Trump has suggested that Canada, a huge and sovereign nation, should become the 51st state of the U.S.
Elizabeth Evans May, a member of the Green Party in the Canadian Parliament, suggested instead that California, Oregon, and Washington State should become provinces of Canada.
Because Trump suggested that Wayne Gretzky should be elected Prime minister of Canada, She felt compelled to explain to Trump how the Canadian system differs from the American system. The people don’t elect the prime minister. The members of parliament do.
Explaining the basic facts of history and government to the undereducated Trump is a never ending task. He clearly learned nothing about such subjects in high school or college.
Jeff Tiedrich is a web designer and graphic artist who has a consistently hilarious and outrageous blog. I can’t redact all the F words, so forgive that. I curse at home, but never in public or in print. Jeff has different rules.
He titled it: Elderly Convict Won’t Stop Running His Ignorant Mouth About L.A. Fires.”
He wrote:
no one has ever accused America’s First Felon of learning. Donny Convict knows what he knows, and he’ll be god-fucking-damned if he’s going to let something stupid like facts change his stubborn mind.
we saw this during the botched response to Covid, where Donny never stopped insisting that that virus that was killing thousands of people a day was going to magically disappear all on its own, “like a miracle.”
we’re seeing again right now, where, as Southern California burns to the ground, he’s refusing to allow a single fact to penetrate his thick skull.
CA official: “if we ignore the science and put our head in the sand … we’re not going to succeed together in protecting Californians.” Donny: “it’ll start getting cooler. you just watch.” CA official: “I wish science agreed with you.” Donny: “I don’t think science knows, actually.”
that was Donny in 2020, insisting — without any facts or evidence — that “it’ll start getting cooler,” because “science doesn’t actually know.”
let’s fast forward to right now, and see if Donny was right.
hmm. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure a hurricane made of fucking fire is not a hallmark of lower temperatures in California.
“Governor Gavin Newscum should immediately go to Northern California and open up the water main, and let the water flow into his dry, starving, burning State, instead of having it go out into the Pacific Ocean. It ought to be done right now, NO MORE EXCUSES FROM THIS INCOMPETENT GOVERNOR. IT’S ALREADY FAR TOO LATE!”
Trump appeared to be referring to water imported south from the Bay-Delta, fed by Northern California rivers and snowmelt. But most Los Angeles water does not come from Northern California. It comes via the city’s 112-year-old aqueduct that runs from the Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada, not the Delta, as well as groundwater. The city also imports water from the Metropolitan Water District, which relays water from the Colorado River and Delta to numerous local agencies. The city was the main motivating force for the building of the Colorado River Aqueduct in the 1930s.
and, of course, we’ve all explained until we were blue in the face that Los Angeles’ hydrant problem stems from having to fight too many fires in too many locations all at once, not because there’s some imaginary faucet that Gavin Newsom won’t turn — but MAGA isn’t listening. they don’t give a fuck about explanations. not when there are political points to be scored.
The 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, also known as the Gatlinburg wildfires, were a complex of wildfires which began in late November 2016. Some of the towns most impacted were Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, both near Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The fires claimed at least 14 lives, injured 190, and is one of the largest natural disasters in the history of Tennessee
as happened this week in Los Angeles, the fires severely overtaxed Gaitlinburg’s infrastructure, to the point where —
Firefighters from across the state flocking to Gatlinburg to battle a growing firestorm couldn’t be sure the fire hydrants they uncapped would provide any water.
And within two hours of the mega wildfire reaching the city on Nov. 28, the hydrants were running dry.
the wingnutsphere must have shit a massive brick, and called for then-Governor Bill Haslam to resign, right? because as we all know from this week’s howls of MAGA outrage, empty fire hydrants are a sure sign of gubernatorial incompetence.
nope, crickets. there was nary a peep from the Fox News crowd. no one blamed it on DEI, and no one called for witholding aid to Tennesee until they change their conservation policies — which is definitely a thing Republicans are threatening to do right now to California.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the great people of Tennessee during these terrible wildfires. Stay safe!”
oh, huh. no bombast, no accusations, no demands that Governor Haslam travel to god knows where and open some imaginary spigot. nope, just some worthless thinking and praying.
why were Donny and the screech-monkeys of the MAGAverse silent? because Bill Haslam was a Republican, and there were no political points to be scored.
It is my review of Trump’s plans for K-12 education.
NYRB is the most distinguished literary-political journal in the nation. It has a huge readership. It reaches a different audience than education journals.
If you subscribe to NYRB, you can open it in full. If you don’t, it costs $10 for 10 issues. Or, if you wait, I will post it in full in a few weeks.
Jeff Tiedrich’s blog on Substack is called “Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion.” He uses language that I ban from this site. But he’s so exceptional in his insights, his humor, and his ability to weave incidents into a narrative that I have to post him despite his flagrant use of the F word.
The judge who presided over Trump’s criminal trial, Juan Merchan, issued a sentence of “unconditional discharge”, meaning the president-elect will be released without fine, imprisonment or probation supervision for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. While the sentence makes Trump a convicted felon, he will face no penalty other than this legal designation.
in the end, A Very Special Boy received the slightest possible punishment, being told in effect to go think about what a bad boy you’ve been. but at least Donny will go down in history as America’s only convicted felon president. you know the big grievance-baby is never going to stop letting it gnaw away at his insides — and for that, ha fucking ha. sucks to you be you, Donny.
Donny had tried like hell to put off his sentencing until how about never, running first to the New York Court of Appeals and then to the New York State Supreme Court, insisting that the imaginary doctrine of “pre-presidential immunity” meant that he couldn’t be sentenced for any crimes at all.
both courts told Donny to get stuffed — and so he went scampering off to his besties on the Supreme Court. late last night, the Supremes surprisingly did the right thing, and ruled 5-4 that Donny could eat an entire bag of dicks.
three of the four dissenters were Luxury Vacation Clarence, Fishin’ Trip Sammy, and Blackout Brett — the bought-and-paid-for Federalist Society hacks who vote the way their oligarch overlords tell them. the fourth was Nihilist Neil, whose own motivation is that he hates government and just wants to see everything burn.
wrap your mind around that. there are four Supreme Court Justices willing to go beyond the already-corrupt concept of ‘presidential immunity’ and insist that Donny is A Super-Duper Extra-Special Boy who can do all the crimes he wants, any time, for any reason, with no accountability at all, ever.
one vote is how close Donny came to escaping even the limited form of justice that was meted out this morning.
“if you noticed yesterday, the hydrants were empty. they didn’t have any water, any of them. they said twenty percent but now I just heard fifty percent and now none of them have water and that fire’s still raging. when he turned that down, I was going to give him unlimited water, it would come down, it really comes down from the north, way up north, including parts of Canada, it’s so much water that they wouldn’t know what to do with. just the opposite would have happened. but and uh, that’s the reason that this happened. he wouldn’t do what we wanna— and we’re gonna force that upon him now, but it’s very late.”
where do you even begin with this nonsense?
Donny somehow believes that Gavin Newsom rejected an imaginary offer of water that apparently comes from some mysterious source “way up north.” (Donny stopped short of repeating his ‘big Canadian faucet’ fairy tale.)
“There was no ‘water restoration declaration’ for him to sign,” Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow in the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California think tank, said in a Wednesday interview.
“There was never a ‘water restoration declaration’ in California that the Governor refused to sign,” Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a Wednesday email.
let’s go back to the clip.
“we’re gonna force that upon him now.”
he’s going to force water on Gavin Newsom? how does that work?
“Governor Newsom, there’s a delivery man here with a hundred million tons of water, he wants to know where to put it.”
Donny’s never been all that big on the concept of consent. remember when he promised to quote-unquote “protect women,” whether they like it or not?
“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not,’” Trump said. “I’m going to protect them.”
how fucking creepy is that? “I’m doing this to protect you” is the kind of thing the serial killer says as he handcuffs you to the radiator.
Donny famously bragged about grabbing women by the pussy — because when you’re a star, they let you. now Donny’s going to hydrate California — because when you’re a president, they let you.
reporter: “what’s the price tag?” Donny: “well, maybe no price tag. y’know, look, we’re going to have to see what happens. because Denmark — we need this for national security. we need Greenland very badly. you look— the Russian ships, the China ships, they’re all over the place, they’re surrounding. now they have for a long time, that’s a lane. but uh, we need that for national security. so, I don’t know that Denmark has any right title and interest, so we’re going to find it— but I can tell you, you saw the clips that were released. the people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America. I— we were greeted with tremendous love and affection and respect. the people would like to be a part of the United States. now Denmark maybe doesn’t like it, but then we can’t be too happy with Denmark, and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs. because they have to do this, I think, for the free world. we need that to protect the free world.
listening to Donny try to form coherent thoughts on the fly is like watching a chimpanzee play with a hand grenade. you know it’s going to end badly, but you can’t look away.
what is this nonsense? “I don’t know that Denmark has any right title and interest.” that Greenland is a territory of Denmark is not open to conjecture. there’s no maybe they and maybe they aren’t. it’s a fact, and facts are not malleable. Donny lives in a fantasy world of his own construction.
now, as to these people in Greenland who are so fucking psyched to become Americans — are they in the room with us right now? because when Cokey McSniffles Jr. and that weird little garden gnome Charlie Kirk did their failed Greenland photo op earlier this week, they had to bribe unhoused locals to wear MAGA hats and pretend to be supporters.
Danish public media organization DR News reports that many of the Trump supporters pictured dining with the president-elect’s son were unhoused and “socially disadvantaged” people asked to wear MAGA merch and offered a free dinner at Hotel Hans Egede in the town of Nuuk.
so yeah, that sounds like a groundswell of enthusiasm right there.
“also in California, you might have recalled a news story from last year. there was some interest in the fire departments and the firefighters in California. and the interest was that there were too many white men who were firefighters. and we need to have a program in California to make sure we don’t have enough white men as firefighters. we have DEI, we have budget cuts, and yet I’m wondering now if your house was burning down, how much do you care what color the firefighters are?”
Scott Jennings seems to care a lot what color the firefighters are. sounds to me that if Scott Jennings’ house were on fire and black firefighters showed up, he’d demand to know where the white firefighters are.
fuck this implication that black people aren’t up to the job of fighting fires, and that they’re being allowed to ride on the firetruck as some kind of unearned favor.
Tex. Rep Jasmine Crockett was having none of it.
“we are looking at qualifications. what diversity, equity, and inclusion has always been about is saying, you know what, open this up. don’t just look at the white men. open it up and recognize that other people can be qualified. if we have been good enough to build this country, we are good enough to serve and die overseas, we are good enough to serve in other ways.”
the Most Unwelcome Man in the World inflicted himself on Jimmy Carter’s memorial service yesterday, and there are two things you need to know.
first, the narcoleptic old dotard immediately drifted off into slumberland — and second, Melania apparently now does her shopping at the Pilgrim Warehouse.
but the real hero of the day was the photographer from the Carter Center, who positioned his camera so that Donny and Melly, who were sitting to the right of Obama, were blocked by a granite column.
Scott Dworkin, a prominent leader in the resistance to the Orange Menace, watched Trump’s self-glorifying rant and reports on it here. I subscribe to his Substack commentary, where this appeared. Just think: we will have to listen to this self-obsessed know-nothing for the next four years. I’m glad to let someone else do it for me.
He wrote:
Yesterday, unhinged madman Donald Trump held what he calls a “press conference.” They’re actually dangerous propaganda sessions.
In order to fight back, we have to stay aware and engaged at a constant. But I don’t want you to have to watch or listen to this bozo, so I summed up what happened for you here.
Donald spent some time pointlessly attacking President Biden. He once again admitted to lying about bringing down grocery prices, and mused that Facebook is likely doing away with fact-checking due to his threats.
He lied about Jack Smith executing people, whined like a baby for being prosecuted for his crimes, and railed against judges who are just doing their jobs. Trump complained about electricity itching—or something—and said he was going to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America.” Very original.
“The windmills are driving the whales crazy,” Donald said at one point, for no reason whatsoever.
He even went on some bizarre tirade about water pressure. “It’s called rain,” he blabbed. “It comes down from heaven. And they want to do no water comes out of the shower. It goes drip, drip, drip. So what happens? You’re in the shower 10 times as long.” There are so many things wrong with that word salad.
Trump lied and said Hezbollah was responsible for the violence on Jan 6th—when we all know Donald and his rabid cult followers are to blame. He also nonchalantly promised “major pardons” for the rioters who attacked the Capitol—possibly even for those who assaulted police officers. What a disgrace.
Donny “Cheap Suit” then rambled incoherent threats about using military force to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, and economic attacks to absorb Canada.
The orange ogre replied to a question about his plans for Gaza negotiations saying, “all hell will break out in the Middle East,” if hostages aren’t released before January 20th. Are you kidding me? That’s not even a “concept of a plan.”
And one of the looniest things that came out of his blubbering mouth was: “We did nothing wrong on anything,” related to the crimes he committed. Remember that every Trump denial is an admission.
This is the sort of unhinged nonsense we will be dealing with as long as Trump is around. And I’ll be right here keeping an eye on him, so you don’t have to.
We’ll be sharing this article with millions of people on 10 social media networks, so we aren’t just singing to the choir.
Today is the fourth anniversary of the worst act of insurrection in our nation’s history. Urged on by President Donald Trump, who insisted that he actually won the election of 2020, a large mob stormed the United States Capitol in hopes of stopping the certification of the election of Joe Biden.
To be clear, Trump is a world-class liar and a very sore loser. He simply refused to admit that he lost the election, fair and square. Biden won the electoral vote and the popular vote. Trump’s lawyer challenged the voting results in multiple states. They filed more than 60 lawsuits, appealed twice to the U.S. Supreme Court, and lost every time. They lost in courts where the judge was appointed by Trump, as well as by other Presidents.
Still, he refused to concede his loss. He spent the past four years claiming that he had been cheated, even though he never produced a scintilla of evidence to support his lies. Several of his lawyers were disciplined or disbarred. His personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was disbarred and also fined $148 million for defaming two election workers in Georgia. Although he had declared that he is bankrupt, Giuliani continues to turn over his assets to the women he defamed. Trump cannot pardon civil judgments, so Giuliani is likely to lose not only his law license but all of his assets.
Yet Trump survived, having persuaded his faithful base that he had been cheated in 2020, despite his lack of evidence and multiple indictments and convictions.
History will say this about Trump:
He was the first President who refused to participate in the peaceful transfer of power to the winner of the election.
He was the first President to inspire an insurrection against the government.
He will be the first convicted felon ever to serve as President.
His insurrection and his name will live forever in infamy.
Quite an ignominious legacy.
To read an excellent article by Robert Reich on the same topic, open this link.
Joyce Vance is a veteran federal prosecutor; she was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern district of Alabama from 2009-2017. She writes a blog called “Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance.” She usually writes about the law, the justice system, and Trump’s efforts to avoid accountability for his misdeeds. But in this post, she addresses the root cause of his appeal: low-information voters who are hoodwinked by his lies and believe he will fight for them. Ha. Not funny.
She writes:
It’s no wonder that Project 2025 calls for putting an end to the Department of Education. Trump’s electoral success depended on so-called low-information voters, members of the electorate who couldn’t or didn’t distinguish between the tough talk and tough guy image the candidate portrayed and the reality of the policies that come with his win. That’s often true for MAGA candidates, who are inexplicably able to attract the voters who are harmed by the policies they subsequently pass, as with tax cuts for the extremely wealthy and the working-class voters who didn’t benefit from them, but made them possible.
The Washington Post had this story today about the hopes of low-income voters who went for Trump in 2024, like a single mom who said she sometimes has to choose between buying toilet paper and milk and told reporters, “He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich … I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.” So far, that’s not looking good.
This very predictable reporting about voters suffering from buyers’ remorse is emerging even before Trump takes office. These people hope he won’t do exactly what he said he would during the campaign and has been focused on during his transition with programs like the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s DOGE—cut government spending that they depend on. Whether it’s low-income people, mixed-status immigrant families, people who rely on Social Security, or parents with immune-compromised kids who rely on immunized classrooms, people voted against their own self-interest and are now facing that reality.
There are no do-overs in presidential elections. Successful disinformation campaigns or campaigns where image trumps consequences have lasting effects.
But spin, or disinformation—however you want to characterize it—designed to redirect voters away from focusing on bad facts about candidates can work, and this past election proved it. This T-shirt ad that the algorithm fed me earlier this week is an example of how Trump’s criminal conviction was sold to voters: the mythical outlaw, not the corrupt criminal. It’s hard to believe Americans fell for that, but they did, giving Trump a pass and letting him cultivate an image that was one step further out there than Sarah Palin’s maverick.
Voters who lack the backbone of a solid education in civics can be manipulated. That takes us to Trump’s plans for the Department of Education.
Stepping on education and staunching the flow of information is a key goal for any authoritarian. Remember when Trump told an evangelical group during the campaign that if they voted in 2024 it would be the last time they had to vote? That’s something that Americans, hopefully, will not fall for, because the 2026 midterms will be key. If guardrails are going to be rebuilt, that’s where an important part of it will happen. And while we’re all burned out from the last election, this next one will matter; we will need to reengage, because a big Democratic win could staunch the bleeding from unfettered acquiescence by the legislative branch to Trump, who currently commands majorities in both chambers. That means the provision of accurate information and accurate analysis of that information to voters who will put it to use is important. But what does that look like in a country that voted for Trump?
One thing that is clear from the ease with which Trump seems to have stripped so many voters of their common sense is the need to restore civics education in this country. That’s a long-term plan and a big topic that we need to take on over time, but it’s not too early for us to begin to think about what we can do in the coming year ahead of the midterms. For one thing, if it’s right for you, even if it’s a stretch, consider running or seeking appointment to a school board. Republicans got the jump on Democrats in this arena. It’s time to catch up. Or, if that’s not in your lane, make the time to show up at school board meetings and demand civics education in our schools. Progress in this area will take time, but we can all set a good example and encourage people around us to do a better job of understanding what matters in government. Ironically, if 2017 is any indication, people caught off guard (although who knows how) by some of the worst excesses Trump is likely to engage in will be ready to be better informed and reengage in democracy. Capturing that moment will be important.
One of the goals of Project 2025 is terminating the Department of Education. There is growing Republican support for that plan at the state level by leaders who want to restore state control (much like conservatives sought restoration of abortion policy to the hands of red state officials in Dobbs). Enter Trump’s nominee to head the Department, Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration (SBA) for him from 2017 to 2019.
Trump’s appointment of the professional wrestling magnate has drawn little comment as the media has focused on Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and others. Suffice it to say she does not appear to possess much of a background in public education. She was on the Connecticut Board of Education for one year, but there has been reporting she received that appointment after lying about having a degree in education. When that report came to light while McMahon was running, unsuccessfully, for a Connecticut Senate seat, she said that “she mistakenly thought her degree was in education because she did a semester of student teaching, and that she had written to the governor’s office the previous year to correct the error after another newspaper noticed the mistake.” (I, too, did some student teaching in college, but I was always clear my degree was in political science and international relations.)
McMahon is a longtime Trump ally and financial backer, apparently key qualifications for the job. After two years at the SBA, she stepped aside to run Trump’s America First Action PAC. Other qualifications: Yahoo News reported that “Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary was once pile-driven by a 7ft wrestler and feigned being drugged unconscious while her husband cheated on her.” Yahoo went on to recount that “Mr. Trump served as a sponsor and host for WWE events in Atlantic City in the late 1980s and years later appeared in the ring himself, when he took a razor to the head of Ms. McMahon’s scandal-ridden husband, Vince, as the wrestling boss wailed. In 2013, WWE inducted Mr. Trump into its hall of fame.”
The National Education Association ran an editorial opposing McMahon’s confirmation. They called her “unqualified” and wrote that she “spent years pushing policies that would defund and destroy public schools.” That sounds like a good fit if your agenda involves destroying the Department of Education. Start at the top.
NEA President Becky Pringle said, “McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students – and 95% of students with disabilities – learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools.”
So while we begin to think about ways to repair democracy, medium-term goals like winning midterm elections, and long-term goals like restoring civics education, spare a moment for some short-term plans: write to your senators about McMahon’s nomination. It’s flying largely under the radar screen, and it should not be. Do not obey in advance, and do not make it easy for Trump to destroy democratic institutions like the Department of Education with the complicity of your state and federal elected officials. We have a lot of work to do when it comes to public education. We have to insist that free, publicly funded, high-quality education is available to every child. Our engagement as citizens is everything. Let’s get to work.
The Thought Police lost an important case in Arkansas! Score one for librarians, booksellers, and people who read books! It’s a setback for those who don’t read books, never have, never will.
A federal judge Monday tossed out parts of an Arkansas state law that allowed librarians and booksellers to be sent to prison for up to a year for allowing minors to access “obscene” or “harmful” materials, whatever local officials might decide is “obscene” or “harmful.” Probably gay penguins.
In his ruling, US District Judge Timothy Brooks found that the law, Act 372, violated the First Amendment and also generally sucked, was overly vague, and didn’t provide adequate guidance to libraries and booksellers to help them avoid being arbitrarily prosecuted. The law created a new process for complaints and required libraries (tell you what, just assume “and booksellers” is part of every sentence, OK?) to shelve “harmful” materials in a special adults-only section, although it didn’t mandate that such a section be behind a beaded curtain like at an old video store. A similar law in Idaho — minus the librarian-jailing — is also being challenged in federal court, as are multiple other censorship laws.
Brooks wrote that the law “deputizes librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship; when motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest,” which was of course the point. For all the Mad Moms’ insistence that they only want to protect tiny innocent kids from “obscene” materials, the actual targets of book banning tend to be anything rightwing parents dislike, especially mentions of LGBTQ people, books about race, and sex education.
Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said yippee, now we can poison kids’ minds, destroy the family, and kill God, or at least that’s how wingnuts will interpret what she actually said, which was
“This was an attempt to ‘thought police,’ and this victory over totalitarianism is a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers, and readers who refused to bow to intimidation…”
To learn more about the court decision, open the link.
Did you see Trump’s bizarre Christmas message? He made outlandish claims, lied, and threatened the sovereignty of other nations. Heather Cox Richardson puts his boasts into perspective. All in all, the prospects are alarming.
Trump is first and foremost an entertainer. He spent many evenings watching wrestling matches. And he had that big role on The Apprentice, which gave him a fake persona as a tough manager. He is not noted for his knowledge of domestic or foreign policy. He clearly knows nothing about history. His understanding of the Constitution seems to be hearsay. Read this post and tell me: is he ignorant, stupid, or senile?
She writes:
It is starting to seem like the best way to interpret social media posts from President-elect Donald Trump is through the lens of professional wrestling. Never a true athletic competition—although it certainly required athletic training—until the 1980s, professional wrestling depended on “kayfabe,” the shared agreement among audience and actors that they would pretend the carefully constructed script and act were real.
But as Abraham Josephine Reisman explained in the New York Times last year, Vince and Linda McMahon pushed to move professional wrestling into entertainment to avoid health regulations and the taxes imposed on actual sporting events. That shift damaged the profession until in the mid-1990s, wrestlers and promoters began to mix the fake world of wrestling with reality, bringing real-life tensions to the ring in what might or might not have been real. “Suddenly,” Reisman wrote, “the fun of the match had everything to do with decoding it.”
Nothing was off-limits, and the more outrageous the storylines, the better. “[F]ans would give it their full attention because they couldn’t always figure out if what they were seeing was real or not.” This “neokayfabe” “rests on a slippery, ever-wobbling jumble of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods, all delivered with the utmost passion and commitment.”
Reisman concluded that producers and consumers of neokayfabe “tend to lose the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.” In that, they echo the world identified by German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt in her 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist,” she wrote, “but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
Yesterday, on Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah, Trump posted a “Merry Christmas to all” message that went on to claim falsely that Chinese soldiers are operating the Panama Canal, that President Joe Biden “has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.” The heart of his message, though, was that the U.S. should take over both the Panama Canal and Canada, and that Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark, “is needed by the United States for National Security purposes,” and that “the people of Greenland…want the U.S. to be there, and we will!”
Trump’s sudden pronouncements threatening three other countries—he has been quiet about Mexico since its president pushed back on his early threats—have media outlets scrambling to explain what he’s up to. They have explained that this might be a way for him to demonstrate that his “America First” ideology, which has always embraced isolation, will actually wield power against other countries; or suggested that his claim against Panama is part of a strategy to counter China; or pointed out that global warming has sparked competition to gain an advantage in the Arctic.
The new focus on threatening other countries, virtually never mentioned during the 2024 campaign, has driven out of the news Trump’s actual campaign promise. Trump ran on the promise that he would lower prices, especially of groceries. Yet in mid-December he suggested in an interview with Time magazine that he doesn’t really expect to lower prices. That promise seems to have been part of a performance to attract voters, abandoned now with a new performance that may or may not be real.
There is also little coverage of the larger implications of Trump’s threats to invade other countries. Central to the rules-based international order constructed in the decades after World War II is that countries must respect each other’s sovereignty. Between 1942 and 1945, forty-seven nations signed the Declaration by United Nations, the treaty that formalized the alliance that stood against the fascist Axis powers. That treaty declared the different countries would not sign separate peace agreements with Germany, Italy, or Japan.
They would work together to create a world based on the 1941 Atlantic Charter, which called for the territorial integrity of nations and the restoration of self-government to countries where it had been lost, and for global cooperation for economic and social progress. In 1945, delegates from fifty nations met in San Francisco to establish a permanent forum for international cooperation.
What emerged was the United Nations, whose charter states that the organization is designed “to maintain international peace and security” by working together to stop “acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,” and to settle international disputes without resort to war. “The Organization is based on the principle of sovereign equality of all its Members,” the charter reads. “All members shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations,” it reads.
Russian president Vladimir Putin is eager to tear down the international rules-based order established by the United Nations and protected by organizations like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). His invasion of neighboring countries—Georgia in 2008, then Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022—demonstrates his desire to return the world to a time in which bigger countries could gobble up smaller ones, the ideology that after the invention of modern weaponry meant world wars.
On Christmas Day, Russia fired more than 70 missiles and more than 100 drones at Ukraine, targeting its energy infrastructure. The Ukrainian forces shot down more than 50 of the missiles, but the attack damaged power plants, cutting electricity to different regions. Just two years ago, Ukraine began to celebrate Christmas on December 25, following the Gregorian calendar rather than the less accurate Julian calendar still favored by the Russian Orthodox Church for religious holidays. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said the change would allow Ukrainians to “abandon the Russian heritage” of celebrating Christmas in January.
Also yesterday, an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia failed, following a series of cuts to telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea in November. Today, Finland seized an oil tanker it believes cut the cables yesterday, noting that the tanker may be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” that is waging a shadow campaign against NATO nations at the same time that it is evading sanctions against Russia.
In a joint statement today, the European Commission, which is the government of the European Union, “strongly condemn[ed]” the attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure and said it would be proposing further sanctions to target the Russia’s shadow fleet, “which threatens security and the environment, while funding Russia’s war budget.” It emphasized Europe’s commitment to international cooperation.
Also yesterday, an Azerbaijan Airlines jet traveling from the Azerbaijan capital of Baku on its way to Chechnya crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing at least 38 of the 67 people on board. Nailia Bagirova and Gleb Stolyarov of Reuters reported today that a preliminary investigation by Azerbaijan officials suggests that Russian air defenses shot the plane down.
Newsweek’s Maya Mehrara reported that on Russian media last night, a propagandist close to Putin cheered on Trump’s demand for Greenland. “This is especially interesting because it drives a wedge between him and Europe, it undermines the world architecture, and opens up certain opportunities for our foreign policy,” nationalist political scientist Sergey Mikheyev said.
Mikheyev supports Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and has called for Russia to add to its “empire” not only Finland and Poland, but also Alaska, Hawaii, and California. Last night he explained that Trump’s approach would undermine the rules-based order that has shaped the world since World War II. If Trump “really wants to stop the third world war,” he said, “the way out is simple: dividing up the world into spheres of influence.”
Mehrara noted that academic Stanislav Tkachenko said that Russia should “thank Donald Trump, who is teaching us a new diplomatic language.” He continued: “That is, to say it like it is. Maybe we won’t carve up the world like an apple, but we can certainly outline the parts of the world where our interests cannot be questioned.”
But yesterday in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, Armenians and Azerbaijanis joined the protesters who are filling the streets to protest the government’s attempt to tie Georgia more closely to Putin’s Russia. They hope to turn Georgia toward Europe instead.
And President Joe Biden issued a statement concerning Russia’s Christmas bombardment of Ukraine to cut heat and electricity for Ukrainians in the dead of winter. “Let me be clear,” he said, “the Ukrainian people deserve to live in peace and safety, and the United States and the international community must continue to stand with Ukraine until it triumphs over Russia’s aggression.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a nonconformist. Also an oddball and a crackpot. He has fought against vaccines for years. Donald Trump chose him to oversee the federal department of Health and Human Services. There he will have the power to stop research on vaccines, to ban vaccines–to use his power to kills hundreds of thousands of people, mainly children and the elderly.
He was a heroin addict for many years. Watch the video from a few months ago where he explained how heroin improved his academic performance.
The Senate should not put this man in charge of the nation’s health.
Diane Ravitch's blog 