A Dictator on Day Week One

 

     Convicted criminal and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump has been squatting in the White House for one week. The guy who bragged to Hannity that he'd be a dictator only on Day One has shown no signs of letting up. And now that we have the bully back in the Oval Office, corporations, nations and the mainstream media have shown their usual fecklessness and began kissing the ring, axing or changing policies even before Trump took the oath of office.

     The guy who on the campaign trail tried to pretend he didn't know what was in Project 2025 despite it being written by up to 140 of his former aides and officials is, predictably, embracing it like the American flags that he molests. On Inauguration Day, he signed nearly 100 Executive Orders, not a single one of which being good for America, its interests or its people (except if you're in the 1%).

     It's not as if Trump is filled with energy. There were countless instances last year of him falling asleep at his trial and at the RNC convention last summer. But now he's aided by thousands of some of the most insane lunatics to ever infest the Beltway. It seems the whole point of this frenetic exercise in fascism is to simply overwhelm us and maybe it's working. America is a nation of 330,000,000 frogs in the same pot of boiling water and it's just a question of whether we'll jump out of the pot in time or boil to death while we wait for someone or some deus ex machina that'll finally put an end to this madness.

     What follows is a list that will hardly be complete or comprehensive considering the damage that Trump's already inflicted on our country in just one week.

Pete Hegseth

     As proof that we've been transported to some alternate dimension that would make even Rod Serling shake his head, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a former four star general and one of the best SecDefs in recent memory, was replaced by former Fox talking head Pete Hegseth. The very fact that he's calling the shots at the Pentagon shows what a wet-legged bunch of feckless cunts the Senate Republicans have become under Bwana Trump.

     Hegseth was confirmed by the Senate in the narrowest vote count for  SecDef in US history (51-50. with JD Vance, predictably, casting the tie-breaking vote.). Only three Republicans, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins, joined every Democrats in voting against Hegseth.

     Undeterred by the lack of confidence in the Senate, Hegseth then made as his first decision axing training films detailing the exploits of the heroic Tuskegee Airmen, or the Red Tails. This seems hardly surprising coming from a guy who wears white nationalist tattoos on his body. What was surprising was that this decision to get rid of videos of the Tuskegee airmen was reversed only when Senator Katie Britt of all people, expressed her outrage on social media. Hegseth had to be shamed into doing the right thing and reinstated the videos.

     The lickspittles in the Air Force could only say it was ""confirmed the courses with those videos had been removed and said it 'will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency and in alignment with national security objectives."

 

DEI

      In 2022, the boogeyman was CRT, or Critical Race Theory, about which Republicans pretended to be outraged. Now we're not hearing so much about CRT any more and the new Red Scare is DEI, or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Republicans and the occasional right wing Uncle Tom (pointedly, not a single one of them got a job in this criminal enterprise masquerading as a government) are always outraged over anything that tries to give African Americans a fair shot or even teaches about the real, racist history of the US. 

     By last summer, the manufactured hysteria over DEI got to a fever pitch, with three Republican scumbags calling Kamala Harris "a DEI hire" despite being elected vice president by over 81,000,000 voters. Well, Trump's loathing for DEI is so palpable that corporations have quietly begun getting rid of DEI initiatives and programs, especially after Racist Zero Donald Trump railed about it to his fellow billionaires at Davos last week. While they overwhelmingly voted against doing so in a recent shareholder vote, Costco also proposed getting rid of their DEI programs. Three days ago, Forbes published a list of all the corporations that proved to be more feckless and this list will undoubtedly exponentially grow over time.

Greenland

     Right after taking office, Trump had a call with the Danish Prime Minister that was so alarming, the government in Copenhagen lost its collective shit. Of course, the call was over Greenland, the world's largest island and one of some strategic importance. Trump suddenly became obsessed with acquiring Greenland during his first term and even floated the idea of trading it for Puerto Rico. The official narrative is that we need to own Greenland in order to counter Russian aggression, which is laughable considering Russia is the one nation on earth most responsible for shoehorning Trump back in the White House.

     No doubt, Trump threatened the Danish PM with higher tariffs, his default bullying tactic but, while I wasn't a fly on the wall during this talk, I'm sure Trump floated the idea of invading Greenland using US military forces despite being told time and again that Greenland is not for sale and that Denmark and Greenland are autonomous entities.

The Panama Canal

     Trump has also infamously set his baleful gaze on the Panama Canal, which belongs to Panama. Trump's contention is that it's being controlled by the Chinese, which China and Panama have strenuously denied. As I stated earlier, perhaps this is based on nothing more than a perpetual mad-on over Panama basically kicking out Trump and his criminal network that involved money laundering and drug and human trafficking through a Trump-branded hotel and carried out by Russian organized crime figures, some of whom winding up in prison.

     The Panama Canal has been completely in Panama's control since 1999 and President Jimmy Carter put that process in motion by signing a deal with Panama in 1977. And, yes, Trump has threatened to invade Panama using the US military as he had while threatening Denmark and Greenland. It's unclear what Trump's motivations are for this other blatant proposed theft but here's one theory.

Pardoning the Rioters

     Hours after taking office on January 20th, Trump made good on his promises (threats?) to pardon and commute the sentences of all the January 6th rioters. Thus, Trump emptied out our prisons by releasing 1500-1600 of the worst criminals, ones who had tried to overthrow the government and overturn a free and fair election. (Ironically, Trump said in Las Vegas a couple of days ago, "They empty their prisons into our country. Can you imagine somebody doing that to our country?") Yes, Donnie Dumbo, we can imagine it very well.

     Now, typically, we're seeing the fallout of those mass pardons ("Fuck it, pardon them all", Trump told aides). The January 6 committee members are seeing an uptick in death threats. Michael Fanone is seeing more of them. One pardoned rioter has already been shot dead by police in Indiana during an arrest. Another is at large after being charged with trying to solicit a minor under 17 for sex. Another was rearrested on gun charges almost immediately after being pardoned. Far from being angelic "patriots" who were simply making their voices heard, many of the rioters were already hardcore criminals, some of them being on parole or supervised release when they went to the Capitol. Plus, study after study shows that violent criminals have a very high rate of recidivism.

Mass Deportations

     One of the campaign promises on which Trump is making good is the rounding up of undocumented immigrants. The numbers are impossible to compile because ICE has been swarming all over the place like Orwell's Thought Police. If you were to ask "Border Czar" Tom Homan, who looks like Central Casting's idea of what a Nazi officer should look like, all the people who have been arrested were those with criminal records, although he couldn't promise that there wouldn't be "collateral arrests" of those without criminal records or charges.

     This Nazi-like purge of immigrants is coupled with a ridiculous Executive Order that brazenly tried to overturn or reinterpret the 14th Amendment, especially in trying to revoke birthright citizenship, which has already been struck down by a Reagan-appointed senior federal judge. Trump also revoked protections during "immigration raids on schools, hospitals, churches and other 'sensitive areas'", meaning we're going to see more families separated from their children. The last time, the crazy and cruel Trump administration separated 1500 children from their parents then lost track of them.

     Now we're seeing a mass exodus of migrant workers who are either not showing up for work or quitting their jobs for fear of getting swept up in an ICE raid. Let's see if Cletus McRedneck will step in and fill in the gap by taking back those jobs that Pedro and Maria stole from him so we're not paying $20 for a fucking orange.

Colombia

     Colombia (or, if you're in the Trump administration, "Columbia") is just the latest nation of a growing list that Trump has either alarmed, angered or alienated (Canada, Denmark, Mexico, Panama, the list goes on). This latest international crisis came about when Colombia, like Mexico, wouldn't allow migrant deportation flights into their sovereign airspace. Predictably, Trump threatened Colombia with higher tariffs. And even though he backed down from his tariff threats when Colombia's President Gustavo Petro laid down his list of demands (He didn't cave as the MSM keep insisting he had), coffee futures have already gone through the roof on Wall Street meaning that, even without this cost driver, corporate greed is already going to rise the price of coffee by as much as $3.50 a pound.

     These are just some of the evils with which the Trump administration has saddled us just in the first week. Our nation is burning, it's withering on the vine. Inflation is going up, nations and corporate executives are already showing their bellies to this administration of cheap schoolyard bullies. It will get worse.