July 31, 2025

Trump is the death president. Where are the human interest stories about people whose lives were distrupted or destroyed by Trump? By Hal M. Brown

 



We see videos of people being brutalized and treated as less than human by Trump’s immigrant hunting Gestapo. See, for example, 'Hard or easy?' ICE agents seen using terrifying new tactic to detain immigrants.” 

With notable exceptions like the few lucky people who came back after being brutalized in the Salvadoran prison of horrors, we don’t learn about how their lives are destroyed after they are disappeared.

These are the dramatic tales, but we also have untold stories about another group of people who weren’t literally grabbed up by masked Gestapo. 

(The actual Nazi Gestapo didn’t need to hide their identities. Nobody would dare go after them at home. Wait for this being a crime punished by summary execution here.)

Far less dramatic are the stories of how the lives of federal employees fired by the DOGE Boys and overall downsizing of federal agencies have been disrupted. 

The media looks at how the work of agencies is effected, a how in a few cases the government scrambled to rehired fired staff.

Depending on where you look the numbers of people who lost their jobs because of DOGE start at a low of 130,000 and go up from there. This is a Google search for aritlces about this.

This is the AI created overview:

While the exact number is difficult to pinpoint due to limited public disclosure, it's estimated that around 135,000 federal workers have been fired or resigned as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) workforce reductions. This figure includes both outright firings and voluntary departures, such as buyouts, that were prompted by the initiative.Additionally, there are plans for further reductions, potentially reaching a total of 285,000 lost jobs, according to some sources

Here’s a Reuters article:

Trump’s handling of Covid caused impossible to precisely determine loss of life and considerable suffering. “Approximately 450,000 Americans died from COVID-19 during the final year of Donald Trump's presidency, with studies suggesting that about 40% of these deaths could have been avoided if the U.S. had matched the death rates of other wealthy nations. His administration's response has been widely criticized for being inadequate and harmful to public health.” (AI generated)

Here’s a Scientific American article about this:

If 285,000 people died as a direct and incontrovertible of something a president did it would headline news. It would have to be something akin to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which caused 150,000 to 246,000 deaths. However, consider the following: 

More than 14 million additional deaths are projected to occur globally by 2030 due to cuts to USAID, including over 4.5 million children under the age of five. These estimates are based on the significant reduction in health and humanitarian programs previously supported by the agency. (AI generated)

People tend to respond emotionally to human interest stories, to accounts of how a person who they would relate to was effected by trauma. These stories take numbers, in the most famous example the 6+ million people who died by disease, starvation, or murder in the Holocaust death camps, and focus on just one individual. Anne Frank is a good example. Anne Frank died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Right now in the land of the free and the home of the brave we have people hiding out for fear of Trump’s Gestapo. There may even be a 15 year old immigrant girl being hidden in someone’s attic.

I am not naive enough to think that one compelling story, one diary that could be published and made into numerous movies, could pull at the collective heartstrings of MAGA. That is the height of wishful thinking. Trump and his MAGA minions have no heart.

………

Addendum:

I posted a link to yesterday’s Substack about South Park’s show about Trump on Facebook and it was removed for the reason shown below.

I’m not going to appeal this. I hope readers don’t count on Facebook to find my Substacks. I far prefer that those who like what I write Subscribe. 

……

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July 30, 2025

Today's Substack goes from humor to horror in a country gone crazy. By Hal M. Brown

 


In an alternate universe where Trump lost the election the ony publications bothering to waste cyber-ink on him would be those covering the entertainment industry like VarietyEntertainment Weekly, and WWE Online, the latter current paying homage to Trump’s darling:

Still we have to try to get some satisfaction from Trump suffering from the persistent pox of Epsteinitis the itchy rash that won’t go away. 

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South Park’s making the news with their micropenis Trump also provided a moment of welcome comic releif. They managed to hit him below the belt and despite their network, Comic Central, being owned by Paramount they not only got away with it but the show was renewed for 50 epidoses. Literally, the phase “stay tuned” is applicable here. Consider this article in Variety:

South Park airs on Comedy Central which is owned by Paramount. That network just merged with CBS. South Park makes so much money that, despite their skewering Trump with biting satire, there’s no way they will be censored or forced off the air.

It is telling that while Trump has been on a rampage attacking Stephen Colbert and other late night TV hosts so far he’s avoided going after South Park like they are The Plague. Trump doesn’t care a whit that when he attacks a late night comic he only piques the curiosity of the public and may actually lead to more people tuning in to their shows. Whether or not he will attack cartoon characters like Cartman and Kenny remains to be seen. He could go after SP creators Andy Samberg, Mike Judge, Matt Stone and Trey Parker. I’m familar with the first two but most people who aren’t fans don’t know who they are.

Meanwhile, on the subject of fantasy images, there’s this (see article):

This leads me to ask the question “which depictions of Trump are are more realistic, a cartoonish Trump or a lousy photoshop?” 

Then in a nauseating but not unexpected development we have the Emil Bove’s appointment to the Third Circuit confirmed by the Senate. 

This shows that the Republicans in the Senate would confirm a Magic Eight Ball to make decisions on any court as long as they always favored Trump.

I don’t know why I bother writing about such trivial matters, even the Bove vote, is trivial when we have stories like this: 

Now that he’s free, Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, a 31-year-old Venezuelan, wants the world to know that he was tortured over four months in a Salvadoran prison. He said guards stomped on his hands, poured filthy water into his ears and threatened to beat him if he didn’t kneel alongside other inmates and lick their backs.

Now that he’s free, Juan José Ramos Ramos, 39, insists he’s not who President Donald Trump says he is. He’s not a member of a gang or an international terrorist, just a man with tattoos whom immigration agents spotted riding in a car with a Venezuela sticker on the back.

Now that he’s free, Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla, 40, said he wondered every day of his time in prison whether he’d ever hold his mother in his arms again. He’s relieved to be back home in Venezuela but struggles to make sense of why he and the other men were put through that ordeal in the first place. Continued.

More proof that Trump has Epsteinitis came late last night when he reposted this post from a QAnon believer who describes herself as a “Proud American, born and raised, a Woman for Trump. I believe in Q, The Great Awakening and Holding the Line!❤️ WWG1WGA!.” The initials stand for “where we go one, we go all” which is a slogan of QAnon believers. (Read article in RawStory)

It’s possible, perhaps likely, that Trump doesn’t know that "the storm" refers to what conspiracy theorists believe will be a day of reckoning when the "Deep State" will be brought to justice and imprisoned and possibly executed at Guantanamo Bay. He may just have liked the AI image of himself and the text.

You have to scroll down the Fox News wesbite to find this story, middle right below, about Epstein: Schumer calls on FBI to conduct counterintelligence threat assessment on Epstein files.

If Trump watches MSNBC there is unrelenting coverage of the story.

They show how close he was with Ghislaine Maxwell. 

I wrote about this here:

They also report on the so-far missing minute of video surveillance of Epstein, supposedly dead by suicide, was found. This led to the conspiracy theory that someone had him killed.

He does not look like a happy camper:

That’s it for today. It’s a mixed bag of Halloween candy which includes some tasty treats and apples with razor blades in them. Remember how that story broke? 

Updates:

I wrote about Trump not being able to sue actual cartoon characters. Now South Park has a new episode about him suing the town of South Park. Excerpt:

One of the episode's main plot lines was Trump suing the town of South Park.

"By the end of the episode, the town agrees to do pro-Trump messaging as part of a settlement. The show then cut to a faux public service announcement showing a live-action depiction of Trump taking off his clothes and crawling through a desert."

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told USA Today that the show by creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, "hasn't been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention."

 While I don’t like using X I did post this there:

Then I looked up Epsteinitis and saw that a large number of people are using that term (see link to X) They are both anti-Trump and pro-Trump accusing Democrats of having it.

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Trump is the death president. Where are the human interest stories about people whose lives were distrupted or destroyed by Trump? By Hal M. Brown

  We see videos of people being brutalized and treated as less than human by Trump’s immigrant hunting Gestapo. See, for example,  “ 'Ha...