WTF 11/20/2024

Trump’s presidency, America’s future and me…

The people I am closest to as well as the folks whose views I am closest to and aligned with sociologically and politically… folks who identify as progressives or liberals or as some small minded peeps like to say, snowflakes… are most probably like myself and in various periods and stages of sadness and melancholy over the recently concluded elections and the fact that Trump and the Republicans are now… or will be after he is inaugurated… in control of the federal government and a fair number of the states.

With the Republicans in charge a part of me is deeply worried that that the most vulnerable of we the people… those of us who rely upon the federal and state governments for aid and assistance to get through from one day to the next… the elderly, the poor and impoverished, LGBTQ folks, folks who need healthcare, and the children of all of the preceding.

Another part of me is hoping beyond hope that the draconian future I fear is inevitable with incoming Trumpist regime will not be nearly as terrible as my mind is painting it for the next four years and possibly way beyond depending on the damage done.

But considering what I see in my daily newspaper and online regarding his cabinet and possible various political appointments… he has his finger poised to get busy naming more than 50 independent federal commissions, such as the Federal Reserve Board or the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as federal judges, ambassadors, and other federal offices… that hope beyond hope I have is just that… hopeless.

This week alone news broke how Trump is selecting people for his administration who worked on Project 2025. Despite the fact that in his campaign to win the presidency he told we the people that he had “no idea” what the “project” was about or of who was involved… which is essentially a 100-member advisory board of people from extreme far-right groups that includes Christian Nationalists and various other right wing, and very arguably bigoted, organizations, as well as tens of millions of dollars in funding from dark money donors which was all spearheaded and coordinated by the far right Heritage Foundation.

In fact back in September Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street CEO and one of top people in the Trump transition team, told CNBC said that Trump and the Republican campaign had “Absolutely zero. No connection. Zero,” with Project 2025 or anyone connected to Project 2025 and that he “… take a list from them. I won’t take a topic from them. I won’t touch them. They made themselves nuclear.” Lutnick, , sought to put an exclamation point on Trump’s statements after he was named transition co-chair. Lutnick told the New York Post in October that Project 2025 had made the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has been around for decades, “radioactive.”

And Trump, in a July 5 post on Truth Social wrote, “I have no idea who is behind (Project 2025). I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

In case anyone is hazy about Project 2025 and what it is and what it could mean for the country and need a primer…

Project 2025 maps out a clear and definitive plan of “reforms” that would pretty much bring the concept of a multiracial democracy to its knees. While the tome… it’s 920-pages… claims at its onset to its seeks to “rescue the country” from “elite rule and woke cultural warriors,” in actuality it is a blueprint in how to replace our democratic-republic government with Christian-based authoritarianism. Among Project 2025’s primary goals are a drastic rollback of sexual health and reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, racial equity, public education, climate, and environmental protections, all the while preferring an exclusionary interpretation of Christianity and stripping rights from multiple communities.

Among policies called for in the first 180 days of a conservative presidency:

• Eliminating LGBQI+ and transgender rights.
• Eradicating federal funding for DEI programs. Participation in any critical race theory or DEI initiative will be grounds for termination of government employees.
• Ending reproductive freedom and replacing the Department of Health and Human Services with the “Department of Life.”
• Shuttering of the Office of Domestic Climate Policy, the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the Office of Environmental Justice, and External Civil Rights, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just to name a few of those most endangered.
• Slashing of the Department of Justice and dismantling the FBI and replacing their traditional independence from political pressure with a sworn allegiance to the current administration.
• Purging the government of apolitical civil servants by firing as many as 50,000 and hiring replacements from a database of personnel vetted for conservative values and loyalty, a “Conservative Linked In.” Successful candidates will undergo training at a “Presidential Training Academy” and be furnished “with the insight, background knowledge, and expertise in governance to immediately begin rolling back destructive policy and advancing conservative ideas in the federal government.”
• Eliminating the checks and balances built into three branches of government in favor of expanded control by the executive branch.
• Replacing the Department of Homeland Security with a 100,000-worker-strong immigration department, militarization of the border and an end to refugee programs.
• Fundamentally altering American diplomacy to push anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ agendas, adopt a “human rights” regime distinct from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and abandon international organizations and traditional diplomatic and security alliances.

And yet despite Lutnick, Trump’s and many others among Trump’s most favored peeps list declaring that neither Trump nor anyone in his campaign had anything to do with Project 2025, here we are a little over two weeks hence from November 5th and Trump is nominating or appointing people who were deeply involved with the writing of Project 2025 and Trump is showing his true self (as much of his true self as he can reveal of the dark enigma that he is) and picking a bunch of Project 2025 lackeys to help him implement his dangerous and extreme blueprint to take America back to Jim Crow and a time when women were kept quiet in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.

First and foremost is that Stephen Miller, a former top Trump aide and the head of America First Legal (one of the groups that advised Project 2025) is poised to return to the White House as an assistant to the president, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.

Miller will now be well placed to help populate Trump’s nomination and appointments with a host of Project 2025 bodies.

The most striking example of Trump going to the Project 2025 well of architects is his picking of Russ Vought to lead the White House budget office.

(The White House budget office is simply the main force in creating the president’s annual budget proposals to Congress and helps approve spending decisions across the federal agencies. It also oversees the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which reviews and implements draft regulations across the executive branch.)

Vought, who is arguably the chief architect of Project 2025 and has claimed that he was deeply involved in drafting Project 2025’s playbook for the first 180 days of a new Trump administration, has said his group, the Center for Renewing America, was, during the campaign leading to the election, secretly drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations, and memos that would lay the groundwork for rapid action on Trump’s plans if he were to be elected.

In addition, Vought has said, if he is confirmed for the budget office role he would most likely work very closely with the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by billionaire Elon Musk and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, on cutting government spending and regulations.

While I have no knowledge of Musk being involved in Project 2025 I have no doubt that somewhere along the line his fingers were somehow in that pie.

The book on Musk is long, deep and darkly tinted with his penny pinching (at least when it comes to the incomes and welfare of his employees) conservative “values”, so I won’t waste space delineating why he is unworthy to ever be a pick to be anywhere near running anything in the U.S. government.

Among some of the many issues with Ramaswamy are his reliance upon conspiracies being behind all of the U.S.’s current problems; saying that the U.S. education system is a “modern ghetto system” and that the government pays women in inner cities to be single. And oh yeah… he once tried to tell former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who is Black, what it’s like to live as a Black person in America and said Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Black Democrat representing Massachusetts, to be like the “modern grand wizards” of the Ku Klux Klan.

And very recently Musk and Ramaswamy wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed that said their new department would “work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget” and then laid out their plans to slash federal regulations, cut government spending and significantly reduce the number of people in the federal workforce. Specifically Musk and Ramaswamy have proposed eliminating programs that Congress funds including those involving veterans’ health care, initiatives at the State and Justice departments and NASA, and multiple major antipoverty programs.

Trump has named at least four other nominees who are credited by name in Project 2025… Tom Homan, for “border czar;” John Ratcliffe as head of the CIA; Brendan Carr to head up the Federal Communications Commission and Pete Hoekstra as ambassador to Canada.

Homan, Hoekstra and Ratcliffe were listed as contributors to Project 2025, while Carr wrote an entire chapter in the 900-plus page manifesto that Trump now wants him to run.

Next… Linda McMahon is Trump’s choice for secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.

McMahon, back in 2019 filled out aa questionnaire for a Connecticut Board of Education post, and “incorrectly” claimed she had a bachelor’s degree in education. She has a degree from East Carolina University in French.

Take it for what its worth but that’s resume padding being done at its best but it also serves as a warning shot to all of the country about the character of the person being tasked to fill one of the U.S.’s most important roles in government… making sure that our children are provided with meaningful educations to go on and become the United States of America’s future.

On November 19th, Trump announced his choice to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services was Dr. Mehmet Oz, aka Dr. Oz, a former TV personality.

Oz is actually a cardiothoracic surgeon however throughout his television career, Oz broached controversial topics in segments were said to not be backed by scientific evidence. Among the most controversial was his asking the on-air question: “Is there a gay cure?” that was robustly criticized, and damned in general, by various LGBTQ+ groups. He also has a negative history with the Federal Trade Commission who sued him over his bogus claim that a green coffee bean “miracle pill” was a weight loss panacea.

And back in 2014, a study in the British Medical Journal found that more than half the recommendations made on “The Dr. Oz Show” were either not backed up by, or contradicted, scientific research.

And… maybe more crucial than anything else he might do to affect the status of Medicare for we the people of America is that he says he is in favor of expanding Medicare Advantage.

Simply put if Medicare Advantage is expanded, Oz will be paving the road to take Medicare and how it is administered completely under the auspices of private health insurance companies who will be more intent on earning profits rather than caring for people’s health or curing them from sickness.

Trump has also named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary. RFK Jr. once acknowledged of himself… “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”
Included among those skeletons are a sexual assault accusation that supposedly occurred back in 1990, a history of debunked conspiracy claims, especially ones regarding vaccines and as recently as this past Tuesday said that the covid pandemic might have been planned. Add in that among his various proposals for his department include the pausing of drug development and infectious-disease research at the National Institutes of Health for at least eight years.

Then there is Pete Hegseth for defense secretary… whose biggest problems may be that he is Faux News host and that he lacks relevant experience. Yeah he’s a decorated veteran who has led veterans advocacy groups… but overseeing an advocacy group and then overseeing millions of people at the Pentagon are two entirely different universes altogether that has major national security implications.

Among his “sins” were his having paid a woman who accused him of a 2017 sexual assault and having her sign a nondisclosure agreement… Hegseth was never charged with a crime but still…

Among his other troubles were various problems in his marriages that included issues of infidelity in the first and that he fathered a child from an extramarital affair during the second.

Personally I could care less about anyone’s marriage problems or any issues of infidelity or whatever… my policy essentially is “It ain’t nobody’s business but their own.”

But…

It also evident that his past personal behaviors and arguably irresponsible past also suggest that Hegseth might not be capable of making the high quality decisions that are a germane and necessary part of his job responsibilities.

Tulsi Gabbard is Trumps pick to be the director of national intelligence…

This is a person who has defended Russian President Vladimir Putin and his rationale for invading Ukraine as well as making comments that echoed Kremlin policies. She has also been cozy with Syrian present Bashar al-Assad, who a strong ally of both Russia and Iran. At one point Gabbard said that Assad was “not the enemy of the United States, because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.”

Does this country need someone who is more or less in bed with some of America’s biggest foes in charge of the intelligence community of the U.S.?

And finally…

Trump’s pick to be this country’s attorney general… Max Gaetz.

In short his biggest and main problems are his alleged issues of sexual misconduct and that he paid more than $10,000 to two women who are said to have testified to that fact before the House Ethics Committee who are vetting his candidacy to be U.S. AG. Additionally a lawyer for one of the women says she also witnessed him having sex with a then-17-year-old friend at a private party.

At this point whatever was said behind closed doors is still behind those door due to the fact that House Speaker Mike Johnson has said the ethics report shouldn’t be released.

Trump choosing a guy to head up Justice that has had similar issues of allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse?

Go figure and who’d a thunk it!

So…

I’m still kinda hoping against hope that I’m wrong. Wrong about Trump and his presidency and what it will mean for the United States of America’s immediate future…

But…

With those picks for his cabinet and other various political appointments?

And especially since I’m 75-years-old and rely upon Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and my towns social services to survive…

I’m still also afraid… very, very, very afraid.

Another thousand words…