After 4 years of saying Donald Trump is worse than Hitler, The Washington Post has softened its stance on the President and now thinks he’s only equal to Hitler. I suppose that’s progress for the purveyors of fake news and Trump-hatred. In what is surely the dumbest thing they’ve published all week, the WaPo warns that once Trump steals the 2020 election he is going to turn into literal Hitler and become the fascist they’ve always said he was. This is journalism in the Age of Trump.
And this is what the WaPo bills as “perspective”:
Twelve signs Trump would try to run a fascist dictatorship in a second term
It starts out as bad as the headline would indicate:
People have debated whether Donald Trump is fascist since he announced he was running for president.
When has the liberal media ever debated whether Trump is fascist? They’ve been calling him a fascist since before he was elected and in fact, the WaPo article goes on to list many liberal stooges who have accused him of fascism:
In 2015, Jamelle Bouie wrote in Slate that Trump, in his campaign speeches and Twitter utterances, exhibited seven of the 14 characteristics identified by the Italian novelist Umberto Eco in his defining essay “Ur-Fascism.”
“The fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tweeted. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) — noting in an opinion column three days later that the president’s “attempt to use chaos to shred democratic safeguards and consolidate authoritarian power is deadly serious” — put it this way: “This is our own Reichstag fire and, yes, Trump is playing the role of would-be Fuehrer, proclaiming a ‘God-given signal’ to seize more power.”
That’s not much of a debate and the author of this WaPo crapfest wasn’t in the mood for objectivity either:
I first reported on Trump in 1982, when he conned me into putting him on the Forbes 400 rich list. That Trump was just a younger version of this Trump, and now I worry that what happened in June was a mere prelude; he’s certainly capable of a far worse Reichstag-fire-like event that would allow him to steal the 2020 election. And if he does win a second term, legitimately or not, his words and actions of the past four years provide 12 indicators that he would seek to replace our democracy with a fascist dictatorship.
And those 12 indicators are by far the dumbest thing about this:
1. Trump uses military power and federal law enforcement to suppress peaceful political protest.
In June, he deployed the National Guard and federal officers to violently evict protesters in Washington, terrorizing them with two military helicopters flying low near the crowd. Trump also had 1,600 members of the 82nd Airborne on standby outside the capital and readied tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Is that the “peaceful” protest that burned down a church? Also, having the military on standby is not using them for anything, it’s having them on standby.
2. Trump persistently lies about voter fraud, setting the stage for him to use emergency powers to seize control of the election or challenge the results if he loses.
After winning the 2016 presidential election while losing the popular vote, he claimed a landslide victory and said that Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote was due to “millions of people who voted illegally.”
Clinton’s margin in the popular vote was about equal to how many votes she got in California, a state that automatically registers illegal aliens to vote.
3. Trump has repeatedly suggested that he might remain in office after a second term and has offered reason to doubt he’d leave peacefully after this first term.
“Under the normal rules, I’ll be out in 2024, so we may have to go for an extra term,” he said at a rally last September. A year earlier, he remarked, “President for life . . . maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” It’s a joke he’s tossed off on several occasions, and the power of suggestion is so strong in Trump and his followers that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen have all expressed serious concern that Trump may try to steal the election or contest the results, and not leave the White House if he loses.
Trump told a joke. I don’t remember Hitler having a sense of humor. Come to think of it, Biden and Pelosi aren’t know for that either, but they sure do like to lie and hyperventilate anytime Trump jokes around.
4. Trump appears to believe he has the power to outlaw speech critical of him, and he calls the free press “the enemy of the people.”
He tweeted of the New York Times and The Washington Post: “They are both a disgrace to our Country, the Enemy of the People.”
The WaPo and the NYT have been in a constant state of retracting their false Trump-related pieces for the past 4 years. That’s not being a friend of the people but it is fake news. Speaking the truth about the sad state of journalism isn’t an attempt to outlaw speech.
5. With Fox News promoting Trump’s lies as truth, the president controls one of the most powerful propaganda machines ever created.
During the impeachment trial, for example, Fox hosts repeatedly attacked the character and mental faculties of Democratic representatives and sworn witnesses, while focusing almost exclusively on the testimony of pro-Trump Republicans.
It’s just too bad there isn’t a propaganda machine for the liberals like ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBC.
6. Trump believes that he has the power to do what he wants, regardless of Congress or the courts.
“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he has said. He has also claimed to have the “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department” and, in the event the judiciary branch disagreed, “the absolute right to PARDON myself.
The President is in charge of the executive branch under which you will find the Justice Department. Trump, like any president can do what he wants with his branch of government. That’s not fascism, that’s the Constitutional separation of powers.
7. Trump acts as if he owns our government and can fire any official who defends the law.
He has dismissed an FBI director and a deputy FBI director, as well as five inspectors general and U.S. attorneys, all of whom were investigating or considering either his abuse of power or the alleged crimes of his cronies.
Again, the President is free to make personnel decisions in his branch of government.
8. Trump uses federal prosecutorial powers to investigate his opponents and anyone who dares scrutinize him or his allies for the many crimes they may have committed.
After the Mueller investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 election, Trump’s Justice Department began a criminal probe into the origins of the inquiry — to, in Trump’s words, “investigate the investigators.”
Deep state Obama loyalists and the democrats tried to have Trump removed from office based on their fictitious story and the President doesn’t have any right to find out who they are and what they did?
9. Trump viciously attacks his critics and has publicly implied that the Ukraine whistleblower should be hanged for treason.
During a speech to diplomatic staffers in New York last September, Trump said: “I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
That’s an acknowledgement that the whistleblower would not be hanged.
10. Trump has messianic delusions that are supported with religious fervor by millions of his supporters.
He has “jokingly” looked up to the sky and said, “I am the chosen one” in relation to negotiations with China.
Trump’s jokes make liberals go nuts.
11. Trump subscribes to a doctrine of genetic superiority and incites racial hatred to scapegoat immigrants and gain power.
He has rallied his base with dog-whistle attacks, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals.
No, he never said that. Does the WaPo fact-check their stuff before they publish it? Obviously not.
12. Trump finds common ground with the world’s most ruthless dictators while denigrating America’s democratic allies.
The oppressive leaders he has praised include North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (“He gets it. He totally gets it”); the Philippines’s Rodrigo Duterte (“What a great job you are doing”); Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (“You have done a spectacular job”); and, of course, Russia’s Vladimir Putin (“You know what? Putin’s fine. He’s fine”). Meanwhile, he has attacked traditional U.S. alliances and allies, like NATO and Germany’s Angela Merkel (“Stupid”).
“Fine” is not praise and Merkel is stupid. What’s the big deal here? It’s not like he sent a plane with pallets of cash to Iran so they could continue to develop nuclear weapons they’d like to use on us and our allies.
This is like a BuzzFeed listicle without the journalistic integrity. I think it’s important to note that the author said he was going to list all of the ways Trump will be Hitler after he steals the election but this is all stuff he’s already done that liberals think make him Hitler. It’s pretty sad to see someone suck this bad at being full of shit.
While there is not Hitler-like activity shown here, in a weird way the Washington Post is predicting a big win in November for Trump. 4 more years!
