Trump's Tyranny

I met with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez just days after he was kidnapped. I’ll tell you about that, and the current President Nicolas Maduro’s visit to my New York office. But first, you must know three things about Venezuela to understand why Donald Trump has ordered a covert operation to overthrow their government.

Look it up: According to OPEC’s own site, Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels in proven reserves are four times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

(By the way, Donald, when you announce a “covert” operation, it’s no longer covert. But never mind.)

For years, I was BBC Television’s correspondent covering Venezuela and US attempts to overthrow their elected government. Trump invented nothing. This is at least the fourth US-backed attempt at overthrow and assassination of a Venezuelan president.

The Orange King, Donald Trump, has given people literally thousands of reasons to hate him. A few current issues: $172 million so Kristi Noem can have two private jets, $200 million to build Trump a ballroom, $40 billion to bail out Argentina—for a MAGA billionaire. But no bailout for soybean farmers crushed by tariffs, No support for families drowning in grocery prices, No help for anyone who can’t find a job in this economy and no mercy for immigrants.

I will explain my hatred of Trump by considering 3 categories: Character, Domestic policy, Foreign policy.

Character: The entire world knows that Trump is a narcissist, a racist, a misogynist, and a pedophile. We also know that he lacks empathy, and is cruel beyond imagination. He is a stupid man, not well educated, not well read, not a student of history. He may be the only person in America who has never visited a National Park, with the exception of photo ops at Arlington Cemetery. He is simply a clueless, bumbling idiot.

The Washington Post quoted Trump on Tuesday, Oct. 21, that “the federal
government owes him ‘a lot of money’ for prior Justice Department investigations
into his actions and insisted he would have the ultimate say on any payout because
any decision will ‘have to go across my desk’”. The implication
is that Trump thinks he can use the power of his office and his control over the
Justice Department to ensure that he will be given this money. And it is a
substantial amount of money.
The Post story further explains the issue in question.
“Trump’s comments to reporters at the White House came in response to questions
about a New York Times story that said he had filed administrative claims before
being reelected seeking roughly $230 million in damages related to the FBI's 2022
search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents….”
The flaw in Trump’s views of the case is that he did break federal law when, after
the end of his first presidency, he took boxes of public documents to his Florida

The human condition includes a vast array of unavoidable misfortunes. But what about the preventable ones? Shouldn’t the United States provide for the basic needs of its people?

Such questions get distinctly short shrift in the dominant political narratives. When someone can’t make ends meet and suffers dire consequences, the mainstream default is to see a failing individual rather than a failing system. Even when elected leaders decry inequity, they typically do more to mystify than clarify what has caused it.

While “income inequality” is now a familiar phrase, media coverage and political rhetoric routinely disconnect victims from their victimizers. Human-interest stories and speechifying might lament or deplore common predicaments, but their storylines rarely connect the destructive effects of economic insecurity with how corporate power plunders social resources and fleeces the working class. Yet the results are extremely far-reaching.

• for RawStory
• October 9, 2025

Pay attention to this professional liar:

“I’m the only president in modern history who left office with a smaller national debt than when I came into office.”

That’s quite a whopper. Fact check: “During Trump’s presidency, the national debt actually increased by $7.8 trillion, nearly 40 percent and more than any president in history.”

The fact check is courtesy of Thom Hartmann. Indeed, Hartmann’s new book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party and a World on the Brink, is one giant fact check on the Whopper-in-Chief, and much more — a disturbing dive into the roiling miasma of self-aggrandizing, self-deluding, psychologically shattered, wailing man-child who is Commander-in-Chief.

Don’t read Hartmann’s book twice, as I have. It’s not just the nightmares it induces; it’s the fact that you’ll wake up to the nightmare that is our new reality.

On Tuesday, our newly-dubbed “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth told our military’s top brass that they must restore the “male warrior spirit” to the armed forces.

“Male” spirit, Pete? Excuse me, Pete. My mother, Gladys Palast, was honored by President Bill Clinton as the very first woman who volunteered for the US Coast Guard after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Let me tell you, Little Petie, Mom was a WARRIOR.

How DARE you insult my mother’s courage and initiative and then introduce General Bone Spurs Trump as the guy “who has your back.” Hmmm. Trump got out of the war in Vietnam by claiming he had a bone spur in one foot — but he can’t remember which one.

And let’s not forget, on the day after his second inauguration, Trump fired Adm. Linda Fagan as Commandant of the Coast Guard for no visible reason other than she has a vagina. Trump is lucky that Mom ain’t around anymore, because I know she’d go back to the White House to kick his ass and show him what a woman warrior can do.

Words fail me – but they’re all I have, or so it seems as I sit here at a table in my new apartment. They ain’t enough! Not as I read the news and feel . . . something . . . rise, politically and socially, and presume to be the American future.

Is this the rise of fascism? I use this word with uncertainty. I have never lived within its brutal purview and do not live within it now, as I write about the increasingly bizarre – and terrifying – presidency of Donald Trump. I feel no constraint as I write, no need to be cautious with my words. I feel no eyes on me, ever-assessing the loyalty of  the opinions I express. I feel no fear, only outrage, as the snarky and bumbling “supreme leader” wannabe tells us who our enemies are. Can’t someone shut this fool up?

But then I read the news and, often enough, learn there’s a further Trump transgression today, a further grab for authoritarian dominance. And I have to look deeply at this freedom I think I have and acknowledge that it’s vulnerable. If others – other Americans, other human beings – can lose it, so can I. I can become the enemy.

Brad Bannon nails it in his Sept. 10 report: “Jobs are down, prices are up and Trump is in trouble . Brad Bannon is a national Democratic strategist and CEO of Bannon Communications Research which polls for Democrats, labor unions and progressive issue groups. He hosts the popular progressive podcast on power, politics and policy, Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon.    

Bannon refers to a new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that “paint an astonishingly bleak picture of the Trump economy.” He continues. “The nation created few jobs in August, and BLS added to the grim portrait by taking off the board almost a million jobs that had supposedly been created over the last year.” 

And the economy is still affected by inflation. On this, Bannon points out that 

When the escalator at the United Nations came to a wrenching and sudden stop this past Tuesday as soon as Trump stepped on it, I would like to believe that future historians will record that as the pivotal, split-second moment which marked the beginning of the end of the Trump Reign of Terror.

A Terror that began — and ended — on an escalator.

June 16, 2015, at Trump Tower — to September 23, 2025, at the United Nations.

When the escalator at the UN came to that sudden and unexpected halt, was that the sign we had been waiting for? The escalator! Is it possible that the escalator’s complete loss of power, its instant paralyzation, its seemingly abrupt and total collapse meant that this too was the end of the Reign of Donald J. Trump?

Go with me on this. I want us to imagine what life might look like in a Post-Escalator, Post-Trump World.

But you’re asking, how can I say we are in “Post-Trump” when right now you can turn on any TV and see him pouring the final load of concrete over the Rose Garden?

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;

And he will never advance beyond the emotional control of a Small Child;

And the government will rest on His shoulders;

For the lawmakers shall become as Court Jesters;

And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Eternal Father, Prince of Peace!

For He shall multiply war spending many fold, create a personal army, blow up random victims in the far reaches of the Earth, normalize genocide, return unto the War Department its proper name, and establish the Holy Deployment of the Red Horseman of nuclear tactical strike;

And He shall say unto His disciples:

“If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples. Then you will know habitual lying and habitual lying will set you free.”

But they shall not hear, as all Life will have vanished from the land.