Once weird was good. It has a new definition thanks to Trump. By Hal M. Brown

 

I live in a suburb of Portland, one of the three cities that takes pride in claiming to be the weirdest city in the United States. Here’s a not atypical resident:

Like most of the residents of the city proper and its nearby communities, I find it to be wonderfully weird in the sense of the word as highlighted below:

Trump, in stark contrast, fits the part of the definition which is almost the opposite of the first.

If you dispassionately analyze what, at first blush, may seem to be Trump’s very strange and bizarre behavior, you can see that there is method in what seems to be his madness. For example, in the news since the Epstein file offshore tremor seemed to threaten to develop into an earthquake leading to a tsunami, we have what could be called inexplicable Trump weirdness on steroids unless you look more closely. 

Just the most recent examples today are the reports that the administration is releasing 200,000 previously sealed Martiin Luther King FBI investigation files (see BBC article). We also learned that The Department of Justice is requesting a meeting with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell (see article). 

In his press conference today Trump was asked about this, he claimed he didn’t know anything about the planned Maxwell DOJ meeting about it. He did say he thought it was appropriate. (This seems to contradict the claim he didn’t know anything about it.)

All this is accurately being reported by the non-Trump media as being an attempt to distract from the Epstein matter, which some publications like this one, summarizing how the story developed, are calling Epsteingate.

Portland, Austin, and Ashville are weird for a reason. Most of their residents are proud of living in them because of their being weird, weird in a decidely good way.

Whether you like pot, tattoos, or strip clubs, if you are a Portlander you are proud that you can’t drive more than a few blocks without seeing one or more of these businesses. Portland just had its Pride Parade (article) and is known for its Naked Bike Ride (article).

Trump, who just called Jerome Powell a numbskull during a press conference while meeting with the president of the Philippines, is weird. Of course, measured against all his weirdness, this is small potatoes.

I am not about to make a top ten list of Trump’s most motely, often malevolent, manifestations of weirdness, but for those of you who listened to his remarks during the meeting this morning, where he ranted about the evils of Hillary Clinton, “Barack Hussein Obama,” and the “rigged election” you would be justified in saying that this man could be considered the prototype of bad weirdness, not merely bad, but demented, deranged, and downright dangerous to democracy weirdness. 

Just now on MSNBC as I finish this Substack the panel is talking about how Trump is trying desperately to talk about anything but Epstein. 

Boil all this down and what it amounts to is that Trump is the fucken weirdest president the United States has ever had. As far as the world goes, historically, he makes leaders like Caligula look normal.

You can’t have a list of crazy leaders without including the king of them all – Emperor Caligula. Caligula was known for his sadism and his odd behavior. Once, he had his army build a two-mile floating bridge so that he could ride his horse on it.

Another time, he had his troops “plunder the sea” by gathering sea shells. Caligula also built a lavish house for his horse, but he didn’t love all animals. He hated goats and banned anyone mentioning goats in his presence. (Reference: 30 Most Unhinged Leaders in History)

What is most appalling is that there are millions of Americans who find Trump’s weirdness endearing. 

Update:

'Irrefutable proof!' Trump makes wild claims that Obama tried to 'lead a coup' in RawStory

Excerpt:

During an Oval Office meeting with Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday, President Donald Trump kept circling back to attack former President Barack Obama, regardless of the reporters' questions.

Even when asked about information Trump has received on the man who tried to assassinate him in Butler, PA, before the 2024 election, Trump ended up accusing Obama of staging a "coup" against him.

"You know, they went into him very, you know, in great detail," Trump began saying about would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks. "And I spoke with the FBI — the new FBI. I spoke to the FBI. If it was the old FBI, I wouldn't have believed a thing they said because the old FBI under Comey was crooked as hell."

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Even with regrets MAGA leaders suffering stomach cramps from dining on the Trumpian feast will find that meal options are all still tainted with the same noxious samonella.

If you have a NY Times subscription read Regret, Thy Name Is Hawley. And Murkowski. And Musk by Frank Bruni. Even if you don’t read the summary of the article in RawStory, 'Reeks of regret': Analyst sees multiple Trump allies now giving off 'whiff of panic' by Travis Gettys. Whether you read the essay in the Tines or not look at the comments in Raw Story. The NY times piece doe not have comments.

I wrote my comment in RawStory (below) and then reviewed some of the others and saw that the same or similar sentiment and reaction as mine were expressed. This is what I wrote:

Great quote from Bruni - willed gullibility is a perfect term, and indeed it was a Faustian bargain. The Devil took his due.

"Theirs was a willed gullibility — they have always known deep down who Trump is," Bruni wrote. "They wagered that they could live with that. They made a Faustian bargain, abetting him so that he didn’t eviscerate them. They just didn’t understand the full price they’d pay."

The commenter below had another way of putting it:

Here’s the GIF on the left above.

At this moment there are only 65 comments to the RawStory article. They run the gamut, for example:

Down the road we don’t know whether the regrets of Trump enablers will amount to anything. It probably won’t be more than like someone with indigestion caused by eating tainted food passing gas. There might be momentary relief, but at their next meal the only food available would be served with the same Trumpian samonella. 

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A chilling story of how a journalist was terrorized by American neo-Nazis should be widely reported. I was going to write about ICE, then I read about how Neo-Nazis targeted a RawStory journalist.

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The RawStory article ( above and here) by a RawStory journalist, Jordan Green, who was directly targeted and terrorized by American neo-Nazis and had his family life upended led me to change the story I originally intended to write this morning.

You can read the article without charge where it was also published on The Assembly here.

On the RawStory artilce note that the shirt the man in the lower left pictured in front of Jordan Green’s house says “Support Your Local Einsatz-Kommando'.” This is what the Einsatz-Kommando'” was:

Note that the shirt the man in the lower left pictured in front of Jordan Green’s house says “Support Your Local Einsatz-Kommando'.” This is what the Einsatz-Kommando'” was:

During World War II, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos were a sub-group of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) – up to 3,000 men total – usually composed of 500–1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to exterminate Jews, Polish intellectuals, Romani, and communists in the captured territories often far behind the advancing German front.^[1][2] Einsatzkommandos, along with Sonderkommandos, were responsible for the systematic murder of Jews during the aftermath of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. After the war, several commanders were tried in the Einsatzgruppen trial, convicted, and executed. Read more here.

I woke up at 5:00 like I usually do and was thinking of writing my daily Substack about what America would be like in a few years with an unrestrained ICE. This was prompted by this local story: “Immigration arrest outside Oregon preschool rattles parents" and the fact that in the morning after the arrest we were at our granddaughter's soccer game in the town where it happened. 

Here’s what occurred:

Parents at a preschool in a Portland suburb are reeling after immigration officers arrested a father in front of the school during morning drop-off hours, breaking his car window to detain him in front of children, families and staffers.

“I feel like a day care, which is where young children are taken care of, should be a safe place,” Natalie Berning said after dropping off her daughter at the Montessori in Beaverton on Friday morning. “Not only is it traumatizing for the family, it’s traumatizing for all the other children as well.”

Mahdi Khanbabazadeh, a 38-year-old chiropractor and citizen of Iran, was initially pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, while driving his child to the school Tuesday. After asking if he could drop off the child first, he continued driving and called his wife to tell her what happened, according to his wife, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to privacy concerns for her and her young child.

His wife rushed to the school, took their child from his car and brought him inside. Khanbabazadeh stayed in the vehicle in the parking lot and asked if he could move somewhere not on school grounds out of consideration for the children and families, his wife said. He pulled out of the lot and onto the street and began to open the car door to step out when agents broke the window and took him into custody, according to his wife.

There were lots of Hispanic families at the soccer game and I could see them being targeted by ICE. There were some multi-racial Black/White families where the children could be mistaken for being Hispanic too. I was thinking of how, with ICE on a rampage, nobody who could be wrongly or rightly be identified as Hispanic could feel safe. Ironically, considering America’s history of anti-Black racism the only people who can feel safe from ICE are those who are either Black or White.

I also thought about the talented lead dancer at the Kona Hilton Hotel in hula show we went to on our recent Hawaii vacation and his tan skin and tattoos. On the mainland, where people aren’t familiar with Hawaiians, he could easily be arrested by ICE agents thinking he was Hispanic despite his being an American citizen traveling with a real ID. His protestations that he was of Hawaiian descent and that his family, dating back for generations, were American citizens, would would fall on deaf ears. They’d only see his tatoos and skin color.

After composing the gist of what I wanted to write in my Substack in my mind, I read the riveting and chilling article about what could be unofficial subsidiaries of ICE, organized groups of American Nazis. In this instance it was about members of such groups terrorizing a journalist working for my favorite news and opinion website, RawStory (read about them on Wikipedia).

It hit home that a threatening email message about one of their writers was received at Raw Story’s email inbox for corrections:

Then, on March 28, 2024, my editor alerted me to a threatening message received at Raw Story’s email inbox for corrections.
The anonymous sender said they were delivering “a warning for the workers of the Raw Story,” and that they belonged to “another group with an international team.” Thanks to 2119’s efforts, they had my personal information.

I have sent hundreds of corrections to that address. Everyone who reads my emails at RawStory and then makes the usually minor typo corrections I alert them to sends me a prompt "thank you" back. They know who I am. For example:

For all I know that Nazi email was sandwiched between two of my emails.

Why Jordan Green has been targeted the horrible way he has, rather than a better known journalist, is a mystery. Perhaps it is because they thought he was an easier target than someone who worked for a TV network or mainstream newspaper. As recently as last night everyone on an MSNBC panel has said they’d received death threats. None of them went into detail. If they had American Nazis on their front lawn as happened with Jordan Green perhaps they didn’t want to give them publicity. Hopefully, law enforcement is aggressively investigating such threats, although if it’s up Pam Bondi’s DOJ and to Kash Patel’s FBI I don’t have any confidence that this will be done.

The target of such American Nazis could be anyone who has reported the truth about the MAGA Nazis. It won’t be someone like me since I am really obscure, but it could be anyone else who writes for a wide audience.

Green’s is a story which should be reported on far and wide in the non-MAGA media. Green should be interviewed on MSNBC and CNN. His is a story that must be told alongside the stories about ICE.

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