Quote of the Day
A distinctive mark of fascism is its conception of politics, best captured by Carl Schmitt, an early-20th-century German political theorist whose doctrines legitimized Nazism. Schmitt rejected the Madisonian view of politics as a social negotiation in which different factions, interests, and ideology come to agreement, the core idea of our Constitution. Rather, he saw politics as a state of war between enemies, neither of which can understand the other and both of which feel existentially threatened—and only one of which can win. The aim of Schmittian politics is not to share the country but to dominate or destroy the other side.
Jonathan Rauch*
January 25, 2026
Yes, It’s Fascism – The Atlantic
Via email from a reader.
Most of the body of the article is behind a paywall so I only have the part quoted in the email.
As many of you will point out, there is no compromise or coming to agreement with those who want you dead. There is no compromise with those who want a cradle to grave welfare state for everyone. But there is a better way to go about opposing them without risking a death spiral into your own purity test driven genocide of killing all the communists.
There is a fair amount of truth to what I could read in the quote above about the definition of fascism. And I prefer to use the oldest definition I can find. It is from an unabridged dictionary copyrighted in various years from 1927 through1946. In part, the Fascisti were:
… organized in connection with a repressive movement directed against the socialists and communists and the disturbances excited by them during 1919 and the years following, which regarded the government as criminally negligent in failing to deal with these disturbances, and took measure on its own account, often violent ones, to combat them…
Hence, one could say people opposed to socialists and communists meet part of the definition of Fascist. Aside from the increased ease of which the dirty label sticks there are other reasons to not defining yourself as opposed, especially violently opposed, to communists and socialists.
Remember the poem from a couple days ago: Laugh, and the World Laughs with You? If you are an unhappy, angry person you will have fewer people who wish to be around you and join your political bandwagon. Be for something good. Be for freedom. Be for liberty. Be for a booming economy. Be for a wealthy society.
Let the communists and socialist be against that.
* Rauch is not a new name to this blog:
The problem is one of the main attack methods for the commies is “Critical Theory,” where when you stand for anything, even something good, it gives them something to be critical of. Being for something gives them an attack surface. Being for prosperity means they'll attack that prosperity is unequally distributed.
Being for freedom means they'll use that freedom to attack you.
Being for wealth means you must hate poor people.
Etc.
That's why the commies are rarely for anything but in general platitudes, because they specialize in attacking anything specific positive statements.
Spot on Rolf.
Communists are nothing but a “religion of domination”.
And you can be for anything you like. But that won’t stop communists.
One must bow to their stupidity or die in their religion.
Just like islame.
Pig skin suits for them all.
“…people opposed to socialists and communists meet part of the definition of Fascist…” — but only the unimportant part.
The important part is “a repressive movement”. In other words, Fascism aims to replace the totalitarian system called communism by a slightly different totalitarian system. THAT is the essence of Fascism; its anti-communist nature is at best a sideline and more likely just an excuse.
So the notion that being anti-communist is in any way suggestive of being pro-fascist is seriously misleading, or worse.
The odd part of that definition is the Fascists were socialist themselves, as judged by their own claims both public and private and by what they did with their power in government.
This was not unknown at the time – they were quite open about it, both the Italian Fascists (the original ones) and the Nazis.
And yes, being “anti-communist” doesn’t make you fascist, any more than being anti-fascist makes you communist. They are both socialist and totalitarian, and their opposition to each at the beginning was that they were wooing the same potential supporters (socialists more generally).
Indeed. “Nazi” is derived from the acronym of the organization, “Nationalsozialistisch Deutsche Arbeiterspartei”, i.e., “National Socialist German Workers Party”.
National rather than international socialist (communist) but that’s hardly a distinction. This of course explains the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, where Stalin and Hitler agreed to divide the spoils — until Hitler lost his mind and figured he’d go where Napoleon so spectacularly failed.
I think you can b both. I am a happy person and promote the values that I feel are important such as family and freedom. But if pushed upon me I am happy to oppose communist and socialist in a manner which results on heads on pikes.
The difference is that being pro-family and pro-freedom pretty much guarantees you oppose communism and socialism, both of which necessitate breaking down the family and restricting freedom to seize and retain power.
Fascism opposes communism and socialism, but offers nothing consistent to replace them with. Other definitions credit it with the infamous “public-private partnership”, in which a centralized government strongly influences the means of production, without the government actually taking direct control as it would under communism and socialism.
Being pro-family and pro-freedom is more specific — and in my opinion, more explainable and defensible — than just being anti-communism and anti-socialism, which could mean anything.
This is why I promote the National Divorce instead of “kill the Commies”. It is a lot easier to coexist with the Left when they are in a different country. We have been at peace with Canada for more than 200 years.
The communist left doesn’t produce anything to live on. Where and how are they going to live if they don’t steal from those that work?
The nature of the dragon is to steal from honest folks. That’s all it is able to do.
I don’t think you can live with the communist dragon. Even if you give it part of your country for its own.
They will just destroy it and then come for more.
They have proven that fact for century and a half now. The same as every tyrant in human history.
No, not the same as every tyrant.
Some tyrants actually run things decently. I mean, sure, it’s for their own benefit, and they aren’t remotely put off from massacring innocents, but at least SOMETIMES you get a working country out of it.
Communism does not do that. It’s like a standard tyrant, only filtered for those that can’t even function passably on the tyrant scale.
King Louis XIV of France was, by any reasonable definition, a tyrant. He believed strongly in the “divine right of kings” and set up the nation as an absolute monarchy, was known for his vanity, and had zero qualms about having anyone who opposed him or said anything against him exiled or killed.
But he’s also known as Louis the Great, he promoted art and industry and the welfare of his subjects, and is accounted by many historians as being one of the greatest — if not THE greatest — kings that France ever had.
Being a ruthless tyrant doesn’t automatically mean being evil. But it is an exception rather than the rule.
Commies are, by nature, totalitarian. Perhaps it’s my Scottish ancestry or just ‘murkin pig headedness, but I have zero patience or tolerance for those who tell me what I must do or must think. So long as swinging my arms around does NOT connect with other people’s faces, MIND YOUR OWN F’ING BUSINESS!!! That goes for enviro-nutjobs, Mooslimbs and so called Christian fundamentalists as well. I hate communists. They don’t adhere to the US Constitution I have sworn to protect and defend against ALL ENEMIES…. Get out of the USA or I’ll gladly help remove the threat to our Constitution. Haters gotta hate! You’re welcome.
I’ve been working hard and trying to be for freedom and peace all my life.
70 years now.
And watched communist stupidity grow from infancy to being about to destroy all that is good, true, and beautiful. From the womb to your favorite grandmother. They have no mercy.
The lord Jesus told us to carry a sword for a reason.
And I can only think that it is to defend ourselves against satans religions in all their varied forms.
In fact, it was such an imperative to him that he said it was better to be cold and broke than to be caught without arms by the forces of satanic evil.
satan is for the destruction of all humanity.
communism and islame are the human forms of his religion.
And there is no living with either one.
You testosterone up and fight, or you die by their hand.
There is no third choice.
Fight smart. Fight for freedom. Fighting for the extermination of a set of people makes it more difficult to get support and more difficult to turn it off. If it results in ever increasing purity tests, then you get a genocide of innocents.
“Fighting for the extermination of a people” is what they do.
They don’t always know that. And in most cases will vehemently deny it. But that is what they are doing.
Reality has proven them as doing none other.
Not me though.
I spent close to 40 years at hard labor and built nothing they would think twice about destroying for the fun of it.
I wish them no harm at all.
I wish to only live my life in peace, worshipping God as I know him.
They are the ones that have pushed us to the brink of collapse. And just like with islame they will lie to your face and promise you the moon. Then rape, rob, and murder you at first chance. Or make excuse for those that do.
I’m all ears on playing it smart.
But they only parley to get their resources in place to kill you and everything you love.
That’s how they play it. They wrote the rules in this game.
You can go reason with them if you want.
I’ll sit overwatch.
They got their last klick out of me. (Unless I’m adjusting my crosshairs.)
I’m not suggesting any compromise should be considered. Just adjust your rhetoric to make it less vulnerable to attack and attract partners to assist in your fight.
There is “fighting against something” and “fighting for something;” neither can exist independently, the balance between them is a critical component of success, but both must exist together, in compatible amount and degree, if success is the goal.
It doesn’t matter what we say. The Left attacks all opposition with equal fury.
But you’ll notice they never attack Islam. The Muslims will kill you if you do.
There’s a lesson to be learned there.
Does this mean we can officially call the current state of our politics, a “Schmitt show”?
Thank you! I’ll see myself out. 😀
This actually points to something I’ve observed about political ads, particularly (but not exclusively) for candidates.
Political advertisements in recent times are rarely for anything or anyone; they’re nearly always against “the other side”. Even ads for ballot measures don’t read like “support this cause”; they’re more like “stand against [some suspiciously-specific example of the other side’s position]”.
Candidates’ ads are the same, focusing far less time and energy on supporting a candidate, and far more on attacking his/her opponent.
I for one am getting really tired of campaigns that focus on opposing “the other side” and telling me nothing about what they support. Among other things, like the “fascism” definition above, it’s much too specific, and fails to give an accurate idea of what you’d be voting for.
It’s kind of like some weird inverse of “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” but instead of each man describing an elephant based on the one part they’ve “seen”, each man is attacking the others and yelling, “Don’t listen to that guy,” and nobody listening walks away with any idea what an elephant is.
The full Atlantic article: https://archive.is/jFuYf
Communists declare everyone who oppose them to be fascists. Ipso facto.
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight back. After all, their main goal is democide. We fight back and win, or they will exterminate us. It really is that simple.
We have this conundrum of what a Fascist is, and what makes it different from a Communist because 85 years ago there were five different totalitarian regimes in Europe, all vying for supremacy (the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, although Spain and especially Portugal were not particularly expansionist like the others.
Once America chose a side, they had to create propaganda that distinguished each of them to justify our decision of which we would support and ally with. Germany and Italy lost world War II, so people thought the window dressing and the particular “Other” each chose defined what made a Fascist.Germany and the USSR both exploited pre-existing jealousies and resentments in their supporters.
Germany picked the Jews, which was easy, as there were generations of hatred of Jews built up before 1920, and the Jews didn’t intermarry with Gentiles, or mix much socially, and worked hard and so became prosperous. In the USSR, once the nobility were driven out or eradicated, It was still necessary to have an “Other” to focus on so power could continue being consolidated. The myth of the Prosperous Peasant, the “Kulak” was born, As the 1930’s went on, a Kulak became an otherwise poor peasant who owned so much as a potato-dryer.
These similarities caused no end of problems for Communist Propagandists, and even today the Communists are driven into a blind fury if you suggest that there isn’t really any difference between Communists and Fascists, except the Fascists let you keep the title to your property so you think you still own it, with anything you can do with it as closely circumscribed as they can get away with that year.
I love tweaking the noses of Communists especially the American Democrats who swear there’s something different between Communists and Fascists besides who they picked as “the Other.”
“I love tweaking the noses of Communists especially the American Democrats who swear there’s something different between Communists and Fascists besides who they picked as “the Other.””
Oh, there are a few other differences, but the only one that has more substance than what you just posted is the “national” vs “international” issue – that is, whether there is some level of something other than the Communist utopia that gets your devotion. For the Fascists, that devotion was to a certain vision of their own people group/country which includes socialism, which is… well, I would say “less bad” than just the unbridled devotion to “communism takes over everything”.
“In the speech given by Stephen Miller at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, MAGA’s embrace of Schmittian totalism found its apotheosis: “We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion … You are nothing. You are wickedness.”
Which leads us to:
“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
– G. M. Gilbert, the chief psychologist who interviewed the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg.
I hate to rain on anybody’s “everybody on the left is evil” parade, but you might consider at least the *possibility* that you’re wrong, and that holding that position (or its converse) is itself evil.
Now review some of the things the political left has been saying for decades about white people, men, and capitalism.
Sure, there are plenty of examples of leftists saying nasty things about conservatives, many of which have already appeared here in other threads. But that’s beside the point: I can’t think of any case in the past 100 years where the *sitting administration* referred to the other side (either liberal or conservative) as being “nothing.” Miller isn’t just saying mean things about people he doesn’t like, he’s the guy in power denying his political rivals any humanity whatsoever. When you’ve decided the other side is “nothing” you can do anything you want to them, and it’s very different for someone who controls the force of government to say that vs. somebody just flapping their gums. I care a lot less about mean things some liberal professor (or even a candidate on the campaign trail) has to say about conservatives than I do the guy running the country who’s decided I’m an infestation and can send a literal army to my house to get rid of me.
Evil comes in different sizes and shapes. A kid torturing a cat is evil. A government dehumanizing half its population in anticipation of acting on that with force is a whole different level of evil. These things are not the same.
I can give you multiple examples of much worse than “nothing”.
“Garbage” in just the immediately previous administration, and not even by some functionary, but by the actual HEAD of the party (well, the empty *figure* head, but still).
“When you’ve decided the other side is “nothing” you can do anything you want to them”
And when you’ve decided the other side is “garbage”, you have a duty to remove them. Again, *just by the standards you are espousing*, the left is far worse.
“A government dehumanizing half its population in anticipation of acting on that with force is a whole different level of evil.”
And yet, when the left does it, *as it has repeatedly in the last few years*, you say nothing.
Well, this is what happens, eventually – people fight BACK, and that fighting BACK is not always clean or morally perfect. FAR FAR better to prevent the need by policing both sides equally from the beginning.
“Deplorables” is another term of endearment that warms the heart.
Except Biden was referring to supporters of the comic who referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” and had been disparaging Latinos. But don’t let that context get in the way.
The more salient point is even if he had been referring to Trump’s supporters, you’ve left out the second part of that sentence: “…in anticipation of acting on that with force” I’m fine with politicians talking shit about people if that’s all it is (shall we peruse Trump’s Twitter and Truth Social posts?). Biden didn’t send the national guard in to red states to harass them, nor did he create his own personal army to occupy cities run by Republicans. (If you think Minneapolis isn’t an occupied city you haven’t talked to anyone from Minneapolis recently.) But Miller isn’t just talking shit, he’s sending in armed troops and killing people. These things are not the same. And if you think they are, please show an example of a red city that suffered under Biden as Minneapolis is under Trump.
Oh, hey, bonus points John, on something not at all related to this topic, but since that didn’t stop you from trying to topic-change to it last time, I’ll drop it here: turns out, not only was Trump not in bed with Epstein (as was obvious for many reasons), he was a federal informant to help get Epstein convicted the FIRST time around.
https://x.com/amuse/status/2021050668468011285
(that has embedded documents, it’s not just somebody spouting off)
Now, I know it was never about facts with you, and this is unlikely to deter your adamant faith that Trump was part of the Epstein pedophile ring (since it is based your emotional need for Trump to be bad, not on facts), but I hope it’s helpful to others who see what you post.
“Not in bed?” Maybe after their falling out in the mid 2000s, sure. But he was very much in bed with him for 20 years before that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2026/02/10/trumps-history-with-jeffrey-epstein-trump-allegedly-called-maxwell-evil-in-2006/
But hey, let’s ignore a couple decades of him and Jeffery being best pals because he realized he needed to save his own skin and decided to flip. That seems perfectly reasonable.
And from the “correlation doesn’t imply causation, but damn it smells bad” department:
“Hypothetically if someone was accused of having sex with goats by over 30 different people and regularly denied it, but also dropped very public hints about how much he liked to have sex with goats for decades, and ran a goat pageant to find the best looking goats, and was best friends with someone who got convicted of fucking goats and trafficking goats to friends all over the world who also liked to fuck goats, and his name was in the classified goat fucker chronicles 10,000 times, and he wished other goat fuckers well in prison, what do you think the odds are that person is also a goat fucker?”
“Now, I know it was never about facts with you, and this is unlikely to deter your adamant faith that Trump was part of the Epstein pedophile ring (since it is based your emotional need for Trump to be bad, not on facts)”
And then your reply. Shocker.
For the record, what WOULD it take for you to actually give up this particular windmill?
Actually, no, *for your own good*, stop and think about what it would take. Draw a line in the sand, where you would admit *to yourself* that this particular white whale is BS.
Because if there is no such point, it’s not fact, it’s not politics, it’s even a conspiracy theory, it’s religion.
Because on the flip side, I have done that with both this topic and many others. It’s clarifying.
“where you would admit *to yourself* that this particular white whale is BS”
I’d need them to release all the files, photos, video, artifacts, testimony, etc etc…ALL of it, UNREDACTED to a special master in charge of making sense of it, and in a form that’s actually consumable in a reasonable time period.
What they’ve done instead is make unnecessary and suspicious redactions (in addition to failing to make necessary redactions of victims, potentially as a warning to others), and then presented the files in a completely non-consumable state:
“The justice department has released a total of about 3.5m files related to Epstein, and Raskin said there were around 3m more awaiting release. The Maryland congressman said he was only able to review about 30 to 40 of the unredacted files that had been released at one of four computers set up at the justice department facility, which lawmakers must enter without bringing any electronic devices, or staff members who have been researching the issue alongside them.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/09/jamie-raskin-doj-cover-up-epstein-files
4 computers. And it’s not like these files have been organized in a way that makes it easy to cull the wheat from the chaff. They’ve deliberately made it as hard as possible to view what’s there in order to prevent people from making connections or exposing evidence. And they’ve only released half the files. The other half are still unreleased. Wanna bet it’s the really juicy ones that are in the unreleased batch?
So hey, all I know is what I read in the news, so it could all be garbage. But from what I’ve seen of previous political scandals, nobody goes to this much effort to prevent people from investigating something unless there’s something to hide. Maybe it’s not Trump, maybe it’s somebody else. I don’t know. But until we actually have access to all the evidence, and it’s in the hands of somebody with the time and resources to process it thoroughly (not just a Senator minus his aides sitting at a terminal), and the redactions aren’t made by people with a vested interest in hiding names, we can only go with what we have. And what we have at the moment looks like a lot of really bad shit being shuffled around so nobody can get a clear picture. Which is itself incriminating.
Net: get me an independent special master who’s gone through ALL the evidence and comes out the other side saying “Trump didn’t do anything wrong” and I’ll be happy to change my tune.
Something for you to consider: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news/content/ar-AA1W4imv
They were friends for 20 years. It doesn’t take 20 years to figure out somebody’s a creep, so the obvious question is “why say that at that particular time?” The most direct answer is plausible deniability.
But that’s about as far as it goes, because if he *really* believed Epstein was evil he’d have released the files during his first administration when they were under his control. Or he’d have pushed for them to be released during the Biden administration. Or he’d have immediately released them when he got into office like he said he would.
Instead he’s done everything he possibly can to prevent them be released, including requiring an *act of Congress* to order him to do, and then when he does he slow-walks the release and makes consumption of the files as difficult as possible. And Maxwell? He’s *helping* her. He wished her well, and then got her moved to a cushy “prison” so she’d be comfortable. Would *you* do that for someone you thought was “evil?”
These are not the actions of somebody who thinks Epstein was “a creep” and needed to be punished, and that Maxwell is “evil,” these are the actions of somebody trying to cover it all up.
“I’d need them to release all the files, photos, video, artifacts, testimony, etc etc…ALL of it, UNREDACTED to a special master in charge of making sense of it, and in a form that’s actually consumable in a reasonable time period.”
The problem is the “special master” – the trust in that has been shredded, as well.
But otherwise, yeah, I’m for it, both on this topic and MANY MANY others.
“What they’ve done instead is make unnecessary and suspicious redactions (in addition to failing to make necessary redactions of victims, potentially as a warning to others)”
Welcome to “every time the government makes redactions EVER”. Glad you finally noticed. Would be even nicer if you would apply that same cynicism against the government all the other times, you know, when Trump isn’t involved.
“They’ve deliberately made it as hard as possible to view what’s there in order to prevent people from making connections or exposing evidence.”
Almost exactly the same thing here. Most recent major example: January 6th footage.
“But from what I’ve seen of previous political scandals, nobody goes to this much effort to prevent people from investigating something unless there’s something to hide.”
That’s true often enough that the flip side gets used in politics: we’re “investigating”, so clearly, that person is bad. The charge is all that is needed.
But in this case, I’ll agree with you that it’s pretty hard to believe there’s nothing there. In fact, it’s utterly unbelievable.
The problem is that the potential list of people wanting this covered up is… well, pretty much “all the powerful people”. That you personally are so fixated on Trump so much doesn’t make him a likely candidate – the attempts at coverup predate his time in politics rather thoroughly.
Realistically, your demands are unlikely to be met, BUT I would like you know that I would LOVE for them to be met (well, minus the “special master” part – just straight to the actual public would be better).
The issue is that I would love that for a LOT of things – this particular issue is not so special, nor is Trump. There are LOTS of bad people involved… and the double-standard is incredibly tiresome. For only the most obvious, the Clintons were FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR more involved with Epstein than is even claimed about Trump, and this is rather directly relevant as Hillary Clinton was Trump’s first political opponent – the people tarring Trump with this supported (and in most cases, STILL support, often explicitly) Hillary over him.
If you applied the same level of scrutiny and lack of trust in all the other people that had this level of accusation against them, I would take you more seriously.
But you are selective in your outrage – as I have pointed out, *and you essentially agreed with* (I can quote you if you need the reminder), it’s not the facts that drive you, but what you WANT the outcome to be. It’s so foundational to your thought processes that you assume everyone else must work the same – or at least, so you claimed about me, and I see no reason to single out some internet rando like me.
Oh, hey, and I should add (and probably should have started with): thank you for posting that, for drawing the line in the sand.
Even if I find it incredibly unlikely to actually happen (*regardless* of the truth of the situation), finding that we agree on desired outcome is pretty great, actually.
It also informs on how to approximate and “best guess”, as best we can without actually getting all of that (which is the least bad option in most cases, since we don’t get what we should… pretty much ever).
My fixation on Trump is because he’s unusual in his level of corruption: he’s turned it into high art. Yes, Biden had his share, mostly via his son, but he can’t hold a candle to Trump. The sheer number of corrupt actions Trump has taken has inspired list after list after list:
https://rantt.com/100-trump-corrupt-acts
https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/list-trumps-alleged-corrupt-acts-8f62af
https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/100-days-corruption-oversight-democrats-highlight-100-conflicts-interest
https://campaignlegal.org/document/tracking-trump-administrations-most-corrupt-transactions
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/columns/lest-we-forget-the-horrors-an-unending-catalog-of-trumps-cruelties-collusions-corruptions-and-crimes
I mean, c’mon. Show me something even vaguely similar for Biden. It doesn’t exist.
So no, I’m not “selective in my outrage,” I reserve true “outrage” for folks who deserve it. Biden was just garden variety corrupt, and gets my normal level of contempt (though he was probably not awake for half his presidency, so I’m not even sure you can hold him accountable. Maybe his chief of staff? We can hold them accountable…). Trump? Trump’s Olympic level. Trump is a level of corruption I honestly don’t think we’ve seen before, and that includes the early part of the 20th century when corruption was big business.
As for the special master, that’s just following past process. If we can get it all out in the public that’s great, but somebody has to do a redaction pass so the victims don’t get turned into targets, and whoever does that pass can’t have a vested interest in the outcome.
I read about half of those, some from each link you gave.
I could take every single one as absolutely true, and none of it holds a candle to what Joe Biden *bragged about publicly* in blackmailing a foreign country with US tax dollars he had no authority to withhold, for the financial benefit of his son, who had the job only as a form of bribery to him.
Did you read even as much of those links as I did? It would appear not. They are largely innuendo, political judgements, and complaints about stuff his did as a private citizen (much of which was, as I have said before “scummy but legal”, which is, well, “scummy”, but not “corruption”).
Here, let me give an example:
“Federal income taxes. The New York Times obtained Donald Trump’s taxes for 18 years. [pay no attention to how this was illegal, by the way.] Trump paid no federal income taxes for 11 of those years, and then only $750 in 2016 and $750 in 2017. Tax avoidance is not tax evasion – unless it is. Tax evasion – if it is – is criminal. Seeking and winning a tax refund of $72.9 million in 2010, resulted in Trump’s annual average taxes for the 18 years being $1.4 million – which for most of us is certainly a lot. However, the Times points out, the average American in the top .001% (1 out of one hundred thousand) of income paid about $25 million annually in federal taxes during those 18 years. The tax refund is the subject of the Federal audit – going on since 2011.”
Notice anything missing there? Any claim AT ALL that Trump actually did anything wrong – just lots of innuendo and implication. That’s how MOST of the stuff you linked to goes. “If you already think Trump is bad, here’s some stuff you can assume is bad because Trump did it.” Yay for circular reasoning!
But beyond that, as so very often with Trump, I ask only one thing, truly: hold ONE set of standards, and judge everyone by them.
The level of effort put in to slime every single thing he’s ever done (when he had been a golden child of the left for years while much of the things they complained about happened… before he came out as a Republican, of course) is ridiculous.
Any of those complaints about his finances or supposed self-dealing (none of which have any actual claim of wrongness, again, just innuendo and claim that it COULD be bad) utterly disappear compared to Nancy “the best investor in human history” Pelosi, among dozens of other examples, very much including Biden and his bag-man son. Would hire someone who didn’t speak your country’s language to manage complex legal stuff in your country? Some people would (AND DID) if he were the son of Joe Biden…
“I mean, c’mon.” Yeah, exactly. It’s as ridiculous as your complaint about some Trump functionary calling the other side “nothing” and magically forgetting about all the HORRENDOUS stuff the left has been calling the right (very much including *actual Democrat Presidents*) for years that are ***MUCH MUCH MUCH*** worse.
This is like a basketball game where the Blue team is literally beating up the Red team, putting members in the hospital, and you finally complain when, in the second half, one of the Red team members punches a Blue team member.
Should the punch count as a foul? SURE! Get back to me when you’ve put even half the level of outrage in the *actual beatings* being given out. And that’s politely taking as true some of the complaints.
The double-standard is absolutely appalling.
And typical. Forget the open and well-document crimes of your own side, criminalize every single thing you can on the other side.
And then stand atop the list of BS triumphantly, because the list is long, trusting that people won’t actually, you know, READ the list. Actual fact-checking… the horror!
Well, let’s look at it quantitatively, since clearly we’re not going to agree on the qualitative side.
The Burisma scandal theoretically yielded between 4 and 14 million for Biden (assuming all the details are true, which is up for debate). Pelosi certainly got some good deals for herself, and is said to have made $130 million in stock trades. Pick somebody else you don’t like and add some money to the pile.
Trump, since entering office in 2025, has made around $160 million just as a result of foreign actors paying for time at his properties (they don’t stay there in many cases…they just rent the rooms so Trump knows the money is flowing). That source alone is more than equal to Biden and Pelosi.
Then we have Truth Social, which has yielded billions (with a b) in stock value for Trump, who owns 60% of the company.
Then: WLF, and USD1 his crypto coin. Billions in revenue from that. The UAE paid $500million for shares in that, with a couple hundred of those million going directly to Trump.
A $400 million 747 from the Qataris, which Trump says he’s keeping after he leaves office.
“After returning to office, Donald Trump’s net worth jumped to $7.3 billion, up from $3.9 billion in 2024, according to a tally that Forbes published in September.”
https://time.com/7342470/trump-net-worth-wealth-crypto/
These are all examples of Trump leveraging the power of the Presidency to make himself rich. I’d argue the Dems are amateurs: they only got a few hundred million in the process…Trump’s getting billions, and he’s just in year 1.
“I ask only one thing, truly: hold ONE set of standards, and judge everyone by them.” Fine. Do that. But if you’re going to complain that Biden and Pelosi used their office to make themselves rich/do corrupt stuff, you can’t ignore what Trump is doing, which is literally an order of magnitude higher than the dems if we’re just counting $.
Emoluments clause, anyone?
““I ask only one thing, truly: hold ONE set of standards, and judge everyone by them.” Fine. Do that. But if you’re going to complain that Biden and Pelosi used their office to make themselves rich/do corrupt stuff, you can’t ignore what Trump is doing, which is literally an order of magnitude higher than the dems if we’re just counting $.
Emoluments clause, anyone?”
So many responses to this.
1) How many people have been prosecuted/punished in any way for the Emoluments clause, ever? Can you list ANYONE? Because this never came up in any significance, as best I can tell, until Trump started looking like a serious candidate and there was an attack opportunity detected there. “ONE STANDARD”
2) Several of those things are businesses Trump already owned and operated. By the example of the people who actually wrote and signed the Constitution, who kept and operated their businesses while in office, that is not inherently problematic. This includes Truth Social, when began while he was not in office. That it could actually just be that it provides standard business value does not seem to even enter your mind. Other social media companies do it without depending on having the President own them. World Liberty Financial is there as well, begun in 2024, while he was not the President.
3) Trump is leveraging… the power of the Trump name to make himself rich, *as he has done for decades*. This is not *inherently* a problem, as you treat it, for that simple reason. How did he do it before we was President? Beats me, BUT HE DID. Now, you could make a case that what’s going on is corrupt (it certainly fits with his classic “scummy” behaviour), but… you didn’t. You just acted like it’s somehow different than what he has been doing for a long, long time, since well before he was President.
4) There is a big, BIG difference between “my businesses, **that I already run**, are getting windfalls that might well be because I am now in office” and “hire my family members for exorbitant wages for jobs they couldn’t do even if they wanted to because I am in office”. Again, Trump did it, so it’s bad, full stop.
5) The net worth thing: considering how much of Trump’s net worth depends on his own reputation and such, AND the absolutely unprecedented levels of effort the Democrats put into getting him put in jail no matter the reason or how much they had to invent “novel” legal theories or raid his property without probable cause, once it was shown that he had, for all practical purposes, beaten that ridiculous and (largely) obviously unlawful assault, it would have been far more surprising if it hadn’t gone up. You could make an argument that something nefarious was involved, and I would listen (especially if it was made by someone I had any reason to believe was interested in facts over bias), but again… you didn’t. Like the sources you link to, the you left it at innuendo and assumption. “Because Trump” is not an actual argument.
6) You list large amounts of money… but you don’t compare them to how Trump has done other times in the past. It would need to be significantly larger than even the good years he had before he went into politics to even *imply* the stuff you are trying to claim as proven. “Business as usual” from before he was in office is not suddenly and *inherently* corrupt because he is in office.
7) The 747… Trump claims there’s a legal case there… and I don’t like it one bit. That’s really the only example you gave that makes me uncomfortable on its face. It may, in fact, be legal (“scummy but legal” is his long track record, after all), but it definitely looks bad, and if it’s legal, I would much prefer that it wasn’t.
Congratulations, you made one decent argument out of all of that… assuming that Trump actually does keep the plane (no idea on that one, honestly – wouldn’t be surprised either way).
As best I can tell, you argument boils down to this, which I will put uncharitably but not (as best I can tell) inaccurately:
“Trump, the businessman who has made money on his name and on his businesses for literally decades before he ever went into politics, has continued to make money on his name and businesses *that he already owned before he was in office* while in office. This is somehow worse than people who have never done any such thing **directly extorting money** from foreign governments explicitly using the power of their office (that would be what Biden publicly bragged about doing) and other such **explicit** forms of corruption.”
Now, I am certain you will object to that summary, which (as I admit) is uncharitable. But which part of it is *inaccurate*?
Perhaps you *could* make an actual argument beyond that… BUT YOU DIDN’T. “Orange Man Bad” is not an argument, it’s preaching to the choir.
Oh, hey, bonus points! I missed one of your much earlier replies:
“Except Biden was referring to supporters of the comic who referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” and had been disparaging Latinos. But don’t let that context get in the way.”
The ACTUAL context, that you aren’t letting get in YOUR way, is that the Puerto Ricans themselves make jokes quite publicly about how bad the actual, literal garbage situation is on their island – piles and piles of it. It’s not “disparaging to Latinos”, it’s referencing an actual problem that the actual residents know about and acknowledge.
“The more salient point is even if he had been referring to Trump’s supporters, you’ve left out the second part of that sentence: “…in anticipation of acting on that with force””
As opposed to, say, suggestions from actual Democrats running for national office to put MAGA people in “re-education” camps? And other such *actual* statements about what to do about them? As usual, you ignore the actual evidence, assume context that isn’t there, and hold one side to standards of perfection and the other side to no standard at all.
“And if you think they are, please show an example of a red city that suffered under Biden as Minneapolis is under Trump.”
Again, assuming without evidence what is going on, when there are multiple “blue” cities that avoided this entire problem by simply… honoring ICE requests for criminals they already had in custody. That’s the whole point.
But you want “red” areas that suffered under Biden? See the FEMA treatment of post-hurricane areas, where anyone with the “wrong” sign in their yard was ignored, where funding was allocated explicitly along political lines.
Again, “I could take them to the camps, but they would still not believe”. You keep acting like the facts are what you WANT them to be, not what they are. You keep ASSUMING bad faith of one side when there are perfectly good good-faith explanations and just plain ignoring bad-faith activity proven and public by the other.