The Menace in Trump’s Method
It’s the ‘Hollywood Access’ Move
Who could ever forget the infamous Hollywood Access tape of Trump explaining to television host, Billy Bush, how he preys upon his female victims. He simply brazenly ‘moves’ on them:
"I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything."1
And, he continues to grab and do anything he wants . . . But now he’s victimizing whole countries and populations.
We have to face what’s happened.
Trump has transitioned.
He’s not the man he used to be. He has lost what little grip he had on normalcy and has become what one can only call a gangster who, now aligned with Vladimir Putin, want’s to ‘Trump’ him as the world’s most dangerous and vicious despot.
I don’t know how else to put it.
But despite how obvious this all is to me and some others — sitting as some of us are in the belly of the beast in Washington, DC — I don’t think many Americans know this about him. Most are only vaguely aware of a lot of ‘stuff’ going on animated and annotated by the usual performative antics of Trump; and around the chainsaw-massacre-Muskreant’s claims of uncovering and crushing massive waste and fraud.
And as to foreign affairs, well, there’s a lot of ‘stuff’ about putting America first. “Sounds good!” thinks the average Jane and Joe, right?
Well, no. That’s all entirely wrong. That’s not at all what’s going on.
What’s going on is a massive betrayal of America led by a man who is no longer who or what millions of Americans still think he is
Donald Trump has clearly gone mad — in every sense of the word.
He has transitioned from his first term incarnation as a bombastic carnival barker and pompous presidential poseur into a pathologically malevolent Joker.
Trump’s first term was all about inhabiting — and performatively habituating the nation to — his populist pretensions and his insatiable need for adoration, riches, and ego gratification.
Having lost his bid for re-election and unable to deal with the loss of his ownership and control of The Greatest Show on Earth, he became obsessed with a wholly fantastical and imagined plot — a deep-dark, dystopian conspiracy — to deny him his assumed right to Lord It Over US in perpetuity.
He manufactured the claim that the election was stolen and, like the terribly persuasive salesman he can be, he sold this conspiratorial concoction (and golden sneakers, and meme coins, and . . . ) to tens of millions of the disconnected, discontented, and gullible. They drank those tempting, sweet offerings by the buckets-full.
Then He Experienced His Worst Nightmare
And then, most egregious of all (from his point of view), Trump, for the first time ever, was subject to a horribly bitter taste he’d never experienced before: a taste of the very same laws by which ordinary suckers are held accountable for their actions. He was forced to endure the abject, unacceptable, unforgivable humiliations of being held to account by ordinary, stupid humans acting as judges and juries.
He experienced this as the ultimate, unacceptable indignity. He experienced this as an unforgivable violation of his sovereign ‘highness,’ which certain elements of Evangelical Christians interpret as his sovereign Holiness. Trump experienced his trials and tribulations as the ’weaponization’ of the liberal state against his monomaniacal sense of untouchable magnificence.
Now, I’m admittedly not a psychiatrist. I may not be using the correct psycho-social concepts or terms. But I’m not wrong. As I suggested above, all of this is plain to see.
Trump experienced such violence to his sense of superiority that it wounded him. It wounded him deeply. And then he just barely survived a real, potentially mortally wounding, assassin’s bullet. These experiences touched and traumatized him to such an extent that he has transitioned from a textbook case of narcissistic grandiosity to a textbook personification of a malignant megalomaniac.
Trump 1.0 was a a classic American pitchman and political charlatan. He was a carnival barker with a hugely inflated ego and an insatiable need for adoration and riches. He talked a big bad gangsterish game, but he had people around him who were normal Republicans and understood they were dealing with an extremely troubled, but high-performing narcissist. Despite their frustrations and occasional horror, they genuinely helped Donald work more or less within the parameters that he has worked and refined over a lifetime. The succession of “normie” wannabe baby-king-sitters acted much like his daughter, Ivanka, and likely son-in-law Jared had for many years - as a bulwark helping to protect him from his very worst instincts.
Trump 2.0 is no longer a mere pitchman and poseur. He is now inhabiting the role of a full-fledge tyrant consumed by hatreds and grievances that appear to have stripped him of any semblance of empathy or sympathy for the fate of others. And so he has signed-off on the project of demolishing the ‘liberal’ state through the ‘chainsaw massacre’ tactics of Elon Musk.
Trump 1.0 — Backroom attempted bribery of Ukraine.
Trump 2.0 — Shakedown and betrayal of Ukraine broadcast to the world.
Trump 1.0 — Build a wall to keep them out.
Trump 2.0 — Build a Gulag and let them rot.
Trump 1.0 — NATO needs to pull its weight.
Trump 2.0 — NATO needs to pull the plug.
In other words, Trump no longer can even pretend to give a shit. He no longer denies he’s said things like (I’m paraphrasing), “Yes, sure there’ll be some discomfort” when talking about real world impacts. He just says it. And he says it was great satisfaction.
He can only experience real satisfaction from others’ obeisance and/or misery and suffering. It’s all about power and payback that can be satisfied only by the suffering of others.
And then Came the Apostles bearing Project 2025 Gifts
Trump’s mental meltdown coincided with the years-long effort, spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation and its wealthy right-wing authoritarian backers, to hatch an extreme, ideologically-driven mission to somehow seize power and to restore to white men the mantle of inherent superiority in a ‘battle of the sexes’ that he and his fellow aggrieved misogynists see as against the laws of nature. And the plan’s great appeal is that it is designed to eliminate from the institutions of governance and civic life any and all vestiges of the influence of more than two century’s worth of democratic ideas.
The emergence of Trump and MAGA finally presented this opportunity.
And Trump, made mad with the need to exact revenge on his woke’ and ‘deep-state’ tormentors, was ready for just such a plan and to make this mission his own.
Trump has turned over much of the execution of the once-seemingly inconceivable objective of eradicating our progress in establishing democracy to his newly appointed Director of the Office of Personnel Management Mugging, Russell (Project 2025) Vought — and to his newly crowned Prince of Contempt-for-Grubby-Earth-Bound-Humans: the megalomaniacal space cadet, Elon Musk.
And now, as never before, Trump has been able to just sit back and sign Executive Orders that trigger the executing of his wrath against a seemingly endless list of enemies. These include just about everything that defines, upholds, or enforces democratic ideas and law and order — as well as all of the people who have contributed directly or indirectly to the indignities and suffering inflicted upon him.
The New Favorite Son
And then along comes Elon Musk. Why this sudden Trump/Musk bromance in the cause of burning down the proverbial house? Well, here’s a further bit more pop-psychology for you:
Musk is the muscular, ebulliently entitled, aggrieved, and avenging ‘son-in-lieu of . . .’ that Trump never had. Or, as I am want to put it more bluntly:
Musk is the favorite”Son of-a-PutinBitch.’
Trump has happily anointed his new (very-)off-spring to go and carve-up all the earthly liberal shit he can. And for the owner of SpaceX, the sky is not even the limit.
You gotta let boys be boys, after all.
It’s how they learn to be ‘manly’ — to fill that Zuckerbergian ‘masculine energy’ deficit.
But much more ominously, Trump has bought into an extraordinarily dangerous plan: to transition America into an autocracy. The plan is well underway and is spelled out very clearly in a recent article in The Atlantic.
This article in The Atlantic taps into exactly the grave danger and complexity of what Trump 2.0 has fully embraced. The endgame is a “dual state” run by and for the oligarchy where ‘powers that be’ in the professions and in institutions oriented towards the creation and provision of ‘public goods’ are extorted, intimidated, and suppressed, while the structures and functions that support state power, our ‘captains’ of industry and finance (our oligarchs), and our late-stage capitalism overall are robustly supported.
It’s the form of dictatorship that a Jewish labor lawyer named Ernst Fraenkel described in real-time taking form in Nazi Germany as Hitler quickly consolidated his power.
The effect is the suppression of all civic institutions and democratic processes and protections. It’s the eradication from our Democratic Republic as much as possible of what constitutes the ‘Democratic’ parts.
These include the post-Great Depression accomplishments of Franklin D. Roosevelt with the New Deal, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as those of the Women’s, Disability, LGBTQ and other movements for civil and political rights.
But it all is designed to be accomplished in a way that maintains a veneer of normalcy that works for the vast majority of people so long as you keeep your head down and your nose out of other peoples’ concerns. Do read this short article!
Knowledge is Power. We Must Bring this Powerful Knowledge to The People
Trump has transitioned. He has shredded any semblance of caring for anything other than what he wants and grievously thinks he deserves. And his wants and grievances now know no democratic bounds thanks to his apostles and acolytes — our home-grown democracy haters.
It is beyond urgent that The American people — not just a few politically-tuned-in analysts and activists — quickly come to know that this is Trump’s new agenda.
They need to hear it spoken by political, civic, corporate, religious, and community leaders and other ordinary people who are normal, decent Americans. They need to see it playing-out on cell phone videos and main-stream media documentaries and reports.
The vast majority of Americans can abide a maverick pitch-man or any number of other classic American characters, be they heroes, foils, or snake oil salesmen as an entertaining and even serious diversion.
But Americans cannot and will not abide a dictator with revenge boiling his brain and burning-up his heart.
As we look towards the series of electoral and even potentially existential challenges facing us, there are millions of people —decent people who, for all sorts of non-nefarious reasons, just sort of ‘followed along’ with the Trump circus and his cultish populist revival. These are mostly people for whom a malevolently transfigured president leading us into an era of cruel purges and rampant destruction is not what they went-along for.
As the horrific revelations of the #BlackLivesMatter movement showed us, Americans are not inclined towards systematic and indiscriminate discrimination, bullying, or cruelty. At its peak, #BlackLivesMatter was supported by 67% of the American people and still enjoys significant support despite its subsequent demonization by the resurgent MAGA movement.2
The Menace of Trump and his Method must be Removed!
A deeply disturbed, brutish, and vengeful Donald Trump has emerged before our very eyes and has embraced and unleashed a malevolent ideological crusade against American decency and democracy — against the very idea of America as, “ . . . one Nation . . . Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All.”
Trump and his democracy-hating backers and Muskreants must be removed.
People Power is the solution. Information is power. An informed people is powerful.
Our priority must be to inform and mobilize the Power of The People!
A note to readers: I’ve been writing this newsletter for about 18 months now and it’s a labor of love. But it’s also a commitment to bringing helpful perspective and context for understanding what’s happening. Even if you are just a casual reader, you will note that I’m not a reporter and I’m not a jump-up-and-down alarmist. I am an analyst drawn to understanding and clarifying political currents, signals, and strategy.
I am looking to engage with more readers. I think I often appeal to readers trying to get a handle on the dynamics behind — or undergirding — particular political developments or actions.
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Thanks! Jon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Access_Hollywood_tape
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/06/14/support-for-the-black-lives-matter-movement-has-dropped-considerably-from-its-peak-in-2020/
A great analysis of the evolution of Trump. No humanitarian bone in his body. His lies are part of his persona and just roll off his tongue. I could go on in this vein.
My fear is that all the protests and court decisions are not going to change his outlook or policies. Only getting the Republican Members Congress to turn on him will the "good guys" have a chance.
How do we go about helping people see that this government trajectory isn’t what “they” want (and who is the “they” we are trying to reach?)? I found a recent interview with conservatives in the New York Times useful to get into the mindset of non-liberals. Many people are happy with what is happening now - for many, this is democracy functioning correctly: votes put people in power with a very different view on how the country should operate and now the government is changing its priorities as a result. Some of what is happening are things that democrats / liberals should fight because we disagree with their goal of dismantling our programs, but their desire to dismantle the programs is not necessarily illegal or contrary to democracy. Other parts of what is happening are genuinely a threat to democracy. Both are important but they are not the same. We want to rally people to stand up for programs that are valuable to them that they might not want to throw away. We also want to alert people about actions that represent a scary trajectory towards the loss of democracy as a political framework. But those two efforts are distinct to me and I find them all bound up together in most of what I’m reading, which I find challenging to unravel.
For those that are not very politically engaged, it is likely hard to distinguish polarized and rabid political and cultural fighting, the dismantling of programs that they should genuinely want to save for the country’s benefit, and concern for the future of the country as a democracy. And in terms of feeling an oppressive and over-powered executive / government in their lives, the COVID times were much more intrusive and controlling in people’s lives than anything happening now, which i think will confuse people about what is government overreach and what is an appropriate reaction to a crisis. And as you highlight, fairly normal court and economic practices continue in parallel even if a government goes towards autocracy. I think it makes the narrative hard to explain and for every day people to feel real urgency about