Donald Trump Keeps Refining Evil Before The World

 Since his disastrous debate with Kamala Harris, Trump reacts by displaying exactly what dictatorship looks like, how to blame the victim, and how to keep inverting all reality, truth and virtue.

If you want to know what dictatorship looks like, just consider the “display after the display” Donald Trump put on before the entire world after his disastrous September 10 debate with Kamala Harris. After ranting on like a fool about one unhinged subject after another and getting systematically eviscerated by his opponent, he leaves the stage literally pouting, immediately crashes all the media tables to spin his own performance,[1] and whines that the moderators ganged up on him, that it was “three against one.” The buck never stops with this guy.
 
And he didn’t stop there of course. The next day he added that ABC should have their license pulled for such disgraceful bias!
 
That’s what dictatorship looks like, right there. No one dares questions the Dear Leader, talks back to him, fact-checks him, pops his bubble of self-delusion, makes him look bad, or hurts his thin-skinned feelings, or they will have their right to broadcast revoked. And it’s not just a matter of free speech or privately-owned, independent media. In the Founding Father’s tradition, the press has not just a right, but a Constitutional obligation, to act as “The Fourth Estate,” with a responsibility to hold the government (and the people) to account. But a lot of that has been destroyed with the advent of Rupert Murdoch and his determination to turn journalism into tabloidism.

Crazy Like A Fox

You could interpret all this as just the ravings of an entitled little brat from birth after the model of Kim Jong Un—the primal scream of a child-man who speaks at a fourth grade level, and you would be right. On the other hand, it is also the exact same pattern followed by every calculating tyrant in history, who claims they’re “protecting democracy,” or the people or whatever, from these murky, shadowy forces “conspiring against the republic,” while seizing and consolidating power for themselves.
 
In the last century, this would happen through open power grabs—a Communist revolution, a military junta, imposing a dictator over a population, etc. Once in power, they would nationalize any media and turn it into state-owned property, spewing forth whatever bonkers narrative about a twisted reality the regime cared to promote.
 
But that’s too obvious, especially now that we’ve seen the fascist playbook play out over and over again for almost a century now. Nowadays, you proclaim yourself a charismatic (i.e., arrogant) leader who alone can fix it, you endlessly defame and falsely-accuse current public officials of everything under the sun, and declare that powerless groups like the poor or immigrants are rats, vermin and other animals “poisoning the blood” of the dominant race.
 
With these things, you signal to self-righteous and entitled plutocrats how much you hate democracy too, and pick up massive financial and political support from a class that thinks that everyone but them are “voting largess” to themselves.
 
Once you’ve gaslit the entire country with your endless, unrelenting inversion of all reality (Dan 7:25), you gain power through election in order to end or subvert all future elections. This is how you “stab the public in the back” after having lied and cheated your way into their trust. Then you accuse a media network of something frivolous, pull its license, and allow one of your political or financial cronies to buy it up.
 
This is the new and improved fascism of the 21^st Century, so much more subtle than the ham-fisted, outright-confiscation approach of the 1930s. It is how Putin silenced his critics, how Orban in Hungary followed suit, and why both of them are the darlings now of a fully MAGA-fied Republican Party that hates and despises democracy, and openly threatens to put all their critics in camps and prison, even as they shamelessly claim their schemes are rescuing democracy from “secular humanists” who can’t wait to put them in camps.
 
Poll after poll show that, when it comes to the issues, Republican policies are significantly unpopular with the public,[2] and they know they will lose in a head-to-head policy race. So, “issue bundling,”[3] demagoguery, hysteria and endless distractions are their playbook, a script Trump, a master defamer/salesman, is so good at. He holds a commanding lead over Democrats in “how to handle the economy,” even though Republican economic policies in particular are hugely unpopular.

Instant Karma

“The Vice-President needs to work on being a little more articulate…English is not her first, second, third, or even fourth language.”
 

This kind of expertise does not come to Donald Trump because he’s such a brilliant strategist. It comes because he’s just so full of himself, so superior to other lowly mortals, so full of pride and bombast that it all comes naturally for him. From the heart actually, you could say (Mt 12:34; Lu 6:45). Bill Gothard once defined arrogance as “pride on steroids,” and if there’s one characteristic Donald Trump is known for, it’s arrogance. And presumption. And bombast. And audacity.
 
Ok, all of the above. Donald Trump is like a word cloud of evil. Just pick your favorite character flaw in an ever-morphing meditation.

 None of this should surprise us. One of the clues of the Antichrist is that he shall “magnify himself in his heart” (Dan 8:25; 11:37), which is a foundational “heart attitude” problem with this man. Listening to him is to watch a puffed-up windbag (I Cor 8:1; Jude 1:16) bloviate for hours on end.
 
It was thus deeply satisfying after weeks of Donald Trump calling Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor no less, “stupid,” of listening to his campaign make excuses for his world-class laziness and contempt for the public, claiming “he doesn’t need to do debate prep,” to watch this man get his head handed to him on a platter. It was a verbal beatdown, a dismantling, a master’s class in how to systematically chew up and spit out an opponent.
 
Harris did it by turning the debate itself into a demonstration of what she meant by world leaders, especially cynical autocrats like Putin and Un, easily playing him. Because he is so vain, he is susceptible to flattery to throw him off balance. Because he is corrupt and lacking integrity, it’s easy to buy him off, even if it means untold damage to the American people. Because he’s so ignorant and intellectually incurious, he’s easily disoriented, so he’ll just wing it and bloviate. And because he is so kompromized, he is easily blackmailed.[4]

And she did it by baiting him at the heart of his pride and joy, what Obama mocked him about at the DNC—his obsession with the crowd size of his rallies:
 
Harris: “…during the course of his rallies, he will talk about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, he will talk about how windmills cause cancer, and what you will also notice is people will start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. [True.] And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams and your desires…”

ABC’s John Muir: Thank you Vice-President Harris. President Trump, on that one point I would like to get your response…

Trump: Well, I would like to respond…

Muir: Let me just ask, Why did you try to kill that bill and successfully so, that would have put thousands of additional agents and officers on the border?

Trump: First let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies [they’re huge], there’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s bussing them in and paying them to be there, and then showing them in a different light. [Actually, hiring people to attend rallies, especially to provide camera backdrop, is a long-standing Republican practice.] So, she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics…

In the history of politics, no less. Of course, you do.

Kamala Harris Explains Biblical Leadership

In that debate Harris, dressed somewhat like an international court judge, demonstrated that Trump’s often-repeated claim that the whole world fears him, that his “tough guy” approach, his simplistic, prison gang answer to every problem, is what makes him an effective leader. Yet in an interview with Lawrence O’Donnell last December, Harris was asked what she thought about Donald Trump’s use of language like “vermin, and “poisoning the blood” of the nation in regards to her own immigrant parents. After noting that it was the exact terms Hitler used, she said:
 
“I think it’s just critically important that we remind each other, including our children, that the true measure of the strength of a leader is based not on who they beat down but who they lift up. And sadly, I think there is something perverse that has happened in our country over the last many years which is to suggest that strength looks like a bully, when in fact the real character of a leader is someone who has empathy, who has some level of concern and care for the suffering of other people and does something to alleviate that suffering.”
 
That “something perverse” was the arrival of the perverse, now multiple felon Donald Trump, coming down that golden escalator to swoon over the “thousands” gathered when reporters present said it was a few dozen, mostly his own suborned employees. Donald Trump wouldn’t know leadership if he fell over it, because he’s someone who doesn’t know the difference between a bully and a hero.
 
And as it is with all idolaters, all that follow such people are “like unto” their idols—dumb, numb and lifeless (Psa 135:15-18). This includes his many “Christian” fans who keep making excuses for him, who keep justifying this Faustian Pact made with him, who keep whistling past the cemetery in spite of everything we know about him now.

It Was All Over At That Point

Having piqued his pride, having so easily triggered him, Trump came unglued. From that point on it was one intemperate, exaggerated statement after another. Just a sampling of them includes:
 
-That “Our country is being lost. We’re a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War 3, just to go into another subject.” Sure, why not? No need to explain such wild generalizations. Just “go into” another subject.
 
-That he knew nothing about Project 2025, when it was specifically crafted by his Evangelical enablers to facilitate both his dictatorial propensities as well as their own control-freak ambitions.
 
-That regarding the 40 out of 44 of his former top administration officials who’ve said he is not fit to serve again, his answer is they were all incompetent and he fired them. Of course, they were. On the other hand, “Biden didn’t fire anybody” after the Afghanistan withdrawl. This, I suppose, is his answer to everything—kick the dogs under you, throw them under the bus, blame everyone but yourself, and always, always be “tough.”
 
-That “millions and millions” of criminals and mental patients have been sent here because of Joe Biden’s non-existent open border policy,  and that Venezuela now has no crime as a result.
 
-That crime and “migrant crime” in particular is “through the roof.” In truth, all rates of criminality of foreign-born people here legally or illegally are much lower than the rates of native-born Americans.
 
-That all the court cases against him are persecution by the Justice Department, not indictments handed down by grand juries.
 
-That his father never gave him $413 million dollars to blow.
 
-That George Floyd protestors “burned down” Minneapolis and Seattle.
 
-That when he admitted in an unguarded moment during a recent interview that he lost the last election, that he was only being sarcastic.
 
-That when claiming world leaders all fear and respect him, he cited Hungarian dictator Victor Orban as his witness. (Actually, the whole world does fear him—they think he’s crazy (Rev 13:4).
 
You can read the transcript or watch it for yourself here if you’re so inclined. And while the winner of a debate is often in the eye of the beholder, I don’t think commentators were wrong when they said they’ve rarely seen someone so “owned” by their opponent. This is because Harris deftly baited him all night while confidently weaving in the policy and other points she wanted to make. Like she’s said before, she’s a former prosecutor, and she knows Donald Trump’s type—brash sociopaths and predators who will lie through their teeth, even under oath.

Raining Cats and Dogs

What I took away from the experience is an obvious point I’ve been making ever since Donald Trump came down that escalator nine years ago—why would anyone even consider this man qualified to be dog catcher, let alone the “leader of the Free World?”
 
Politics is like any other profession. There are educational pre-requisites to go through if you want to understand the world’s different political systems and ours in particular. Then you have to start at the bottom and earn your way to the top.
 
What would you think Donald Trump would say if someone walked into his office and said, “You know, I really like this Trump Organization. In fact, I’d like your position. Could you please clear out your desk and vacate?” If he was lucky, Trump would kick him down to the mail room, if not out on to the street altogether.
 
But when it came to the Presidency, he brought that same attitude of entitlement and dictatorial style with him. As long as he presided over a private, non-public company, he could afford to do that. But now he’s in the public fishbowl, and that lack of “Presidential temperament” is showing all over the place.
 
Add to that his ego-centric, self-obsessed, narcissistic personality and you have exactly what Jesus Christ warned us about when it comes to exercising judgment—a total lack of proportionality (Mt 23:24). They can’t judge objectively because they can’t see beyond their own noses. And of the many examples of this Trump has been guilty of over the years, few have ever been as glaring as the fiasco over Haitians in Springfield eating cats and dogs.
 
This he thought worthy of bringing up in a Presidential debate, mind you! If it were a race for town council, maybe you could justify it. But here, the whole world was tuned in. And he’s the guy who’s always claiming the whole world’s laughing at us!
 
This matter was so absurd on so many levels it’s been almost surreal to watch it play out. It is such a textbook example of what James 3 has to say about the power of an unbridled tongue, that it is “a world of iniquity” that “setteth on fire the course of nature” [the world] and is itself “set on fire of hell” (3:6).

A Real Hillbilly Elegy

By 2014, Springfield, Ohio had lost so much population due to de-industrialization, a long-standing Republican economic objective,[5] that the city started a campaign to attract immigrants to come fill jobs and re-vitalize the economy. Eventually 15-20,000 Haitian refugees, here legally, moved there. They were not part of some government mass resettlement program, let alone one that Harris was personally responsible for as Trump tried to insinuate, but rather they moved there over time out of word of mouth and the like. Moreover, Springfield’s situation was not typical of “what is happening all over the country.”
 
This change alarmed some in the local white population, but no crime wave accompanied it. In fact, local employers liked their work ethic better than native born Americans, who often had drug problems, wouldn’t show up, would leave their posts, etc.
 
In early September, a woman posted a rumor on Facebook about something she heard third-hand (it turned out to be a fourth-hand) about a woman whose cat went missing who later saw it hanging from a Haitian neighbor’s tree, butchered. It included claims that they had been doing the same thing to dogs, geese and ducks from a local pond.
 
It turned out none of this was true. In fact, a news reporter looked into it recently and traced it back to one Miss Sassy, a cat who went hiding out in its basement for a few days. To this was added a picture posted of a native-born American carrying two dead geese, victims of a car accident in Columbus, but attributed online to Haitians in Springfield. In another incident, a 27-year old native-born American woman in Canton had been arrested for killing and eating a cat, and it too was attributed to Springfield.

As local neo-Nazi and white power groups such as “Blood Pride” spread these rumors around, city officials had to keep making statements that they had no reports of anyone killing pets in town, but the damage was done. On September 9, Trump’s Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance started amplifying these rumors despite the fact that a staff member had called up the city of Springfield and was told these were all false rumors. Vance posted:
 
“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”[6]
 
The next day, Trump nationalized these false stories at the debate, citing Vance as his source and that he “saw it on television.” As I write, there’s been a total of 36 bomb threats that have closed down virtually all public buildings in Springfield including schools at every level. They were threats phoned in from Donald Trump’s crazed supporters.
 
Thus, as I said above, there is an absurdity to this man’s spell-binding effect upon this country, in that half of it are prepared to vote for him again, despite his utter lack of judgment in bringing such a local matter to the global stage, that he and Vance would be so irresponsible as to stir up this plot in spite of dangers to local people and the Haitian community in particular, and that he has since vowed to mass-deport all those Haitians out of Springfield, crashing its economy, along with 20 million other people out of the country.
 
This is what fascist political theater looks like—massive stunts creating mass hysteria, division, chaos and strife, to draw attention away from how an increasingly-calloused plutocratic class wants to grow ever richer at everyone else’s expense. This is the evil of the last days that the Church people ought to be warning against.

More Evidence of the Existence of God

It is also the evil we are being tested over, with plenty of evidence of instant karma / Divine judgment involved. The Sunday after the debate, Trump as usual is hard at work golfing at one of his own courses. The Secret Service has urged him to use private courses that are more secure, but Trump insists on using his own, so that he has an excuse to bill the US government for security accommodations.
 
As if to illustrate the experts’ wisdom, Ryan Routh, Trump’s second would-be assassin, was found hiding in the bushes ready to shoot him, having snuck on to the easily-accessed Mar-a-Lago course 12 hours earlier! After years of calling the DOJ the “Department of Injustice,” of constantly insinuating the White House and “the Deep State” are out to get him, here Homeland Security passes on yet another opportunity to let someone assassinate him.
 
Even more suspicious, this globalist, New World Order Biden administration sets out to prosecute the would-be killer in US Court for the Southern District of Florida. And who is the lead US Attorney, but one Markenzy Lapointe, the only Haitian-American in the force, and a man with an American dream track record.  Yet, as Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out as only he can, in Donald Trump’s fever dream, inverted fantasy world, the shooter would have been one of these crazed dark-skinned immigrants, while the all-American prosecutor would be a white guy.
 
The Trump campaign showed its gratitude and class of course by guilt-mongering the Democrats for “creating an atmosphere of hysteria” by accusing Trump of being “a threat to democracy” (which he most definitely is).  

Yes, Donald Trump, who never tires of referring to the Vice-President as “Comrade Kamala,” a “Marxist-Communist-Fascist” who will “destroy the country” and is responsible for the “worst economy in history,” is once again the pot who’s calling the kettle black.
 
This diabolical behavior by the Democrats they did by reminding people of January 6, talking about what’s in Project 2025, and quoting Donald Trump’s own words. Such dirty pool! The media of course fell all over itself to prove it’s now certifiably post-Murdoch “fair and balanced” by dutifully “both-sides-ing” the issue.
 
After the Insurrection of January 6, I published an article entitled, “A Nation of Masochists” that had a tagline of “Had enough?” The idea of it wasn’t just how extreme the MAGA movement had gotten, so as to attack the nation’s capitol building in a way not seen since the War of 1812. It was the idea of, “Have you had enough, Church people, of the absurdity of the alliances you are making (I Cor 15:33)? That you are associated now with such violent people like crazed militias and fringe racist groups? That someone like the Shaman Guy (witchcraft) led Evangelicals in prayer in the Senate chamber on January 6? I’m still asking that question.

We Are All Being Tested

Everything about Donald John Trump screams demagogue, con man, fraudster, etc. But bottom line, he’s simply not what they used to call “Presidential timber.” Rather, he’s a joke, yet a joke millions of Americans are willing to go down with. As Professor Bandy X. Lee puts it in her latest book, Trump Contagion, Donald Trump’s mental illness is spreading to everyone around him, from JD Vance, to Laura Loomer, to all his enablers in what is left of the Republican Party now, including Church people who insist that no amount of right-wing is too extreme.
 
In a few weeks a new Batman spin off is coming out called Joker: Folie à Deux, about a criminally-insane man that nonetheless has a massive cult following on the streets of Gotham City. I can’t help but believe it’s someone’s attempt to show us what mass madness can look like when people refuse to come to their senses.

Notes:

[1] An unprecedented act and “a sure sign of weakness” as one observer put it. American tradition, something this faux “conservative” always despises and can’t wait to degrade, has always dictated that a candidate never lowers themselves to “spin” their own debate performance, but always leaves it to campaign surrogates or allies to do it for him. To do less is to denigrate one’s own “Presidential timber” image. But Trump has been doing this for years, calling in to radio and TV shows to dish on the latest gossip, drop his latest insults, ramble on incoherently,and basically reduce the “leader of the Free World’s office” to that of a publicity hound celebrity. He’s the political counterpart to what Murdoch did to journalism, reduce it to tabloid sensationalism, and is part and parcel of that same cynical philosophy.
[2] See also, https://econsoc.mpifg.de/40754/05_OpEdPrasad_Econsoc-NL_21-2_March2020.pdf
[3] https://leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-paradoxical-reason-republicans
[4] I remember the days when Monica Lewinsky successfully snapped her thong at Bill Clinton, how much mockery there was in right-wing radio over Democrats trying to cover for him, arguing that sexual blackmail was not important in national security. Of course, it’s important, always has been throughout history, but now that the Republicans are being led around by a long-time security risk like Trump, it suddenly doesn’t matter again.
[5] “‘The Democrats had long championed workers’ rights, and the Republicans had become a free-trade party; that kind of broke down around with Clinton,’ Cowie says.” https://time.com/5468175/nafta-history/
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield,_Ohio,_cat-eating_hoax