By Douglas John Imbrogno | NotesBeforeYouVote.com | Our families certainly know us well, but so do those folks with whom we spend so much of our every waking hour: our colleagues and co-workers. As the clock ticks down toward one of the most consequential elections in American history — one that could well conclude the country’s constitutional history — we take 60 seconds to hear insights, alarms, and warnings from some chief officials who worked closely with Donald Trump in his first administration.
EPISODE 5 features some key officials — such as former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley and Chief of Staff John Kelly — who tried to restrain, block, and divert Trump from his worst autocratic compulsions. And here is an important point for all undecided voters; for people pondering voting third party (in effect, voting to help Trump’s vote tally rise); and to those of you in Trump-Ride-or-Die families and communities, but who are free to vote your conscience in the voting booth. The point is this: All the sensible folk such as Mark Milley will be long gone from a second Trump term. It will only be true believers, enablers, yes-men-and-women; and people who won’t say ‘No!’ when Trump seeks to use the armed forces, National Guard, and the vast powers of the U.S. Presidency to settle scores and pursue the harsh and gleeful retribution that seems the main driving force of his second run for the White House.
BORROW THESE MEMES
Feel free to borrow and post some of the images from Episode 5:
ARTICLES WORTH READING
THE NEW YORKER: Trump Is Not Pivoting to Policy, Now or Ever: The ex-President is promoting the idea that his hateful propaganda comes from Heaven itself. | By Susan B. Glaser | sept26.2024
FROM THE ARTICLE: While Democrats agonize over the proper levels of policy detail required to prove Kamala Harris’s suitability for the Presidency, Trump and his acolytes have gone deep into the racist recesses of the American psyche to run a campaign meant to stir the passionate hatreds and deepest insecurities of their followers …
… One of the big lies powering this election: the charade that Trump is actually an ideological MAGA warrior engaging in legitimate and substantive policy dispute, and that that policy agenda is what makes him appealing to his otherwise unrepresented followers. This canard has been one of the most persistent fallacies we’ve heard from Republicans about Trump, a category error that fundamentally misses what kind of politician he really is.
I was reminded of this often overlooked point while moderating a book launch for “The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within,” an important new academic work by Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former national-intelligence official covering Russia and Eurasia, and two academic colleagues, Erica Frantz and Joseph Wright. Their study places Trump in the international category to which he properly belongs—that of an aspiring autocrat who has taken over the Republican Party and turned it into a “personalist” vehicle for himself, the type of party that, in the authors’ words, exists “primarily to promote and further the leader’s personal political career rather than advance policy.” …
Where does all this leave the non-MAGA Republican? We actually know the answer to this one: they are hunkered down, still largely planning to vote the party line, averting their eyes, ignoring the slurs, and pretending that Trump and his campaign are something other than what they are … | READ ON
BREAKING NEWS: From ‘Democats for Kamala …’
SHARE EPISODE 5: ‘Who Knows Trump Best’
INSTAGRAM: Share this link
TWITTER: Share this link
FACEBOOK: Share this link
TIKTOK: Share this link
CARTOONS WORTH SHARING
Here are some ignificant, comparative utterances in U.S. presidential history:
CHECK OUT PAST ‘NOTES BEFORE YOU VOTE VIDEO
EPISODE 4: ‘Chaos IS the Campaign’
EPISODE 3: ‘OP-ED LIMERICKS’
EPISODE 2: ‘SHAPE-SHIFTING JD WINCE’
EPISODE 1: ‘NO CLIMATE FOR YOU’
PS
WHO KNOWS TRUMP BEST