Donald Trump admits that he “plays to people’s fantasies” (lies) and that he uses the press to advance his interests.   He meets every definition of a con artist.  Supporters and critics agree that you cannot believe anything that he says.   How can the American public learn any truth about him?  

Many, hoping to get to some truth, continue to demand that Trump release his tax returns, as every other modern day President or Presidential candidate has done.  Recently,  the White House urgently released Donald Trump’s 2005 2-page tax summary - to beat Rachel Maddow who was about to reveal the same tax summary  on her MSNBC show.  Her source was David Cay Johnston, a former New York Times reporter who has recently started a website, DCReport.org, focused on revealing the activities of the Donald Trump administration.  Mr. Johnston received the summary in his mailbox without any indication of who had sent it...
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In this 2005 summary, Donald and newly married Melania Trump report an income of $150 million and a tax payment of $38 million (25%).   The White House confirmed the authenticity of the summary,  using their usual bluster to denounce the its “theft”.  

President Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan lost bigly as their bill to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka ObamaCare) failed.   While both Trump and Ryan tried to emphasize how very close they’d come to passing this cruel bill, they were not able to recast the attempt as anything other than a critical failure.

The three reasons why they failed to pass were incompetence (shown by Trump and his White House and by Ryan and the Republican Congress), the effectiveness of the country-wide resistance movement by voters, and the egregious provisions of the bill, especially the proposed cancellation of insurance for 24 million people.  At a time when so little seems logical, it is reassuring that a resistance movement by voters can make a difference, even if the bill was bad and ineptly handled. 

The election of Donald Trump as President of the U.S. has presented the nation with a giant morass of corruption and likely treason that may deconstruct it.  The impact of this mess has been exacerbated by both the complicity of some institutions like the Republican controlled Congress and the ineptitude of other institutions like the Main Stream Media (MSM) to help in the clean-up.  The collaboration of the Republican Party with Trump, which has been moving from the party of white nationalism to full-blown fascism, is expected.  But, the ineffectiveness of the MSM to respond to Trump and Friend’s disinformation attack is surprising. 

The MSM has been covering Trump and Friends in its usual linear and formulaic way to synthesize events as issues with tug-of-war tactics used by Republicans and Democrats.  They are not equipped to handle the entire conglomeration of corruption, dysfunction, and treason that make up the Trump Presidency.  As a result, the MSM is reduced to interviewing each other, reporting their opinions and describing events, but seldom disrupting their own conventionality that is based on segmenting events and overlooking interconnections.

Rachel Maddow at MSNBC has been the leader in recognizing that the serial approach employed by most of the MSM is inadequate for understanding what is going on with Trump.  She has systematically aggregated stories that focus on the various aspect of the Trump and Friends.  Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) has also avoided the pitfalls of this telescopic approach by focusing on the interconnections between the parts of the Trump morass.  His figure (shown above, with our enhancements) highlights the connections between all parts of the mess.  

Michael Crowley has also drawn the interconnections between Trump and people involved in corruption and intelligence.  There are so many issues, examples and “players” that it is difficult to get a full picture of what is going on unless we concentrate on the whole mess.  And, even the use of schematics that focus on the entire picture can be difficult to understand.  For example, there are at least five parts of this mess that needs exploration: Russian Interference in U.S. Elections; Hollowing Out of the Federal Government; Ethnic Cleansing and the Fascist Overthrow of the U.S.; Trump Corruption and Conflict of Interest; and the Russian Crime State.
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Nonetheless, unless the focus is on this whole ugly mess, we are likely to be misled as we shift from one issue to the other and from one player to another.  Some of the MSM are doing exemplary work in tracing one or the other parts.  And, some of the more capable analysts are doing a good job in showing how these parts relate to each other.

​The media punditry in its wisdom has concluded that Donald Trump’s tweets accusing President Barak Obama of wiretapping him were another example of his deranged behavior.  Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman have assumed that Trump’s reason for the twitter rants was either an immature and illogical attempt to deflect the media from Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from investigating the Russian hack.   Alternatively, Peter Beinart suggests that Trump’s intent was to discredit on-going investigations by claiming that they are motivated by “deep state” Democratic bureaucrats hidden seeking to undermine the Trump Administration.
 
Trying to deflect Sessions’ recusal from investigating the Russian hack by emphasizing surveillance of Trump brought about by Trump’s involvement in the Russian hack seems a far reach—even for Trump.  Tarnishing the on-going investigations, all conducted under the auspices of Republicans, with partisanship seems unlikely to sway any voters other than foolhardy Trump supporters. 
 
But, there is a third possibility.  Trump may be providing Putin with a mitigating circumstances claim for Russia’s hack of the DNC.  The reason for thinking that Putin is the beneficiary of Trump’s tweet storm is that two days later, WikiLeaks, an affiliate of Russia’s intelligence agencies, released CIA hacked information about the gimmicks they use to surveil people.  The leaks show that the CIA’s tools for turning smart phones, televisions, and other electronic devices into methods of surveillance could have been easily and stealthily used to illegally surveil Trump.  As former U.S. collections intelligence officer, Malcolm Nance, points out, this information, hacked about August of 2016, was released precisely to coincide with Trump’s tweets. 
 
With the CIA’s means of surveilling Trump accompanying Trump’s accusation of illegal wiretapping, the Republican led Congressional committees will have the opportunity to equate the Russian hack of one Democratic nominee to the illegal CIA hack of the Republican nominee.  The Main Stream Media may not be able to resist diminishing acts from which both Republicans and Democrats benefit.  And, of course, Trump has already accused of the intelligence community of trying to undermine him.
 
Equating the Russian hack to an imagined “illegal wiretap” of Trump will not affect a hard headed investigation of Russian interference in an U.S. election.  Putin’s objective, however, is not to influence the law enforcement, but to influence the public’s perceptions about Russia.  After all, having U.S. sanctions lifted on Russia is one of Putin’s primary concern and the U.S. public’s perceptions of Russia is a key factor in achieving this end. 
 
Of course, instead of a planned operation to affect public opinion, this may simply be an effort by Putin to control the damage Trump did to himself by making a crazy and unsubstantiated charge against President Obama.   Nonetheless, whether Trump’s “wiretap tweets” was part of a planned operation or an afterthought to clean up another deranged outburst by Trump, they show yet again how close Trump is to Putin.  

Some Democrats and Progressives are criticizing other Democrats and Progressives for focusing too much on the Russian hack of the DNC computer system as a way of attacking Donald Trump.  Their principal claim is that Trump voters don’t care for about what the Russians may have done to help Trump win compared to their illusion that Trump will help improve their economic and social circumstances.  Instead, these Dems believe the Democratic Party should focus on organizing voters and better messaging to compete against Republican policies that are already suspect with many voters. 
 
Also, some liberal Democrats are concerned about reviving a cold war with Russia.  They do not believe that the intelligence community has provided proof that the DNC hack was done by the Russian government, as opposed to Russian non-government hackers.  And, liberal Democrats are uneasy about depending on the intelligence community as allies given their checkered history in the over throw of elected governments like that Salvador Allende of Chile.  Moreover, even if the Russian government was involved in the hack, they doubt that Russian efforts had any meaningful impact on the election outcome.

Sessions lied in the hearing to confirm him as Attorney General as he volunteered that he had not met with Russians during the election season.  Sessions served as a surrogate for Donald Trump as a primary in the Trump presidential campaign, during which time, Sessions met with Russian Ambassador Kislyak in July and September.   If this were a “normal” Presidency, we would expect that the president would encourage Sessions to recuse himself in any examination of the campaign.    Any President who cared to have his administration trusted would be eager to display that his chosen Attorney General projected integrity in all his dealings.  Instead, Trump is seething.  Trump is irate that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions recused himself from issues related to the investigation of the influence of Russians on the 2016 Presidential elections. We have to ask why.

As the Devil’s advocate (Trump’s advocate), Trump needs Attorney General Sessions to obstruct any comprehensive investigation into Russia’s hack into the DNC computer system and email leaks to WikiLeaks.  His election has already been illegitimated and additional information is becoming available about Russia’s blackmail, social media trolling, fake news, and illegal contributions to undermine democratic elections.  Trump’s public pretense that Democratic cries of foul about a “Russian invasion” is a sign that Democrats are blinded by disbelief that they didn’t win in November.   If that were the case, he would want to refute this falsehood and not suffer additional damage from a weakened Attorney General.     

Alternatively (or in addition to), It may be Trump, Ivanka, Jared, and the Steves (Bannon and Miller)  have kept their many ties to Russian oligarchs and   government officials hidden because of their participation in corrupt and illegal business practices.  It seems that Trump has laundered money from Russian criminals, Iranian guards, and Vladimir Putin himself.  They are rightly convinced that a full investigation of their activities would dispel the illusion that they are negotiating with the Russians for world peace and lead to their criminal prosecutions.    

However, neither of these explanations holds water.   If the Democrats are sore losers, or if the Trumpetts are engaged in the quest for world peace, the administration would welcome scrutiny and would be eager now to reveal all – to shame the Democrats and to delight their base.  Instead, Trump is seething, and the press is drip-drip-dripping details each day.  Why are they lying about their connections with Russians at a time when there is widespread acceptance of the idea that Russia invaded our country by contaminating our election process?

Last Thursday, for example, Sessions acknowledged “inadvertently” misleading the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, on Monday, after spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago with Trump, Sessions amended his testimony by asserting in a written statement that he had told the truth when he said he hadn’t met with Russians.  He justified this last lie to cover his first lie by saying that he did not meet with Russians as part of the campaign but as a member of the Senate (although the meeting was at the Republican Convention and his travel was not paid for by the government).  After being caught in such a clear lie, many have called for Sessions to resign.  But, Sessions has no intention of resigning because Trump (and Bannon) need him.  (Sessions is not just a loyal Trump employee; he and Steve Bannon have long strategized how to restrict immigration, curtail voting access, and to clamp down on inner cities for the glory of white supremacy and the old South.) 
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Trump and his posse have engaged in wrong doing and are now being run down by the media and intelligence community.  They hope that the lies they tell, will at least buy them some time so that they public will forget.  They may be right unless the new stories based on leaks are buttressed by facts uncovered by public investigations. 

Even the most ardent Trump supporters admit that Donald Trump’s behavior is, at best, unusual, or, at worst, bizarre and unhinged.  While many of his supporters believe his behavior is somehow connected to the bluntness and political incorrectness called for to be a successful businessman, many of his opponents attribute his behavior to the more sinister and well-designed plan to transform our democracy into a fascist state.  Other opponents see Trump’s behavior as the manifestation of some form of mental illness.  It is surprising that so many people find it credible to believe that Trump is mentally deranged rather than a budding fascist given the abundance of evidence that Trump is a fascist who is aligned with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
 
Fascism is often used as a pejorative and equated with Nazism, although not all fascists have been Nazis. To lessen the derogatory sting of “fascism,” some observers have substituted “authoritarianism,”  “totalitarianism,” or “illiberal democracy” as less incendiary substitutes.  Nazism is only one of the many different types of fascism.  Compared to Nazism, for example, Italian fascism was syncretic and did not have a coherent ideology.
 
 Characteristics of Fascism
 
While many analysts of fascism have identified various characteristics of fascism, there is a remarkable consistency in what they found.  Two analysts, Henry Wallace and Umberto Eco, are of particular interest because their analyses were conducted during or shortly after World War II and were based on their personal experiences with fascism.  Their explanations of the dynamics of fascism show the truth that Donald Trump and many of his Republican supporters are without question fascist.​

Henry Wallace

​Henry Wallace, Vice President of the U.S. (1941-1945) identified several characteristics that he believed described American fascists.  Some of the characteristics he identified in 1944 include the following:

• The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants … to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power;
•  A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religious, cultures, regions, or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends;
•  The symptoms of fascist thinking … can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power;
•  American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact…their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate ever fissure of disunity; and
•  [American fascists] claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution…they demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.  Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

This Black History Month inevitably reminded us of the oppressive times that forged the heroes we celebrate.  With the installation of Donald Trump and the obvious desire of his white supremacist administration to return us to those times.  We wonder if there is anything we can learn from those heroes besides the need to persevere. 

The three basic paths blacks took to resist white was to (1) agitate for economic and social rights in the manner of W.E.B. DuBois; (2) try to negotiate with the white establishment for limited economic rights like Booker T. Washington; or retreat into the self-imposed separation of black nationalism as Marcus Garvey did.  DuBois, one of the founders of the Niagara Movement that became the NAACP, fought for social and economic integration. He argued that any attempt to limit rights would eventually lead to the subordination of all rights.  Washington, on the other hand, while publicly arguing for limited rights in the economic area espoused separation in the social sphere.  Interestingly, during the period Washington was espousing social separation as a way of advancing economic welfare, blacks who made had attained some measure of economic success were brutalized by whites who use white supremacy to claw back those economic gains.   Garvey, a Jamaican who had traveled throughout the world and thus put U.S. racism into a global perspective, developed a Black Nationalist perspective.  He aimed his appeal to non-elite blacks and promised uplift for the entire black community. 

Although very different perspectives, both the Washington and Garvey approaches entail some degree of isolation from the rest of the U.S.  Regardless of whether these approaches were viable early in the twentieth century, they cannot work now.  Bantustans or nationalism (black or white) will not work in a globalized system of commerce.  Conducting business, however, means necessarily erasing boundaries rather than erecting them. It should not come as a surprise that citizens from none of the seven countries on Trump’s Muslim ban list did business with Trump.

DuBois was right.  The approach that is left now, as in previous times, is the struggle for equal social and economic rights that will give us all a shot at making the most of the opportunities we have.  What is also true is that must continue to persevere in light of Trump and his administration’s efforts to limit rights.