If Robert Reich had waited just a couple more hours before posting his substack, he could have included the national embarrassment of the speech this morning!
I don’t normally post the whole thing, but this one is too good not to get the word out.
h/t Felony Govt
I would have found it later today, but so glad she pointed it out to us in this morning’s thread.
The Past Week
Friends,
I can’t tell you exactly how I know but after sixty years in and around politics I’ve developed a sixth sense, and my sixth sense tells me the tide is now turning on Trump.
This past week did it.
On Monday, he sued the Times in a lawsuit that, as CNN put it, read “like a pro-Trump op-ed, with page after page of gushing praise for the president.”
On Tuesday, he accused reporter Jonathan Karl and his employer, ABC News, of engaging in hate speech against him, and warned that Pam Bondi, the attorney general, might go after them.
On Wednesday, after Brendan Carr, his lapdog chair of the FCC, pressured ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, he claimed that Kimmel being “CANCELLED” was “Great News for America,” and urged NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers next.
On Thursday, he said broadcast networks have been mean to him and that Brendan Carr might have to start taking their licenses away. “When you have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump,” he said, “they’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat Party.”
On Friday, he suggested that negative coverage about him is “really illegal.” Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office he said: “They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal,” adding “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”
On Saturday, he demanded that Bondi prosecute several of his political rivals even though grand juries and federal prosecutors couldn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing. He demanded that she do it “NOW!!!”
On Sunday, at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, he said that he disagreed with Kirk’s supposed leniency toward his ideological foes, adding: “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”
After Last Week
You could almost feel the great sleeping giant of America open an eye and frown, then blink both eyes and sit up and stretch, and then roar “what the hell is going on here?”
Immediately after Kimmel’s suspension, Disney viewers and customers began to cancel their subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu and threaten a broader consumer boycott.
According to Strength in Numbers, the Disney boycott quickly became four times as large as any boycott over the last five years.
Disney’s stock dipped about 3.5 percent and continued to trade lower in subsequent days — a loss in market value amounting to some $4 billion.
Even Ted Cruz — Ted Cruz! — began issuing grave warnings about censorship.
By then the giant was roaring and stomping.
By Monday, Disney decided to put Kimmel back on the air.
Trump’s poll numbers were dipping even before last week’s explosion of authoritarianism. Now they’re in free fall.
I’m old enough to have witnessed the great sleeping giant of America awaken before.
Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt destroyed countless careers before the giant roared: “have you no sense of decency?”
McCarthy melted almost as quickly as the Wicked Witch of the West. His national popularity evaporated. Three years later, censored by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death, a broken man at the age of forty-eight.
The giant roared again a decade later, after television showed civil rights marchers getting clobbered by white supremacists. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.
It roared again after tens of thousands of young Americans were killed in the jungles of Vietnam, finally bringing to an end one of the nation’s costliest, deadliest, and stupidest wars.
It roared again at Richard Nixon after Nixon was heard on tape plotting the coverup of Watergate — then being forced to exit the White House by helicopter on his way back to California.
It is starting to roar again now — at the sociopathic occupant of the Oval Office who won’t tolerate criticism, who in one wild week revealed his utter contempt for the freedom of Americans to criticize him, to write or speak negatively about him, even to joke about him.
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I’ve seen a lot. I know the signs. The sleeping giant always remains asleep until some venality becomes so noxious, some action so disrespectful of the common good, some brutality so noisy, that he has no choice but to awaken.
And when he does, the good sense of the American people causes him to put an end to whatever it was that awakened him.
WaterGirl
Once again, the light really pops if you click on the sidebar pic. Who doesn’t need their breathing to slow for a minute, looking at something beautiful?
japa21
Make it so
ArchTeryx
@WaterGirl: It reminds me of many early autumn hikes at the Morton Arboretum in Chicago. It’s been ages since I visited there, but I always enjoyed their “golf cart tours” where they used electric vehicles with several bench rows of seats to tour the entire grounds. Including some of the most beautiful backwoods areas and the historical landmarks. In early autumn, you can just lose yourself.
XeckyGilchrist
Fingers crossed
Belafon
If people waited until he didn’t do something embarrassing, things would never get published.
Old School
I hope Reich’s sixth sense is correct.
They Call Me Noni
@WaterGirl: The woods at the back of our house look like that. It is magical.
zhena gogolia
Well, I hope he’s right.
I wish the giant had awakened before last November.
Anonymous At Work
I had to check like 3 other sites to make sure that the “Your countries are going to hell” was a direct, accurate and in context quote. Even for Trump sans teleprompter, that’s escalation and/or a line designed to get him laughed at by diplomats to his face.
Baud
@Anonymous At Work:
Being a world leader, the US is already in hell.
cmorenc
Joe McCarthy was a Senator, not a President, Truman and Eisenhower were during McCarthy’s attempted reign of terror, and neither was cooperatively supportive of McCarthy’s attempts to purge government and stifle dissent. Difference with Trump is that he is President and has purged the federal government of resistance and installed ideological partisan stooges in every important government role, including SCOTUS 6-3.
Baud
WaterGirl
@ArchTeryx: We used to go there a lot to, when I was growing up.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That’s what I would do. Why would anyone trust the word of our government at this point? It would be madness for any government to engage with the U.S. at this point.
When someone shows you who they are, believe it the first time.
They have now had dozens of changes to see it.
ArchTeryx
@WaterGirl: To the Morton Arboretum?? That’s so cool!
I just happened to take a peek at the MA site to look at what’s become of their tours. Apparently, the Acorn Express got a big upgrade; they now use a converted van with tram seating, and a trailer with further seating behind it. Looks gas-powered, sadly. It’s a whole lot bigger than the originals I rode on. Golf cart tours no more; now it’s a full tram.
Jeffro
all so that he can wreck our government while lining his pockets
We’ve never had an anti-America president before. It’s been interesting but I think it’s time to wrap up the experiment.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: You are correct, good sir.
Baud
He wasn’t lying about the escalators.
Matt McIrvin
@cmorenc: There were autocrats with a lot of executive control, though–in hindsight, one of the most amazing things to me is that J. Edgar Hoover served as director of the FBI from its founding in 1935 until 1972, and the guy was a straight-up jackbooted thug who hung on because he had kompromat on everybody. The only thing that stopped him was death, from old age.
The Republic of Stupidity
I had actually come to a similar conclusion to Reich’s on my own last week…
The dam might be breaking…
For me, the final straw might have been the stunningly ugly, over-the-top speechifying both Trump and PeeWee Goehring engaged in at Kirk’s memorial…
Then you get the kind of commentary we got from, of all people, Ted Cruz, about free speech…
And now Trump’s UN ranting is the perfect cherry for a spectacular shit sundae…
kindness
Nice piece by Reich. The MSM is still dominated by Republicans. As long as the MSM sane washes Trump2.0, ignorant voters won’t know and that is the entire point of the sane washing.
I think by and large average Americans aren’t impressed with the bullying. They dislike Republicans deciding who they can and who they can’t watch. Fox watchers & the right wing are still pushing the fear and butt hurt to 11. We’ll see how it shakes out.
feebog
@Baud: Plenty of farmers bitching about China freezing the US out. Trump screwed them in his first term and they came back for another round. A bunch of them are going under this time.
Matt McIrvin
I can’t ever get a bead on this. To me the horrible always sounds like horrible and I never understand why other people can see it at some times and not at other times.
I have my doubts that Trump’s circa-40% core support floor is really going to crack. But I suppose all we need is a general perception that his will won’t forever be law.
catothedog
@Jeffro:
There is no wrapping up this experiment until the Supreme Court is cleaned up. Without packing the SC to 15 , and defanging the rightwing thugs on the Court, all victories are ephemeral.
Kathleen
After watching a good part of that speech (Ben at Meidas Touch was hilarious). We have 2 options. Find a paper bag large enough to cover America so it’s unrecognizable. Pretend we’re the Duchy of Fenwick and we don’t know who this “Donald Trump” person is.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: It would be madness not to engage with Trump though. That’s why leaders from five Arab and three other Muslim nations* are meeting with Trump at the U.N. this afternoon, to talk about his plan to end the war in Gaza. Like it or not, no other leader has the power. They can’t wait for a change in leadership here, or for an alternate power structure to be built, because this crisis can’t wait.
* That would be leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan plus leaders from Rurkiye, Pakistan and Indonesia.
Jackie
After FFOTUS’s ramblings today:
Sigh… I think most Americans ARE embarrassed. My fear is that the world thinks we’re idiots for electing him. Sigh
Baud
@Jackie:
To be fair, I think we’re idiots for electing him.
Where we = voters.
Hoodie
I’m skeptical of Reich’s argument. The best hope for nonviolent repudiation of Trump would be if a significant number of GOP/corporate leaders were to turn against him. Civil rights legislation didn’t go anywhere until the leadership of the Democratic Party decided, against it’s own perceived electoral interests, to do the right thing. McCarthy and Nixon went down relatively peacefully because elites of both parties turned against them. We’re not seeing any GOP leadership – or their big business donors – seriously turning against Trump yet and it’s kind of hard to see when that might happen given that there’s been enough information about his criminality and insanity for quite a while. The GOP elite did finally abandon Nixon when is popularity fell into the 20s after months of Watergate hearings. However, the public has been exposed to years of Trumpian criminality (Ukraine blackmail, J6, etc.) and he’s still in the 40s, which is enough to continue in power given the distortions of our electoral system.
hueyplong
@Matt McIrvin: Might be in a tiny minority, but I see the same thing stopping Trump that stopped J. Edgar Hoover. We’ve yet to see it proven that any of our sixth senses are any more inaccurate that Reich’s, so I’ll go ahead and set the over/under on Trump’s personal rapture at the opening gong of that 7/4/26 cage match at the White House, which must surely be a stench in the nostrils of any god the RWs care to worship.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Jeffro:
One of the signs from protests earlier this year was “This is the government our Founders warned us about”.
Ending the experiment’s gonna be a heavier lift because the GOP controls all branches as noted earlier and noted many times before. In many ways, we have a shit-ton of anti-American Congresspeople and Senators.
To find anything remotely akin to this, one hasta go back to 1860-61 and secession. That crowd was decidedly anti-American.
And what Hoodie said at #29.
Expletive Deleted
I really hope he’s right, but it still leaves the problem of how we get to the next step.
I can’t envision any scenario where Trump leaves office willingly. We only just managed it last time, and now half of the people and institutions that we needed then are loyal to him or themselves, corrupted, or just gone.
I will say, I’m glad to see at least some Democrats taking his whole “Trump in 2028” schtick seriously after nearly a year of hearing folks blasély talking about “when we get a Democrat in office” like it’s a given, but I still seriously hope someone somewhere is making a plan for what happens in 2028.
Jackie
@Baud: Yup. It’s too bad voters don’t have to pass the same civics test to BECOME Americans, before we’re eligible to vote.
Belafon
@Jackie:
We are idiots.
Now, if the we that didn’t vote for him could form a country with people in Great Britain that didn’t vote for Brexit, maybe we could get something done.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: clarification, please: you’re still an idiot even though you didn’t vote for him, right?
XeckyGilchrist
@feebog: Trump’s proposed bailout of the Argentine economy will happy those farmers right up, I’m sure.
Hoodie
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I think the 1850s are probably the best analogy to what we’re experiencing now because they had a similar constellation of forces. In particular, you had an entrenched group of powerful people who were protecting the interest of a particular hierarchy, even though that hierarchy generally was not in the best interests of an expanding country. Slavery, beyond being a crime against humanity, was a shitty economic system for the country as a whole but great for (1) rich slaveholders with economies of scale and (2) non slaveholding white supremacists who valued their position in the hierarchy over their actual wealth.
Belafon
@Steve in the ATL: #NotAllVoters
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Yes, there are ways for one to be an idiot without selling out one’s country.
Jackie
@Expletive Deleted:
Hell, we have to worry about the 2026 elections before worrying about 2028. I watched this interview this morning, and hearing Gov. Pritzker say this out loud and publicly…
I hope America heard him loud and clear. Maybe he’ll wake up voters that still just think “Trump’s just being Trump and doesn’t mean it.”
mr perfect
The only thing that would have made that perfect speech to the UN better would have been if attendants dressed in white holding butterfly nets had been in the background.
Kirklin
@Expletive Deleted: My opinion and only my opinion, throwing him out depends on democrats winning at least one of house and senate next year.
This depends on us fighting the long fight, holding what we can and voicing our resistance loudly about what we cannot hold. Declare no Republican victory as such, instead only as a temporary setback to be overcome and rejected.
Take lessons from the non-whites in their resistance movements. If you’re an idiot who can’t see how that applies, take lessons from the union fights at the start of the 20th century (though hopefully with a hell of a lot less overt warfare).
Accept there will be tears and pain, that we will suffer losses. And endure, and when the time comes to strike vote and get all our voices to vote.
Because if we don’t get that peaceful step of winning the vote, all subsequent routes will make the pain suffered up to next November seem no more than a spring afternoon’s walk in the park.
Or so that’s my opinion.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
It is beautiful.
Bupalos
I actually listened to most of the Trump UN speech. You don’t really get much of the flavor of it from the polarized highlights that get linked, which seem to be about making him seem more feeble and incomprehensible than it was. He actually seemed pretty energetic and coherent. Which makes it a lot worse, because he put all of his greatest red-meathead hits in the starkest possible terms and dialed them up to 11. Flatly saying that global warming is the greatest and most deadly hoax in history, that investing in green energy is a guaranteed death warrant for a country; that all immigration everywhere in the world should end completely, and on and on in these terms.
He’s trying to escalate and flap his arms as hard as possible now that he’s run off the Epstein cliff domestically. It sounded to me like a serious and determined play for the hardest edge of the global right wing.
Ohio Mom
Of course I look forward to Trump being gone but it’s not as simple as that. As others have pointed out, the Supreme Court needs fixing, plus undoing everything those clowns have done — repairing the administrative state, mending relationships with our allies, etc., all hugely expensive and grueling tasks that can’t be accomplished quickly.
Trump, DOGE and Vought have been extremely detailed orientated and there are many small pieces that would need glueing back together.
So I am not all the sanguine. I may chuckle at the farmers getting what they voted for but I also know that the harms of bankrupting those turkeys are going to ripple through the economy and the rest of the country.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: His voters love him because he hates the same people they do.
JoyceH
That’s a message for every Democratic candidate in 2026. Every horrible thing that Trump has done, he’s done because the Congressional Republicans have let him do it. He’s not just using presidential power insanely and irresponsibly, he’s also using CONGRESSIONAL power illegally – and the GOP leaders just roll over and let him do it. The firings? The fired employees who sue win because that was done illegally. Tariffs? That’s not a presidential power, that’s a Congressional power. The president can’t just sign a goofy piece of paper and say I’m setting tariffs on this country at this amount – or if he did a real Congress would immediately say, ‘hey, whoa whoa whoa, you can’t do that.’
When farms go bankrupt, when US citizens are snatched off the streets by masked men and disappeared, when grocery prices skyrocket, when rural hospitals close, when you can’t get your vaccines – that’s the fault of YOUR Republican Congressman who could easily have stopped Trump and chose not to do it.
Spanky
A CNN headline:
Pretty sure we’re not going to have the pleasure of a CNN talking head pronounce the winner’s name on TV, sadly.
jonas
The feeling’s mutual, asshole. I would really like to see Trump die of that disease where you get like sepsis of the taint and balls.
Expletive Deleted
@Jackie: Truth.
RevRick
Autocrats ultimately depend on three things: food, fear, and mystification, which, incidentally, are the three things the Devil offered Jesus in the wilderness.
Food includes not only literal bread, but also more broadly, prosperity and safety.
Fear is about domination and control.
Mystification is about entertainment, spectacle and confusion.
Trump promised that he would tame inflation, restore American manufacturing dominance, and protect us from “dangerous invading others.” He’s failing miserably at the first two, and we’re seeing the ugliness of how his ICE thugs are operating.
He has cowed many institutions into submission, but Disney’s bringing back Kimmel is exposing cracks in that power.
He has given free rein to nuttiness in science and health that are causing others to say, “Now wait just a minute.” His shtick of demanding retribution is running into the hard reality that grand juries won’t indict and juries won’t convict based on his whims.
So, yes, there are clear signs that his grip on power is not what it once was. This is not to say he can’t create more havoc and do far greater harm. But if ICE is having a hard time hiring 10,000 thugs, it’s a signal that we all still have the power to disrupt and thwart his plans.
Shakti
I don’t think you can claim that we need a major unfucking (ha ha haha ) and that you need to humor the “embarrassed” fragile fee fees and egos of Trump supporters who now “regret” their decisions.
The two notions are incompatible — unless your main issue is with how Trump has done certain things and not that he has done them.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Baud: So why are people so reluctant to call those voters out? Everyone and everything else gets blamed – candidates, messaging, weather conditions, the placement of the moon in the sky.
Captain C
@jonas:
Provided it’s slow and doesn’t respond to painkillers.
...now I try to be amused
@JoyceH:
“Republican members of Congress won’t curb Trump’s excesses. We will.“
Deputinize America
@Spanky:
Would only be better if Duc Phuc’s middle name starts with an “A”.
Torrey
@WaterGirl:
I was going to thank you for posting that image. The sidebar pictures have all been excellent, but this one happens to fit a particular appreciation I have for sunlit trees casting painted shadows and a path disappearing invitingly among them. Today was a good day for it.
Thanks to you for choosing it, and thanks to BretH for the original picture.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jackie:
Trump is underwater on every poll, so yes, Americans can see it, but it’s not every American who can. Many of his supporters, which include GOP Congressmembers, the coporate world, etc, still support him, are in a cult, and refuse to hold him accountable
JoyceH
@…now I try to be amused: but what needs to be emphasized is “this isn’t just the usual policy dispute. What Trump is doing is illegal. And this Congress is letting him break the law.”
catclub
@Hoodie:
and a whole lot of other folks.
2)cotton traders
3) cotton mills in the north
4) shovel and shoe factories in Massachusetts that sold to plantations in the south.
etc etc
Paul in KY
@Baud: A stain on our country 500 years from now.
Paul in KY
@jonas: Happened to Henry IV. Not a good way to go.
jonas
@Bupalos: When he’s going full fascist, he’s remarkably coherent. It’s what he truly believes and knows, and so can articulate it pretty clearly, even as most of his mind is already gone. Kind of like Irish Alzheimer’s — you forget everything but your grudges.
It’s when he has to talk about other stuff off the cuff that isn’t racist uncle ranting that he sounds like a dim-bulb idiot.
jonas
Tylenol’s off the table now, apparently. Wouldn’t want to give himself autism on top of everything else.
jonas
The other side of that is that there are a lot of people who think he’s doing a terrible job, and let the pollsters know, but will continue to vote Republican anyway because whaddyagonna do? Vote Democrat?
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
Fun fact: if any of you are subscribed to Dropout, Robert Reich is Sam Reich’s father.
Matt McIrvin
@Interesting Name Goes Here:
they have guns
cain
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
If there is no bill from congress bailing out the farmers then they got a big problem on their hands. Gerrymandering or not, those people are going to be pissed and that bitterness is going to spread.
By next year, rural hospitals and healthcare is going to be hurting everyone but the folks in the cities will be able to manage. The rural areas? Good luck. It will look like the federal govt has completely abandoned them and all his 14k gold bullshit is going to look tone deaf.
Citizen Alan
@Captain C: They shouldn’t give him painkillers anyway. It might make him go autistic. (/s)
JaySinWa
The best time to report on Trump dick stepping is a few hours from now. The second best time is now.
Darkrose
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: He’s been there the whole time!
NutmegAgain
@Matt McIrvin: For a guy who bleated & roared about the evils of communism all the time, he sure would have fit in with Stalin &co.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Part of this is that a lot of the people that farm and such are republicans, and likely voted for shitforbrains. Not all of them will wake up and smell the overflowing toilet in DC. But I’d bet that politics in the US will change over time. A lot of republicans seem to want strict rules so that everything works the way they think it should. But that’s not a democracy, that’s a supported dictatorship. Which never works out the way the supporters think it will. But then what-a ya gunna do? First, don’t give a dictator or dipshit the keys. Second, have a concept of a democracy and hire like minded people. Third, work for getting rational, realistic, humans elected. Fourth, make sure that we never again hire a moronic, self-centered, jackass, wanna be dictator. Now that may not be as easy as counting to five but still it is us that is in charge, the big US, all of US. That concept that shitforbrains does anything for anyone but his own self is pure, unadulterated bull and shit. And of course he fucks that up just like everything else he touches.
Ruckus
@Jackie:
My fear is that the world thinks we’re idiots for electing him. Sigh
That ship left the dock and is steaming around the world at the speed of something rather fast, with loud speakers and 2 tapes. One letting everyone know that it’s as bad as they think it is and the second is that there may be non-idiots in the US but every single person that voted for his shitty majesty is one, without question.
Karen Gail
We should all remember that many times Trump, MAGA and GOP have been saying the quiet things out loud and in public; sadly, this is how many people have believed deep down inside of themselves but never had the courage to say in public.
We have replaced the white hoods with red hats and now the masks are on supposed LOE; this is upside down of how the US has perceived itself for years. People ignore that country was founded on genocide and slavery and claim that the land was empty and slavery only profited a few plantation owners rather than admitting much of the pre-civil war economy nationwide was enriched by slavery.
Personally, I believe that the US needs more than Democrats in office; it needs a whole new beginning.
Nancy
@WaterGirl:
You’re so right. Thanks for waking me up to look. I was on autopilot, reading and now I’m not.