A Substack by Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen should be alarming. Mine might outdo his. By Hal M. Brown

 

Spheres of Influence or Imperial Delusion?

This is not hyperbole. Trump doesn’t just admire dictators; he envies them. He views alliances as weakness and diplomacy as a con.

Trump doesn’t care how many bodies pile up. In his mind, collateral damage is just the cost of doing business. He’s a man who admires power and fears irrelevance. Ruling over a fractured, militarized North America? Watching Russia reclaim its Soviet glory and China swallow its neighbors? That’s Trump’s idea of legacy.

The question in Cohen’s title is not answered. Can Trump along with Xi and Putin slice up parts of the. world like a big pizza into thirds where each exert ruthless control of their portion.?

Is this aspirational for Trump, Xi, and Putin or is it possible? Cohen notes that if these three leaders decide to use military force to swallow all their neigboring countries it won’t be peaceful. He says “Trump doesn’t care how many bodies pile up. In his mind, collateral damage is just the cost of doing business.” It has been the same with Putin. How far Xi would go has yet to be seen.

Cohen ends his alarming essay as follows:

So, what are you going to do about it? Sit back and scroll? Or are you finally ready to fight like democracy depends on it?

Because, trust me, it absolutely does.

I have a more pessimstic way to put a question. Is there any at all we can do about it?

I want to know what he means when he asks this:

Or are you finally ready to fight like democracy depends on it?

Russia, led by a president who was elected (in however dubiously free elections), illegally invaded Ukraine. Ukraine legally defended itself. If you asked a Ukrainian what the meaning of fighting and dying for democracy meant for them when Russian troops invaded you know what answer you would get. 

The United States elected Donald Trump in a close election. He didn’t win a landslide like he claims, but this is not relevant. He could have won but a single electoral vote and he'd still be the legimate president.

It doesn’t matter that if every voter in the country knew everything that he intended to do there’s a very good chance he would have lost.

He’s Trump, not Putin, and he hasn’t illegally invaded a country. Putin wants to take over Ukraine and add it to a Russian empire which he will rule as dictator.

Trump intends to rule the United States as a dictator. If his complete takeover can’t be stopped or at least modified legally there’s nothing that can be done.

Read my previous Substacks here.

About Kristi Noem's perverse PR stunt: Trump probably loves her for it, but will it backfire? By Hal M. Brown They could have sent the thug who looks like a Mafia enforcer, Tom Homan, to the Salvador prison instead.

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In order to view the pictures below you must go to Substack here.

There she was, probably the only female these inmates have seen in years, standing as props as she was filmed. I assume the guards forced them to stand where the camera would get a good shot of them topless in their white shorts which look like diapers.

I doubt they had any idea what the hell was going on. Here’s one of the photos that has gone viral with justified criticism:

This is photo is from the article: Sec. Kristi Noem uses inmates of notorious Salvadoran prison in photo op.

Here’s a photo from another article:

And then, Kristi Noem fans, there’s this about the Rolex Daytona 116508 Black Dialwatch which you too can have for the low, low, price of $48,995:

This excerpt is just too juicy not to include in today’s Substack:

When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.

….

Noem’s choice of watch kicked off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of mass imprisonment and deportation.

“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.

“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there's “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the make of the watch in a statement, saying that “then-Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children

If Trump made the decision, or Noem made it herself, I wonder why they thought it would send a better message than having Tom Homan, who looks like a Mafia enforcer, go instead. Frankly, that man scares me.

What is the image they wanted to convey? Perhaps Noem, the dog killer, wanted to make her bones by showing how fearless she was by going to the prison and standing mere feet from men who reportedly commited multiple murders and rapes.

Maybe she’s so perverse that she was thinking “here I am boys, the last woman you may see in your miserable lives, and all you can do is drool and do whatever you do for sexual gratification here in prison.”

The more people who see photos of people who are obviously law abiding citizens, and sympathetic at that, the more they may find stunts like the one where a man was picked up by ICE for having an autism tattoo in honor of his son on his arm utterly appalling. Even some MAGA hopefully will conjure up some emptahy in their cold hearts knowing this man may now be at the mercy of real gang members:

Also in the news yesterday was the the story of the Tufts University student being handcuffed and led away into an unmarked vehicle by Trump Gestapo:

It’s possible that Noem feels she’s in competition with Pam Bondi, who is also has been making the news big time in the past 24 hours refusing to investigate Signalgate. 

To make headlines that will please Trump one has to be as cruel and/or lawlessly sycophantic as possible. This is how the women in particular can gain, dare I say, what passes for endearment from Donald the Duke of Desire and the hunka-hunka-burning love.

Whether there are men who want this too (and there’s nothing wrong with that) remains to be seen. Everyone around Trump wants approbation from him and they are willing to swallow whatever pride they may have to grovel before him to receive whatever morsels of approval he deigns to dole out.

It is difficult to believe that there are really women vying for Trump’s manly man attention so they feel more desirable until you look at who some of them are: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Elise Stafanick, Tulsi Gabbard, Karoline Leavitt, Paulina Luna, Susie Wiles, Linda McMahon, and others (with the probable exception of Melania). 

Apparently they see Trump the way I depicted him using AI (see Substack). Or maybe it is the Eau de Testosterone scent made from the gonads of randy bulls that he bathes himself in every morning that gets their juices flowing.

Read my presvious Substack and consider a free subscription.

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