The evidence that former president, Donald Trump took in at least $7.8 million from foreign entities while in office is the kind of misdeeds that the GOP cannot find on President Biden. 

Donald J. Trump through his businesses reportedly received at least $7.8 million from more than 20 foreign governments during his presidency, according to new documents released by House Democrats on Thursday that show how much he received from overseas transactions while he was in the White House—most of it came from China.

In addition to the millions Trump received while in office, the former president, 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.”

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 both hoping that former President Donald Trump will be in the White House in 2024.

“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, perhaps more than ever before in U.S. history. 

And even though America has seen its share of elected leaders that have spoken out in the same manner as authoritarian rule 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 is still seen as the GOP iconic and unfortunately, shining example, for many of the Trump faithful. 

These ideologies have chillingly gained momentum. 

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 actually 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 making a slow but steady comeback as the nation nears 2024. 

One member of the Arizona Jewish community described the growth of antisemitism and speeches flowing with hate-filled rhetoric from many of the GOP Arizona midterm candidates as “a tidal wave of antisemitism.”

The 64-year-old business owner and contributor to Northeast Valley News said that he is deeply troubled by growing antisemitism—but worse, the apparent acceptance of it on the part of many GOP political candidates and even some elected officials.  It’s difficult to know how to respond to someone so legitimately frightened by the kind of antisemitic rhetoric and communication associated with some GOP candidates in Arizona.

The longtime member of Arizona’s Jewish community chose to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation and threats but told Northeast Valley News that he is concerned with the rampant and growing language of antisemitism.

“They have endorsed antisemitic candidates in other states, posed with and attended rallies of white nationalists, some of them are funded by conspiracy theorists or are supported by Nazi sympathizers —why are these candidates even allowed on the Az. ballot?”

The business owner recently changed his party affiliation back to what it was when he was “much younger”— after almost two decades as a registered Republican he said he wanted to “drop any affiliation with the GOP.”

While he has maintained a popular and successful small business for more than 21 years in Phoenix—he declined to go on the record with Northeast Valley News over fear of retaliation and threats.

Several other Valley respondents told Northeast Valley News that they “fear for American democracy if Donald Trump is elected.” 

Loraine Hull, a retired teacher and resident of Gilbert spoke of a growing “unease” at the popularity of living in an “isolationist country ruled by a dictator who may never leave office again.”