The Skinny: Threats, Fantasies, and Naked Corruption
Assclown Fascism in America Marches On: May 16th – 23rd
The Hidden Power of Assclown Fascism
As I approach four months of analyzing the news in the second Trump era, I’m still frequently alarmed at the way the surreal “assclown circus” atmosphere of the entire Trump regime, somehow functions to mask and minimize the overt fascist machinations and operations the government and the president himself are conducting. It’s as if the Klepto Kaiser’s outrageous behavior prevents observers in the media and our larger discourse from taking his authoritarianism seriously, even as he’s engaging in authoritarian actions. Take for example the recent story about Downmarket Mussolini getting into a spat with, and then openly threatening aging American rocker Bruce Springsteen; a consistent critic of the Trump regime, and longtime supporter of the Democratic Party.
Trump Warns Springsteen: “He Ought to Keep His Mouth Shut Until He’s Back Into the Country”
“Earlier this week, Bruce Springsteen launched his “Land of Hope and Dreams Tour” in Manchester, England. The opening concert proved to be a decidedly political affair, as the New Jersey rocker repeatedly took aim at the Trump Administration with a series of pointed speeches throughout the night. “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration,” Springsteen proclaimed at the top of the concert. Later, he remarked, “A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.”
It seems Donald Trump has finally got wind of Springsteen’s comments (possibly via Fox News), and on Friday, he responded in a post on Truth Social. “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK,” Trump wrote.
He then issued what some may perceive as a not so subtle threat: “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
Okay, so on the surface is this story kind of funny? Yes. One of the most absurd things about Trump is the way the president mentally lives in a version of reality dominated by fame and public image, and thus his already quite bizarre feuds with variously liberal celebrities are often unhinged and highly-charged emotionally. Freaking out about a rock star’s skin when you look like a bag of oatmeal covered in pancake makeup is a bold, but puerile move my dude. The whole thing is pathetic, weird, and makes the President of the United States look like an assclown; which probably really matters to boutique liberal snark media outlets, but isn’t actually anything that moves the needle in a concrete sense.
The thing is, Der Leader didn’t stop typing after he mocked Springsteen’s skin; the President then proceeded to issue a demand for silence and a thinly-veiled threat to punish the again, famous liberal rock star, in unclear ways. Whether you want to talk about using the bully pulpit to try and suppress the constitutionally-protected free speech rights of a prominent critic, or the clear if undefined threat towards that same critic, this is fascist dictator shit and it’s illegal. Given the regime’s weaponization of the Department of Justice against media critical of the government, the abduction and attempted deportation of student anti-genocide protestors (including at least one woman who did nothing more than write an op-ed), and even the recent detainment and questioning of anti-Trump, anti-genocide streamer Hasan Piker by CBP in Chicago, it seems to me that we should probably take Trump seriously when he threatens an outspoken musician he doesn’t like too.
So why exactly is the lead story in the vast majority of corporate media outlets “ha ha, Trump is such a pathetic narcissist” and not “the fascist President just threatened Bruce Springsteen?” Yahoo had to pull that analysis from an upscale blog I’ve never heard of; and I’m not seeing much focus on the important part of this story in The Guardian, NBC, or ABC for example. Given what we already know about what this administration is prepared to do to silence dissent, I don’t think chalking it up to Trump being a loser is gonna cut it; and yet that’s where we’re at across much of the mainstream media environment. Look, it’s not lost on me that Trump, his sycophants, and state media outlet Fox News are all gonna deny what Der Führer said was a threat, but like I’ve said before, just because lying nazis play disingenuous games of Simon Says doesn’t mean we have to pretend they’re speaking in good faith. You know it’s a threat, and I know it’s a threat; so does the media, they’re just too scared of Trump to focus on the important part of the story.
Ratfucking and Genocide Apologia in the NYT
Given the centrality of fascist attacks on the “Lügenpresse” to their overall nazi agenda, I am sympathetic to liberals who get nervous when I go after US media outlets for lying to smear critics of power; including some outlets being directly threatened by Trump. But sympathy and the ability to understand where those folks are coming from, doesn’t change the reality that corporate media in the US has long since given up even the pretense of authentic journalism, and has willingly functioned as a propaganda vehicle for American imperial and colonialist objectives for pretty much its entire existence; and well before the rise of Trump. The fact that it’s not always politically convenient to point this out, doesn’t make it any less true, or the situation any less damaging for our political and news discourse as a whole.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the US media’s 19 month-long insistence that there are two equally valid “sides” in a discussion between genocidal warmongers and folks who oppose Israel bombing hospitals and refugee camps as part of an intentional project to conduct a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. At virtually every turn, this is a corporate media establishment in America that has defended a genocide, and viciously smeared anyone who opposed that genocide, while actively covering up for unhinged Zionists who celebrate murdering women and children while claiming basically every dead Palestinian is a terrorist or at least acceptable collateral damage in the fight to “end Hamas.” Furthermore this behavior has continued well into the second Trump era, even as Israel engineers a famine to starve Palestinians to death in Gaza, and the Trumpenreich itself kidnaps and tries to deport foreign student anti-genocide protestors, while seizing control of higher education institutes under the guise of fighting “antisemitism” that really just means “opposing Israel’s genocide.”
For an example of what I’m talking about, let’s look at this story about that time the New York Times decided to ferret out the truth, and answer the question that’s been on precisely no rational person’s mind: “is popular children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel an agent of Hamas?”
The New York Times Really Asked Ms. Rachel If She’s Paid By Hamas
“Here’s something else you won’t find in this New York Times article: the name of anyone in StopAntisemitism, a public irritant with no legitimacy whatsoever. It’s bizarre that Tracy declines to identify the person behind the organization: Liora Reznichenko, a.k.a. Liora Rez, is the founder of StopAntisemitism. She spoke at a U.S. House committee in 2024. Her main activity consists of brigading private citizens and trying to get them fired from their jobs, while she hides her own identifying information; she has a focus on targeting any criticism of Israel. According to the Washington Post, StopAntisemitism is supported in part by the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation—Tracy refers to the organization, though not by name—as well as partially funded by the Merona Leadership Foundation, which in 2022 tax filings reportedly paid Reznichenko $125,633 and gave her organization approximately $270,000. This publicly available information failed to make it into Tracy’s report.
To make it abundantly clear: Reznichenko does not provide any evidence that Ms. Rachel is funded by Hamas, either on her own website or to Tracy. The reporter’s manufactured conflict primarily hinges on some Zionist crackpot with a Twitter account and an ongoing defamation lawsuit against her, and yet she receives the benefit of anonymity as well as a helpful ally. “Accurso’s activism has divided Jewish parents distraught by the relative dearth of posts about Israeli children, with whom many Jews worldwide feel a powerful connection,” Tracy wrote. If I were his editor, I’d ask what this means. “Relative dearth”? “A powerful connection”? And this is unique, somehow? In another paragraph, Tracy wrote of Griffin-Accurso, “She did not dispute that she has posted more frequently about Gazan children.” Why would she dispute it?”
Sweet mother of christ folks; is there really no bottom for the pro-genocide establishment in the United States? For those of you who don’t know, Ms. Rachel is a children’s content creator who is globally famous for her genuine love for kids, and through her contacts with Palestinian children during again, an ongoing genocide, has started speaking out on her personal social media accounts on behalf of Palestinian child amputees and starving kids in Gaza. To the unhinged Zionist pro-genocide propaganda machine in America this means she must clearly be working for Hamas, and they’ve started a now weeks long smear campaign to declare Mrs. Rachel, basically a terrorist.
“But that’s absurd” you say; and indeed it is. Despite this the Times, a paper that loves dead Palestinian kids and supports the genocide, decided to treat these unhinged accusations as a “both sides” and “some are saying” story to help these maggots persecute, again, popular children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel. For supporting Palestinian child amputees.
Excuse me while I vomit.
Empowering Digital Fascism for the Next Decade
In writing about the Republican Party’s nightmare class war budget proposal, what Trump dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” I’ve tried to focus on the mortal toll this shit is going to foist on labor class Americans in order to give outrageous tax cuts to the richest people and companies in our society. I am not employing hyperbole when I say this reconciliation bill is going to kill people; the GOP is actively engaging in corpse farming to make the rich richer, while pretending they’re fighting a meaningless US debt “crisis” the bill won’t address at fucking all. This is the most important issue here, and Americans need to know that their representatives are literally going to kill thousands and thousands of them in a clear act of class warfare; these people must not be allowed to accomplish their goals, and the public (particularly folks in “red” districts) needs to let these fascist politicians know they will have neither a career, nor a moment of peace until they shuffle off this mortal coil, if they pass this theft and murder bill.
Unfortunately however GOP control of the House and Senate, albeit by very slim margins, has also allowed them to stuff this odious piece of legislation with all kinds of other gifts to broligarchs and well-funded ideologues trying to transform America into a fascist dictatorship. One particularly disturbing provision, given the Trump regime’s close ties to Silicon Valley nazi billionaire ideologues pumping an AI-bubble worth trillions of dollars, would block all State-level legislation of any kind on what the GOP broadly defines as “artificial intelligence or automated decision-making systems” for the next ten years.
“A provision in the proposed budgetary bill now before the House of Representatives would prohibit any state or local governing body from pursuing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems” unless the purpose of the law is to “remove legal impediments to, or facilitate the deployment or operation of” these systems.
The provision was a last-minute addition by House Republicans to the bill just two nights before it was due to be marked up on Tuesday. The House energy and commerce committee voted to advance the reconciliation package on Wednesday morning.
The bill defines AI systems and models broadly, with anything from facial recognition systems to generative AI qualifying. The proposed law would also apply to systems that use algorithms or AI to make decisions including for hiring, housing and whether someone qualifies for public benefits.”
As the article notes, this broad overreach of Congressional power comes at a time when there are already class action lawsuits being filed against companies using algorithmic software to collude on rent prices, or discriminate against marginalized renters, and will almost certainly invalidate safeguards against such practices already legislated in some “blue” states. Perhaps more disturbingly however, this deregulatory provision in the budget bill will also protect and benefit projects like Elon Musk’s DOGE-infused quest to replace most federal government workers with AI systems likely provided by and to benefit his companies. The ban would also apply to online AI information resources like chatbots and LLM-powered research tools; which doesn’t sound that sinister until you remember we’re currently in the middle of a massive AI scandal because *someone* (it was Elon Musk) programed the Twitter chatbot tool Grok to promote a nazi conspiracy theory about white genocide in South Africa and engage in a little Holocaust minimization and denial.
Look friends, I know that AI technology, for all of its dangers, isn’t inherently evil. But at some point as the evidence that I’m right continues to compile before our very eyes, I’m going to need people to accept that the really-existing AI industry we’re facing down today in the not at all hypothetical world we live in, is being run by billionaire nazi cultists who want to use these programs to destroy critical thinking, turn your kids into fascists, and transform our society into a reactionary hellscape controlled entirely by guys like them. That’s just who these people are, and what they’re trying to do with LLM’s and algorithmic technology; and you can’t say it doesn’t matter because we just watched these guys transform social media algorithms into a new generation of young fascist converts over the past three or four years in America. Now the Republican Party wants to legislate a free hand to accelerate that project, tucked into a class war budget bill that will absolutely kill poor people. There’s a clear plan at work here, if you want to see it. Do you?
Political Intimidation in Trump’s Rotten America
In a story that as far as I can tell represents a petulant fascist temper tantrum as a result of fallout over the clown-show authoritarian arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, noted sycophant Trump minion Alina Habba has announced criminal charges against US Congresswoman (D-NJ) LaMonica McIver. The regime is accusing the Congresswoman of assaulting two ICE agents during the lawful oversight visit she conducted on a sketchy, privately-run, recently reopened migrant detention facility called Delaney Hall; the very same visit that resulted in Trump’s Gestapo arresting Baraka as part of the regime’s attempts to intimidate opposition to their unlawful mass deportation campaign.
‘Should Send a Chill Down the Spine of Every American’: Trump DOJ Charges New Jersey Democrat
“In a statement, Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba announced the charges against U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), claiming the lawmaker “assaulted, impeded, and interfered with law enforcement” at GEO Group’s Delaney Hall. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded GEO Group a billion-dollar contract earlier this year to detain migrants there, even as the facility faced legal challenges and accusations of abuse.
McIver rejected the charges against her as “purely political,” saying that “they mischaracterize and distort my actions” in an attempt to “criminalize and deter legislative oversight.”
“We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short,” said McIver. “Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor [Ras] Baraka.”
Habba said Monday that her office has agreed to drop the trespassing charge against Baraka, who welcomed the decision while expressing solidarity with McIver.”
If you followed the story of Ras Baraka’s arrest, you’ll know that the entire encounter between McIver and the Gestapo goons that Habba is talking about was literally captured on widely-published video, and needless to say it doesn’t show the Congresswoman assaulting anyone; let alone “body-slamming” anyone as at least one DHS official previously claimed. Even the government’s own out of context video clip just shows some shoving in a crowd of people trying to protect the Mayor of Newark. In other words the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey is straight up lying about something we can all watch on video. This would of course be more shocking if the world hadn’t gotten to know Alina Habba while she served as a defense attorney for Downmarket Mussolini, when she routinely spat out easily disprovable lies in court. As an activist I can say from personal experience that this feels an awful lot like the standard bullshit charge cops who just roughed up some protesters press to keep the heat off long enough for the story to go away, and then quietly drop later. You can see that same pattern at work in the “trespass” charges laid against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, which were ultimately dropped because the regime knows they don’t have a leg to stand on when they’re under oath.
With all that established however, I think it’s important to understand that even if they ultimately drop the charges against McIver as they did with Baraka, this is still an example of a fascist regime weaponizing the enforcement arm of the state, to target and intimidate their political opposition. Pam Bondi might not love the Justice Department’s chances in a court of law, but a message is still being sent to opposition party politicians that if they try to interfere with the unlawful, openly fascist “whitening” of America, security forces will be deployed to stop them. This when combined with the regime’s threatening rhetoric, and its day to day attempts to erode the oversight of the judiciary so they can do blatantly unconstitutional authoritarian bullshit, effectively creates an unstable political environment where opposition to the regime’s program, even legal opposition, carries an impossible to properly calculate degree of personal risk to the critic. Whatever your opinion of the Democratic Party happens to be, I think we can all admit that putting their own asses on the line to protect dissidents and critics hasn’t exactly been their forte since at least October 7th, 2023; although obviously Baraka, McIver, and Robert Menendez deserve full marks for doing so now.
Finally; I can’t prove it, but for a fun thought experiment google up some pictures of Baraka, McIver, and Menendez and tell me if you can think of any obvious reasons a white nationalist government might charge only the two people they did. Yeah, that looked about white to me too.
Graft, Militarism, and Sci-Fi Fantasies
I may be revealing my age by asking this question, but that is it with white supremacist ex-film star presidents and “dumb weapons ideas inspired by science fiction movies?” Although it’s hardly the worst thing about the Republican Party’s nightmare class war reconciliation bill, House Majority Speaker and noted bootlicker Mike Johnson squeezed in $25B worth of funding for Downmarket Mussolini’s absurd desire to build a “Golden Dome” missile defense system covering the United States. Now Trump himself has announced he intends to move forward with the project, and despite the fact that it’s a delusional old cracker’s unworkable Hollywood fantasy, it’s going to cost Americans a lot more than just $25B.
Trump rolls out Golden Dome missile defense project and appoints leader
“Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration will move forward with developing the so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense system that he envisions will protect the United States from possible foreign strikes using ground and space-based weapons.
Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in the Oval Office, Trump also said that he wanted the project to be operational before he left office. He added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part.”
Dear Canada, what the fuck are you doing? Setting that question aside however; this is absolute batshittery. I hate the way the US media reports even Trump’s most unhinged activities through the lens of what a vain, ignorant dipshit he is but sometimes that really is why he does the unhinged shit he does. Downmarket Mussolini has been obsessed with “space war” and upper atmospheric militarization since his first administration, and he’s jealous of Israel’s US-funded “Iron Dome.” The tip-off here is in the name; Gold is after all worth more than Iron. This whole project is basically Trump’s version of the “Star Wars” program Ronald Reagan tried to will into being during the 1980’s, and they’re equally useless and wasteful ideas.
The kicker here however is that the $25B price tag Republicans are tossing around is just a down payment. Downmarket Mussolini himself thinks it’ll take $175B to get the project he wants done, and experts predict the real price tag might be way higher; even without the cost overruns that have become endemic in US military spending projects.
“But the option that Trump chooses will determine its timeline and cost. The $25bn coming from Republicans’ budget bill is only set to cover initial development costs. The final price tag could exceed $540bn over the next two decades, according to the congressional budget office.”
Have I mentioned that this garbage isn’t going to work? Never mind that; even if it did work, why do we need a Golden Dome? I’ve been on this green Earth for forty-eight years now and I can’t think of one time we’ve come under missile attack, with or without a “Golden Dome.” Are Pentagon planners sitting around the war room sweating the possibility of Mexico and Canada teaming up to take out the Beltway with conventional rockets because neither country has a nuclear weapons program? There is precisely zero chance Trump’s Golden Dome even works against modern hypersonic missiles, but that’s probably fine because both Russia, and China have had nukes for my entire life and the need for a missile defense shield just hasn’t come up.
So if America doesn’t need a Golden Dome, who does? If your guess was defense contractors and billionaire nazi broligarchs raised in apartheid South Africa, you win a gold star.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Among Bidders to Build Trump’s $175 Billion “Golden Dome”
“Defense Contractors are already boosting the idea. In an interview with Fox on Wednesday, Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet boasted that the dome would create jobs domestically, while also trying to sell Lockheed Martin as a company that could play a major role in its creation.
Among benefactors of the project could be Elon Musk, who has played a major role in Trump’s government-gutting spree after spending more than $250 million on Trump’s reelection; and Peter Thiel, a major backer of Vice President J.D. Vance, credited for Vance’s rise in politics.
Musk’s SpaceX and Thiel’s Palantir are reportedly frontrunners to win a contract to build a major part of the Golden Dome, Reuters reported last month.”
Although I don’t want to just quote the whole article, this Truthout piece also notes that Trump is just pulling numbers out of his ass and this is probably going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars more than he’s saying; $880B to be precise. The author also says what the Guardian won’t: the entire Golden Dome project is stupid and it’s not going to work. The Iron Dome barely works and Trump’s proposed system is more ambitious and unworkable by far. And of course, the piece also notes, as I have above, that we literally don’t fucking need it.
This my friends, is what old timey newsmen used to call a “boondoggle” in the making. This is a massive make work program for billionaire fascists who own defense contracting companies; guys like Musk and Thiel. And the cherry on top is that it’s being rammed through at the same time the ruling Republican Party is slashing over a trillion dollars in life-saving social programs for labor class people from the federal budget. This obscene scam should disgust you, even if your media is too far up the weapons industry’s ass to care much.
Killing Green Jobs to Torch the Planet
Well, we’re all in the shit now. In the event you haven’t heard, House Republicans rammed through their nightmare class war reconciliation budget bill in the dead of night on Thusday; because when you’re voting to murder and rob your own voters, it’s best to wait until everyone is asleep. This is of course, catastrophically bad. The “Big Beautiful Bill” does however still have to make it past the GOP-controlled Senate, where there has been pushback over Mike Johnson’s proposed $715B in Medicaid cuts; most notably from faux-populist Josh Hawley. Keep in mind however that in the US system of government the Senate has the power to alter legislation before voting to pass it, which means this bill could easily get worse for labor class Americans too. The long and short of the situation is that we’re probably still fucked, but we get to spend multiple weeks agonizing over whether or not we’re completely fucked; because American politics is basically the meatspace answer to the Torment Nexus trope.
All of which means that we’re still breaking down the most horrifying aspects of the GOP’s homicidal class war reconciliation bill; which honestly might have so much nightmare shit inside that it’ll fully pass into law before analysts get a chance to talk about all of the reasons this is a terrible piece of legislation. Take for example the unhinged and highly-partisan assault the Republican Party is conducting on green energy initiatives and subsidies. We already know the Trump regime is committed to burning the planet to ash as fast as possible purely as a matter of ideology, but did you know that eliminating everything about Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act will also increase household costs for everyday Americans and eliminate as many as 830,000 jobs? These guys sure are good at “the economy.”
Trump’s tax bill to cost 830,000 jobs and drive up bills and pollution emissions, experts warn
The analysis in this article is kind of all over the place, but we’re essentially looking at three key problems here: job losses, increased household expenses, and climate damage that will all be directly caused by this bill.
“And the legislation will cost the US 830,000 jobs by 2030 compared with the status quo, Energy Innovation found. That includes the direct loss of jobs in fields such as solar panel manufacturing and electric vehicle production, indirect job loss from the decreased investments and lower clean energy demand, and induced cuts resulting from consumer spending cuts attributable to layoffs, higher fuel costs, and other third-order effects.
“The Inflation Reduction Act was carefully crafted to create good-paying jobs in deindustrialized communities, underserved communities, and coal communities. We have seen that it is doing just that, creating good jobs you don’t need a college degree to get and opening up pathways to the middle class across the nation,” said Ted Fertik, vice-president of manufacturing and industrial policy at climate and labor advocacy group Blue Green Alliance. “Killing the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act is a direct attack on working Americans.”
I think these devastating numbers speak for themselves, but it’s also worth pointing out that because the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy spending was specifically targeted at rural, deindustrialized communities, this is going to result in significantly more job losses in Republican voting areas than “blue” states. Whether that matters to you is a question of opinion and political loyalties, but it again exposes the reality that the GOP is actively voting to harm its own supporters at every turn by passing this bill.
“The bill as it stands will cause Americans’ energy bills to spike by stymying new renewable energy – often the cheapest form of new electricity generation – the non-partisan thinktank Energy Innovation calculated. The average household will see their bills rise by more than $230 by 2035.”
I mean who doesn’t love paying higher power bills, am I right? Obviously very few people are going to fall into financial ruin as a result of an additional $230 per year in energy costs, but this must be understood in the context of all the other ways this bill is going to increase household costs for American families as well; more expensive power, combines with higher medical costs, and reduced food subsidies to add up to an insurmountable barrier for low income families pretty fast. Not that Republicans gleefully throwing just under fourteen million people off Medicaid really care much about whether or not labor class Americans survive, clearly.
Finally of course, there’s the fact that slashing all of this green energy funding while promoting fossil fuel extraction and consumption at historically unprecedented levels is the absolutely worst thing we can do to combat the ongoing climate crisis.
“This will all come at the expense of the environment,” said Orvis.
The new bill will also cause the US to emit 260m tonnes more pollution than it would’ve otherwise in 2035, which is more than the entire annual emissions of Spain.”
Hey, would it even be be a Trump-approved bill if it didn’t literally kill the planet faster? Of course not.
Naturally, all this nightmare bullshit packed into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is being sold as “ending subsidies for woke corporations” – because “not getting black lung” is apparently woke now. The obvious truth here however is that this entire bill is a subsidy for rich people, paid for by literally robbing and murdering labor class Americans.
Bloodlessly Reporting Our Descent Into Fascism
The larger American establishment’s ongoing surrender to Trump and his fascist regime is a story with many high-profile cowards, culprits, and collaborators. But given the frequently self-declared role of American media to speak truth to power, and protect our “democracy,” I think it’s entirely fair that corporate news outlets paving the way for Downmarket Mussolini to install a fascist dictatorship come in for extra vigorous criticism by honest and informed observers. Take for example this recent piece for the Intercept by Natasha Leonard, examining how corporate media outlets reported the Department of Justice’s outrageous plans to prosecute Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver on wholly fabricated assault charges, after she attempted to conduct legal oversight on a privately-run ICE facility in her district.
Trump Is Prosecuting a Congressional Democrat for Doing Her Job. The Media’s Response: No Big Deal.
“Democratic Rep. McIver charged with assault after skirmish at ICE center, New Jersey prosecutor says,” The Associated Press reported. “Rep. LaMonica McIver charged by DOJ over incident with ICE agents,” read the ABC News headline. “The Justice Department charged a New Jersey congresswoman with assaulting federal agents during a clash outside a Newark immigration detention center,” began the New York Times’s coverage.
All of these are technically accurate: Alina Habba, Trump’s sometime personal lawyer and the interim federal prosecutor for New Jersey, announced on X that the administration was charging the member of Congress with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” after an incident when McIver and two other House members went to view ICE’s privately run Delaney Hall detention facility.
News organizations should, however, have long ago stopped affording the Trump administration such credulous coverage. Even the most bare-bones, facts-only reporting here fails the basic task of truth-telling if it doesn’t lead by pointing out that these charges are manufactured, malicious, politically motivated attacks.”
I’ve written a bit about both the (now dropped) charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and the pending charges against Congresswoman McIver so I won’t rehash all the details here again; needless to say I agree wholeheartedly with Leonard’s assertion that the charges against McIver are trumped up fascist nonsense, a clear case of attempted political intimidation, and part of a seemingly racist pattern of targeting its political opponents with the Justice Department, by the Trump administration. Furthermore, given that the incident that motivated interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba to file assault charges that each carry a maximum sentence of eight years was captured entirely on video, I don’t think it is at all reasonable to pretend the Trump regime might have a point, or that this is a “she said, they said” kind of issue. Yet as Leonard documents, that’s exactly how subservient media reported not only the story of McIver’s targeting, but also the attempted prosecution of Baraka as well.
Look folks, this isn’t a question of partisan political coverage; I’m no friend of the Democratic Party, and based on the significant quantity of her writing I’ve read, I’d be willing to bet neither is Leonard. There is something fundamentally wrong, and actively dangerous, about a US corporate media complex that can watch a fascist, white nationalist, and openly nativist regime engage in a clear act of authoritarian political intimidation against its duly-elected political opposition, to protect a nightmare mass deportation scheme built on legal arguments you know are extremely dubious, and report it as a “clash” while accepting Alina Habba of all people’s arguments at face value. This isn’t bad journalism, this is paving the way for the fascist repression of Trump’s political opponents in real time and whether its a result of cowardice, or open collaboration, is absolutely fucking irrelevant. The United States is speedrunning a descent into a fascist dictatorship run by a brainwormed septuagenarian racist and his openly white nationalist toady Stephen Miller, and these chucklefucks are out here pretending just maybe a Congresswoman should do a couple decades of hard time for bumping into an ICE murderpig while literally being prevented from doing her job; even though we have the entire interaction on fucking video.
If this is the kind of coverage corporate media outlets intend to provide during the second Trump administration, then Downmarket Mussolini doesn’t need to suppress the media. After all, they’re already happy to work for him and his fascist agenda right now, and Der Leader is rather busy tearing what passes for American democracy apart as we speak.
Trumpworld, Tariffs, and Insider Trading
At this point I think it’s safe to say that open, bald-face corruption is more or less a known calling card of the Trump regime. As such, would it surprise anyone reading this to learn that while Trump and his sycophantic toady Howard Lutnick were planning to core out your retirement savings and drive the cost of household goods through the roof, people inside the administration were selling off stocks in anticipation of the massive market crash the tariffs behind Downmarket Mussolini’s unhinged trade war produced? Yeah I didn’t think so.
More Than a Dozen U.S. Officials Sold Stocks Before Trump’s Tariffs Sent the Market Plunging
“More than a dozen high-ranking executive branch officials and congressional aides have made well-timed trades since Trump took office in January, most of them selling stock before the market plunged amid fears that Trump’s tariffs would set off a global trade war, according to a ProPublica review of disclosures across the government.
All of the trades came shortly before a significant government announcement or development that could influence stock prices. Some who sold individual stocks or broader market funds used their earnings to buy investments that are generally less risky, such as bonds or treasuries. Others appear to have kept their money in cash. In one case unrelated to tariffs, records show that a congressional aide bought stock in two mining companies shortly before a key Senate committee approved a bill written by his boss that would help the firms.”
I think this article does a pretty good job of covering the bases, while still being emblematic of the corrupt free market fundamentalist society we live in; a society where the laws are more or less designed to facilitate and protect greedbag speculators and cheats, not regular people. At least twelve Republicans in and around the Trump administration sold off their stocks right before the tariff-induced market crash, in an act any reasonable person would call open corruption. You can read the whole article for more details, but the highest profile crooks we’re talking about here are AG Pam Bondi, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. This of course isn’t the first time a Trump government has been exposed for trading on inside information for their own benefit; as you may recall multiple GOP Senators responded to confidential government meetings about the then-emerging COVID-19 virus by selling stocks, in a scandal that likely cost Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler their political careers.
Of course Pro Publica doesn’t call what the Trump minions are doing here corruption, or directly accuse anyone of what is obviously insider trading at all; because they’re afraid of getting sued in a society that insists rich people manipulating the markets isn’t corruption unless all parties involved produce a signed confession witnessed by a member of the Notary Public. Which brings us to the larger issue this story is also pointing toward; namely that insider trading is so easy for government officials in America that it’s simply unreasonable to assume any of them are trading stocks and other securities honestly. Yet that is more or less the current operational policy in American politics.
Every single day governments in the United State, particularly the federal government operating on the national level, make decisions that cause corporations and even whole industries to rise and fall in the stock market; sometimes as in the lead up to COVID lockdowns, these decisions are monumental, and sometimes they’re focused on the activities of a small number of unheralded companies, but what all of these policy choices have in common is that they often affect the market in wholly predictable ways. Each one of those decisions, policies, and pieces of legislation are ultimately an enrichment opportunity of some kind for people working in the government who are aware of what tomorrow’s economic reality will be in advance, because they’re working on the laws that will shape that new reality in the dark.
Given this reality, one would presume that it would be illegal for members of the US government, particularly the federal government, to trade stocks at all. Because we’re living in the High Church of Capitalist Hellworld however, it is not illegal. Furthermore most administrative oversight of trading activity by members of the US government has been stripped to the bone because let’s be frank, politicians and their staffs aren’t in the business of sending each other to jail for something a lot of them are getting stinking rich from all the time. This set up is outrageously corrupt at the best of times, but the establishment’s demand that we continue to ignore this situation becomes more openly contemptuous of our intelligence with a Trump administration that doesn’t give a wet shit if people know they’re greedbag crooks engaged in again, a clear act of insider trading. Yet because our society is corrupt enough to allow the very rich to legally silence their critics through harassment lawsuits, nobody is really allowed to call it what it is – open corruption.
If you want to understand how a bunch of rich nazis ended up installing assclown fascist thieves in the highest positions of power in American politics, you could do a lot worse than examining a ruling class American establishment that tolerates, encourages, and defends openly corrupt practices like the trading documented here as a starting point in your investigation.
- Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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