Even though Donald Trump has the uncanny ability to dodge consequences for the numerous scandals, cons, and lawsuits he has faced, and now, at least four separate indictments for alleged state and federal crimes—he will likely not lose favor with primary Republicans and the MAGA faithful.
Still, in recent polling, and after Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in his role to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Trump, it seems, has been unable to avoid the consequences of public opinion—namely, that most Americans do not believe that the United States Department of Justice was out to get Trump as he continues to scream at every opportunity.
“Sixty-nine percent agreed that, yes, it would be a security risk if Trump had nuclear or military documents in his home after leaving office. Another poll, from Ipsos/ABC News, found that 61% of American adults — including 38 percent of Republicans — thought the charges were very or somewhat serious.”
But let’s not forget his words and actions early on and while he was still in office and even recently with regard to two of the world’s most notorious authoritarian rulers, China’s President, Xi-Jinping and Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
Before his defeat, Donald Trump reportedly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to “help him win the 2020 election” according to an account of life inside the Trump administration by former Trump national security adviser John Bolton.
“At the same meeting, Xi also defended China’s construction of camps housing as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang — and Trump signaled his approval. According to our interpreter,” Bolton writes, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”
If Trump’s approval of what amounts to crimes against humanity doesn’t signal what this top Republican contender would actually do if ever allowed back in the White House—then nothing will.
Democratic Representative, Jake Auchincloss, sits on the U.S. House Select Committee on China and recently said that both Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are hoping that former President Donald Trump will be in the White House in 2024.
One does not have to imagine why they hope for a Trump return.
“Let me be crystal clear here: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are salivating at the prospect of President Trump re-entering the White House in 2025,” Auchincloss said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday.
“January 6, 2021, was Xi Jinping’s best day in office because when the United States degrades its own democracy on the world stage for people all over to witness, it undermines the power of our example,” Auchincloss said.
Republicans have moved closer and closer to publicly and unapologetically cozying up to authoritarian governments and more than ever before in U.S. history.
Praised authoritarianism simply did not exist in this country, at least not in the rabid numbers it is seeing today and before Donald Trump entered the political scene.
But just download the recent and ridiculous Republican primary debate and listen to statements made by GOP presidential candidates in defense of Putin through their rants against sending aid to a free and sovereign nation—the Ukraine—a nation attacked by the brutal Russian dictator.
One can also download daily video news accounts of innocent civilians including children among those being killed in the Ukraine and their homes and cities reduced to rubble.
The Republican primary spewing rhetoric against helping the Ukraine is one of the shameful disgraces ever seen in our country and certainly on any candidate running for office in a democracy.
Trump ushered in all of this.
And even though we have seen our share of elected leaders that have repeated horrifying rhetoric in the same manner as tyrannical rulers in other countries (think Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his U.S. communism witch hunts)—no one stands out in American GOP political history quite like Sen. Robert A. Taft—dubbed, “Mr. Republican” and whose defense of the “pure” principled conservatism and still seen as the GOP iconic and unfortunately, shining example, for many of the Trump faithful.
These ideologies have chillingly gained momentum in the past few years and more and more of the once moderate conservatives have climbed on the hate train.
In 1940 Taft wrote, “There is a good deal more danger of the infiltration of totalitarian ideas from the New Deal circle in Washington than there will ever be from any activities of . . . the Nazi bund.”
This quote is Taft literally comparing one of our nation’s highest ideals for working Americans, the New Deal which set into motion programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations of protections enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939—as more dangerous than the infiltration of Nazi Americans in the U.S.
The Nazi Bund was a German-American Nazi organization established in 1936.
Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany.
Today we are seeing and hearing chants and public displays of a return to that kind of thinking and the antisemitic rhetoric is ripe among GOP MAGA candidates that were mostly defeated in the mid-terms but are trying to make a slow and steady comeback as the nation nears 2024.
In late January Trump said in a video aired on his social media platform “Truth Social” that if he is re-elected, “he will punish doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors and push schools to “promote positive education about the nuclear family” and “the roles of mothers and fathers”—this as part of a wide-ranging set of policies to use federal power to target transgender people.
Trump’s proposals have been met with strong opposition from LGBTQ+ rights and civil rights advocates pushing back against similar measures being introduced across the nation.
Gender affirming care, according to the Department of Health and Human Services “consists of an array of services that may include medical, surgical, mental health and non-medical services for transgender and non-binary people.”
These declarations and pledges are in line with Putin’s harsh rule against LGBTQ+ lifestyle choice, or Russian citizens speaking out against the war in the Ukraine and Putin has effectively closed down all remnants of a free and open press.
Trump’s punitive stance against trans-education and services is also a huge departure from his former claim of being a “friend” of the LGBTQ+ communities during his 2016 campaign for president.
There’s simply no truth in Trump, no trust and no honor.
As recent as March, during a Waco Texas rally, Trump praised both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping as “very smart people.”
“If you saw the other day with President Xi, smart, top of his game, President Putin, smart, very smart people, standing there talking about the world order for the next 100 years,” Trump proudly told the crowd.
The most frightening part…people at the Texas rally were vigorously applauding.
As far as Putin and Xi Jinping are concerned, the stage is set for a possible Trump return and both nations see a Trump win as a win for them.
A 2020 Brookings Institution forecast of a possible 2024 return of Trump to the White House reads, “a second Trump term would make a lasting impact on the world right when it is at a particularly vulnerable moment, U.S. alliances would likely crumble, the global economy would close, and democracy and human rights would be in rapid retreat.”
