Democracy For Nepal: 15: Trump

Trump’s Phase 2 now begins It’s a last-ditch effort to discredit all Trump’s political opponents. It will fail. .............. Phase 1 has centered on silencing criticism. It has featured retribution toward people Trump deemed personal “enemies” — not just Democrats who had led the criticisms and prosecutions of him in his first term but also Republicans and his own first-term appointees who subsequently criticized him, such as John Bolton. .......... Phase 1 also entailed an assault on universities that utilize so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” harbor faculty members and students who speak out critically against Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Palestine, or offer classes critical of the United States’s history toward Black people and Native Americans. .......... Finally, Phase 1 has gone after media that criticized Trump by withdrawing funding for public radio and television and relying on the billionaire owners of The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, and X to suppress criticism of Trump on their media platforms............ Phase 2, it appears, will entail a more direct attack on all Trump’s political opponents, including the entire Democratic Party............. Trump has vowed to order troops into cities run by Democrats — Washington, D.C., Chicago, Memphis, and New Orleans. .......... he’s sending disaster relief to states run by Republicans and that he won in 2024, most recently announcing $32 million in aid for North Carolina, “which I WON BIG all six times, including Primaries,” suggesting that states run by Democrats will not receive such relief. ......... He has taken off the gloves with Democratic states and their representatives in Congress, virtually ordering the governors of Texas, Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio to redistrict in order to come up with more Republican seats. ............. Phase 2 must be understood against the backdrop of Trump’s rapidly declining popularity. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, from September 9, shows that only 32 percent of Americans support Trump’s deploying armed troops to large cities. ........... His economic policies are similarly unpopular. Only 36 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, 30 percent approve of his handling of cost of living, and 16 percent support Trump’s having the power to set interest rates or tell companies where to manufacture products. ......... I believe he will fail. Americans won’t fall for it. To the contrary: Trump’s Phase 2 will reveal the depths of his anti-democratic authoritarianism, from which even more Americans will recoil. ............ plan on demonstrating October 18 in the second and largest No Kings Day protests across the nation. Information can be found here.