November 13, 2025

Much ado about dirty document dumping, By Hal M.Brown

Below is the title of the RawStory article:

“Explosive” dumping? This (image below) is explosive dumping, indeed, the dumping of explosive bombshells.

So far the worst thing that we have heard is that Trump may have known that Esptein’s “liking them young” crossed the line into pedophilia and sex trafficking.

We know Trump is a lascivious leerer, so it’s no news that he walked into a glass door while gawking at young women or girls in or around a swimmng pool (see story).

In reports about Epstein there are no suggestions Trump did anything illegal.

What Trump knew and when he knew it is an irrelevant question as far as Epstein goes. It that phrase sounds familiar and you can’t quite place it, this is the subtitle of John Dean’s book “The Nixon Defense.”

Even if it was revealed that he knew the worst of the worst for years before he cut off his relationship with Epstein, his base wouldn’t care. Trump is no Richard Nixon. In fact, Trump’s presidency has made many Democrats remember Nixon fondly.

Certainly lots of people care about Trump’s friendship with Epstein, but what difference would it matter if we discovered that Trump knew about what he was doing with underage girls?

The is the guy who was found guilty in the E. Jean Carroll case. This got him a great mugshot which ended up on t-shirts.

The is the guy who has been accused of sexually assaulting at least 28 women. Millions of MAGA men envy him for getting away with this.

The Access Hollywood bus incident as a scandal bombed like a Broadway show with high expectations that did well in Philly, but closed after the first night on The Great White Way to horrible reviews.

This is the guy who told Howard Stern that if Ivanka wasn't his daughter he might date her, and we know what he means by “date.”

Trump doesn’t think there’s anything that can hurt his political aspirations. He even even came away unscathed when he got Covid when it was killing thousands of people.

Germs and bullets can’t bring him down. Of course he thinks he’s invulnerable:

Pam Bondi and Mike Johnson know that there’s nothing in the Epstein documents that will cause Trump a moment of shpilkes. Why then have they tried to suppress their release?

The answer should be as plain as the brown noses on their faces. They want to please the president.

This leads to the next question. If Trump doesn’t worry about anything being revealed that he knows or suspects is in the documents, why didn’t he direct Bondi and Johnson to have them released expeditiously?

This is because he knows his enemies want them released, and damned if he’ll give them the satisfaction of getting their way. This is because he knows that when it all comes out it will embarrass them, not him. This will be because all the hype will turn out to be a big hoo-hum.

Trump can then gloat and make fun of them for promising a giant three ring circus of a scandal and ending up getting a side show flea circus.

Related from Thom Hartmann

On HUFFPOST

RawStory article.

My hope is that Trump does commute Maxwell’s sentence because of what is in the last sentence of this article:

“But if Trump did grant the commutation, it would also only add to the questions about whether Trump is trying to bury any evidence about his ties to Epstein after their falling out. The president, in short, has no good options.”

November 12, 2025

"If only he would die," one might say after reading Chauncey DeVega today. I'd say back "I'm not sure it would make any difference, Vance would do the same things."

Some may read read an article in Salon this morning and mournfully said the words in my title. To this I would respond with the equally sorrowful words about it not making much difference whether Trump or Vance was president.

One of Salon’s senior writers, Chauncey Devega1 spelled out exactly what I think today in this essay:

DeVega does this under this heading:

In “Star Wars” the Empire is: “An oppressive dictatorship with a complicated bureaucracy, the Galactic Empire seeks the rule and social control of every planet and civilization within the galaxy, based on anthropocentrism, nationalisation, state terrorism, power projection, and threat of lethal force.” Wikipedia

If you’re a Star Wars fan you know that in their quest to rule the galaxy they thought nothing about destroying an inhabited planet with the Death Star.

Here are what I found to be the takeways from DeVega which express my fears:

(Trump and MAGA) are likely to escalate their attacks on American democracy because they have reasonably concluded that, with the 2026 midterms approaching, the window of maximum opportunity and leverage may be closing. To that end, Trump is amplifying his threats to use the Insurrection Act to invoke de facto martial law and order the military to invade Democratic-led cities. In such a scenario, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that elections could be suspended.
Increasingly, it appears that the administration’s ultimate goal is, just like in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Viktor Orban’s Hungary, to de facto outlaw the Democratic Party and any other opposition movement. Under that scenario, the United States would be ruled by a system of competitive authoritarianism. Elections would take place, but the outcome would be rigged in favor of Trumpists. That could even be the “best” outcome.
Since his return to office in January, Trump’s plans have become so extreme that the veneer of a fake democracy could even be replaced with a full-on authoritarian regime.

DeVega concludes with what I consider very guarded optimism:

… pro-democracy Americans saw hope turn into tangible victory. Trump and MAGA are not forever. The elections proved that American democracy can still fight back. The question is whether it can survive its next battle.

Unless one of the scenarios I described in yesterday’s Substack play out, because the president holds awesome powers, democracy could be replaced with a full-on authoritarian regime.

Countless pundits have noted that Vance has none of the charismatic hold over MAGA as Trump does. This is true. But I don’t think it matters.

What matters is probably whether or not he shares the personality disorder of the president:

click here

Here’s an article which addreses a crucial question:

DeVega’s full-on authoritarian regime could be call a sadistic revenge fueled authoritarian regime marked by sideshows of self-indulgent expressions of gold plated grandiose narcissism or a Vance wonkish authoritarian one.

I doubt that if Vance became president he’d keep the likes of Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem on. I also think he’d get rid of Hegseth, Patel, and RFK Jr. once he realized Trump was dead and buried and he could chose anybody he want to as Cabinet members and close advisors. I don’t see him taking calls from Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson or cozying up to the dictator leaders of other counties. Gone would be the late night posts on Truth Social and the mishmash of lies, insults, and misinformation that from Trump’s mouth.

There’s a benefit to having Trump stay alive. It’s that his excesses are more likely to lead to some kind of government overturn than the benign authoritarian regime than we’d have with Vance.

November 11, 2025

The Paucity of Hope

In 2006 Barack Obama wrote "The Audacity of Hope.” This was both a memoir and a call to action. The book outlined his vision for America. Two years later he beat John McCain for the presidency and four years later won his second term defeating George Romney. He did fulfill his promise to bring hope to the country. People like us had hope.

Then Trump came along. He was bad but he didn’t turn out to be as bad as many of us thought he would be. Next came President Biden and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

As of 2025, President Joe Biden ranks approximately 14th among U.S. presidents based on recent surveys of scholars and political scientists. This ranking places him in the upper tier of modern presidents. Obama is ranked as seventh, and Trump is rated as 45th, dead last. (This is from an AI query.)

Yesterday I wrote “The futility of desperately seeking hope.”

Today I want to be less dire as I look at Amercia’s future. I want to share what gives me hope, albeit meager hope, that the country won’t descend into the hell of a brutal dictatorship.

Much of what I think could happen to stop this descent and reverse its course so democracy is restored is unlikely to happen. I still think what I described yesterday is what America will look like in a year or two.

The most likely chance I see of my vision not being realized is that Donald Trump dies and Vance takes over and he decides that without having Trump around he wants to reverse his most draconian and cruel policies.

Assuming Trump lives, I see variations of a few occurrences that could achieve different positive results.

Lots of people are pinning their hope for thwarting Trump’s worse excesses on the Democrats taking over Congress. They assume that Trump will abide by the laws they pass. When it comes to this I am not sanguine. Trump may be so confident in his power that he defies Congress. The same applies to rulings of the Supreme Court which, while much less likely to go against him in a major way like a Democratic Party controlled Congress would, might still try to stop his most egregious violations of both presidential norms and of the Constitution. Trump could simply ignore Supreme Court rulings he doesn’t like.

The actions I describe would undoubtedly lead to the Democratic House impeaching him. His being convicted in the Senate would mean that enough Republican senators decided he had turned the country into something abhorrent even to them so they would risk not being reelected and they would vote him out.

This could happen. It would depend on public sentiment combined with the personal morality of enough Republican senators.

Once voted out of office we have the possible scenario of Trump refusing to leave and trying to use the military to keep him in power. This might suceed but I doubt it.

This possiblity brings up the other reason I cling to a slim hope.

In America, like in all countries, there are two forces that decide how a nation is governed. One is the force of law and the other is the force of force, or put another way, the force of the armed forces.

Here are two articles which address what would happen if the military decided that Trump had gone too far:

What Would Happen if the Generals Refused to Follow Orders?

Two Key Takeaways From Quantico

The second article ends with:

More to the point, are the generals and admirals, who took an oath to uphold the US Constitution, ready to resist orders that violate that oath?

Resisting orders could just be the beginning of a military coup. At it’s banana republic, extreme, we’d see tanks surrounding the White House and other federal buildings. We might see Trump arrested.

We could see a a triumvirate of generals and admirals assuming the duties of the president. This might be like unofficial coalition of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus in 60 BC and the “Second Triumvirate,” which was a coalition formed by Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian in 43 BC. We could see this military triumvirate bring in Barack Obama as temporary president.

They hopefully would maintain power only until free and fair elections could be held.

Thus I see two ways the country can get back to being a democracy. One depends on the on the death of Trump or his removal from office, and (a crucial “and”) President Vance restoring the kind of democracy we’ve had under very conservative presidents like Ronald Reagan.

I asked AI what a Vance presidency would look like. Click here or scroll down for the answer> 1

The other way democracy could be restored is through a military coup. An attempted coup by a significant number, but not overwhelming percentage, of the armed forces could result in a violent civil war. Depending on which side won we could have a restored democracy once the smoke settled and the dead were buried, or an even more brutal dictatorship with executions of members of the losing side. If the authoritarians won we could turn into a country which would make North Korea look like Disneyland.

JD Vance’s Potential Presidential Agenda

If JD Vance were to become President, his agenda is likely to align closely with Donald Trump’s policies, given his current role as Vice President and his involvement in the Trump administration. Here’s a breakdown of what Vance’s presidential focus could look like based on his actions and statements so far.

Key Policy Areas

POLICY AREADETAILSImmigrationAdvocate for strict border security measures, including ending catch-and-release policies and enhancing vetting.Economic PoliciesLikely to support tax cuts for middle and working-class Americans while pushing back against regulations seen as burdensome.HealthcarePotentially push to cut funding for the Affordable Care Act and oppose social programs like Medicare and Social Security.Social IssuesStrong opposition to abortion rights, with support for a nationwide ban and minimal exceptions.Energy PoliciesEmphasize U.S. energy dominance, aiming to streamline regulations and boost fossil fuel production.Foreign PolicyWould likely continue a nationalist agenda, with a strong emphasis on America-first diplomacy.EducationAdvocate for educational reforms that align with conservative values and promote school choice.

Immigration and Border Security

Vance is expected to focus heavily on border security, advocating measures like reinstating “Remain in Mexico” policies and ending asylum for undocumented migrants. His administration might pursue the designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations to enhance law enforcement capabilities along the border.

Economic Policies

Vance’s economic agenda will likely include aggressive tax cuts and reducing federal spending on social programs. He has been vocal about viewing the Affordable Care Act and entitlement programs like Social Security as obstacles to fiscal responsibility.

Social Issues

Vance’s stance on social issues, particularly abortion, reflects a hardline conservative view. He supports stringent abortion laws with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest and has articulated views that discourage women from leaving abusive relationships.

National and Foreign Policy

In terms of foreign policy, Vance’s approach is more isolationist, aiming to prioritize American interests without heavy reliance on global agreements or organizations. His administration may focus on reshaping U.S. relationships with traditional allies as well as adversaries, including China.

Summary of Approach

Vance’s role as a “fixer” and enforcer in Trump’s administration suggests he would continue to cha . mpion the America First agenda while likely bringing a more personal, aggressive flair to discourse on both domestic and foreign fronts. His presidency could entail a commitment to reform various aspects of government to streamline processes and enhance support for conservative objectives.

With his potential candidacy for the 2028 presidential election already in discussion, JD Vance is positioning himself as a key figure in the continuation of Trump’s legacy and an enforcer of his policies

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

November 13, 2025

Much ado about dirty document dumping, By Hal M.Brown

November 12, 2025

"If only he would die," one might say after reading Chauncey DeVega today. I'd say back "I'm not sure it would make any difference, Vance would do the same things."

November 11, 2025

The Paucity of Hope

What Would Happen if the Generals Refused to Follow Orders?

Two Key Takeaways From Quantico

JD Vance’s Potential Presidential Agenda

Key Policy Areas

Immigration and Border Security

Economic Policies

Social Issues

National and Foreign Policy

Summary of Approach

Much ado about dirty document dumping, By Hal M.Brown

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