Today I like to post two articles from Robert Reich. As usual I filled up the articles with some pictures I found in the net. Normally I do not like to discuss religion or politics throughout my blog. In case of Trump I can’t help myself to inform people about this menace, if I can. Who is Robert Reich ?

Robert B. Reich, a co-founder of The American Prospect, is a Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

The threat to American democracy has
never been more pronounced.

The shadow of President Donald Trump is cast on the wall as he speaks in the East Room of the White House.
AP photo by Susan Walsh.

A president who claims he has an absolute right to declare a national emergency and spend government funds that Congress has explicitly refused to appropriate for the ends he seeks, is assuming the role of a dictator.

A president who shuts down government in order to get his way on a controversial issue, such as building a wall along the border with Mexico, and offers to reopen it as a concession when and if his opponents give in, is treating the government of the United States as a bargaining chip. This, too, is the behavior of a dictator.

As is spouting lies over what Trump terms an “undeniable crisis” at the southern U.S. border, which is in fact no crisis at all.

Donald Trump using government as his own personal piggy bank. Whether it’s costing taxpayers millions to golf or having his own State Department promote Mar-a-Lago for financial gain, this is how this corrupt administration functions.

Donald Trump is violating the Constitution. He is negating our system of government based on the rule of law. He is violating a president’s core responsibility to protect American democracy.

But the threat to American democracy is not just from Trump’s dictatorial moves. And the real threat to American sovereignty is not coming from Trump’s fantasized hordes seeking to cross the Mexican border.

MCALLEN, TX – JUNE 12: A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The asylum seekers had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents before being sent to a processing center for possible separation. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is executing the Trump administration’s „zero tolerance“ policy towards undocumented immigrants. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said that domestic and gang violence in immigrants‘ country of origin would no longer qualify them for political asylum status. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

It is coming from a foreign government intent on undermining our democracy by propagating lies, turning Americans against each other, and electing a puppet president.

We do not know yet whether Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election. What we do know so far is that Trump’s aides and campaign manager worked with Putin’s emissaries during the 2016 election, and that Putin sought to swing the election in favor of Trump.

We also know that since he was elected, Trump has done little or nothing to stop Putin from continuing to try to undermine our democracy. To the contrary, Trump has obstructed inquiries into Russian meddling, and gone out of his way to keep his communications with Putin secret, even from his own White House.

He has also done exactly what Putin has wanted him to do—threaten to pull out of NATO, pull out of Syria, and accept Russia’s presence in Ukraine.

Perhaps Trump’s current attack on American democracy through his assertion of a fake national emergency is intended as to distract from this larger attack on America. No matter. Both threaten the essence of the nation.

There is only one answer: Donald Trump must be removed from office. Impeachment should start immediately.

Heil Trump !!!

Trump’s immigration moves are
straight from the dictator’s playbook.

Demonising the ‘other’, confecting a crisis to entrench power and using cruelty to spread fear are all part of an assault on democracy

The first rule in the dictator’s playbook is to fuel public anger against the “other” – people said to be dangerous outsiders.

From the start of his campaign for president, Donald Trump has sought to make immigrants from Mexico and Latin America the nation’s nemesis.

The second rule in the playbook is to conjure up a so-called “crisis” of containing the outsiders.

Undocumented immigration into the United States dropped in 2017, but began to rise last year. March brought more than 92,000 apprehensions at the southwest border, the highest number reported in one month in a decade, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

But this is no crisis. It’s not a threat to national security. (Last November, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to ban Central Americans from seeking asylum on national security grounds.)

America is hardly “full”, as Trump has said. In fact, our aging population needs young immigrants to take up the slack.

Whatever problem this surge of migrants poses isn’t nearly the magnitude of threats like climate change, nuclear proliferation, or the undermining of democratic institutions – all of which, not incidentally, Trump has worsened.

The immediate problem is humanitarian. The surge is largely asylum-seeking families from Central America who have a right to have their claims heard by an immigration judge.

But because America doesn’t have enough immigration judges to make such decisions, families are being detained at the border. Even the Republican senator Ted Cruz proposes adding hundreds more such judges to clear the backlog.

Yet Trump has no intention of remedying the humanitarian problem. He wants a crisis to stir up his base and show how tough he is.

Which brings us to the third rule in the dictator’s playbook: use the trumped-up crisis to enlarge and entrench power.

When he’s not accusing Democrats of being socialists, Trump is rallying his followers around the supposed mob at the gates. At a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he claimed migrants are coached by lawyers to say “I’m very afraid for my life” although they look as strong as “the heavyweight champion of the world”.

This flies in the face of the recent warning by the former Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen that migrants – including children, two of whom have died in federal custody – are arriving “sicker than ever before”.

Which raises the fourth rule: use cruelty to spread fear.

Even though Nielsen committed every cruel act Trump wanted her to – putting migrant kids in cages, separating them from their parents, locking up both for long periods of time – he fired her anyway, apparently because she refused to employ even crueler illegal measures such as detaining children for more than the 20 days allowed by law.

Reportedly, Trump is considering forcing migrant families to choose between letting their children go, or spending months or perhaps years with them in jail.

All of which sets up the fifth rule: take power, unilaterally.

Trump’s “national emergency” to fund his border wall isn’t just an unconstitutional power grab. It’s a grab that shatters previous norms about how far a president can go in testing the limits of his power.

Trump has no intention of remedying the humanitarian problem. He wants a crisis to stir up his base and show how tough he is

So too with shuttering parts of federal government for 35 days to get funding, threatening to close the border with Mexico, and stopping foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador (a move likely to fuel even more migration by further destabilizing those nations).
Trump is now exploring ways to deny migrants a chance to seek asylum in the first place – a clear violation of American and international law. He has also toyed with shipping detained immigrants to sanctuary cities in order to retaliate and pressure them, according to the Washington Post.

For a president to behave as if he is above the law, or can unilaterally make it, violates the cardinal precept of democracy.

Which may be the real point of all of this for Trump. He seeks total control.

There are now 18 vacancies at the top of the Department of Homeland Security – including the secretary, deputy secretary, chief financial officer, two undersecretaries, the assistant secretary for policy, the director of the Secret Service, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (who is now acting secretary).

Reportedly, Trump also intends to fire the longtime head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services. This past week Trump rescinded the nomination of Ron Vitiello to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying, “We’re going in a tougher direction.”

How to explain this purge? Merely a change in policy?

Trump is also keeping vacant the top positions at every other department with any responsibility for border security, including defense and interior.

It’s about total control. “I like acting secretaries and directors,” Trump said in January. “It gives me more flexibility.”

It also gives him more power to do as he pleases.

Unconfirmed appointees will be loyal to him personally. Their authority is not dependent on Congress.

The final rule:  Destroy Democracy.

In 2006, British author Peter York wrote a book, Dictator Chic, in which he identified all the design characteristics that autocrats’ homes have in common: gaudy gold-detailing, faux 18th-century French furniture, buildings of ludicrous scale and more. As York writes, President Donald Trump’s Manhattan penthouse would fit right in. Here’s a closer look at the aesthetic style of dictator’s past—the glass and the marble, the mirrors and the self-portraits—and how Trump’s own style compares.

The main sitting room at Trump’s Manhattan apartment follows almost every rule of “dictator style”: marble pillars set against marble walls, low-hanging glass chandeliers and over-sized period furniture—so far apart, it would be hard to have a conversation.

Excessive gold detailing is another feature of dictator style. Here, a gilded glass dining table at Trump’s apartment is set for tea—with glasses and other serving items that are also gilded. And, if you like, look up what color his curtains in the White House have ! Or look at all the GOLDEN memorabilia he sells in his golf clubs.  A golden lunatic !

Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah.

Picture: Washingtonpress.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the former GOP presidential nominee, condemned President Donald Trump after reading the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation report on Friday, 19th of April 2019.
„I am sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President.
I am also appalled that, among other things, fellow citizens working in a campaign for president welcomed help from Russia, including information that had been illegally obtained; that none of them acted to inform American law enforcement”.

Now, my dear friends, make up your own mind about this „Trump Menace“ ! Many many Americans deserve better then living under his dictatorship !