What Is Actually Happening Today
POST 1254
Don Lemon’s Bogus Arrest Isn’t What You Think
He committed journalism. So far that still is not a crime. But it was only a matter of time until Don Lemon would be arrested.
For years Lemon has been critical of Trump. He’s laughed at and ridiculed him, been disparaging, accusatory, condemning and, worse, Lemon has been accurate in his unsympathetic appraisal of the malignant narcissist. That alone would be enough for Trump to jam Lemon into his retribution pipeline, his enemies list, about which both he and Pam Bondi lie, saying it doesn’t exist.
Clearly, Trump believes Lemon has earned retribution and other cruelty. If Trump doesn’t suppress Lemon, Trump would be forced to see himself as a loser, the very worst thing. So he must crush that nasty bug. But there’s more and it’s worse.
Don Lemon has the effrontery to commit the most heinous sin of being gay. He’s not who the heavy-starch-in-their-underwear, moral storm troopers insist that he must be. And he compounds that by being a full time, card carrying Black person. Don Lemon is the perfect target for persecution by racist Trump. And there’s more.
Trump and his fascist lieutenants are on a full court press to eliminate our rights, focused primarily on the First Amendment. They’ve sent their Gestapo to many cities to shut down freedom of speech, the right to assemble and the right to petition government.
He’s already attacked freedom of the press with his extortion of CBS, ABC and now his baseless arrests of Don Lemon and other journalists.
Historical precedent
It was then-Vice President Dick Cheney on (I think it was) Meet the Press. There was great criticism across the country of Dubya’s invasion of Iraq, Cheney’s pet project. He proclaimed his absolute certainty that deposing the tyrant Saddam was worth our blood and treasure. Far worse, he told we critics of the war that we better watch what we say.
WATCH WHAT WE SAY!?
If we were to criticize him, Dubya, Rumsfeld, their policy, their strategy or their power he would – what? – come gunning for us? Lock us up? Cheney’s was a barely concealed threat against the First Amendment’s protection against governmental abridgement of our freedom of speech. We might not have seen it then, but that was prelude to today.
Now
Trump, Bondi and a few DOJ bench warmers are saying the same thing, that we better watch what we say. They’re taking Lemon to court to make it stick. Were they to win their blatantly anti-Constitutional case, all freedom will be taken from all of us. The First Amendment will be burned to ashes.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens are already threatened with violence and incarceration, even a torture prison, this as government policy to eliminate our freedom of speech and place all power in Trump’s hands.
And Trump won’t stop there, Here are a quick list of the Amendments and Article II of the Constitution.
Q. Once the First Amendment is gone, what will be destroyed next?
A. Everything
Duplicitous
Maybe it’s just more of Trump’s miserable, self-serving, living-the-lie bullsh*t. Read this short report from Peter Baker’s January 13 NYT piece, Trump Supports the Protesters, Except Those Protesting Him.
From The Onion
President Trump had a ringing message of solidarity on Tuesday for demonstrators in the streets. “KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he wrote on social media. He decried “the senseless killing of protesters,” and added that those pulling the triggers “will pay a big price.”
He meant the protesters in Tehran, not Minneapolis. By contrast, the people in the streets of Minnesota, he wrote just 63 minutes earlier, were “anarchists and professional agitators” trying to cover up a fraud scandal. He vowed that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”
This is yet another example of Trump as democracy destroyer.
Tom Homan, Border Bastard
From Mother Jones:
Homan was a key architect in implementing family separations as acting ICE director in the first Trump administration [Think: thousands of kids in cages. Over 1.000 still are not reunited with their parents.]. In the president’s second term, he was appointed “border czar” to take charge of mass deportations and was investigated over cashing in on it. (We reported with the Project On Government Oversight that many of his former private business clients won lucrative border and immigration-related government contracts.)
Plus, Homan is the $50,000 FBI bag man. And he’s continuing the illegal, un-Constitutional ICE Gestapo brutality in Minneapolis, coming soon to Ohio and Maine.
That’s right: Homan’s appointment to Assistant Chief Cruelty Dispenser is yet another example of Trump as democracy destroyer.
Quote Of The Month
On NBC’s Meet The Press, Sunday, January 18, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained why we are in a state of emergency, by saying,
“The national emergency is avoiding a national emergency.”
Let your eyeballs settle a moment for having gone googly over that idiotic doublespeak.
Next-Gen M1 Abrams Tank. Picture that parked down the street from your house.
There is always the possibility of something causing an emergency. So, if Bessent’s absurd remark has weight, then we are always in a state of national emergency. That’s handy for Trump because that could allow him to cite the Insurrection Act and deploy our active duty military with their weapons of war everywhere in the country.
And that would make it much easier for Trump to destroy democracy and accrue all power to himself.
It Isn’t New, But It’s Just As Ugly
From The Diary of Anne Frank, January 13, 1943:
Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone. The Christians in Holland are also living in fear because their sons are being sent to Germany. Everyone is scared.
We’re living in a mad king, Jaberwocky moment like that right now and it’s very, very dangerous for us all.
Song of the Month
You must listen to Bruce Springsteen’s song Streets of Minneapolis. It’s so strong and so sad and so honoring and so brave.
A Call For You From July 4, 1776 – Pick Up The Phone
We are endowed with . . .
. . . certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .
. . . but we do not consent to this government!
We are at a choice point. We can either allow ourselves to be terrorized into submitting to Trump’s dictatorship or we stand against it.
Many ask what we can do. Read Steve Schmidt’s Defiance Is The Cure. Then steel yourself for the patriotic battle that we will win.
Now, tell me you’re seeing what is actually happening today.
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To The November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election
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