironic constitutional crisis at SOCTUS!
Yes. It does seem the "legal system" is quite intact, though one has to look closely to see that. On the "front page" bad news sells, so we struggle to find what is really happening. We're like mushrooms. Kept in the dark.
First. Do not 'enable the goons' so they arrest you and detain you and take you off the street! Getting yanked off the street plays right into "Divide and Conquer". If we're going to get out of this mess we need our "boots on the ground", and not in some Fort Bliss detention facility with 70,000 others. Gov Waltz, Janet Mills, or Mayor MamDami, say they have our back.., hohohoo, but they aren't able to yank that Federal Chain to get us out of the jail once we've been hauled off. If they even know we've been hauled off. Let's make things better, not worse.
Oooops, regarding the news we receive: In my "mushroom" comment, I forgot to mention we are being treated like mushrooms.., kept in the dark, and fed manure (BS).
Merrill, what you write is interesting, however "the proof" .., meaning 'the voter turnout'.., will be "in the pudding." Of that, I am really afraid - aren't you? It does not appear to me, at least, that those who don't bother to show up at the polls have been moved off of their dead-ass or comfy-recliner and big-screen TV. For them, they don't think their vote amounts to a yellow-hole in the snow, so why bother. The price of gas is all they look at, along with FAUX News and the constant barrage of Savannah Guthrie photo-ops (yo.., could that be a distraction?).
Absolutely! Trump's Roy Cohn-style McCarthyism, unsubstantiated charges, "witch hunts," adultery, and clamor for headlines will fade. He can't keep Americans at odds with each other forever. Some day, his supporters will realize he's trying to create a permanent underclass by killing the American Dream. https://www.epi.org/publication/47-ways-trump-has-made-life-less-affordable-in-his-first-year/
Bad Bunny's halftime show last night was a fabulous antidote, celebrating ALL of America at the table. We can still be those people. I LOVE Lady Gaga's and Bruno Mars' song, and it was SO appropriate!
Patricia S Duffy,
Loved "Bad Bunny's" display of creativity and music and JOY!!!!
ALSO EVERY BEAUTIFUL AND TALENTED DANCER AND MUSICIAN!!!
THANKS AND BLESSINGS TO EACH AND ALL!!!
...also a great football game!
Demented..decomposing... and decompensating you say... Now there's an alliteration that only those in this moment of time can appreciate... This is far from the innocent "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers"... Decomposition might have to wait until he's dead, but I certainly look forward to it...
Whenever it does happen, millions of us will all say "death becomes him..."
"ding , dong the witch is dead" sang the townspeople . His flying monkeys will pass with him, never to be seen again.
I look forward to the day America steps out of his ugly demented shadow and the Good Witch of The West reminds us:
"You've always had the power, my dear. You've had it all along," and instructs her to "Close your eyes and tap your heels together three times. And think to yourself, 'There's no place like home'
America is our home, NOT trump's home.
,
The entire world will celebrate his death...time to splash some water......
Even the flying monkeys reveled at her death. The flying monkeys, in this case, the republican house and senate, will not mourn his passing. Cowards as they all were, their cowardice will be all the more on display after they are pressed to explain themselves to our nation for the malfeasance of their representation to all their constituents.
I've had that water thought myself.
Trump getting doused with a bucket of water--that would make headlines! I can just imagine that thin hair flattened, revealing the baldness, and that orange pancake melting off his face onto his suit.
'Ding dong'
There will be street parties, like when Joe Biden was announced president.
'Swingin' an swayin' and record playin'
'Dancin' in the streets'
I can't wait!
Who woulda thunk: Trump is "woke".
I mean: the Mad King is "lying in wake".
Clever.
😂😂😂😂
Michele2. I have a nice single malt ready for a celebration.
I need some Bromo-Seltzer, sorry.
History has seen this act before. Accusations without evidence. Loyalty over law. Noise mistaken for power. From McCarthy to MAGA, the pattern is clear and so is the ending. Demagogues burn bright, exhaust their audience, and leave behind an empty podium where authority once pretended to stand.
''Loud Men Fade: The McCarthy Pattern and the Coming MAGA Collapse''
Donald Trump did not invent a new political movement. He revived an old one and amplified it with better microphones. The playbook is familiar to anyone who remembers the Red Scare, or who has bothered to read history instead of shouting over it. Accusations without evidence. Enemies everywhere. Loyalty elevated above law. Performance replacing governance. America has seen this before, and it did not end well for the man who tried it first.
The original architect of this approach was Joseph McCarthy, a junior senator who discovered that fear travels faster than facts. McCarthy understood something timeless about mass psychology. You do not need proof if you can produce panic. You do not need coherence if you can dominate attention. You do not need to govern if you can accuse. Once he grasped this, he weaponized paranoia and wrapped it in patriotism.
Trump has followed this script almost beat for beat. The only real innovation is scale. Cable news replaced Senate committee rooms. Social media replaced press briefings. Outrage became a 24-hour business model. But the substance remained unchanged. Claims without verification. Enemies named but never proven. Institutions labeled corrupt the moment they resisted personal loyalty.
McCarthy thrived on insinuation. Trump thrives on volume. The effect is the same. When everything is a conspiracy, nothing needs to be demonstrated. When disagreement equals betrayal, accountability becomes impossible. When loyalty tests replace policy, the state stops functioning, and the spectacle takes over.
What MAGA did was industrialize this dynamic. McCarthyism was once a man and a moment. MAGA turned it into a culture. Suspicion became a shared identity. Grievance became a bond. Anger replaced analysis. The movement trained millions to see institutions not as flawed systems to be improved, but as enemies to be destroyed if they failed to serve a single leader.
This is why MAGA reacts so violently to courts, elections, journalists, and civil servants. These institutions do something demagogues cannot tolerate. They slow things down. They ask for evidence. They require process. And process is fatal to performance politics.
For a while, fear works. It always does. McCarthy cowed senators, terrified bureaucrats, and dominated headlines. Trump bullied rivals, bent media coverage, and turned outrage into brand loyalty. Both mistook this moment for permanence. Both believed attention equaled authority.
History has little patience for that mistake.
McCarthy’s downfall did not come from a heroic uprising. It came from exposure and exhaustion. The Army McCarthy hearings forced his behavior into the open. Televised questioning revealed the cruelty, the emptiness, and the repetition. The public saw the act for what it was. Not strength, but insecurity. Not leadership, but abuse. America did not suddenly become wise. It became tired.
Trump and MAGA are heading toward the same wall. The pattern is already visible. Repetition dulls outrage. Claims grow more extreme as credibility shrinks. Each new accusation sounds like the last. Each promised revelation fails to arrive. The movement becomes louder because it is weaker.
The most dangerous phase of demagoguery is not its rise but its decay. As belief erodes, the leader demands more loyalty and less reality. Failure is blamed on sabotage. Losses are declared victories. Law becomes persecution. This is not confidence. It is desperation.
Trump’s central flaw is the same one that destroyed McCarthy. He believes the performance is the power. He assumes the crowd will never notice the absence behind the noise. But spectacle requires novelty, and novelty cannot survive endless repetition. Eventually, the audience sees the strings.
When that moment arrives, the collapse is rarely cinematic. It is administrative. It happens through court rulings, financial records, sworn testimony, and slow institutional grind. It happens when allies distance themselves. When donors vanish. When media attention moves on. When the performance no longer produces fear but fatigue and ridicule.
MAGA’s greatest vulnerability is not electoral defeat alone. It is historical demotion. Movements that claim destiny often end as case studies. They are remembered not for what they promised, but for what they revealed about human susceptibility to fear.
That is McCarthy’s legacy. He is not remembered as a defender of America. He is remembered as a warning label. A lesson about how easily a republic can be rattled, and how ultimately it resists being ruled by paranoia.
Trump risks the same fate. So does MAGA. The louder they shout, the clearer the pattern becomes. Accusations without evidence. Enemies everywhere. Loyalty tests as governance. These are not signs of strength. They are symptoms of a movement that cannot survive scrutiny.
The American Republic has endured worse men than this. It has survived louder voices, darker moments, and deeper divisions. Its endurance does not come from perfection, but from structure. Courts outlast bullies. Records outlast lies. Memory outlasts noise.
Demagogues burn bright and fast. Institutions move slowly and last longer. History is not written by those who shout the loudest. It is written by what remains when the shouting stops.
McCarthy fell not with a bang, but with a verdict from history. Trump and MAGA are moving toward the same judgment, one document, one hearing, one exhausted audience at a time.
https://essayx.substack.com/p/loud-men-fade-the-mccarthy-pattern
Michael, thanks for your comment. The through line is right there staring all of us in the face. McCarthy - Cohn - Trump, you don't even need to connect the dots. It also, to me at least, proves the point of republicans holding office don't care about governance, just power, because if they did care this would not have happened. If we can see this plainly what the fuck is wrong with their eyesight.
Without doubt, Bill, your take on the "through line" is as accurate as can be. My thoughts revolve around where the through line ends; there are still people like Vance, Miller, and of course, the Heritage Foundation, which one can accuse of putting the final touches to what truly looks like a republican conspiratorial scheme. After this is all over, where do we go from here. Democrats are famous for resisting to prosecute past presidents for obvious crimes to the nation. Nixon for instance, never was prosecuted for his role in Watergate; his reformation, however, was a welcome sight when he admitted the power of hate and what it can do to a person. Bush II, however, was never prosecuted for the approximate 4,000 US military deaths caused by the Iraq war. Vincent Bugliosi, in writing his book: "The Prosecution of George W bush for Murder" illustrates very convincingly the crime of, murder, but certainly at least, manslaughter in sending US troops on a wild goose chase for WMD. I should also mention the approximate 100,000 Iraqi civilians that were killed literally, for no reason. Blackwater has never been held to account for the atrocities that they committed during this war. As for the leadership of the Heritage Foundation, what consequences will they face? All of this needs to be born out to the public. The proof of Trump's guilt is certain. The Jan. 6 Committee and Jack Smith have already processed the proof which I believe can be tied in with Project 2025. All we need is the will to do it. Vance and Miller, to name just two, will need to answer for their crimes of corrupting our Constitution to their own ends. This should not be over yet and so easily.
Riad Mahayni,
The power: ie money and influence of The Heritage Foundation has taken years to build. As a former Republican, I too saw it as a positive force for freedom.
It was when Trump was nominated for President of the United States of America that I immediately changed political parties. I saw it as ,"The Republican Party has lost their soul...and they claim to be so religious!"
My father passed away when I was 12 years old. He was always a strong Democrat. He would say, " The Democrats will help to care for the poor." I should have taken the "Dems" seriously even as a young person. I regret every vote I gave to a Republican!!!!
I grew up in rural America. I wasn’t interested in public politics because it was a business of levers like the old trip rake . You drag those tines along gathering a bunch of hay and when it was in the right line you pulled that lever. Then along came a politician with a gawd awful buck rake and run off with all the hay. It was like that back in the last century. Republicans were hard to like. They always lied, took the most, hated everbody. Nothing was ever done right. Eventually they ended up with most everything. They were always sure they were right and deserving of more than anyone. They hated the “lazy Indians.” They hated the rare men who were democrats. I don’t really remember why we as kids avoided them. I guess they were no fun at all. Wanna be politicos had to buy a cowboy hat and have it shaped by that old gal in Great Falls. Get yourself some shit kickers with a bulldog heel and learn to rope a little bit. If you won the election in no time at all you had herself a big spread and could pass yourself off as authentic snap button cowboy stock. I reckon now days you get yerself a couple three helicopters and a flight jacket and earphones and chase livestock from hell to breakfast. The you get in yer corporate jet and fly off to a big city telling your constituents you are going there on important business meetings destined to make Montanans part of the modern scene. We probably will never get another Mike and Maureen Mansfield or even a Max Baucus but at least the new guys can play billionaire poker with tax player money. Yup. With a rope in the hand and a cow by the tail…
Vance and Miller? Uh huh. And, what will be their sentence, once found guilty? Stocks? The Rack? Kaning? Chained to a post in a NE town square, and stoned? What? Und.., Der Leader?
You said that so well. "Movements that claim destiny often end as case studies" indeed.
49.7% doth not a mandate make. I just hope that this collapse occurs before this group of psychopaths causes a blood bath at the midterms or a nuclear incident isn't employed to create another spectacular diversion. I don't believe this regime has a moral driver other than winning at all costs. It is their god. No matter how punic it may be.
They certainly don't care about their children or grandchildren's world! I guess an apocalyptic climate change doesn't bother them, as long as they can makes $$$$$$ funding pollution producing now.
Yup. Let's not blow it up. This door will fall off its hinges, provided we let it. It's built to fail, not last. Gotta be smart about this. We're watching Snidely Whiplash in action. (Snidely, a stereotypical villain whose caricature existed first in silent 'movies'.) For those of us here, who remember.
ICTT I admire your optimism but I don't share it. What has struck me more than anything in the last two weeks of our now quotidian sh*tshow is the revelation that much of the activities displayed in the Epstein files might have been designed for the purpose of enabling Vladimir Putin to have blackmail intel on powerful men in America. The pearl clutching going on about the abuse, torture, and degradation of girls and women displayed in these millions of pages (and apparently far more graphic in those that the DOJ refuses to disclose) is laughable because the torture, abuse, and degradation of women and girls is a CONSTANT in the history of human civilization. Indeed, it is the HALLMARK of human civilization. So to hear all the men scramble to deflect the anger that women and girls swallow daily and are now feeling slightly more emboldened to express makes me want to slap them all upside the head. As long as patriarchy is protected by men in power, nothing is going to change.
I agree, but I would add that boys were also abused. Children. Not just girls.
Linda Mitchell, KCMO,
Vladimir Putin is a formidable "enemy" and we make it easy for him . There are many Americans working WITH HIM. They both fear him and respect the control he holds over his people.
Linda agree: "As long as patriarchy is protected by men in power, nothing is going to change."
Even so, I am very proud of the brave women working throughout our world for "the people" everyday, under difficult circumstances.
We should never forget that Trump, his efforts to legitimize white-male-supremacist genocide, the resultant ChristoNazi conquest and its MAGAstapo terrorism is the triumph of a multi-generation, bi-partisan scheme more than a century in the making, To learn of the carefully hidden roots of the crisis, the documentation of which include a PBS film about the enormous support for Hitler here in the '30s and additional, meticulously footnoted documentation of the plutocracy's support for Nazism, go here: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-25-2026?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=205274486
Evidently, Europeans have a sense of morality that is missing in America. People in high places are stepping aside, or being asked to, because they have been named as part of the Epstein horror show. Here, no big deal, at least so far.
Aha, that despicable Roy Cohn is the chain connecting McCarthy and trump.
History does seem to repeat itself. So went that scourge of the Senate, McCarthy, as will go Donald Trump. It well appears that most republicans will sign on to anything that is about *them* rather than the nation, only to find out......oops.... better to think about this some more and see what the other side has to offer. Their penchant for retractability is very...... well...... so very republican.
I always look forward to your comments, ICTT…You help me clarify my thoughts!!! Thank you!!!
I have often wondered why it is taking so many people so long to say "Enough, Stop!" and finally turn on Trump. He is so clearly operating on McCarthyist tactics and always has. Wasn't Roger Cohn, working for both men, the direct throughline? It seems like is is taking longer to turn it around this time. Perhaps people are more jaded. But even back then, a large portion of Americans simply did not want to bother to do the work necessary to maintaining democracy. So instead they let democracy degrade to the point it is now, where that maintainance work is exhausting. And rebuilding is even more exhausting and tenuous. Destruction is easy and emotionally simple.
Im looking for the rear view mirror
Thank you.
Pursuant to your first paragraph, ICTT, I had a reaction to the actual words of HCR's Letter, but can find nowhere to express it because the conversation here has headed off into a completely different direction.
The general theme of the Letter, as I read it, is about the long thread of conservative white panic that they might not always be in charge. McCarthy's "red scare" was a roundabout way of getting to the kernel of his fear and that of far too many Americans: loss of white power.
It was on this foundation that Republican operatives forged an alliance with evangelical leaders to create a new wedge issue. In the beginning, it was a choice between criminalizing same-sex relationships or criminalizing abortion. In the end, the abortion issue won out because LGBT persons were universally hated by Christians already. No division was to be had there.
More importantly, abortion was causing concern for Republicans. In the new affluence of the 1950s abetted by new rights for women, including being able to own property and get credit, white women were flexing their independence. They were deferring marriage, getting jobs, deferring or declining motherhood. The birthrate among white women was declining rapidly, causing a dramatic shortage of future white Republican voters.
With the help of evangelical leaders, the GOP launched the campaign against abortion, touting it as a moral issue. But it was never about morals; it was about numbers. Forced birth of white babies would insure future Republican voters.
What a rude opening paragraph! Chill dude!
Interesting. Balla starts off by saying he is still processing. You start off by taking a dig at him, and then skew the conversation the direction you want to take it.
Hi Phil. American Prison: An Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment. A book about contract, for profit prisons that document the kind of treatment that detainment camps that mirror these prisons in poor facilities with insufficient food, poor quality food, unsanitary conditions, lack of medical care, abusive guards and little to no oversight.
Don't forget the ownership of such by former Alabama senator then U.S. Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. Is it a coincidence that he bet on investing in prison systems ? Any 'dots' to connect there ?
That’s something I didn’t know. Even though I live in Alabama, I have paid little attention to state politics. Since I lean slightly left of center and Democratic, paying attention to Alabama politics is an exercise in futility. I have voted with intent on Alabama politics to elect Doug Jones and vote for Harris. For all his faults, Sessions was a good bet in advocating for veterans. Not a good choice for Attorney General, but better than Pam Bondi. You probably know that Tuberville lives in Florida and maintains a house in Auburn.
When Tuberville was first elected, and I heard him say the three branches of government were the House, the Senate and the presidency, I saw that he represented perfectly two stereotypes: the goober and the coach who knew about only one topic.
The great pendulum will shift once again back to some sense of sanity.
I hope I live long enough to see it.
As do I.
Me too!!!
Liam Ramos is a brave American boy! He is back in Minnesota after a judge ruled that the ice fascists could not deport his family. I wrote a poem inspired by him: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/liam-ramos-poem
Some superb lines in your poem for Liam, Public Servant.
One of them: "there is no law that demands we be cruel."
Another: "Fascism does not know what to do with boys like this."
But I balk, too, at the trio of lines just before the one on fascism supposedly not knowing what to do with boys like Liam:
"and here he was: / small, unapologetic, / reminding them what their job has made them become."
I balk because these heavily-armed, masked thugs would need conscience to be reminded as you suggest -- and we all know they have none.
Shakespeare's view on this (400Y ago)
Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:npvd54yeikvuj3ytmrcwsh4b/post/3me4d4xzisc2x
Thank you, Hugh.
I happened to see this when it formed the ending to Stephen very much enjoying his banter with Sir Ian.
And just before the speech here -- never in fact performed during Shakespeare's lifetime -- Stephen and Sir Ian set it up perfectly, as if the latter unbeknownst to him got coaxed serendipitously into doing it.
He'd done it onstage somewhere not long ago -- making him then the first actor ever to recite these lines from the bard.
It was indeed a wonderful lesson delivered to the US, with great timing.
Sorry , Phil . that damn arrow again😡…that rape is realized is not a sexual ‘thing’ but that of anger -shortened- many a crime or criminal needs the discipline exacted ( consequence) as somehow their upbringing was punishment and/or lack of proper raisin’ ( high, very high percentages). Justice needs thorough revamping too , as well as immigration policy ,etc etc etc. We have a country young in existence showing the mistakes, needing improved, as as well pointed out “longest Democracy surviving” (ty Katy).
That American rally I do believe so well exampled in times of danger to us A m e r i c a n s …is showing up…applaud, join, be your brilliant bad-ass selves…the names we will remember and duly jail for criminal endeavor are yup ‘it happened here’ reality.
Remember that Good ship “Principle” forever … many have died to preserve it…
🫶
Profound. It is that love prevails. Good…poetry in her last words. “I’m not mad at you”…that we realize discipline means tough love at times , not cruelty..in as much as rape is not a sexual thing’
Trump and his lying cadre of fools is reneging on what were to be signing bonuses to the ICE agents. I know I know, catch your breath. Trump, Miller, Noem, Homan and all of their Nazi recruiters lying to the newbies. This is from the far right leaning Yahoo News -
ICE Agents Whine That They Aren’t Getting Their Massive Bonuses
New hires at Immigration and Customs Enforcement are complaining that they haven’t yet received the massive bonuses promised to them for agreeing to brutally arrest immigrants.
In multiple Reddit posts reviewed by the International Business Times UK, federal immigration agents complained that they’d yet to see their signing bonuses materialize. Others complained that when their bonus arrived, it was only a few thousand dollars after taxes. One person claimed that they were unable to cover medical costs for their sick child due to an insurance coverage gap.
The Trump administration had promised a payout of up to $50,000 for anyone who joined the ranks of so-called homeland defenders.
Following a massive recruitment push, the Department of Homeland Security has boasted an incoming class of 12,000 new ICE agents, putting a clear strain on the agency, which received more than 220,000 applications. One administration official previously said DHS’s hiring influx had caused a “shit show” at ICE.
Meanwhile, morale among ICE agents is already plummeting after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse attending a protest in Minnesota. In addition to being roundly hated by the public they spend their work days terrorizing, ICE agents are also complaining of long working hours and high arrest quotas.
I have no sympathy for them.
i have no sympathy for the whiny bullies.
220,000 applications!!! to be overpaid and undertrained gestapo! a perfect job for so many angry white men plus a few women. and their families.
they are learning what many many small contractors learned decades ago -The Donold doesn't pay his bills.
So 220,000 applied to be racist thugs that take innocent 5-year old boys and ruin countless legal American citizens lives. So the thugs already doing the dirty work of the reich are moaning about not receiving their promised bonuses, the long hours, the huge quotas, and, surprise surprise, one of these thugs had to face the reality that the republicans in congress created by making health insurance unaffordable. I hope they all see what they're doing is inhumane and start walking out, quitting.
And when they quit, Miller and Noem will try to recover their signing bonuses.
IMHO, methinks there are many cosplaying gamers in the bunch. Maybe they are discovering it isn't the constant adrenaline rush they experience in their cushy gaming chairs. Gee, being on your feet out in the elements is ssooooo tough!!
I wonder whether their future resumes will include “ICE agent”, or just an unexplained gap. Studied overseas?
Maybe they could replace the low end workers they deported.
A gap in your employment history is always a red flag for potential employers at least in my experience.
They can lie about their employment history, but most companies take the time to verify employment in my experience. I was working with a computer operator one time and he was fired as soon as they found out he lied on his resume about his employment.
Liked (as usual) for your sentiments and use of words. I particularly enjoyed seeing the word "mountebank" in your post. It's a perfect label for our POtuS.
Among so many others James.
I see what you did here: POTuS. Apt.
They don't send ICE to Idaho, my wife said.
Ice has been welcomed by Bradley Little our governor. He proposes to work closely with them. His lips will eventually be surgically removed from trps nether region. Front or back I’m not sure which. But Bradley is one of those cool dudes. He will hang with the money. Keep in mind Idaho agriculture is critically dependent on Mexican labor. Our populous is rapidly becoming a Hispanic majority, so our political affiliations will slowly see the end of Republican control. Progressive whites see that as inevitable as our demographics shift.
He sounds like one bad bunny.
Currently, there are 26 Republican governors and 24 Democratic. Hopefully that will finally shift the other way. Trump had a meeting with just the Republican governors recently and didn't invite the Democratic governors.
If you live in a state with a Republican governor make sure you link their actions to the Trump administration. There are no longer ANY conservative Republicans. If there were, they would be calling out the $2.5 trillion that the Republicans added to the national debt in 2025.
The oligarchs definitely are winning. We need to fight back with our credit cards and our check books. The Hilton and Marriott hotel chains are housing ICE agents in Chicago, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine and other places. These Fascists receive a reduced Federal rate. Why aren't the ICE agents staying in warehouses with the detainees? All they need is a cot and a shower once a week, right?
First order of business is to get rid of MAGA. Within a matter of hours, Hakeem Jeffries (or someone like Don Bacon) could be Speaker of the House
https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
Idaho remains about 46% Republican but only about 12%Democrats. The primaries are closed so one has to declare one’s affiliation to vote. If you declare democrat then you receive a Democrat ballot.
I thought much of the potato crop was worked with prison labor.
Relatively new field. How many inmates are on fire crews as well. What are the demographics of such crews? I don’t know. I long hauled potatoes from Idaho across the country and the familiar scene was a work force speaking Spanish from both farms across the state and processing plants freezing hash browns,tots, and French fries. Bulk potatoes went straight from the farm to mid west potato chip producers. Land was usually under the stewardship of a Spanish speaking foreman who handled the planting and harvesting. Gradually both land ownership and processing plant ownership has tended to become non white. The white kids grew up and left home. That has been my hands on assessment. I could go on in fruit and beans. Same shift. I have worked with prison crews only on fires. That was a Montana thing. That seems beneficial to me.
Eat more potatoes? Had the chance to be in Idaho on a work assignment three different times. Part of my visit was to the World Raptor center near the Snake River valley. The climate of the high desert was exhilarating. Thanks for the update on the farmers.
We do have a plethora of raptors. Even peregrines. Yesterday three pairs (6) goldens were circling at tall cottonwood height when a bald started circling among them. Out of no where from high up a pair of osprey dive bombed the goldens. We had quite an aerial battle ground as a 747 went over the top of it all. I live 1/2 mile from established colony of blue herons. Sandhills like to walk the pastures and leave their young here while they forage. Red tails always seem to find you as do 40 or so turkey vultures occasionally dot the skies. They seem to sweep through as in migrating, crossing the continental divide into the Big Hole. (live in Salmon)
I lived in Boise a while back. I loved it there.
Then again, I was in a isle of Blue in a sea of Red.
Idaho, JAAD, a red state.
My mistake, earlier, in leaving out the "D" in your moniker. Sorry for that.
To clarify my point, @Pat Cole: They don't send ICE to Idaho "to crack down on protestors," like they have in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and Minneapolis. This is what I meant to convey, a comment on reported ICE outrages. @Phil Balla, don't know what "JAA" means.
"JAA" was meant to refer to you, I think... lol
Yes, JAAD -- sorry I erred with your moniker earlier.
I've corrected that via the three dot-edit function.
But I got, "liked," your intended meaning regarding ICE and its only mission: Donald's thuggish harassment, cruelty, chaos, and murder in areas of Democratic populations.
News: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/us/politics/trump-deportation-idaho.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K1A.Q7D5.fyGaUOYdMb9y&smid=nytcore-ios-share
Or any other red states, many of which have a very high percentage of brown skinned people who speak with accents <cough, Texas. cough>
Maybe not overtly and for media coverage, but these agents live throughout our country (and, I'm willing to bet, in Idaho, too.)
Nor to Texas.
Not yet, anyway.
Donald Trump is running the same McCarthy script, louder, sloppier, and with cable news instead of a Senate hearing room. Accusations without evidence, enemies everywhere, loyalty tests as governance. It worked for a while for McCarthy too, until sunlight, testimony, and exhaustion caught up. Demagogues always mistake attention for power and noise for legitimacy. History suggests the ending is not triumph but collapse, televised, humiliating, and remembered less as strength than as a cautionary footnote.
Can you imagine how he would react if one whole news day NO ONE MENTIONED HIS NAME? He'd be in such a rage!
Actually, the top ten states where ICE is active per capita are Texas, Florida, Tenn, Az, Utah, Ok, Ark, La, Ga, Nv. Red states all.
https://www.visaverge.com/news/top-10-states-with-highest-ice-arrests-in-2025-per-100k/
Interesting contribution from you, "madhatter."
Its stats suggest the older ICE bureaucracy, those parts legitimately doing their work in those states with, in fact, more immigrants per capita.
These legitimate parts of ICE bear no relation, however, to the roving bands of thugs who form Donald's advance front for his police state and concentration camp gulag.
I was only addressing the comment that ICE wouldn't invade red states.
Interesting that you make a distinction of ICE legitimacy. The implication being that the illegitimate agents are working where there are serious protests and the legitimate agents are working in mostly peaceful locales. I don't know how ICE poobahs could arrange that
and yet, in these states, one does not see video of roaming gangs of masked, military armed thugs or smashed car windows, or kicked in doors with underclad old men dragged into the street, or people with their face pressed to the pavement, or shot in the back 10 times. Wonder why?
Try imagining places where the local authorities don't go out of their way to impede ICE operations. Places like Fla and Tx where their governors say to locals, "Thou SHALL work with ICE".
It's going to be interesting here in Appalachia. What with our legendary history of cooperation with law enforcement and all. They're putting up statues around town now of people who ratted out their neighbors and grandpas so their evil stills could be destroyed.
yeah, roll over and play nice while the process destroys the lives of so many people...including granny in assisted living.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/trump-attack-on-refugees-could-hurt-grandma-haiti-tps-caregivers?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Tell me again what TPS means? Oh, yeah ... TEMPORARY Protected Status. In my understanding, 16 years doesn't quite fit that definition.
Actually it does...
https://forumtogether.org/article/temporary-protected-status-fact-sheet/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19860700528&gbraid=0AAAAADkQHSdQEQj4Po9mEW6ezkSE11CTM&gclid=CjwKCAiAqKbMBhBmEiwAZ3UboLjzbEssFPtfD7qansd45Ziq1e-Nq30lljeN11SEwEgGic1cs_WLCRoCQFkQAvD_BwE
When the people speak, "madhatter," it's in defense of neighbors.
Do you really dismiss Donald's criminal intentions, his goal of police state answerable only to him, his mass gulag of concentration camps to make Putin proud.?
If you mean his efforts to actually enforce immigration law for a change, why yes, I do dismiss such intentions.
Please cite some examples of the local police in Minneapolis "going out of their way to impede ICE operations."
In fact the local police were not informed by ICE of where they were going to "patrol". The local police had nothing to do with impeding ICE from disingenuously luring people to offices under the pretense of administrative compliance only to detain them, often against court order.
What specifically did local authorities do to impede ICE?
Thank Goodness our local police and authorities do not participate in violating the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments of people.
Perhaps to be more clear, when top level authorities (think Walz, Frey, Ellison) call for more resistance, it can only be interpreted as impeding operations. Local cooperation means that most apprehensions would occur by handing over those illegals who are already in hand, rather than having to scour the streets for them after they have been released.
I'm glad to read you are distinguishing between impeding and cooperating, as they very different things, especially when understanding our Federalist system of government and that certain authorities are restricted between Federal and local. For example, FBI agents cannot write traffic tickets and local law enforcement cannot enforce immigration laws.
Can you cite some examples of Walz calling for actions that would impede ICE? Again non-cooperation is not impeding, opining is not impeding.
Can you provide quotes that any of these men have encouraged people to impede ICE?
You are correct, however it's how they operate in those states. Are there more arrests in Texas, of course that's where the border is. More in Florida, sure, Florida being on the Gulf of Mexico with incoming boats. Southwest states, yup.
The difference, the are arresting persons crossing or recently crossing the borders.
In the effected Blue states they are arresting people who have been here years, following the process and attempting to do the right thing. They are doing it at schools, churches, homes, with random patrols in neighborhoods, stopping people simply because they "look" illegal.
Trump is using thuggish tactics as a tool to intimidate those he perceives as enemies.
Intent matters.
TN’s gov, along with its US House representatives across the state (save one) and two Senators, are true blue Trump sycophants. They invited ICE in.
This is a revelation to me, madhatter. I live in the boondocks south of Little Rock, AR, and drive into town for all my shopping needs. The southwest section of the city has become predominantly Latino with numerous tiendas and taquerias lining the main thoroughfares. Businesses in all parts of the Little Rock metro employ Latinos, and I see them working and shopping with no apparent fear.
Neither do I ever hear of any ICE raids at any local operations, nor do I see ICE-marked vehicles on the streets.
If ICE is active in Arkansas, they must be doing their work in a low-key, legal manner. Possibly this is because the governor is Donald's former press liar, Sarah Huckleberry Sanders. She doesn't need intimidating. Also, there are no five-star accommodations in Arkansas, so the corporate media couldn't be coaxed in here to cover any manufactured drama.
I think the magic phrase is "low-key, legal manner". Amazing what can be accomplished with a bit of cooperation
Hi Phil, Have you read the latest piece from The Gaslight Report? https://open.substack.com/pub/frankgeorge8675309/p/violence-is-the-new-normal?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=gfzoo
Thanks for sharing. From his post: "When identity fuses this tightly within a group, disagreement with the group stops being informational. Any type of challenge to a belief is seen as a threat to the self.
This is why facts bounce off.
This is why opposing views escalate anger.
This is why loyalty matters more than reality.
Once belief becomes identity, the goal is no longer to be right. It’s to be affirmed. "
Thank you, Sandra. I went to your link.
No need, however, for Frank George to agonize over group fixation.
It logically always follows -- by quite logically linear chronology -- whenever souls and schools void themselves of access to humanities. Whenever people lack access to individuals, whether in humanities or in anecdotal real life.
Phil Balla, I read your post and reread yesterday’s HCR’s Feb. 7 Newsletter. If anything, it was more shocking this time. It’s another Far Right-Wing challenge to the rule of law, can't be ignored, and needs to be stopped. I hope the judge's decision will be thrown out on appeal (if that’s what would happen with a successful appeal. I’m no legal scholar).
They showed up at a daycare last week to grab a father who had only a misdemeanor on his record, for which he spent time in jail and later community service. Not a "criminal" and this was Idaho, aka red state.
I sat next to a guy on a flight to Bozeman once who in polite chat admitted he worked for the for profit prison industry and was going to a new site they'd purchased in eastern Montana. I told him he should have flown into Billings as it was closer and he said Bozeman was a much nicer place.
I told him no doubt Bozeman wouldn't have allowed such a thing to be built there and got up and moved.
LIES?
IT TAKES a lot of chutzpah from a party that said JOE BIDEN is as mental good as ever.
the border is NOT OPEN & Men can get pregnant to CALL ANYONE ELSE A LIAR.
It just makes yourself look like a sanctimonious fool.
You are exactly what AMERICA hates about leftism. Another condescending elite LECTURING America about your moral virtue.
It's pathetic.
Actually they have gone into red states, as today’s NYT makes clear. Factual representation is crucial.
And there were MANY browned skinned people who voted for him. Go figure.
Right. Yesterday and now today. A double whammy.
White man still speaks with forked tongue.
From journalist and preacher Dr. Stacey Patton, who writes on Substack about the Black experience in America, a prayer for Black History Month in the time of Trump:
Teach us, Black Jesus, how to build soft places for each other. Teach us how to speak gently to our own people. Teach us how to release the burden of defending our humanity to those who refuse to see it. Help us spend our days pouring into Black joy, Black safety, Black brilliance, and Black rest. Help us remember that we were never a mistake, never an afterthought, never a problem you were trying to solve, but a people you called good from the very beginning.
Bless the creatures that walk beside us and teach us presence. Bless the spaces where we can finally exhale. And as we move through Black History Month, help us not just remember struggle and survival, but practice joy, rest, and belonging in real time. And bless us with the courage to live like we belong here, because we do.
Let the church say Amen, Amen, and Amen.
Dr. Patton wrote this in her weekly sermon on the Sunday after Trump posted a meme that disrespected the Obamas.
It comes at the end of a sermon about the nature of dignity in animals and our love for them, specifically the winner of the Westminster Dog Show. In every Patton sermon there is satire, but the punch in the gut always comes at the end.
It's so interesting you used the example about the nature of dignity in animals and our love for them. When my dog was dying I was in despair I would not know when the right time was to end his life. People told me my pup would tell me.
Sure enough it was during an incident when I rushed to protect 'his dignity' that I knew the time had come.
Georgia, thanks for attempting to build soft (based on compassion and factual accuracy) places for the people of this forum. It is becoming an increasingly hard and strident place, even as the letters remain calm and reasoned.
Of course, this hardness is fear-based. There is much to be fearful of right now. Fear can either focus our minds on effective, creative options or blind us to them. One ear-mark I use to discern the blind from the focused is to note the frequency of derogatory names for Trump a poster uses. The more derogatory names, the more fearful the poster is, and generally the less focused and valuable the posts are. The name-calling has its place (I've certainly done my share), mainly as a relief valve. Now, however, we need to focus on what works; writing congress-critters, educating our neighbors, texting any family or friends in police or military, showing up for protests, etc, etc. Thanks again, Georgia.
You bring up some good points, Steve. I think that the "hard and strident" tenor of some comments here are a reflection of people's perceptions of danger to both self and country coupled with the abject violence that we are all witnessing at the hands of an out of control rogue agency that is killing our residents. We are being inundated with the horrors that our government is inflicting upon our neighbors coupled with the unfathomable acquiescence of family, friends, and other people in power who (in our collective minds) should know better.
Heaven knows that I am by turns scared, angry, outraged, despondent, and royally pissed off at what I see not only from our government, but people who used to be my friends and now am forced to conclude they are no friends of mind as they support what ICE is doing in our communities. I try to keep my comments more measured and reasoned, but two things I do on a regular basis: I utilize MAGAt (those initials refer to the regular MAGA with the "t" representing either "trope" or "turd", depending on my mood at the moment and whether I need a noun or an adjective. I also use either "current occupant" or "ffpotus" to refer to 45-47. ffpotus is "first felon president of the united states" in lower case to indicate my disrespect.
Yes, agreed, and thank you for mentioning the shifting tenor of this community. I used to read and participate here because of the wise and thoughtful comments. I often learned as much from the community as I did from the letters. There has been a shift towards anger( fear), name calling, and pejorative statements against groups that leaves me unsettled. We have seen how divisive sentiment has hurt our nation, and despite HCR’s generally level headed discourse the division lives large and growing in this community. The angry left is not the solution. We need the big tent. We need the rational mind, circumspect ideas, a unifying cry to bring the masses together and fight this un-American administration.
that is lovely!
Some do, not all. Certainly, all of those in the current administration do. It was a job requirement.
It does appear so.
Stop voting for white men. They are going extinct anyway. The future of America is bad bunny and Liam Ramos. He is a brave American boy! He is back in Minnesota after a judge ruled that the ice fascists could not deport his family. I wrote a poem inspired by him: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/liam-ramos-poem
And the government is trying to destroy his family's asylum claim so they can deport him again.
Noted, but not liked.
Shades of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's experience.
Because they can and will never accept or admit any wrongdoing, so they find ways to make themselves and their action right.
The problem now is that the AG agrees with the replacement theory, and she is allowing racial profiling stops, also allowing ICE to be above the law, even when they kill people. That administration just got two judges to say that they can continue to harass, beat, and even shoot people who interfere with their mission.
The Republicans are not living up to their agreement to negotiate new limits on ICE. Again, they can never be trusted.
There will be a partial government shutdown.
We will see who cares.
Meanwhile, Trump is making more corrupt deals for himself.
This policy of detaining people based on their ethnicity is now known as 'Kavanaugh Stops', after the concurring opinion of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. It was just the opinion of a single justice but it's given the Trump administration the green light to continue this highly objectionable practice.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/09/justice-brett-kavanaugh-and-racial-proxies/
In a more recent decision, Kavanaugh tried to moderate what he said, realizing that they have used it to the Max, but I doubt he really cares.
I think he actually does care. But the damage is already done. And we'll keep using that term - to the max - until it becomes irrelevant.
That presupposes Brett the Rapist has both a heart and a brain, neither of which are in evidence.
He is likely a sociopath, like Trump.
I like to think that right now he's like The Grinch, and that both his heart and brain are two sizes too small. And, like The Grinch, that he can be redeemed. But I'm not confident that he can be.
Oh he doesn't have a heart... but he does have a brain. He didn't get where he is entirely by Leonard Leo's money.
Not only are 'Kavanaugh Stops' blatantly unconstitutional but I'm sure that the other Federalists were pissed off that Brett just tore the veil of decency off their game. He realized that he was going to go down in history as another McCarthy. Not someone who just made a 'mistake' but someone who is openly evil.
He tried walking it back.. but the Government is still doing Kavanaugh Stops so I don't think it helped him at all.
He knows that when this all goes down. He will be the first one to be impeached.
To use a pun, Kavanaugh's record of corruption pales in comparison to Clarence's. If there's a line forming for justice impeachments, I'm pretty sure Clarence should be Number One.
I suspect he is like many/most white privileged males; he simply did not think it through because it has zero relevance to his rarified experience. Many such privileged White males can't be bothered to consider realities beyond their own narrow perspective (Trump, Miller, Bessent, Witkoff, the list goes on and on).
That's a good point that I hadn't considered. I should have remembered his original borderline-delusional remarks that gave birth to term "Kavanagh stops." Thank you.
This is really who he is. Thanks for clarifying.
Atrocious decision - like many recent ones from the Court. And now they are stalling on the tariffs case.
Never trust incessant liars.
Trump has pretty much checked out of running anything except withholding previously allocated funds to blue states.
On Saturday, he bragged that Ozempic has gone from $1000 to $199, a 578% decrease in price thanks to him. None of these facts were close to being accurate and the 578%???. That's not how math works DonOLD.
Fox News cut him off which is rarer than an honest Republican and switch to a story about Savannah Guthrie's mom. When Fox News walks away, you know it's really bad.
His attention has been diverted to other ways to waste taxpayer dollars, like rebuilding the Kennedy Center and a giant marble arch. White and cold, just like him.
Yeah, GJ, it would be great if “the media” (meaning “the news”) walked away from silly Trump, but, the huge difference from the McCarthy era and today is COMEDY! It is going to be difficult to have Colbert, Kimmel, SNL, Stewart, etc. walk away from such rich material that simply writes itself. Plus, I, for one, love to laugh at the stupidity. I guess we need to come up with different fun, huh?
No. Trump doesn't have the intelligence to appreciate comedy. It's when he's the butt of the joke he becomes unhinged. If anything we need to make it more fun of him! It enrages him!
I totally agree! Ridiculing him enrages him. Remember when Obama was roasting him at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner? I swear he decided to run for president that night.
Ozempic.
Doesn't that exactly fit his Brand though.
He can brag that he literally removed healthcare, err I mean 'fraud', from veterans and their families. But the Mara Lago crowd can get their Ozempic cheap. Leaving them more cash for their plastic surgery.
I will likely lose my sight because I can no longer afford the $600 a month eye drops. But Muffy and Buffy can now snack on hors d'oeuvres and not worry about their designer dresses not fitting.
Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled for the person that actually uses GLP-1's to control their diabetes. But the number of those people is miniscule compared to the weight loss crowd.
They're recalibrating.
You are not in my way! Thank you.
The problem here is unlike Eisenhauer who did not support McCarthy we have a President whose soul has been replaced by the demon McCarthy.
"Suddenly, reporters ignored him...."
Oh, wouldn't that be the dream-come-true moment with this current prevaricating, blubbering, whiny, self-pitying, demented loudmouth bully in the White House...
Which reporters? The internet has completely changed this as has the current ownership of legacy media. Just look at the WH Press Room. Listen to the set up questions from podcasters and rightwing sycophants. Check out the mean girl antics and the mega misogynistic presidential smack downs.
I think you missed the point. The quote refers to reporters ignoring McCarthy after he lost the public, and ICTT is wishing that to be the case with the dictator. Reading comprehension is a good thing.
Thanks, friend. Perhaps I comprehend more than you think.
He is just mansplaining Janet.
ICTT, every time, EVERY TIME, he insults woman reporters, I get so upset that the entire group doesn't turn a walk out!
And as those who read Jeff Tiedrich know of his challenge, I keep waiting for one of the reporters to take that challenge. Yes, they might lose their job, but I have no doubt that a GoFundMe for them would reach double-digit million$ within a week!!
Except he might really ramp up his behavior to get the attention back, like going from pronouncing to doing.
And Roy Cohn
And Roy Cohn, yes. He was Donald Trump's mentor. Donald Trump is today's Joe McCarthy, equally evil and demented.
Nixon Was another red baiter. McCarthy's kit of dirty tricks has been riding with the GOP for some time now. Now it's all lies all the time. We so need to raise the bar.
Or bury the Republican party.
LynnAnn, yes a direct line from Cohn to death star.
Ike Eisenhower did not speak out against McCarthy until he had successfully won the Presidency. And even then, it took a lawyer to ask McCarthy in the Army- McCarthy hearings, "Have you no shame?" before Ike would speak against him. Had McCarthy not been a severely mentally unstable person, physically taken out of the Senate screaming, he would have done a lot more damage. Trump has the mask of sanity though bits of it appears to be falling away. Read the book The Mask of Sanity to meet Trumpesque folks.
Demented demon Donold is no president!
NEVER EVER BACK DOWN TO A BULLY or they will continue to chase you FOREVER!!
NEVER EVER TRUST A BULLY because they are SO insecure narcissistic and paranoid that sooner than later EVERYONE becomes one of their enemies and targets!!
VOTE ALL maga MURDEROUS PEDOPHILE PROTECTORS OUT!!
They OBVIOUSLY CARE NOTHING about AMERICA or AMERICANS!
RESISTANCE REARS ITS HEAD AND ROARS...as the Superbowl " Epstein survivor "ad" sends a chillingly effective message to the world, to the Trump regime, and specifically to Pam Bondi. "Stand with us. Tell Attorney General Pam Bondi IT IS TIME FOR THE TRUTH." Those women in their bravely persevering solidarity are showing us just how powerful a strategic and creative approach to Resistance can be and how vital it is for us to utilize all our collective resources to fight for our Democracy, to fight for truth over lies, and as Timothy Snyder reminds us - to never give up in advance.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPAiJw4EScA&pp=0gcJCTMBo7VqN5tD
Page not available?
Try it now. I copied it again. Brian Tyler Cohen will announce the ad and then show it.
Thanks!
Liam Ramos is a brave American boy! He is back in Minnesota after a judge ruled that the ice fascists could not deport his family. I wrote a poem inspired by him: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/liam-ramos-poem
Thank you once again Public Servant Poet.
And 5 year old LIAM RAMOS personally received a gift during half time when Bad Bunny make that 'Good' Bunny gave young Liam his Grammy.
Bad Bunny redefined "America" including Columbia, Mexico, Venezuela, Dominican Republic the U.S. & Canada. That was not a geography lesson.
Our country's racist past...and our country's racist present. Not far removed from one another, are they? But never before has such a clearly racist president who has no compunction about demonstrating his racism presided over the country--and been given free rein and remained unchecked by his own party. But the rest of the country is standing up to his vile attempts to introduce white supremacy. He--and his MAGA sycophants--will continue lashing out until he is gone from office. That cannot happen soon enough...and we must put an end to the sycophants' tyranny as well and hold them all accountable.
"The great Klan revival of that time [late 1920s] was sparked by active racist Woodrow Wilson, who promoted Birth of a Nation, film that argued for the KKK as an ICE force of its time, hunting and murdering anyone they chose."
.https://stevebrodner.substack.com/p/woodrow-wilsons-bastard-grandson.
One of my ex-students was working on a paper that covered the era of Birth of a Nation and so we got the film and watched here at home with him. And some of us always recommend the book Fever in the Heartland which covers the KKK in the 1920s, mainly in my home state of Indiana, a place still full of racists.
Wilson was well-known as "a narrow minded Southern bigot." He was the one who nationalized Jim Crow by bringing it into the federal civil service. How he ever became a progressive hero is beyond me. His famous 14 Points only applied to the white people trying to create nations our of the German and Austrian Empires after WW1, as a young Vietnamese named Nguyen Ai Quoc discovered when he tried to use the 14 points to get Vietnamese independence from the French Empire. (Later better-known to history as Ho Chi Minh). But then the Democrats - as late as the 70s - used to celebrate Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Wilson as Great Democrats - what did those three have in common?
My alternate-reality theory is Trump's Tech Bros will engineer a false-flag assassination of POTUS and put the blame on antifa in order to install the more compliant suck-ass J.D. (Junior Dictator), once Trump looses the mid-terms for the Republicans.
I'm not certain of the details of how they will bring it about...but I am certain that if trump makes it through the midterms, shortly after he will be pushed aside by the tech bros. He's been their useful idiot--and his usefulness will expire with the midterms.
That’s frightening and I could see that happening.
Seems to me, a rehearsal was mounted in Butler, PA. Goat's blood and a tampon wouldn't be convincing enough, so a fan had to die.
Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was pretty openly racist.
“Pretty racist” pretty far understates it, I’m afraid, but I admire your restraint, TCinLA.
That is so, of course. My comment was really about our more recent (20th century) past, as Heather outlined. And, while Johnson was racist and his followers were racist, he didn't have the "apparatus of government" behind him (because it didn't exist that way at the time) in the same way that modern presidents like trump have.
"Same old serpent".
Woodrow Wilson was certainly a clearly racist president; there wasn't the media amplification of that time. The post WWI era was a horribly racist time in America.
Yes, he was. And so was the country. And you are absolutely correct about the role of the media in amplifying the racism we face now. However, a differentiating factor between Wilson and trump is that I don't think Wilson had the "apparatus of government" behind him the way trump does. I don't know whether there was a trifecta of White House-Senate-House of Representatives the way there is today. While the executive branch was smaller then, I don't think Wilson wielded as much out-of-control power over his departments or that his cabinet was a house of sycophants as it is today.
Agreed. A much different milieu than what we have today!
I was born in 1951, one year after McCarthy went on his rage against innocent people. His accomplice was at one time, Trump’s really close friend, Roy Cohn. Those two men were a disgrace (Trump’s favorite word) and look, they both died shortly afterward. One died of alcoholism and the other, of AIDS. So really, this is a lesson for us to never support the jerk-in-chief nor his minions. We are seeing all of this being played out again as if it is a game. I don’t appreciate the irony🙄from these monsters.
Roy Cohn did not die at the same time as McCarthy; he lasted until 1986 and was the lawyer for several prominent people, including Donald Trump.
He was our current president's favorite lawyer and 'thinker,' and the favorite lawyer of many NY mafiosi.
Yes, I know.
The Cohn connection. Tail gunner Joe was the prophet of the modern GOP.
Thank you for bringing up Trumps mentor Roy Cohn
Last Friday, a majority of judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (which Adam Klarsfield of All-Rise News has called "the most conservative federal appellate court in the United States") approved Trump's mass detention policy without offering a chance for bond, even if they have no criminal records and have resided in the country for decades. They had clearly been sought out by the administration to deliver the result it wanted.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26884355/ca5detention.pdf
Reagan-appointee, judge Edith Jones, wrote for the 2-1 majority:
“That prior Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority … does not mean they lacked the authority to do more...".
It didn't seem to matter that the vast majority of judges in the US who have addressed this issue fundamentally disagree with this view.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/05/trump-administration-immigrants-mandatory-detention-00709494?experience_id=EXYF89KVT5UQ&is_magic_link=true&template_id=OTJIR2CRKUD6&template_variant_id=OTV632IE7RALS&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack
The withering dissenting judgement from judge Dana Douglas, a Biden appointee, said:
“Straining at a gnat, the majority swallows a camel. The government’s proposed reading of the statute would mean that, for purposes of immigration detention, the border is now everywhere. That is not the law Congress passed, and if it had, it would have spoken much more clearly.”
She noted in her dissenting opinion that some of the detainees were "spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
The border is now everywhere. That's the chilling fact of the matter now unless the Supreme Court is disposed to overrule this court.
The Fifth Circuit has always been conservative, sometimes to the point of being right wing racists. BTW, Trump is not a conservative in the true sense of the word in a political context. He is an authoritarian grifter.
Trump is not in any way conservative with a small "c', nor is his party, nor, apparently, is the Fifth Circuit majority. They are reckless beyond measure.
“Conservative” is a hijacked word. Orwell would be impressed
It seems that Republicans are predisposed to hijacking C-words. In addition to "conservative," "Christian" no longer means what it used to.
I have a C-word for all of them.
The Neo-Confederacy at its most virulent.
The idea that the border is now everywhere is a useful one for us to encompass the Administration's use of CBP everywhere. This needs to stop, but it can't be stopped until lawmakers opposed to the administration can keep it in mind
And apparently Trump's Imperial Guard needs no statutory legitimacy to do as they please.
My mother told us a story of Sen. McCarthy giving a speech at Smith College around that time in which he pulled the same stunt - holding up a list of Americans he claimed had communist affiliations and worked in the government. She said the students roundly booed and hissed. Ultimately, as you say, it was the decency of the American people that brought him down. I think it is beginning to dawn on many of us that no institution or protector is coming to save us. If we value this country and its ideals, we cannot expect to be saved by Mueller, Jack Smith, Garland, impeachment, the Supreme Court or even Congress. Similar to the McCarthy period, we must save ourselves- organizing, protesting, speaking out and voting!
"McCarthy’s supporters in the 1950s claimed that his lies were necessary for keeping Republicans in power: the ends justified the means."
And Vance admits to lying about Haitians in Springfield eating pet cats and dogs for purposes of keeping it in the news.
This is more than humming; this is history repeating itself.
Wow. I understand now. Thank you, Professor, for laying out such a clear timeline and tying that all together for us.
This seems like one for the ages. No matter how this turns out, HCR has laid out the path to today's pathology.
Bad Bunny broke X while Heather Cox Richardson was writing/posting tonight's letter. The symbolism in tonight's half-time performance was awesome! Congratulations, Seahawks!
My great grandfather came to this country in the1850s from China. He spent a few years building up a savings and returned to his village near the city of Canton. He came back to SF in 1864 and started the first herb shop in Chinatown. His son took over the business and eventually my father took the helm. In 1957 it was no longer legal to have any business with China. My father was arrested for "trading with the enemy" since all the herbs came from mainland China. The government burned 93 years of inventory, and the family lost its business overnight. My uncle was responsible for taking a physical inventory every year, and he told me that we had $750,000 in inventory at that time.
Eventually my father was found not guilty, and the government prosecutor who headed the case against my father was reprimanded by the judge for misusing the rule of law (trading with the enemy). He was scolded for trying to gain political recognition through the use of fear of communism. Of course, by that time, we, including our extended family from the village, had lost all our savings and investments. All the employees had to resort to whatever jobs they could find. My mother told me that my father had to work 3 jobs at one time. His hobby was photography and that was how he wound up working in that field. My uncle passed away in 2019, and he wanted to sue the government until his last days. He was 98 years old.
💔
Just awful.
I am so incredibly sorry for what was done to your family.
The scars are still there and so many even today still carry them. So sorry for what was done to your family and yourself.
I always learn something new from these Letters. In this case, it was the role of the Chicago Tribune in amplifying McCarthy's lies. I was just a small boy when all this happened and have always been curious as to why this kind of rubbish found such fertile soil. Little did I know how much the Red Scare was to affect my own life. There are direct links between that phenomenon and the Vietnam War.
And as always, the excellent Dr. Richardson highlights themes that echo into our own times.
It's still a mystery -- why rubbish like that manages to keep worming its way to fertile soil.
Socialism -- at least the concept of public involvement in, and oversight of, the private market -- has been with us at least since the New Deal as a part of the overall 'general welfare' clause of the Constitution. The evidence is overwhelming -- socialism saved capitalism from itself in the 1930s (and perhaps saved the country from demagoguery and dictatorship), and was instrumental in the entire postwar period of prosperity, growing social equality, public accountability. Given that, it's even more of a puzzle why there remain such fertile grounds that suddenly bloom -- like algae or something -- every so often. The evidence does not support these people's malignant hatred of the concept.
One of the larger messages of tonight's lesson from history was that we're approaching that moment of 'have you, Senator, at last, no decency whatever?' that brought Joseph McCarthy down. Despite everything, history does tends to move in cycles. Our current one is simply exhausting itself in the form of a demented, loony tunes President so utterly disconnected from reality I'm surprised he can put his own pants on in the morning.
Our conclusion? Don't let up for a second.
Great post, ICTT. Your conclusion seems to me to be exactly correct. What concerns me is that not enough people may care enough about their own, our country’s, and this administration’s glaringly obvious lack of decency that a question like that put to McCarthy by Welch will simply get lost in the noise.
I worry we have become so accustomed to lying by all (including state) government officials, plus the violence and open hate-spewing trump engages, we’re not going to call it out now—and be outraged—or in the future.
McCarthy was brought down by: "Have you, Senator, at last, no decency whatever?"
That was then, this is now…
A key problem is that MAGA Republicans are fully aware of, and in fact applaud, the malignantly-increasing indecency of their Dear Leader, Donald J. Trump.
Mike Johnson's and Karoline Leavitt's defense of the atrocious meme featuring the Obamas shows that they have no decency either.
ArcticStones, as you've implied, our national lexicon has been turned upside-down. Words no longer mean what they once did, and frequently mean the opposite. "Decency," for instance, no longer means respectability or consciousness of others. It means "weakness; a quaint irrelevance." Nobody wants to be weak and quaint.
ArcticStones, I think you've hit the nail on the head. "Decency" is no longer any sort of positive attribute.
Sometimes you've gotta eat that sandwich in your lunch box on the fly. The apple or zinger can wait till you get a bit of a breather.
Gregg, I have, on more than one occasion, not only eaten that sandwich on the fly, but while driving in great excess of the posted speed limit because I know that if I don't eat that sandwich, I make bad decisions, and that is a risky business.
(I was on my way to an in-progress weapons involved dispute with a 15 minute response time. I was also talking on the radio and the phone, coordinating a multi unit response.)
I did eat the apple later.
Doubt that Trump puts on his own pants in the morning. His magesty's valet dresses him.
McCarthy’s gave up when the press ignored him. That’s what the legit press should have done with Trump from the beginning. Instead, they followed him around breathlessly asking for his “thoughts” about where Obama was born.
Yes. As if anybody needs more "interviews" with this obtuse, grotesque charlatan who sits in his chair, waving his little hands back and forth, forth and back, pumping that invisible concertina for everything it's worth, when anybody "asks" a question. You don't have to be a psychiatrist to see a prevaricating liar going 'don't say that, stop right there, go away, don't ask anything, no, no, no, go away.' Why the press does not make more of these constant physical gestures of obvious guilt and deception I've no idea.
How I long for the President who spoke in well-structured sentences, even logically-construed paragraphs! Instead we’ve got a Mad (wannabe) King who is limited by the vocabulary and rage of a nine-year-old forever deprived of the approval of his father.
I’ve said it before: Trump’s single redeeming trait is that his malevolence is tempered by massive incompetence.
That should have been nipped in the bud way back. Our press loved it. Shame
The press may yet catch on. The IMDB movie rating system allows the public to submit their assessments on a scale of 1 to 10 (no zeros). The database includes 29 million titles, only two of which have a current average rating of 1.2. None have a lower average rating than 1.2. Bezos’s recently released Melanomia documentary has racked up 50,000 public assessments, so far, averaging 1.3. There is still plenty of time for it to sink to the lowest average rating of all 29 million titles, though. We can hope. (Reported in the Tannenbaum blog)
Isn't the movie yet another side show to distract us from what's important?
Signe, at this point in our timeline, anything associated with Donald is a distraction from something else associated with Donald.
But I don't think that was the intended purpose of the movie. To quote Stephen Colbert, "It was a big, fat bribe."
Sounds like it might be a two-fer: bribe plus distraction.
Maybe. But it was also a way to flatter Melania and buy off both of them.
It was snother bribe. In cash.
Yes, I guess they both need to stockpile money for legal defense for the coming criminal proceedings against them.
Attorney Roy Cohn is a direct link between McCarthy and Trump.
And perhaps more significantly between John Gotti and Trump, since Trump more resembles a mafia boss than he does Joe McCarthy, in my view.
An evil blend of both.
Right industry, Russell, wrong franchise. Donald inherited, then strengthened a complex business relationship with Bratva, the "Russian mafia."
Thank you for reminding us about Trumps mentor Roy Cohn.