12 hours Ago By Judy Waytiuk
“We won because the American people got to see the REAL Donald Trump!” texted Alex Bruesewitz, the 27-year-old who worked with Barron Trump on the Trump podcast strategy, even as Trump delivered a gloating, typically confused, rambling victory speech that repeated threats of mass deportations and a sealed border. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * “We won because the American people got to see the REAL Donald Trump!” texted Alex Bruesewitz, the 27-year-old who worked with Barron Trump on the Trump podcast strategy, even as Trump delivered a gloating, typically confused, rambling victory speech that repeated threats of mass deportations and a sealed border. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Opinion “We won because the American people got to see the REAL Donald Trump!” texted Alex Bruesewitz, the 27-year-old who worked with Barron Trump on the Trump podcast strategy, even as Trump delivered a gloating, typically confused, rambling victory speech that repeated threats of mass deportations and a sealed border.
“He is a once in a lifetime leader and he completely embodies the spirit that makes this nation great,” young Bruesewitz gushed. The former is, sadly, true. The latter begins to emerge as an agonizing and tragic falsehood.
Trump does apparently embody the spirit that drove him to an appallingly strong re-election. The “great” nation, however, is dead. The media and the Democrats will continue to sift morosely through the ashes of deeply flawed polls and inept, untargeted, vague campaigning, desperately seeking nuggets of reason for why Kamala Harris was rejected wholesale by the young, the very ethnic groups Trump spent his entire campaign insulting and belittling, and the suburban women who seem perfectly happy to don -style red gowns for the forseeable future.
Don’t waste your energy, folks. Trump is a power-mad, psychopathic con man who pulled off the ultimate con. It’s that simple.
The media had best turn its attention away from compulsive autopsying of the corpse that is American democracy and airing desperate claims that there will still be a democracy, if only the legal system and interest groups can provide the guardrails that have been ripped completely off the shiny new Trump autocratic engine. Better the media quietly fold their collective journalistic tents and send their reporters to stenography courses, to teach them to quickly and accurately parrot back to the adoring public the future rants of Dear Leader. The and the have already exhibited their versions of anticipatory obedience.
That blind acquiescence will continue, and likely escalate in Orwellian form. Because here’s what’s going to happen. To borrow a tired Kamala Harris phrase, “hear me when I say” Trump plays by no rules whatsoever, the Constitution be damned.
He will erase any and all charges and convictions still extant against him. He will savage the justice department and any other segments of government that impede him. He will spend tens of billions dumping illegal immigrants on the far side of America’s southern border, family ties be damned.
He will issue full pardons to any and all convicted rebels from the Jan. 6 insurrection. Anyone who does not display the dazed grin of a pure Trump loyalist will be tossed out and replaced by sycophants who swear loyalty to Dear Leader.
The West Coast, which defied him in the voting, can expect little to no federal support in the event of natural catastrophes. California will burn to the ground before Trump gives that state money to fight wildfires. Minority groups can kiss their human rights goodbye, as can every being not Trump-branded.
People who have opposed him for the past eight years will be persecuted, probably prosecuted and tarred by the Trump version of treason. The ultra-wealthy who have fawned on Trump will see their wealth continue to grow, probably exponentially. Like Elon Musk, they may be given key government positions to enable them to assist in spreading Dear Leader’s organizational savagery.
From here on in, Trump will be working from the Vladimir Putin playbook to fully consolidate an autocracy. There will doubtless be many more secret phone calls as Putin steers his worshipful protegé along the path to locked-in supremacy, since Putin has perfected that fine art. So did Hitler.
So have China and North Korea. When Trump’s mental decline sidelines him, JD Vance will take hold of the reins. Exaggeration? Hysteria? Wild-eyed panic about America’s future? This is what Americans wanted.
This is what they voted for en masse. It is not impossible that this was the last free and fair election held in the United States of America. This is an extension of the rapid overgrowth of autocratic governments around the world.
.. and Canada, to a milder, less charismatic degree, is, at the moment, virtually guaranteed to be next.
Is this just crazy talk? A suggestion: clip/save this column. Dust it off in October 2028. See how reality compares to this projection.
And say hello to the New Dark Ages. Judy Waytiuk, a retired Winnipeg journalist, was born five years after Hitler killed himself in that bunker in Germany, and grew up during the Cold War era. Geopolitical literacy has always been a compulsion of hers, which she mulled over while hiding under her desk during school drills in which she and her classmates practised what to do when the nukes fly.
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