Tag Archives: George Soros

Alternet: Trump just made a big mistake — and he has no one to blame but himself | Opinion

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The Epstein scandal is the best thing to happen to the cause of freedom and democracy in a very long time. I don’t remember the last occasion when liberals could hope to break the grip that Donald Trump has had, not only on the Republicans but on the Washington press corps. With this story, there’s finally daylight between him and his base. MAGA is facing a crisis of faith and with that, there’s hope.

Which is why I was genuinely stunned yesterday to see former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismiss the Epstein scandal as just another distraction. “Whether it’s Jeffrey Epstein or Alcatraz, it’s all off the subject of what they’re doing with this budget that’s harmful to meeting the kitchen-table needs of the American people,” she said.

MSNBC’s James Downie put it well: “The public is pissed about Epstein in no small part because he was a rich guy who got away with heinous crimes, because he deliberately cultivated rich friends,” he said. “That’s an inequality story. The only way it could be closer to ‘kitchen-table issues’ is if the files were tucked in a goddamn pocketbook!”

Aside from that, she’s missing the bigger picture. The Epstein scandal has grown so fast that Trump now risks forfeiting the one thing that made him invincible in the eyes of many – that made it possible for him to credibly claim that he could shoot someone and never lose a supporter. That one thing is him being the exception to the rule.

In this case, the except to the rule of Epstein.

Fact is, the president was intimately involved with the disgraced financier and child-sex trafficker. (You can read about their history in today’s Times.) But the MAGA faithful never believed it, or if they did, they didn’t believe Trump deserved the same level of scrutiny. Why?

Because the cult of MAGA is animated by a conspiracy theory, one that holds that Trump was sent by God to fulfill a prophecy, as a hero who saves America from a secret cabal of powerful (Jewish) pedophiles who traffic young girls for sex to untouchable elites. In MAGA lore, Epstein came to represent this shadowy, malevolent confederacy. The idea was that Trump would get reelected in 2024 and bring them all to justice.

So even if there was concern about old pictures and videos of Trump palling around with Epstein, Trump couldn’t be that bad, because QAnon – the conspiracy theory’s name – said that Trump was MAGA’s champion. Enemies like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros were guilty and deserving of death, but Trump? He was the exception to that rule, the exception that would make America great again.

As long as MAGA believed in him as their savior, there was little he could do to lose their trust. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. He could lead a paramilitary takeover of the US government. He could literally betray some supporters with the understanding that their sacrifice was for the greater good of saving little girls from monsters.

But then Trump made a mistake. He took MAGA’s faith for granted. He and US Attorney General Pam Bondi believed they would go wherever he told them to, even if the US Department of Justice concluded that there was no list of Epstein clients and there was no blackmail ring. They pulled back the curtain to reveal that Trump is not only a mere man, but a con man. And if MAGA believed him, well, that’s on them.

Up to that point, it really didn’t matter how much reporting there was about the actual relationship between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, because MAGA could explain away those facts as part of the QAnon prophecy. The (Jewish) media is part of the evil conspiracy against America, so naturally they are going to try to bring its savior down. Now that Trump has triggered a crisis of faith, things are different.

You can see the difference in Trump’s reaction to the latest by the Wall Street Journal. It reported Thursday that he gave Epstein a “bawdy” note on his 50th birthday in which he drew the outline of a naked woman. He signed his name at the bottom as if the signature were her public hair. He included imaginary dialogue in which Trump says, “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.” Trump concluded with saying: “Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

If you’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, which is what MAGA has been doing for the last decade, there’s nothing to see here. But if you’re unwilling – if, in fact, you feel betrayed by a leader who said he’d reveal the secrets of America’s enemies but instead chose to protect those secrets – this might look like what it seems to be: Two grown men joking about their fondness for sex with underage girls.

It used to be that Trump could gut it out knowing that the rightwing media apparatus was behind him all the way. They could altogether shout down legitimate mainstream reporting. But the rightwing media apparatus – which includes men like Steven Bannon, Tim Pool, Tucker Carlson and Benny Johnson – made itself as powerful as it is by advancing Trump, in one way or another, as the leader of the cult of MAGA. In their view, he was never supposed to put himself in league with the Jewish conspiracy, yet that’s what he did, and now that he’s done so, these rightwing media personalities can’t accept it.

Therefore, Trump is in a position he has never been in. He must earn back trust from the MAGA faithful, trust that he used to safely assume was his. That’s why he ordered the attorney general to seek the release of grand jury testimony in the Jeffrey Epstein case. But in doing so, he opened space for more questions by the press corps, more demands by the rightwing media personalities, and more opportunities for his most loyal supporters to second-guess the purity of his intentions.

That’s not a distraction. That’s the whole ball game. Fortunately, many Democrats are taking advantage of it. They’re calling for the release of more documents, raising awareness of Trump’s hypocrisy and in general, they’re sewing doubt by hyping the idea that he’s hiding something. Nothing else has cracked Teflon Trump, but this might.

Pelosi ought to know better.

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-maga-epstein-2673383670

MSNBC: ‘Project Esther’ exposes the reality of Trump’s agenda to fight antisemitism

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The extreme and paranoid policy paper underscores how the right has weaponized antisemitism to serve its political and theological projects.

President Donald Trump has enacted a raft of suppressive policies ostensibly designed to combat antisemitism, such as cutting off funding to universities that he claims haven’t done enough to curb antisemitism on campus. But if you take a look at the little-known playbook that appears to have inspired many of his most aggressive moves, it becomes evident how little it has to do with ending bigotry against Jews.

The playbook is called Project Esther, a policy paper created by the Heritage Foundation, arguably the most influential right-wing think tank of the Trump era. Heritage also produced Project 2025, the extreme policy manifesto that has shaped much of Trump’s agenda. Project Esther is a kind of miniature Project 2025, offering guidance on using authoritarian tools to crush criticism of Israel across the country. Trump has used many of the extreme policies it has recommended, including deporting immigrants who express pro-Palestinian sentiment and attacking academia using public defunding.

There was some reporting on Project Esther before Trump entered the White House, although it got relatively little attention. But new reporting from The New York Times details how it came together and lays out how much Trump appears to have hewed to it. The White House didn’t respond to the Times’ query about Project Esther’s influence on its goals, and Heritage couldn’t confirm its influence, but a co-author of Project Esther told the Times he believed it was “no coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening.”

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In a document that sounds plainly McCarthyist, Project Esther posits that the pro-Palestinian movement in America is “part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN)” and that this network is “supported by activists and funders dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy.”

It continues: [T]he HSN benefits from the support and training of America’s overseas enemies and seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community’s complacency.”

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-antisemitism-project-esther-heritage-palestinian-rcna207935

Daily Mail: RFK Jr. drops slur in 40-minute tirade that made staffers leave

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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a 40-minute off-the-cuff speech where he nonchalantly dropped the word ‘retarded’.

His unexpected remarks during his visit to the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, which were meant to be a welcome from the new FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, got several staffers to walk out of the room, two anonymous employees told Politico.

Perhaps his brainworms are flaring up again?

RFK Jr. drops slur in 40-minute tirade that made staffers leave
During his visit to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a 40-minute off-the-cuff speech where he said a slur.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rfk-jr-drops-slur-in-40-minute-tirade-that-made-staffers-leave/ar-AA1CNE8S

Mediaite: FDA Staffers Dish on Unhinged Meeting With RFK Jr.: ‘The Deep State is Real’

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A meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Food and Drug Administration was intended to be an introduction between Kennedy and the agency staffers he oversees, but his remarks were so shocking that several people walked out, according to a report by Politico on Friday.

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According to Politico, Kennedy delivered “largely off-the-cuff remarks” in a 40-minute meeting with FDA staffers Friday. Two employees who attended the meeting spoke anonymously to the reporters, who were provided with a transcript and audio of Kennedy’s comments.

“President Trump always talks about the Deep State, and the media, you know, disparages him and says that he’s paranoid,” Kennedy said. “But the Deep State is real. And it’s not, you know, just George Soros and Bill Gates and a bunch of nefarious individuals sitting together in a room and plotting the, you know, the destruction of humanity.”

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Kennedy also accused FDA staffers of being swayed by “agency capture” and acting as a “sock puppet” for the industries subject to their regulatory oversight. He referenced human mind control experiments like the CIA’s Project MKUltra and the Milgram experiment, which tested participants’ willingness to inflict what they were told were painful, possibly fatal, electric shocks to others if an authority figure ordered them to do so — as part of a discussion that Politico described as “an apparent effort to encourage FDA employees to stay true to their mission of making Americans healthier.”

These comments from the boss “alarmed and disheartened” FDA staffers and several of them walked out of the rooms where Kennedy’s speech was being aired, according to the sources who spoke to Politico.

FDA Staffers Dish on Unhinged Meeting With RFK Jr.: ‘The Deep State is Real’
A meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Food and Drug Administration was intended to be an introduction between Kennedy and the agency staffers he oversees, but his remarks were so shocking that several people walked out, according to a report by Politico on Friday.
FDA Staffers Dish on Unhinged Meeting With RFK Jr.: ‘The Deep State is Real’