Hal Brown's Substack (fomerly Hal Brown's Blog)

October 23, 2025

Trump needs a ginormous gilded ballroom fit for a king. Who are we mere mortals to deny him such a royal presidential perk? “It was never thought of as being much.” Trump about the East Wing

(Correction: An earlier version of this described what turned out to be a fantasy about my neighbor and toddler girlfriend’s house having an attic ballroom. I checked with her and she said it didn’t.)

I want to share a bit about my childhood. We weren’t rich, anything but. We were the poorest family, not only in the neighborhood but among all of my friends. My father was a self-employed upholsterer and we only lived in a neighborhood with what could be called McMansions because when he married my mother he moved into her parent’s house.

My house is No. 42 with the star over it. You can see how big some of the other houses are in this current image from Google Maps.

I did get to see lots of really big mansions on acres of beautiful grounds. This was because my father had many rich customers in upscale Westchester County, NY, and I went on deliveries with him when I was old enough to help. I saw the mansions of the owner of Revlon, Charles Revson, and William F. Buckey. My father made custom furniture for both of them and other very wealthy people.

Do you get where I am going with this yet?

Of course Trump lives in a mansion. After all he’s the American president. Before being president he had a mansion in Florida and a triplex penthouse in New York City.

Even our governors live in houses called mansions (see some of them here). Typically, rich people and others who live in mansions have large rooms for entertaining. They generally don’t live in homes on any national registers of historic homes so if they decide to demolish part of their homes to enlarge a ballroom they don’t find their efforts thwarted.

If Trump gave two shits about rules about such things, this would be one more shit than any normal person could crap out on their bathroom throne.

Trump wants the power of a dictator and the few kings left who aren’t figureheads and exercise absolute power. Whether you liken him to a king, dictator, despot, or tyrant Trump relishes the trappings and the pomp and circumstance of power.

He probably visited Al Yamamah Palace, the official workplace and residence of the King of Saudi Arabia and the seat of the royal court. He may have seen articles like “Tour the World’s 15 Most Opulent Places” in Architectual Digest, a magazine I wouldn’t be surprised if he subscribes to….

… although he may not appreciate the article “This Architecture Firm Wants to Build a Wall Around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago” published in 2019.

Trump is about as patient as a golfer who gets red ants into his pants is to get to a water hazzard and jump in. I have no doubt that if he could have his ballroom finished earlier by ordering the existing building dynamited he’d do it. Spokespeople for the president say that the project will be completed before the end of his term but there are those who beg to differ that it can be done this quickly.

You know that Trump will do anything to make sure he gets to hold the grandest party that puts this one to shame.

October 22, 2025

There was no Super Glue for Trump's fascistic "I'll only be dictator on the first day" boast to make it happen, so he's slowly adding fixative to Dictator Epoxy. Some glues are made for special purposes like for fabric, glass, and metal. None are made for metaphors.

I was inspired to write this after I read Jennifer Rubin’s Substack on The Contrarian this morning and added this comment:

Combine the White House demolitiion with everything else Trump has done and it is akin to adding fixative to the epoxy of fascistic control and we see it hardening before our eyes. That is MY metaphor. For more examples of the way I think, and how if differs from the relentless attempts at optimism from The Contrarians like Jennifer and Norm who I admire see my Substacks. I hoped for reality and less wishful thinking when I shelled out $500 to be a founding member. Please don’t dismiss me as a cranky 81 year old from the besieged city of Portland,

Epoxy glue works by mixing two components: an epoxy resin and a hardener. When combined, they undergo a chemical reaction that causes the mixture to cure and harden, forming a strong bond that can withstand heavy loads and resist environmental degradation. (From AI)

If Trump could have pulled off his dictatorship in the one day which he promised it would have been like him using Super glue. There are lots of them on the market:

This was the original and is still the best known:

Some are made for special purposes like for fabric, glass, and metal. None are made for metaphors.

They work by using a chemical called cyanoacrylate, which rapidly forms strong bonds when it comes into contact with moisture. This process, known as polymerization, creates long chains of molecules that effectively hold surfaces together almost instantly. (More AI)

(The two videos on the top of the page were made using Grok.)

He notes that Trump and his minions Peewee German Miller and ICE Barbie Noem are helping turn our Democracy into a fascist state. He doesn't mention Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth, Steve Bannon, and Russ Vought. The later is often referred to as the key “toady” in Project 2025. He serves as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget though seems to be as much of an influential Trump whisperer as Miller.

October 21, 2025

I'm not the only one comparing Trump to other dictators, despots, and tyrants. Thom Hartmann lays it out today. I have a few things to add. By Hal M. Brown

I don’t know if this video I used Grok to make will work. Give it a try:

Frequently a few Substackers and others write about something that I wanted to write about, often better than I could, thus leaving me without much - or anything - to add. This was the case with Thom Hartmann this morning with a few things I wanted to say.

All I really could do was use Grok (for the first time, having previously used Perchance AI) to make my illustration. I got the idea from Hartmann’s AI illustration. In all modesty I think the image I used is more evocative than the one he used.

This is Thom Hartmann’s Substack:

I have one quibble with Thom’s introduction:

Trump and his people, with all their strut and swagger, want you to think he’s the most powerful man in America and will continue in power indefinitely. Don’t believe it.
The reason he’s rushing so hard and fast to spread his secret, masked police across American cities while mobilizing the military against civilians is precisely because he’s so extraordinarily weak.

Of course Trump, being mortal, won’t remain in power indefinitely. I’m 81 and nobody knows who will die first. However, one of us will and I hope it’s him. This doesn’t mean I will live to see him dethroned, or whatever term will describe his loss of power. It also doesn’t mean that an authoritarian America without Trump will suffer a defeat like the Nazis did following D-Day.

I agree with Thom that Trump is working as fast as possible to instill fear. I do not see him as extraordinarily weak. He has some weaknesses. Many of them are in his psychopathology. The primary non-psychological weakness is that just more than half the population is against his turning the country into an authoritarian oligarchy. Measured against that is the awesome strength that he has his with his command of the Federales, his Gestapo, his SS, who so far are willing to act as his enforcers.

Here’s more Hartmann:

Trump, in fact, is pretty much unique among both modern and historic figures who rode elective office to power and then turned their nations into dictatorships. Nonewere as weak as Trump is today when they succeeded in consolidating enough power to eliminate their challengers and lock down the populace. All had a massively larger base.

He goes on to give a brief history lesson about Putin, Orbán, Hitler, Mussolini, as well as Fujimori , who succeeded in destroying democracy in Peru, and Bukele who did the same in El Salvador.

I don’t know what Thom Hartmann is really feeling when he concludes as follows:

So, take heart. The No Kings marches proved both Trump’s widespread unpopularity and the fearlessness of an American public echoing over two centuries of our nation standing up to tinpot despots and wannabe dictators.
We Americans have never tolerated a king or a dictator, and we’re not about to start now.

Is he as pessimistic as I am but trying to keep our spirits up?

I don’t know. I plan to ask him when we see him in a second planned get-together in his Portland studio. This will be in the Spring. We have this opportunity thanks to a are donation we made to Free Speech TV.

Addendum:

Hartmann also had this published in the subscription RawStory+:

He concluded with another optimistic note which, I am sure, is meant to be inspitational.

Democracy is not defended by hashtags. It’s defended by hands, millions of them, building, voting, organizing, and refusing to quit when the cameras are gone.
The No Kings Day marches were righteous and inspiring. But history will not remember the crowd: it will remember what the crowd built.
If we want a nation of citizens and not subjects, we must do the slow, steady, unglamorous work of taking back our republic, one precinct, one institution, and one election at a time.
Volunteer for your local Democratic Party and become a precinct committeeperson. Join Indivisible. Run for local office and participate with local pro-democracy organizations. Show up.
That is the revolution worth marching for.