Trump And The End Of American Democracy

The authors of new books about Trump's degradation of American democracy appeared on Morning Joe today.

The Steel Dossier allegations are being corroborated making it clearer all the time that Putin had his hooks into Donald Trump from the beginning. That Donald Trump has been and continues to be a Putin puppet.

What does Putin want? Besides overturning the sanctions the US imposed on his oligarchs after the invasion of Crimea, Putin wants to create chaos in the U.S.

Where have we heard that before?

Chaos is Steve Bannon's brand

Steve Bannon has compared himself to Lenin, which is odd enough for a right wing operator. His overarching theory or goal is to create chaos. He has said this repeatedly in his safari jacket TED style talks. He sees this moment as his “Fourth Wave” where the whole system is overturned. He thinks of himself as a Robespierre figure, a Lenin, an agent of mass destruction tearing down democratic institutions he doesn’t like. His goal, apparently, is to create a new American dictatorship with himself at the top, securely fastened there by his connections to shadowy billionaires whose fortunes came from disruption.

We see the damage he’s doing in every government department where Trump has appointed disruptors to top positions. The nominees may just as well have been sent from Moscow. The Dept of Energy, which safeguards our nuclear stockpile, is run by a doofus who wanted to shut down the department. His Health chief was a pawn of big Pharma. His Environmental Protection chief built his career on defending and lobbying for polluters. Their mission is focused on destruction and dysfunction.

Putin whispers in Trump’s ear and Trump insults our allies, undermines our alliances, rubbishes our treaties, exits global agreements American leadership crafted, seeks to pit one ally against the others. And then Trump gives big warm kisses to the worst dictators and kleptocrats around the world. He admires and envies the skill with which democracies have been destroyed and coups have been accomplished. He envies the mass murders of Duterte in the Philippines. He does nothing when Turkish dictator Erdogan brings his dark-suited thugs into the heart of Washington to attack and brutally beat peaceful protesters. This is the style Trump admires and envies. This is how Trump has disgraced the American brand and degraded American leadership in the world.

The Trump junta has had a plan from the start: destroy American democracy and the American way of life, create an angry mob, and ride that angry mob into dictatorial power.

Trump Unfriends America's Largest Trading Partners––Friends Express Concern

[President] Trump is engaging in a worldwide unfriending. People formerly close to the White House are puzzled and concerned. Asked if Mr. Trump has access to weapons, they said "Yes. Lots of them.”

In a phone call with America’s most reliable ally [President] Trump loudly berated the Australian president and then hung up on him.

Reported in The Age, from Australia

In another phone call Trump threatened Mexican president with US military invasion.

“You have a bunch of bad hombres down there,” Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the excerpt seen by the Associated Press. “You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”

From the LATimes and the AP

From MotherJones

Earlier this week the White House blamed the shooting in Quebec on Muslim terrorism when it was Muslims at prayer who were murdered… by a white Christian nationalist…

From the Intercept

Canadian President Trudeau demanded an apology. Canada is our #1 trading partner

From The Guardian

The largest percentage of America’s foreign trade is with the European Union. The Head of the EU stated this week that President Trump is a threat to Europe’s future.

From the Wall Street Journal

America’s #2 trading partner is China. Donald Trump has entrusted our national security to Steve Bannon, who believes the US is definitely going to declare war on China.

From the Guardian

Bannon also favors “a major shooting war in the Middle East” in the coming years.

“To be brutally frank, I mean Christianity is dying in Europe, and Islam is on the rise,” he said in January 2016. “Some of these situations may get a little unpleasant,” Bannon said. “But you know what, we’re in a war.”

From Foreign Policy Magazine

Bannon is a big war enthusiast, a war hobbyist you might say. His big idea is that chaos causes good things to happen. He is predicting––and now is in a position to precipitate––major catastrophes and crises. Why? Unlike Dick Cheney, the shadow president from 2001 to 2009, who had to have a war to rescue his Halliburton retirement package, Bannon is planning a war or wars just because he likes blowing things up.

From TIME magazine

Bannon loves war. He gets a thrill from the thought of sparking a major global conflict.

In a speech he delivered to the Liberty Restoration Foundation in 2011, Bannon said this:

"I'm actually energised...You've all read history books since you were kids. And you all think hey, if I was there during the Civil War, I'd be right in the middle of it. Or if [it] was the Revolution, I would be right there. On World War Two...I would be there. I'd be in Normandy, I'd do all that. We have that opportunity today...There are so many people who believe in what we believe and understand when you start talking to them, and engaging them, that we're not cloven-hooved devils. We're not nativist, homophobic, racist, right. But they understand that we believe in what made this country great, and they believe it too.”

In a 2014 speech to a conservative conference at the Vatican, Bannon said this:

“We’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that's starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we've been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years...we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it.
"[It is a]...global war, and it is, unfortunately, something that we're going to have to face, and we're going to have to face very quickly...there is a major war brewing, a war that's already global. It's going global in scale, and today's technology, today's media, today's access to weapons of mass destruction, it's going to lead to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today. Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that we didn't act."

From International Business Times

This is the man who promoted himself to the chairmanship of the National Security Council, after firing our top military leader, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and our Director of National Intelligence. He is merging media, propaganda, national intelligence and our military, transforming them into a personal toy.

If a foreign enemy, say Russia (just hypothetically) wanted to isolate the US and create debilitating chaos that would bring us to our knees, they couldn't have done a better job than President Bannon and Make-Believe-President Trump have done in under two weeks.