Yesterday marked a dark day in American history when A president of the United States addressed his senior military commanders to advocate for the violent political cleansing of large American cities controlled by those who disagree with him.
You know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re going to straighten them out one by one.
And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can’t let these people live. You know, we had no people enter in the last four months, zero. Even I can’t believe that.
He went on:
But I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission. It’s really a very important mission. [Referring to supporting immigration enforcement] And I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city, with an incompetent governor, stupid governor, stupid.
This was an unashamed attempt to create a permissive environment for the US military to enter major US cities to wage war on his political enemies in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. There is nothing ambiguous about the statements ‘We can’t let these people live’ and ‘We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military’.
Trump made his position very clear; he is preparing the way for what he now sees as his personal militia to crush dissent by any means necessary. It is beyond comprehension that Republican lawmakers are just sitting on their hands, staying silent as an arsonist sets fire to the very foundations for which so many brave Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice.
As Eugene V Debs, the best-known apostle of industrial unionism in the early years of the 20th century, said:
“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.”
This is just another step towards the normalisation of militarising the streets of America. Be in no doubt, the footage of this audience will be analysed in detail for telltale signs of disloyalty in their reactions to the speeches of Batman and Robin. They were not there just for fun; this was a test. The biggest problem for the military is that Trump claimed DEI made it less effective and woke, for which there is no evidence. He’s now allegedly replacing that so-called ‘woke’ structure, not with a meritorious structure, but with loyalty. If you claim that all personnel hold positions based on merit, then the central premise is false. Loyalty cannot be the sole trait by which to measure competence, which appears to be a false assertion. A loyal idiot is no use to anyone, as Pete Hegseth so ably demonstrates.
I fear that the problem is now that nobody knows what to do as Trump slowly descends into madness before our eyes.
It was suggested to me that this could all be a play by Vance and those pulling the strings to create enough concern to invoke the 25th Amendment; that’s how desperate these times have become that we are now chasing shadows and dreams around every corner. I think a former defence official nailed it, saying:
“It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.”
It’s so ironic that these men travelled in from around the world on the taxpayer's dime to listen to a paranoid drunk whose warrior ethos seems to be assaulting women. In a twist of irony, all this came on the same day their pay would be stopped as the dynamic duo shut down the government. I hope their return air tickets were paid for in advance. You couldn’t make it up, and yet they do every single day.
Every American not prepared to offer a loyalty pledge to tyrant Trump has now been officially designated an enemy of the state. Pause to think about that for a moment. How does it feel to be an enemy of the state in your own country?
As for the government shutdown, Trump was always going to shut it down because he believes he can lay responsibility at the feet of Democrats, who are running around like headless chickens, desperately looking for any sort of win. As I have repeated time and time again, Trump is REALLY GOOD at dominating the narrative, and I have to say that the ever-efficient MAGA messaging monster has done its job. The disgusting AI meme of Schumer and Jeffries was deliberately designed to get Democrats across social media to rage-post it everywhere. It’s called free message propagation, and they ate it up, providing additional reach for the intended narrative.
Republicans knew the Democratic base wanted to see strength from their leadership, so they knew Dems really had no off-ramp. That’s why you’ve seen Republicans simply step back and adopt a no-compromise position. What’s really interesting is that Democrats seem genuinely confused that there is little to no sign of a willingness to compromise from Trump. That’s because he does not have to rely on the House or the Senate to legislate; he can carry on with his daily proclamations from the Oval Office, which can include the firing of more federal workers and anything else he might want to do to further cause discomfort for Democrats, all as retribution for not getting his clean CR. Meanwhile, in the background, his messaging operation will pin all the pain people are suffering on Democrats. Remember, truth is not the objective; it’s all about the win.
What people have to understand is that Trump does not give a damn about those workers who will no longer get a paycheck and will be working for free. He simply does not care; for him, it’s just a further opportunity to dismantle more of the government. In his own words,
“A lot of good can come down from shutdowns”, suggesting it provides an opportunity to “get rid of a lot of things we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things”
Make no mistake, he will go on TV every day telling the American people that he is feeling the pain of all the poor people now out of work and suffering at the hands of the ‘Schumer Shutdown’, which appears to be the tagline. Meanwhile, the Democrats will flounder with counter-messaging while Republicans continue to dominate the media narrative. It seems to me that lessons are never learned.
One other thing that might have escaped your attention is that under the shutdown, the Bureau of Labour Statistics will not file a jobs report on Friday. As reported by Madison Hoff in Business Insider:
Based on the Department of Labor’s contingency plan, if the government shutdown is still happening on Friday, the monthly employment situation, commonly known as the jobs report, won’t be published as planned. If it’s still happening by mid-October, it could affect the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits because inflation data wouldn’t be released on schedule.
The Department of Labor said the Bureau of Labor Statistics would “suspend all operations,” planned publications wouldn’t be released, data collection would stop, and its website wouldn’t be updated during the funding lapse. If it continues for a while, planned data releases could be delayed, and could affect data quality down the line.
This administration is three steps ahead in this dangerous game, and Trump is not afraid to shoot the hostages. Democrats were in a no-win situation here; they had to appear to be resisting for the benefit of their base, but had little to no leverage to bargain with.
This is a red-letter day for Russell Vought; he believes that under the cover of executive orders, he can now bring the hatchet out and finish what DOGE started. I rarely have sympathy for Democrats at the moment, but on this one, they are in an impossible position, I’m afraid, and they have, I fear, little by way of leverage.
What I would say is, it’s the price they have paid for not being aggressive and obstructive as they should have been from the day Trump entered the White House. The day they lost the election, Democrats should have created a shadow cabinet to counter every message that Trump was sending in order not to concede the political narrative. This was a fatal mistake. They now appear weak and ineffective, as the polls clearly indicate; they have no bargaining tools. I worry that they may have to roll back on demands because Trump won’t just want to win the argument; he will want to humiliate Schumer and Jeffries. This is why their leadership is becoming untenable.
I want to know where the Democratic strategists have been in this whole sorry saga. I wouldn’t pay them in peanuts. I come back once again to the fact that this has gone too far for a political solution, and we are back to my public campaign of economic disengagement.
The road to nowhere WILL end in tears
As the saying goes, you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. For months, people asked, ‘What can we do?’ and my answer has been remarkably consistent. STOP SPENDING. It’s a conclusion many have come to, but sadly, few want to play the game in any meaningful way. The Disney boycott was enlightening for me. Democracy has been dying in p…
I have no idea how this will end, but I fear Trump may well be the winner because he now will likely not have to defend bad job numbers, and if the shutdown continues, the scrutiny of these numbers, GDP and inflation will start to surface as alternative facts, perpetuating his fantasy economy. What you have to remember here is that Vought and the Heritage Foundation have had four years to game this out. The first 100 days were merely a test run to see how far they could push the envelope and the Supreme Court. Now they are in full stride, and because the Democrats were asleep at the wheel for the first six months, they have no answer. All they can do is hope Trump sets himself on fire, and that’s not really a plan, I’m afraid.
I’m going to end the day, though, partly on a positive note. Don’t thank me yet. If and that’s a BIG IF, Democrats can limp to the 2026 midterms and capitalise on what will be a massive anti-Trump protest vote, then they might be able to slow him down. They certainly stand a good chance of taking back the House with a decent majority, which would at least stop the arterial bleed that is causing democracy to bleed out. If they then go on to win in 2028, they would inherit so much power handed to them by the precedents set by this administration that they could deliver truly transformative change.
The problem I fear, is that elections may be held in 2026, but they will in no way be free and fair. As we can see from his current actions, he has no intention of losing, because if he does, it will be game over for both him and the Republican Party, which would likely face political extinction in 2028. There is far too much at stake, and that is where the real danger is coming from.
As Trump seeks to solve a problem of his own making, having claimed he inherited a basket case economy, let’s remind ourselves what he actually inherited, shall we?
Friends, I can’t tell you how bad I feel about always being the one to deliver the news I do each day. I so want it to be different. The issue is that it’s becoming increasingly complex to find the truth, as the administration is becoming increasingly adept at hiding the critical data needed to assess the real level of economic distress. Trump is now openly stating that it may take up to two years before things improve. Not much use to someone who can’t put food on the table today. The level of broken promises is off the chart, but he is still controlling the narrative, and that is on the Democrats.
I’ll leave you with this thought by John W. Dean, from Conservatives Without Conscience
“Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.”
I am very concerned that open deadly warfare within the U.S.A. is about to rapidly ramp up. I was amazed that neither Russia nor China took advantage of the entire defense apparatus of this country was sitting in one too well known room, so very close to the coast!
The Dems are not great at messaging but the US has always gladly spewed any BS nonsense that Republicans say while questioning everything from the Democrats. They are a huge part of the problem.