The Republican Party under Trump's leadership has become such a racist, xenophobic, immoral, conspiracy-mongering cesspool, it's easy to lose track of any one of its despicable stands that, pre-Trump, would have been thought unthinkable. A prime example: racism. Here is a review of his racist track record. Trump:
'His team knows': White House reporter reveals how staffers try to hide Trump's decline
"Morning Joe" panelists reacted throughout Monday's episode (March 3, 2024) to the former president slurring and bumbling his way through a pair of campaign speeches over the weekend, saying he clearly seems to be mentally diminished…” In several public addresses recently, Trump has confused Barack Obama for Joe Biden and Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi.
'Does he not see that?' MSNBC guest alarmed by signs of Trump's physical deterioration
Former Trump Organization CFO pleads guilty to perjury
Chesebro thought Jan. 6 would 'blow over' if Trump gave Biden coffee and told jokes
The Scandal of Clarence Thomas’s New Clerk
Voters cannot ignore Trump’s racism
With nine months to go before the election, we already have the FACTS about what Republicans long for in a presidential candidate. A Republican presidential candidate is someone who:
--Rapes a woman, labels her a liar when she publicly outs him; continues to vilify her after a jury finds him guilty of gross sex abuse and orders him to pay compensation; forcing her to go through the ordeal of another public vetting of the horror she endured; once more, continues his vilification outside the court and appears personally in court to do the same.
--Makes up a Big Lie about how two Georgia election workers engaged in criminal activity to manipulate the ballot count, and joins his lawyer--like Rudolf Giuliani--in a publicity campaign to spread the lie, unleashing a torrent of threats and intimidation of the two that turns their lives into a living hell. Keeps the vile lie going for three years until a trial exonerates the two and the jury orders the lawyer to pay almost $150 million in damages.
--Publicly and frequently expresses his fulsome praise for murderous thugs Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, Chinese President Xi, Hungarian strongman Orban. Even calls the terrorist organization Hezbollah "very smart."
--Continues to vociferously tell the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from him, without offering a shred of evidence to support his allegation, while even honest former senior officials in his Administration say he is lying
--Openly declares his intention, if elected, to establish an authoritarian regime in the United States that will put an end to democracy and the rule of law.
--Demeans the military service of John McCain
--Calls fallen American soldiers "losers" and "suckers," according to Gen. John Kelly, Trump's former Chief of Staff.(See https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/politics/john-kelly-donald-trump-us-service-members-veterans/index.html)
--Mocks the handicapped.
All the above is what Georgia Republicans like Gov. Brian Kemp, SECSTATE Brad Raffensperger, and all the Republican members of GA's U.S. Congressional delegation want their presidential candidate to have. They are joined by people like Gov. Glenn Youngkin (VA) and Senators Grassley (Iowa) and Collins (ME).
*Bankruptcy no longer fits. Too weak.
Any decent American hopes that the saga of Donald Trump vs. E. Jean Carroll will be over with a jury’s decision to award Trump’s rape victim with $83 million in damages. In the many years of this saga, Trump has displayed a pluperfect example of toxic masculinity that would put most serial rapists to shame. First, there was the sexual assault itself in the mid-1990s, a brutal act that, if revealed at the time, would probably have ended Trump’s career as a TV celebrity. But, as in most instances of a rich and famous person committing a sexual assault, the victim refused to press charges out of a feeling of shame and the dread of the publicity circus that would ensue, likely ending—according to precedent—with the criminal being found not guilty.
But personal and societal norms change, and in 2019, Carroll revealed the assault in the New York magazine as an excerpt from a book she had written. Trump vociferously denied the allegation and called Carroll a liar. Unable to seek damages over the alleged assault itself because the statute of limitations had passed, Carroll brought defamation claims against Trump over his written and verbal comments accusing her of lying. That lawsuit seemed to be getting nowhere when New York state in 2022 dramatically changed the situation by passing a law giving plaintiffs a one-year window to bring claims seeking civil damages for sexual misconduct. Carroll immediately filed a new lawsuit seeking damages for the alleged assault itself. She included a new claim of defamation over Trump, in October 2022, once more accusing her of lying.
On May 9, 2023, a federal jury in New York found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse and awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in damages. The jurors did not find that Trump raped Carroll, but they agreed that he "sexually abused" her and that he defamed her when he denied her story.
The jury’s decision did not phase Trump one iota. He immediately proceeded to show what a warped, twisted, and depraved soul he really is by resuming his public insults and defamation of his sex assault victim. Carroll had no alternative but to force him to face a jury one more time, not on the physical assault charges, but to determine how much Trump would have to pay in fines and punitive damages.
During the second trial in January 2024, Trump outside the courtroom kept up a barrage of verbal attacks on his victim, and repeated his accusation that she was lying in a brief personal appearance on the witness stand. His lawyers in the courtroom did the same. The judge several times admonished Trump for exceeding the guidelines for his testimony.
On Jan. 26, 2024, the second jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to Carroll for defaming her.
Trump showed up in person at the second trial. Here is one news service description of his antics: “He shook his head in anger, sitting with his back hunched. He spoke to his lawyers, his words sometimes quite audible to the packed courtroom. He wrote instructions for his defense team that he shoved their way. He walked in late at one point, and at another, while a lawyer suing him was speaking to the jury, he stalked out.” The journalists concluded that Trump’s behavior showcased his disdain both for America’s legal system and for the protocols of courtrooms that apply to all participants.
The Carroll case had its parallel in Georgia. In 2020, Trump accused two Georgia election workers—Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman—of illegally manipulating ballots that were being counted in the presidential election. The Trump campaign, led by lawyer Rudolf Giuliani, launched a campaign to vilify the two, based on nothing but lies. The allegations turned the lives of the two into a living hell of threats and harassment, forcing the mother to move out of her home.
Federal courts and the state of Georgia found the charges to be completely false. Giuliani himself at one point had admitted the allegations were lies he had created out of whole cloth. He then recanted his words, but a jury awarded the mother/daughter team $148 million in damages from Giuliani for defamation over the lies he spread about them.
The defamation trials, in short, glaringly reveal what an immoral, character-assassinating cretin Donald Trump really is. But more to the point: what decent human beings could possibly reveal their own depraved, degenerate souls by continuing to support Trump for president? In fact, to gleefully support Trump for president for the third time? The answer, of course: an overwhelming majority of Republicans, that’s who.
In Georgia, those Republicans who support the despicable behavior displayed by Trump in his treatment of his defamation victims include the following U.S. Representatives and their stafers:
As IndieDems previously noted, by late last year Donald Trump and his Republican minions had turned American politics into a racist, xenophobic, conspiracy-mongering cesspool. We summed it up with these words:
It is the Republican Party that has thrown overboard the basic moral, democratic, and religious values that have guided the country for 240 years. It’s the Republican Party that has adopted lies and extremism as a normal way of life and become a replica of the fascist parties that spread so much evil in the 1930s and 40s.
Trump’s words and deeds over the past several weeks, and Republicans’ response to him, have further clarified the extent of the degradation of the Republican Party. Republicans, more than ever, have become moral outliers compared to all politicians that came before. Eight years of Trump’s leadership, guided by his from-the-gutter morality, has so warped Republicans’ hearts and minds, they are off the scale of any previous measure of a group’s moral sensibility.
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni summed it up cogently, labeling it The G.O.P.’s Nasty New Religion: Republicans inhabit “an inverted ethical universe, one where nastiness is toughness and bullying is boldness. One where contempt is strength.” Most Trump voters regard his penchant for insults as proof that he’s uniquely “strong and honest enough” to say out loud what other politicians want but don’t have the nerve to. Trump, in their minds, is not a vulgar, indecent, bullying lout. He’s an authentic and unbowed hero.
Another voice in the rising chorus is columnist Jessica Grose: “The Republican Party has undergone a fundamental shift, swapping a fixation on character and morality and so-called Family Values for a celebration of belligerence, violence, and, yes, toxic masculinity.”
IndieDems believes Grose came up with a term even better than toxic masculinity to describe Republicans: “toxic immaturity.”
A New Vocabulary
“Extremist” is still the best definition of the Republican Party’s ideology under Trump. But the new level of pure nastiness and personal insults requires these words: Lout. Oaf. Bully. Knave. Brute. Thug. Deceitful. Scoundrel. Rapscallion. Scalawag.
READ MORE
Trump Just Keeps Doing Appalling Things, and the Ranks of the Disengaged Are Growing
Mocking Haley, Trump Adds to His Long History of Racist Attacks
The former President is again focusing on race and background as he campaigns against Haley in New Hampshire
What 17 of Trump’s ‘Best People’ Said About Him
These cabinet-level appointees saw Donald Trump up close. And they decided they couldn’t stand by him.
(Editor's note: this post was first published on January 4. Since then, the media have reported many new examples of the head-long effort by Trump and the Republican Party to destroy democracy and the rule of law in America. The new articles are designated as such below).
As the mainstream media are increasingly recognizing, Donald Trump has not single-handedly turned American politics into a racist, xenophobic, conspiracy-mongering cesspool. It isn’t even Trump plus his famous know-nothing extremist base that accomplished the deed.
It is the Republican Party that has thrown overboard the basic moral, democratic, and religious values that have guided the country for 240 years. It’s the Republican Party that has adopted lies and extremism as a normal way of life and transformed itself into a replica of the fascist parties that spread so much evil in the 1930s and 40s.
It’s millions of Republicans who, as the 2024 election season heated up in recent weeks, stepped up their all-out, multi-dimensional campaign to impose Trump’s vision of an authoritarian, lawless regime on the United States. Here are some of the prime examples of their deeds. The details under the headlines are the exact or slightly redacted quotes from the articles.
NEW
Trump’s promotion of debunked election report reveals divisions in his circle
“In interviews, academic and legal experts debunked the content of the report Trump promoted.”
NEW
Trump tries reappropriating ‘insurrection’ on Jan. 6 anniversary
In campaign speeches surrounding the third anniversary of the attack, the former president defended people charged in the riot and repeated baseless claims that left-wing or government interlopers caused the breach
NEW
Three years later, beware dangerous revisionism of Jan. 6
NEW
Trump skips Illinois loyalty oath promising not to overthrow government
Trump “did not sign a loyalty oath requested of candidates for election in Illinois that asks, among other things, to swear that they won’t support overthrowing the government, according to an analysis of candidate petitions by the local news outlets WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times.”
NEW
Trump reprises dehumanizing language on undocumented immigrants, warns of ‘invasion’
Former president Donald Trump on Sunday accused undocumented immigrants of waging an “invasion” of the United States, in a speech that highlighted his frequent use of dehumanizing language and exaggerated terms to describe many foreigners seeking to enter the country.
NEW
Trump leaning into his criminality because Republicans love his crimes
Donald Trump has been leaning into the crimes that he's been charged with committing, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough concluded that his supporters actually approve of him breaking the law.
Scarborough’s conclusion: Trump’s attendance is his best campaign move. “Republicans love that he commits fraud, Republicans love that he steals nuclear secrets, and I have no direct evidence of that other than looking at his poll numbers when it comes out that he's actually committed fraud, and when they find out he's stolen nuclear secrets, his numbers go up."
(In IndieDems view, Scarborough has nailed the pathetic state of the Republican Party in 2024).
Led by Trump, GOP candidates take polarizing stances on race and history
The party’s three leading candidates are speaking about history and race in polarizing and provocative ways that sometimes diverge from or distort the facts, some political strategists, experts and civil rights leaders said
____________________________________________________________________/
States were cooperating on election integrity. Then GOP officials quit
Since 2022, nine states where Republican officials administer elections have quit a nonprofit, nonpartisan consortium that helps keep voter rolls up to date through interstate data exchange.
____________________________________________________________________________/
3 years after Jan. 6 attack, GOP loyalty to Trump and rioters climbs, poll finds
_________________________________________________________________________/
These politicians denied democracy on Jan. 6. Now, they want your vote.
While the violent mob swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, aiming to subvert democracy and keep President Donald Trump in power, another group was already working on the same project inside.
In an unsuccessful bid to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, 147 Republicans formally supported objection to counting Joe Biden’s electoral votes.
(The article provides cartoon caricature portraits of the Republicans, by region.)
__________________________________________________________________________/
Extremist MAGA Republican Web Site Still Pushing Michigan Election Fraud Lie
Three years after the 2020 elections, right-wing website Gateway Pundit published a lurid story about burner phones, semiautomatic weapons, silencers and bags of prepaid cash cards. “NOW WE HAVE PROOF!” blared the headline.
Of course, they had not a shred of evidence, but the story “provided weeks of headlines that radiated across right-wing media and were repeatedly amplified by pro-Trump influencers.”
“The outlet’s emphasis on long-debunked fraud claims helps explain why election denial has proved so durable.”
______________________________________________________________________________________/
Donald Trump's Own Expert Debunks His Election Claims
“The elections technology expert who former President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign hired to find voter fraud debunked Trump's claims again in a scathing op-ed in USA Today. Ken Block, founder of the analytics company that Trump contracted in the wake of the last presidential election, said on January 2 that the extensive research his company did no evidence that election fraud contributed to President Joe Biden's win. He blasted Trump's "steady diet of lies and innuendo."
"The former president keeps careful watch over his endorsements from elected Republicans, aided by a disciplined and methodical behind-the-scenes operation."
Aquilino Gonell, a former U.S. Capitol police officer who sustained serious injuries defending the building against the Jan 6 Trump-inspired mob, has written a book, “American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy,” to help counter the lies being told about the attack by Trump and his Republican henchmen. Gonell was assisted in the writing by Susan Shapiro and Jamie Raskin.
Aquilino Gonell came to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a young boy, speaking no English. He dedicated himself to his adopted land, and determined to be a success story, he joined the army to pay for college. He saw action in Iraq and returned home with PTSD, but focused on healing himself and supporting his family. His hard work paid off when he landed a position with the United States Capitol Police and rose to the rank of sergeant.
January 6, 2021, changed his life. When insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, Gonell bravely stood fast against the mob, sustaining brutal injuries that ended his career in law enforcement. He decided to write his book when some of the very people he put his life on the line to protect downplayed or denied the truth of that day. He still suffers mental anguish when he hears people he protected say that nothing happened, and feels compelled to speak out against the injustice done to him and the country.
Gonell states flatly: anyone who describes the thugs who invaded the Capitol as “hostages” is desecrating America. Trump and the other apologists for the mob, he says, have abandoned and betrayed the principles and values America stands for.
Republicans have not only taken us back in time in race relations, closer to the days when racism was accepted as normal. (Some would say, back to the days of legal racism under segregation). Recent revelations show Republicans' anti-regulation fervor has allowed the revival of the practice of child labor, as practiced under unfettered 18th-19th Century capitalism.
Children Risk Their Lives Building America’s Roofs
The Times tells what happened to several child roofers who were severely injured on the job.
Antoni slammed into a concrete patio after slipping and falling nearly 30 feet. He lay in a coma with severe brain trauma. His skull was fractured, a lung was punctured and he was bleeding internally throughout his body. After three months, he woke up, and the doctors said he could leave. No rehabilitation facility would accept him without health insurance. Unable to speak or stand, he went back to the trailer he had been sharing with his uncle’s family. He stayed inside for the next several months.
A 16-year-old fell off a roof in Arkansas and shattered his back. A 15-year-old in Florida was burned all over after he slipped from a roof and onto a vat of hot tar. A child in Illinois stepped through a skylight and fractured his spine.
Terry Coonan, who runs a human rights center at Florida State University, tells how one 15-year-old boy from Central America, who had been traveling around the country with a crew boss, was abandoned last year after being injured on a work site. The boy was found alone and crying in a ditch. “He was of no more use,” Mr. Coonan said.
Children working on construction sites are six times as likely to be killed as minors doing other work, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Roofing is particularly risky; it is the most dangerous job for minors other than agricultural work, studies show.
Labor organizers and social workers say they are seeing more migrant children suffer serious injuries on roofing crews in recent years.
FULL STORY with more about Republican-tolerated child carnage
READ MORE:
Trump is showing how a second term would rewrite the rules of presidential power