Little Donnie has sure been successful in getting not only his country, but the entire world into one huge pile of [manure]! When he was first elected, I recall sitting on the couch watching the results come in. I was in absolute stunned dismay. But I figured (back then, in 2016) I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Surely, once he was in office, he would become somewhat more presidential. He would fill the office; the office would help mold him. He would exhibit more proper leadership than I had yet seen out of him during the campaign. Surely there were people in the Whitehouse who could ameliorate some of Trump’s unethical craziness. As we can all see, that has not come to pass. He has gotten worse and worse in his seemingly utter inability to do anything constructive.

Steve Benen, in his new book, The Imposters, states that Trump, and subsequently the Republican Party, care nothing for policy. They are not interested in actually running the country. They have one aim, and one aim only, and that is power. The party has been that way since losing the 2008 election, says Benen. Once Barak Obama came into power, the GOP had only one objective, and that was to block everything, absolutely everything, that he wanted to do while in office. Mitch McConnell’s publicly stated aim was to make Obama a one-term president.

So, with Obama’s time in office winding down (after two terms!!) the Republicans found the perfect candidate to continue their “post-policy” agenda (Benen’s term). Trump cares nothing for the country; he cares nothing for the American people. He doesn’t care for the minutiae of governing. He wants one thing only, and that is power.

Another book, just coming out, is John Bolton’s memoir of his 17 months inside the Trump administration. He, like Benen, stated that he could think of nothing Trump did while he (Bolton) was in office that was not geared to re-election.

The latest in a long string of power moves happened yesterday, in a now-familiar Friday night news dump. Trump removed everyone in leadership at the “Voice of America” broadcasting network, replacing them with one of his own, Stephen K. Bannon-approved, men. Admittedly, I did not know much about the VOA group of stations, and what they did. I had always thought of them as WWII and cold-war programs. There aim has always been to get truth out to the world, especially to those areas of the world where truth was hard to come by. There were a half-dozen or so various stations under the VOA umbrella, apparently. Yesterday, all of them had their leaders fired; all of them had their entire boards of directors fired.

Is this a move to obtain a media voice of his own which will repeat ad nauseam all of his “fake-news”? Trump had been getting increasingly unhappy with the performance of his previously sycophantic news network, Fox (or should it more appropriately be called “Faux News”?!!) because it wasn’t toeing his line as much as it once did. So Trump needed a new outlet for all his gas-lighting efforts. Will this be it? Will Trump be allowed to get away with this blatant grab for power?

During the previous few months of coronavirus lockdown, I have been off work, self-isolating at home, giving me lots of time for reading and watching. One of my projects is a thousand plus page book on Winston Churchill. I have also binge-watched the three seasons of The Crown, and, more recently, World War II in colour. So I’ve renewed my awareness of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. And there are frightful parallels to some of the moves Donald Trump is making. This recent (just last night, remember) grab for power seems so Adolf-like, that I am really scared.

I’m sure everyone can see Donald Trump’s fascination with totalitarian leaders. He admires their holds on power, and clearly envies them their positions. Could he be attempting such a move in the USA? I know, I know, that the 1930’s German situation was vastly different than the 2020 US. But I can’t help but see patterns. And it does not reassure me.

I can only hope the Democratic Party does not foul up their chances to win next fall’s election. I think the DNC was largely responsible for losing the 2016 election; I hope they’ve learned some lessons. And I hope the Democrats win not only the Whitehouse, but both houses of Congress as well. And then I hope they pursue investigations into the criminal activity of the current administration. I would like nothing better than to see little Donnie, Billie and Mackey (McConnell) all dressed up in orange jump suits and sharing a cell!!!

There is one stinking, huge pile of manure we are facing, and I’m not sure how we will deal with this mess. I want to continue my thoughts, but I will do that in a separate post. This is long enough!!!