The Demonization of Albrego Garcia

 It takes some rudimentary photoshopping to make Albrego Garcia look like a real demon. Why not do this if you want to turn him into a truly bad guy? There are no bare chested photos of him with gang tattoos to publish. The best/worst Trump Trump could do was use a poorly rendered photoshop to show M, I, 1, and 3 on his knuckles. 

Below is what Kristi $50,000 Watch Noem (read “The Watches of the Trump Administration”) had to say.

Read the HUFFPOST article which makes Garcia out to be a really bad guy article here.

Excerpt:

“Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador and should never have been in this country and will not be coming back to this country,” she told senators. “There is no scenario where Abrego Garcia will be in the United States again. If he were to come back, we would immediately deport him again.”

Noem said he doesn’t belong in the U.S. “because he is a terrorist, he’s a human smuggler and he is a wife-beater.” There is no evidence that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist, and he was never arrested on or charged with human smuggling. It is true, though, that his wife filed a protective order petition against him in 2021, alleging he had physically attacked her on multiple occasions.

Kristi Noem is not a lawyer. Even so, she has a bachelors degree in political science. This should be enough for her to understand due process. Irregardless of this, she shouldn't be throwing out unsubstantiated accusations about Abrego Garcia. Of the three crimes she’s accused him of, only one has any evidence to suggest it is true. That would be her saying he’s a wife beater. Even on this he was never convicted in court. His wife filled a protective petition alleging he pshycially attacked her.

A Trump executive order designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization. This hides the fact that the gang originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Their members largely join out of economic need, self-defense, or social pressure—not ideology. Trump’s executive order says the following:

….transnational organizations, such as Tren de Aragua (TdA) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) pose similar threats to the United States (as drug cartels). Their campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious, and similarly threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere.

It is the policy of the United States to ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the United States and their ability to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States through their extraterritorial command-and-control structures, thereby protecting the American people and the territorial integrity of the United States.

You can’t have it both ways. Either each and every person who joins a gang is a criminal or some may be in the gang but have never committed an act of violence, let alone jumped a turnstyle at a subway station. 

This seem to harken back to the bad old Joe McCarthy Communist Party demonization and witchhunt days when either being an actual member of the party, being sympathetic to the party, or having any association with it made one a target. At least McCarthy never tried to get those he deemed party members or sympathizers deported to a hellhole overseas prison.

The United States still doesn’t deport people who are legally residing here because they’ve committed crimes. If Garcia is to be deported it must be because a court determines he is here illegally. McCarthy called them un-American. He never said they were terrorists. Not a single person who appeared before McCarthy's committee went to jail for accusations McCarthy brought against them (reference).

There’s this idea that Noem, her boss, and others are promoting that anyone here who they say, with no evidence, is a vicious criminal can be denied their day in court - a now quaint and irrelevant notion - and be sent to prison here or in another country. This is a country that sometimes seemingly is selected by throwing darts at a world map.

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Now defunct website called Trumpelthinskin endeavored to skewer Trump. Trump 45 wasn't as bad as predicted, but now he has a second term and he's a horror show. By Hal M. Brown

 

If not moving To animate the image above click here.

In 2017 Hillary Clinton accused Trump of being thinskinned. His reponse was "I don't have thin skin — I have very strong, very thick skin.” 

Donald Trump is disputing Hillary Clinton's critique of his foreign policy, including her epidermal argument that the New York businessman is too thin-skinned to be commander-in-chief.

"I don't have thin skin — I have very strong, very thick skin," Trump told CNN's State of the Union in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Trump was responding to a speech last week in which Clinton said that the presumptive nominee is too volatile and lacks the temperament to manage the nation's military and foreign affairs.

"This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes," Clinton said, "because it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin."

If someone who responds to the slightest attack with a rage tweet in the middle of the night isn’t thin skinned I don’t know how else to characterize him.

I found a GIF of Trump called Trumpelthinskin showing him having a tantrum with tears flowing from his eyes.

Then in trying to learn more about this GIF I discovered an old website named Trumpelthinskin which I hadn’t seen before. .This website was created to attack Trump. It has not been updated since October 3, 2018.

As for the GIF, Slansky’s website explains that it was “created by the famous guerrilla street artist ROBBIE CONAL, whose savage portraits of the worst of the nation’s politicians have been assaulting the eyes of unsuspecting Americans since 1986.”

From the website:

Our mission is to be the ultimate repository of damaging information about – and scathing satire of – the most absurd, the most odious, the most psychopathic man ever to seek the Presidency. We are compiling the definitive record of exactly how Donald Trump – one of the very worst people in the nation’s history, a tantrum-throwing seven-year-old in the bloated body of a seventy-year-old – rose to this exalted level of potential power.

I found it illuminating and prescient to read the “about us section” here. Consider the following, not in light of what Trump in his first term did, but rather looking at his second term so far. Trump 45 seems mild compared to the Trump of today. You can read the dire predictions on this old website in view of what he already has done in his second term. Here’s their comparison of Trump to Rumpelstiltskin.

Once upon a time there was a fairy tale character named Rumpelstiltskin. He was a short-tempered dealmaker who, when one of his deals went bad, went into such a rage that he stamped his right foot so deep into the ground that his whole leg went in. Then, in a furious effort to free himself, he tugged at his left leg so hard that he tore his body apart and destroyed himself.

The real life dealmaker we call Trumpelthinskin has a similarly short fuse, but, as President of the United States, his fits and frenzies would have the potential to destroy us all.

Trump didn’t destroy our democracy in his first term. Now the horrors we thought he’d unleash upon democracy in his first term seem mild compared to what is happening today.

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Who deserves to be called "The Greatest," Donald Trump or Muhammad Ail? By Hal M. Brown

 

Trump is making the news (here for example) with his announcing that the country needs two new holidays, one each to celebrate victories in the two world wars.

Has any other president made the news at least once a week with lunatic ideas like those about Greenland, Panama, Canada a state, alligators in the Rio Grand, making the border zone a military base, making Gaza a resort, etc. Does he think of all these things himself? I might be impressed if he did.

This aside, Trump once again reveals how obsessed he is with taking credit for anything he possibly can brag about even though he had nothing to do with the accomplishment.

I need not elaborate on the how insulting this war victory holiday idea is coming from someone who earned the nickname “cadet bonepsurs” and who disparged veterans and POW’s, and is now allowing the VA budget to be cut.

The subtext of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is Make Me Greater Again and Again and Again. Trump believes not only that he is the greatest U.S. president in history, but that he is the greatest human being ever to walk the Earth. He thinks he’s smarter than Einstein and more powerful than a Jedi knight.

The Einstein level genius Trump is too uninformed to realize that Darth Vader wielded a red light saber, while Jedi knights fought with blue light sabres. He also shows his ignorance about Star Wars by posting an image of himself with bulging muscles. No character in Star Wars looked like this. 

Yoda was hardly muscle bound. For that matter neither was Darth Vader:

Trump keeps equating intelligence with muscles. He wants everyone to believe that he’s a world class golfer, and that this means he, putting myself into his mind, believes this proves overall he is the greatest everything. Add this to his being able to grab any woman by the genitals and having people kowtow to him cements this belief in his conception of himself.

If the personal slogan “I Am the Greatest” wasn’t already taken I wouldn't be surprised if Trump adopted it. He has basically said that he’s the greatest president ever. 

There’s no way he could say it the way Muhammad Ali did. Consider his own ballad:

This is the legend of Cassius Clay, 
The most beautiful fighter in the world today.
He talks a great deal, and brags indeed-y, 
Of a muscular punch that's incredibly speedy. 
The fistic world was dull and weary, 
But with a champ like Liston, things had to be dreary. 
Then someone with color, someone with dash, 
Brought fight fans a-runnin' with cash. 
This brash young boxer is something to see. 
And the heavyweight championship is his destiny. 
This kid fights great. He's got speed and endurance. 
But if you sign to fight him, increase your insurance. 
This kid's got a left. This kid's got a right. 
If he hits you once, you're asleep for the night. 
And as you lie on the floor while the ref counts ten, 
you pray that you won't have to fight me again. 
For I am the man this poem is about, 
the next champ of the world, there isn't a doubt....

Trump does have this proof that he’s the greatest. 

Muhammad Ali had this:

Mumammad Ali proved he had character by taking a stand against the Vietnam War, being a conscientious objector, and being willing to go to prison for this (see reference).

Ali had character. Trump is a character. 

If I could muster up some empathy for him I might be saddened by anyone who would think it was amusing joke about his being the next pope and posting an image of himself as a pope.

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Trump, Miss Manner's he ain't. By Hal M. Brown -- When it come to common etiquette Trump doesn't give two shits about respecting the feelings and sensibilities of other people or countries.

Most people, even Donald Trump, have probably heard of Miss Manners. They may not know this is the pen name of Judith Martin. I didn’t know this prior to beginning to write this Substack. 

This is from the Wiki page on her:

In 1978, Martin began writing an advice column, which was distributed three and later six times a week by Universal Uclick and carried in more than 200 newspapers worldwide. In the column, she answers etiquette questions contributed by her readers and writes short essays on problems of manners, or clarifies the essential qualities of politeness.

Martin writes about the ideas and intentions underpinning seemingly simple rules, providing a complex and advanced perspective, which she refers to as "heavy etiquette theory". Her columns have been collected in a number of books. In her writings, Martin refers to herself in the third person (e.g., "Miss Manners hopes...").

In a 1995 interview by Virginia Shea, Martin said:

You can deny all you want that there is etiquette, and a lot of people do in everyday life. But if you behave in a way that offends the people you're trying to deal with, they will stop dealing with you...There are plenty of people who say, "We don't care about etiquette, but we can't stand the way so-and-so behaves, and we don't want him around!" Etiquette doesn't have the great sanctions that the law has. But the main sanction we do have is in not dealing with these people and isolating them...

Martin identifies "blatant greed" as the most serious etiquette problem in the United States. The most frequently asked question she receives is how to politely demand cash from potential gift-givers (which she answers by stating that there is no polite way to do this), and the second most common question is how much potential guests must spend on a gift (determined by what the giver can afford, not by the event, relationship, related expenses or other factors).

This brings me to something that struck me in the New York Times today. The last two sentences in the following excerpt from their editorial board’s opinion piece “Trump’s Third-Term Musings Are Part of a Pattern” led me to make one comment.

The editorial concldued as follows:

In the decades since 1951, politicians from both parties occasionally called for the repeal of the 22nd Amendment, including Harry Truman and Mitch McConnell. But they did not argue that the amendment was unclear or could simply be evaded. They recognized that somebody who disagrees with a law should follow a legal process to change it. If Mr. Trump and his acolytes believe they have Congress and the states on their side, they are free to start a repeal campaign. What they should not do is pretend that any part of the Constitution is merely a suggestion. It’s the law.

My comment shown above was “What they are doing is treating the Constitution as a kind of Miss Manners guide to etiquette which is easily ignored and unenforceable.”

Next down the page were the following comments. They represent most of the other 168 other opinions and reactions posted at the time of this writing.

Here’s the entire long post from George:

To a considerable degree, of course, Trump is grandstanding to his MAGA devotees with such talk. And it is indeed somewhat concerning given the fact that Trump has revealed that he has no real knowledge of the US Constitution and it's controlling role. But as worrisome as these pretensions are it is perhaps yet another sign too that Trump is not of sound mind? After all, over the past twelve months we've essentially traded in one elderly man for another. And we did so with some concern that the first one, Joe Biden, was suffering from cognitive decline due to aging. So should we really be surprised that we may now be encountering the reality of what happens when a POTUS begins to mentally "slip"? In 2024 the Democrats themselves tore down Joe Biden by calling into question his mental state. It was an act of political self-harming that has had dire consequences for the Nation. We cannot and should not expect the Republicans to act similarly now with regard to Donald Trump. He's apparently mentally slipping badly while tossing out Executive Orders on whim and fantasy. Yet the media remains silent to what is actually going on. I'm not worried about Trump having a third term. I much more concerned with how are we going to survive his second?

Here are the next comments (click to enlarge)

Getting back to good manners and etiquette and Donald J. Trump, who, lest we forget is the president. He’s president of the United States, not the president of Delta Tau Chi fraternity, otherwise known as Animal House.

Trump certainly knows how to mind his manners when he wants to. He just doesn’t give a shit about behaving in a way that adheres to any rules of etiquitte, let alone the rules in the United States Constitution.

Why make sure he follows the Constitution, the Law of the Land, when he treats the simple rules of good manners as irrelevant? These rules, while not actual laws, are all focused on behaving in ways that respect the feelings and sensibilities of other people. They require that one be sensitive to whether things they say, write, or do will offend someone. Offending other countries, which of course are collections of people, fuggedaboutit.

From wearing a blue suit to Pope Francis’s funeral to posting a photoshop of himself as the next pope, he insulted Catholics around the world. According to the dress code required by Vatican officials for Pope Francis' funeral, men were required to wear a dark suit, along with a long black tie. Trump showed up in blue. (Read article in Snopes.)

You can see the contrast in colors between what he wore and what Melania wore below.

Click to enlarge full image.

Some people on X tried to excuse this by trying to find other men wearing blue suits and noting that Zelenskyy didn’t even wear a suit.

The salient point here isn’t whether or not the blue suit was appropriate attire for this solemn occasion. 

The point is that if he gave a damn about good manners he would have worn the traditional black suit with a black or dark tie. I doubt he even thought about this. He probably just decided to wear this on a whim. Below is Trump with his signature red tie when he addressed the United Nations:

At least he didn’t wear a suit with a bright red tie at the funeral, let alone one of these:

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