Profiles in Hypocrisy-A Look at Trump Allies, Past & Present:
Also, Looking at News Highlights of the Week and Providing Some Blog Recommendations
Feel free to check the past Biden Era archives and follow the editions to come in the Trump Era on Substack, Medium, and LinkedIn (First Come, First Serve!).
Question of the Week: What does Russian dictator Vladimir Putin—and yes, he is a dictator (just ask Alexei Navalny)—have on Donald Trump?
Seriously.
Other than that, let me start off with a political reflection. Democrats need to take some advice from Ruthless People: “We’ve got to be ruthless.” Use the McConnell playbook procedurally to gum up the Trump and billionaire takeover of our government.
And please, just stop defending and wavering on the 45-year, Reagan-Clinton economic and political status quo:
It’s so simple, isn’t it? Take the easy path forward, Democrats. Be the party of “change” again—the good kind of change.
Speaking of the path forward, here are some helpful articles that can help us reflect on what that journey could look like:
Via The Nation: “What Happened to the Democratic Party?”
Via Washington Post: “Republicans caught between Trump and farmers pleading for frozen funds”
Via Yahoo.com: “Jim Acosta Argues Media Should Pull White House Coverage of ‘Aspiring Autocrat’ Trump In Solidarity With AP”.
Via presswatchers.org: “Why is Trump coverage so feeble”
Via Sludge: “Top Dem Hires UnitedHealth Lobbyist” and “DCCC Scores Massive Palantir and SpaceX Lobbyist Cash Haul”
Via Mother Jones: “Elon Musk is Trying to Buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court” & “Republicans Aim to Extend a $684 Billion Tax Break That Benefits Many of Them”
Via Dropsite News: “Trump Stripped All $103 Million of Legal Assistance From Storm and Disaster Victims”
Via DisabilitySource: “Push to Dismantle Ed Department Fuels Worries About Special Education”
Via Associated Press: “Trump says he may take control of the US Postal Service. Here’s what to know”
Via Politico: “Is the Democratic brand toxic?…Going ‘Independent’…”
Via New York Times: “Venting at Democrats & Fearing Trump, Liberal Donors Pull Back Cash”
Via The Lever: “RFK’s Beef with Big Food” & “Trump Just Limited Your Payout For Airline Mishaps”
Via Daily Beast: “Accused Sex Trafficker and Rapist Andrew Tate Finds Ally in Trump”
Meanwhile, Rachel Maddow has been on a tear covering the Trump Administration. The episodes on “the First 100 Days” have been some of the best and I encourage everyone to keep tabs on that program as it continues onward. If not for her, I would not be able to provide some of the granular details of DOGE that I have been able to recently.
However, onto the main subject: where the hell is Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Rudy Giuliani, Jeff Sessions, and Mike Pompeo? Boy did Trump throw them all under the bus.
It is worth remembering how Trump’s fiercest rivals, who often said the cruelest, most bitter things about him before, have now capitulated and bended the knee to him. And it was not a genuine change. Never.
Look at Nikki Haley. She did more flip-flopping than Hillary Clinton did, and Hillary Clinton was the master of flip-flopping. In 2016, Haley was against Trump on the campaign trail, saying he was “everything a governor doesn’t want in a president.” In 2017, naturally, she became his UN Ambassador, lavishing and showering praise all over him.
In 2021, she condemned him for his role in the January 6 insurrection. In 2023, she bashed Trump again. In 2024, she endorsed Trump to the choir of boos at the Republican National Convention. Now that she was left in the dust, without a government job, she is back to criticizing him. No moral compass whatsoever.
Chris Sununu is much of the same. Where to begin with him? Nothing more than sheer political calculation.
What about House Speaker Mike Johnson, though? Even he once criticized Trump in 2015 as unfit to be President. Now he is the main puppet of the GOP oligarchy agenda, because without them, he can’t be the Speaker of the House. Only 2 or 3 no votes can kick him out of the top leadership position in the lower chamber.
Along with Kevin McCarthy, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be most responsible for reviving Trump’s political career by ensuring he received no accountability in the Senate for January 6. He could have delivered the two-thirds majority conviction for Trump’s incitement of insurrection, but he didn’t. He instead endorsed his reelection campaign in 2024. And he just voted to confirm the deranged-looking menace Kash Patel to run the FBI.
I’m sorry, I won’t be missing the obstructionist Grim Reaper that much in the Senate. Not exactly a towering John McCain profile in courage.
On the 2016 campaign trail, Mark Rubio couldn’t have mocked Trump more than he did. He called him a con artist back then, and insulted his hands, insinuating that “something else” must be small if Trump’s hands were so small. Now he’s Trump’s Secretary of State. “Little Marco,” indeed. A little man with little principles.
In 2016, Trump baselessly blamed Ted Cruz’s father for JFK’s assassination, and the future POTUS then called Cruz’s wife ugly. 5 years later, Cruz was one of the few Senators willing to openly back Trump’s election lies on the 6th.
JD Vance, perhaps the biggest hypocrite of all, might be getting punished with Elon Musk sidelining him. Maybe part of that has to do with his past comments raising the question of whether Trump could be “America’s Hitler,” or his comments comparing Trump campaign rhetoric to opioids, amongst other things.
Brutal and somewhat ahead-of-his-time commentary in 2016. But given the path he has chosen now, a sad reflection on how much of a chameleon Vance truly is.
Seriously, not a peep from any of them when it comes to taking the side of the Kremlin, pardoning the insurrectionist January 6, 2021 “hostages” (including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio), or the partisan purging of the civil service.
The plutocrats and oligarchs were not always Trump allies either. Elon Musk said he voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and never had anything positive to say about Trump until after he left office.
Likewise, Mark Zuckerberg was a known Trump critic before he took a front row seat to the White House inauguration. Many of these oligarchs can’t stand Trump personally, but at least now they are able to profit off of his policies without any lingering guilt or pangs of conscience.
And that’s the point. The elites, like Canadian tycoon Kevin O’Leary, don’t care about the American people, or about American values, or about democracy in itself. They just care about fat pockets and good profits.
O’Leary will reap praise on DOGE. Why wouldn’t he? Because the Musketeer cutting of working class services won’t impact him. In fact, his friends might even get a big fat tax cut for it.
So much for caring about the deficit and the debt Kevin. But that wasn’t ever the point, was it? By the way, this is why businessmen shouldn’t really run the government most of the time. Because the government is not a business, where the men at top are trying to squeeze out a profit for themselves in any way they can. It is a public service with life-or-death ramifications. But what would Kevin know, besides plundering and robbing in private equity, like a vulture under a different name?
(He and venture capitalist/former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo should meet up sometime. I imagine they would get along swimmingly with each other).
But enough of these profiles in hypocrisy. Let’s take a look at the press too. Jim Acosta has been right on. And why does CNN and other outlets have so many pro-Clinton commentators (like Rahm Emanuel and Donna Brazile) and so very few commentators associated with Bernie Sanders and/or Elizabeth Warren? Where’s our seat at the table?
Hasn’t this past 2024 election showed us the importance of having voices that represent, you know, the base of the Democratic Party? The base that didn’t turn out last year?
Okay, that’s all I have for you today. Stay tuned, because next time, I will be looking into more on PBS and NPR and why it is under Trump’s Project 2025 microscope.