Fly the friendly skies of Jeffrey Epstein

The $50 Million Venetian Wedding of Robber Baron Jeff Bezos

Today's robber barons revel in a new Gilded Age

Elliott Negin for Common Dreams

With all the fawning coverage of Jeff Bezos’ storybook $50 million Venetian wedding, the news media lost sight of fact that Bezos—the third-richest person in the world—is hardly worthy of veneration. He’s been exploiting Amazon workers for years.

Historians have drawn parallels between the Gilded Age of the late 19th century and what we are experiencing today. Like the first Gilded Age, Gilded Age 2.0 is marked by increasing economic inequality, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and a rise in populism and social unrest.

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Jeff Bezos fits the profile of a latter-day robber baron to a T. Like the ruthless tycoons of yore, his business practices are unethical, he has amassed a vast fortune on the backs of his workers, and he has brutally stifled competition and controlled markets.

Amazon terrorizes its workers

With their manifestly unsafe working conditions, Amazon warehouses are a 21st-century version of a Gilded Age sweatshop. Despite the company’s claims that it protects its workforce, an 18-month investigation released last December by a Senate committee led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) found that the nation’s second-largest private-sector employer risks its workers’ health and safety by prioritizing speed and profit, and it is doing quite well on that score. Last year, the company outpaced Walmart, the largest private-sector employer, by netting $59.2 billion—a 95 percent increase from 2023.

The making of a sociopath

Born loser: Inside Donald Trump's troubled life

Peter Dreier 

I must admit, if Trump wasn't such a power-hungry demagogue, a danger to democracy, a sexual predator, racist, sociopath, pathological liar, bully, and impulsive and unstable megalomaniac, I might feel sorry for him.

He has no real friends, just sycophants. All his relationships are transactions, including with his three wives and his children. When people are no longer useful to him—wives, lawyers, advisors, Cabinet members—he discards them.

His current wife Melania is transactional, too. She married him for his money. She obviously doesn't love or respect him and she occasionally displays her disdain for him in public. She didn’t even campaign for him last year, except to make a few public appearances.

Trump hardly ever laughs. He has an almost-constant angry scowl on his face. To Trump, the world is a dark and foreboding place, where, like him, people are consumed by greed and lust. He relies on money and intimidation to get what he wants because he has no capacity for empathy or love—or any belief that people can be motivated by idealism and compassion.

Trump grew up in a world of vast privilege, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't emotionally wounded.

Both the federal raids on immigrants in Los Angeles and the military parade in Washington, D.C. reflect Trump’s need to look tough, manly, and in control.

According to his niece Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, he was bullied by his father, who must have told Donald that he wasn't smart and that he was (or should be worried about being) a loser. In 2017, 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts published a book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, warning that he was erratic and unstable as pressures mounted on him. 

Two years later, they updated the book—this time with 37 experts weighing in on Trump’s troubled mental health.

He has no strong beliefs about governing or public policy. His major motivations are money, power, revenge, racism, and adulation.

One of Trump’s few joys in life are the cheers from his fans at MAGA rallies. So, to compensate for his insecurities, feed his ego, and to mobilize his MAGA followers, he planned this massive parade on June 14 ostensibly to celebrate the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday, but which also just happens to coincide with this 79th birthday. 

Trump intended it as a display of force, domination, and personal power. It is more about him than about honoring our soldiers and veterans.

In U.S. history, large military parades have typically come at the end of wars as part of demobilizing troops and celebrating getting the country back to normal. But such spectacles have a long tradition in authoritarian countries, where dictators, including the current rulers of Russian and North Korea, seek to bind themselves to national identity. 

The most disreputable of these displays of dominance were the mass rallies and parades organized by the Nazis to celebrate Adolf Hitler, depicted in Leni Riefenstahl’s pathbreaking propaganda film “Triumph of the Will,” that celebrated Hitler speaking at a massive Nazi Party rally in Nurenberg in 1934.

Having won a second term, Trump now wants to consolidate his grip on power. He’s sought to bend those whom he views as his critics and opponents—universities, media companies, law firms, judges, businesses, scientists, artists and performers, and even professional sports teams—to his will. Both the federal raids on immigrants in Los Angeles and the upcoming military parade in Washington, D.C. reflect Trump’s need to look tough, manly, and in control.

From his father, who was arrested at a Klan rally in 1927, he also absorbed the racist ideas of the fake science of eugenics, which was popular in America in the early 1900s.

In 1988, he told Oprah Winfrey that a person had “to have the right genes” in order to achieve great fortune. In 2010, he told CNN that he was a “gene believer,” explaining that “when you connect two racehorses, you usually end up with a fast horse.” He compared his own “gene pool” to that of successful thoroughbreds. During a 2020 campaign speech to a crowd of white supporters in Minnesota, Trump said, “You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

Trump's grandfather Friedrich was a
German draft-dodger

But in fact, Trump has thus always been insecure about his family's genes. His father lied about his family's heritage, pretending that the Trumps were from Swedish, not German, ancestry. Trump repeated the lie in his book, The Art of the Deal. 

He later said that he wouldn't mind if the US had more immigrants from Scandinavia, but kept out immigrants from "shithole countries," an outrageously racist comment. 

Trump said at a rally in Iowa that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of the country. They're destroying the fabric of our country, and we're going to have to get them out."

Trump believes that most white Americans share his racism toward immigrants and that he can weaponize that hatred by carrying out a mass deportation of people he calls “illegal” and “criminals.” He’s sent federal agents to Los Angeles to arrest immigrant workers and parents, followed by National Guard troops to intimidate and arrest those who are protesting the anti-immigrant raids. 

This is all designed to create fear and chaos to give Trump cover as the “law and order” president and, as Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA) noted, “an excuse to declare martial law in California.” The timing is no accident. The federal raids—which Trump is likely to expand to other cities—are meant to divert public attention from Trump’s legislative plan to cut Medicaid and other essential programs in order to give a huge tax cut to the super-rich.

Trump often claims that he's a self-made billionaire. In fact, he inherited his father's wealth, as reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig explain in their 2024 book, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. 

His father bankrolled his developments and bailed him out when they failed. Despite his boasts, he knows that most of his business ventures—his casinos, hotels, golf courses, fake university, airline, football team, clothing line, steaks, and others—failed. 

Most banks won't go near Trump, because they consider him a toxic grifter who consistently defrauds his subcontractors, employees, and lenders. According to Forbes magazine—which ranks the world’s billionaires—Trump was never as wealthy as he claimed to be.

The timing is no accident. The federal raids—which Trump is likely to expand to other cities—are meant to divert public attention from Trump’s legislative plan to cut Medicaid and other essential programs in order to give a huge tax cut to the super-rich.

Trump's favorite insults, directed toward people he considers his enemies, are "not smart" and "losers." Clearly the man is projecting.

Trump was terrified of losing last year’s election because he might have had to go to prison and also because he'd be viewed as a "loser," which in his mind is the worst thing you can be, a consequence of his father's disparagement and his mother's neglect. He was doubly worried that he might lose to a Black woman, Kamala Harris, whom he described as “not smart.”

Trump is clearly insecure about his mental abilities and worries that it's due to his inferior genes. He’s boasted that he comes from a superior genetic stock and that he is a "very stable genius." For years, he has constantly insisted that "I'm smart." 

“Throughout my life,” Trump tweeted in 2018, “my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” He lied about being first in his class in college. He didn't even make the Dean's List. Whenever he has defended his intelligence, it isn't clear if he's trying to convince his interviewers or himself.

He’s even defensive about his vocabulary. He claims to have "great words," although linguists who have studied his speeches and other statements say he has the vocabulary of an adolescent. He doesn't read—for pleasure or work. As president, he doesn’t read the memos prepared for him by his staff, including intelligence briefs. Some observers attributed this to his arrogance. But more likely it is because he can’t understand what is in them. He'd rather be considered arrogant than stupid.

At least 26 of his top aides publicly said that Trump was unfit to be president. They questioned his competence, character, impulsiveness, narcissism, judgement, intelligence, and even his sanity.

According to Michael Wolff, in his book, Fire and Fury, both former chief of staff Reince Priebus and ex-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called Trump an “idiot.” Trump’s one-time economic adviser Gary Cohn said Trump was “dumb as shit.” His national security adviser H.R. McMaster described the president as a “dope.” 

In July 2017, news stories reported that Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first Secretary of State, called the president a “moron.” When asked, he did not deny using that term. In an interview with Foreign Affairs magazine, Tillerson recounted that Trump’s “understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited.” He said, “It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even understand the concept for why we’re talking about this.”

“Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” said his former Vice President, Mike Pence. Mark Esper, one of Trump’s Defense Secretaries, said that Trump is not “fit for office because he puts himself first, and I think anybody running for office should put the country first.” 

In his farewell speech, Mark Milley, a retired Army general who served as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2019, to September 30, 2023, warned “We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” clearly referring to Trump. John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps four-star general who served as chief of staff from 2017 to 2019, said that Trump “admires autocrats and murderous dictators” and “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

Soon after the January 6, 2021 insurrection, McMaster, the former national security advisor, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump had incited the riot through “sustained disinformation… spreading these unfounded conspiracy theories.” He accused Trump of “undermining rule of law.” 

Sarah Matthews, deputy White House press secretary during Trump’s first term, witnessed Trump staffers trying, without success, to get the president to condemn the January 6 violence. “In my eyes, it was a complete dereliction of duty that he did not uphold his oath of office,” she told USA Today. “I lost all faith in him that day” and resigned from her job. Trump’s “continuation of pushing this lie that the election is stolen has made him wholly unfit to hold office every again,” Matthews said.

What kind of president invites the media to attend Cabinet meetings where each member is required to humiliate themselves by telling Trump how wonderful he is?

But let's give Trump some credit. He does have the kind of intelligence, sometimes called "street smarts," attributed to hustlers, con men, and grifters. That seems to have worked for him.

Trump knows that many Republicans in Congress laugh at him behind his back but don't say anything in public because they fear him—particularly his ability to find candidates to run against them in the GOP primaries.

He also knows that most world leaders don't respect him. We’ve now been witness to the ritualized Oval Office meetings between Trump and his counterparts, where Trump seeks to bully, coerce, and humiliate them. 

A few have challenged him, which gets him angry enough to seek revenge. His meetings with Putin are somewhat different, since he envies the Russian autocrat’s power. Trump’s bromance and recent break-up with Elon Musk is partly about policy but mostly a battle of egos and wills.

What kind of person craves being famous for telling people, "You're fired"? But that's how he became a TV celebrity. What kind of president invites the media to attend Cabinet meetings where each member is required to humiliate themselves by telling Trump how wonderful he is? To Trump, respect is a zero-sum game. He likes to demean others to boost himself.

Trump will try, and fail, to cancel the 2028 elections and remain in power. But don't expect him to fade away. He will seek to become the leader of a white nationalist supremacist movement while continuing to dominate the Republican Party. The MAGA forces he’s unleashed since 2016 will also still be around. It is no accident that racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic incidents have spiked since Trump began campaigning for president. Trump verbalizes, encourages, enables, tolerates, winks at, and makes excuses for hate groups, most notably when he said that some of the Nazis marching in Charlottesville in 2017 were “good people.”

But as he gets crazier and crazier, and no longer has the power of the presidency, most of his followers will abandon him, crowds at his rallies will be smaller and smaller, and he’ll become a lonely, decrepit old man, a fallen idol like the Orson Welles character (Charles Kane) in the 1941 film "Citizen Kane" and the Andy Griffith character (Lonesome Rhodes) in the 1957 film "A Face in the Crowd."

He'll retreat to Mar-a-Lago—his Xanadu—by himself and with his paid staff. Or perhaps he'll spend much of his remaining years in federal prison, seething over how he was the victim of conspiracies.

When Trump dies from the side effects of obesity, the nation and the world will breathe a huge sigh of relief. And while he can't quite admit it to himself, he knows it, and it terrifies him.

Where was ICE when we really needed them?

When are they coming for Melania?

Lying, cheating dirtbag

 

Today's star witness

Draw your own conclusions

The company he keeps

They deserve each other

A perfect couple: The worst president and a wretched first lady 

by Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

Here they are with another role model power couple, convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. (Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)

Melania Trump hasn’t been associating with her husband, Donald, on his retribution tour across America. She hasn’t been at his side during his trials for fraud or for defaming a woman he sexually assaulted in a dressing room. 

She didn’t even show up for her spouse’s New Year's Eve party. That level of dedicated absence may lead to suggestions that the Einstein visa-winning former nude model doesn’t really care for her ketchup-hurling husband.

The genuineness of this photo of Trump and 11 year old
Ivanka was checked by Snopes.com
and determined to be real.

But over the weekend, there was more evidence that the pair are perfect for each other. They may not be a match made in heaven, but in whatever spiritual sweatshop cranks out rich-old-guy-and-much-younger-trophy-wife relationships, these two are a chef’s kiss.

That fresh evidence starts with Fox News fuming over the latest presidential rankings from a survey of political scholars who specialize in presidential history. Those rankings once again have Abraham Lincoln in the top spot. It’s also no surprise who is riding in the historical caboose. Not only is Trump ranked dead last, he’s last by a huge margin. It’s bad. Like, way behind James Buchanan bad.

And to really get MAGA fans grinding their molars: Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden are in the top 15.

Could it be the end of the world?

Trump as the Terminator of All Mankind

ALFRED W. MCCOY in the TomDispatch

(Image: ArtCard)

With recent polls giving Donald Trump a reasonable chance of defeating President Biden in the November elections, commentators have begun predicting what his second presidency might mean for domestic politics. 

In a dismally detailed Washington Post analysis, historian Robert Kagan argued that a second Trump term would feature his “deep thirst for vengeance” against what the ex-president has called the “radical Left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country,” thereby launching what Kagan calls “a regime of political persecution” leading to “an irreversible descent into dictatorship.”

So far, however, Trump and the media that follow his every word have been largely silent about what his reelection would mean for U.S. foreign policy. Citing his recent promise of “a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods,” the New York Times did recently conclude that a renewed trade war with China “would significantly disrupt the U.S. economy,” leading to a loss of 744,000 jobs and $1.6 trillion in gross domestic product. 

Economic relations with China are, however, but one piece of a far larger puzzle when it comes to future American global power, a subject on which media reporting and commentary have been surprisingly reticent.

So let me take the plunge by starting with a prediction I made in a December 2010 TomDispatch piece that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines.” I added then that a “realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could be all over except for the shouting.”

I also offered a scenario hinged on — yes! — next November’s elections. “Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair,” I wrote then, “a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Back then, of course, 2025 was so far off that any prediction should have been a safe bet. After all, 15 years ago, I was already in my mid-60s, which should have given me a “get-out-of-jail-free” card — that is, a reasonable chance of dying before I could be held accountable. But with 2025 now less than a year away, I’m still here (unlike all too many of my old friends) and still responsible for that prediction.

Fashion dreams

By Bruce MacKinnon

 

Why didn't Trump deport her?

 

The untold story of Donald Trump’s last day

Eviction Crisis Reaches White House

Pitiful Family Goods Dumped on Pennsylvania Ave Sidewalk

By Mitchell Zimmerman
 

The wave of home evictions which has swept America in the wake of the coronavirus catastrophe finally reached the White House, and the Donald Trump family found themselves on the street. After months of hapless legal (and illegal) maneuvering, the heart-broken Trump family was ejected from their home of four years. “Where are we to go?” cried a red-eyed Melania. “But I am President for Life,” a seething Mr. Trump insisted.
 

The owners of the coveted Washington residence, the American people, callously served a 78-day notice of eviction on the Trumps early in November, but Mr. Trump decreed the notice invalid based on technicalities and filed 60 lawsuits to stave off removal. “No one knows tenant-landlord law like me,” Mr. Trump said.
 

Nonetheless, a conspiracy of judges inexplicably deemed the cases frivolous and lawyer Rudy Giuliani told his tenant client nothing could halt the eviction.
 

When Mr. Trump still refused to leave voluntarily, Federal police were obliged to pry his fingers loose from the Resolute desk in the oval office, and six Secret Service officers strained to lift the hefty former tenant. Screaming “Mine! Mine! Mine!” and spasmodically squeezing his remote control, Mr. Trump was carried away.
 

A member of the White House kitchen staff followed, picking up silver spoons and forks that were dropping from Mr. Trump’s pockets.
 

The former tenant was deposited on the sidewalk just outside the main gate. There stood a pathetic heap of the distraught family’s goods – five sixty-inch television sets, a box of soiled MAGA caps and Stop the Steal pins, Tiki torches, injectors for Lysol, Mrs. Trump’s “I Really Don’t Care Do U?” jacket, Mr. Trump’s bible prop, and a stack of pardons he didn’t have time to sign. “Where’s my nuclear football?” Mr. Trump demanded.

Mitchell Zimmerman: Read my latest op-ed: A Tale of Two Mobs, How the GOP abandoned democracy and became an accomplice to insurrection. And on my anti-racism thriller Mississippi Reckoning: L A Review of Books: “Gripping … revelatory.”  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “Powerful.” Kirkus: “Riveting.”  Freedom Rider Diane Nash: “Enthralling.”  Pulitzer-winner Eric Foner: “Rooted in history.”  Fed. Judge Thelton Henderson: “a soul-wrenching narrative.”    Read an excerpt: www.mississippi-reckoning.com

Paintings of Trump painted by his supporters

 Really.

Merry F******* Christmas

 

Donald and Melania are getting ready for Christmas

 

Crimes and Corruption

 

MUSIC VIDEO: If Donald Got Fired

To watch this wonderful duet on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AoY6RRfMZM

 

Self-inflicted

We Shouldn’t Be Surprised That Trump Is Infected

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor

That Donald and Melania Trump should test positive for what was described as relatively mild COVID-19 seems both sad and avoidable, the inevitable and ironic result of snubbing mask-wearing and physical distancing.

It is what it is, after all.

That the White House and the Trump campaign were not forthright about learning that close adviser Hope Hicks had been found infected and went ahead with fund-raisers and lots of contacts without taking precautions is reprehensible.

Amid calls for recovery were notes of open disbelief over whether the news as announced was true, questions about the First Couple’s medical status and a chaotic race to reach scores of people with whom Trump and Hicks had contact over the previous four days. Worry mounted about exactly how the government is functioning, as a result, to say nothing of the effects on elections.

The White House never acknowledged the Hicks contagion for at least a full day after learning of it. A bevy of others were exposed to the illness. People need to hold someone responsible.

Opponent Joe Biden tested negative after contact with Trump at the Tuesday debate, but three senators, the Trump campaign manager and head of the Republican National Committee, White House staffers and guests and three journalists at White House events are ill.

Through the day, as Trump was moved to Walter Reed Hospital, it sounded as if Trump was sicker than acknowledged. But then again, it was hard to tell: The White House is controlling closely the information.