October 7, 2021: Trump and a George Orwell-Kind of Moment

10/7/21: There can be no doubt that President Biden is having a serious losing streak; but this blog is never about Biden, or even about Republicans vs. Democrats. This blog is about Donald J. Trump, the most dangerous politician in all of this nation’s history. 

Again, the evidence piles up, even with Loser Don in exile in Mar-a-Lago and plotting his next moves.

Trump followed the "authoritarian playbook."

 

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A George Orwell, 1984, kind of moment.

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For example, this afternoon, I catch Dr. Fiona Hill, late of then-President Trump’s own National Security Council. To say that she offers a chilling warning in regard to her old boss is an understatement. Appearing on Nicole Wallace’s show on CNN, not “Fake News,” but interviewing, Dr. Hill explains in her new book how she watched President Trump follow “‘the authoritarian playbook’ scripted by Vladimir Putin and other ‘strongman’ leaders.” She adds, in answer to a question, that her old boss “has this autocratic strongman envy.” What Trump wanted, she says, was “fealty.” He wanted to be able to force people to pay him respect and to do as he wished. “I don’t believe Donald Trump has an ideology,” she says at one point. “It’s more about idolatry.” 

In her book, Dr. Hill writes about the danger posed by President Trump and the worst elements of his base. “Another American president, just like Vladimir Putin, might decide to stay in power indefinitely. And the next insurrectionary force that invades the U.S. Capitol Building might be better prepared than the January 6, 2021, mob. They might just happen to hold it.”

 

Throughout history, she writes, coup plotters have seized control of the methods of communication when they attempt a takeover. Silence free speech on radio and TV. And keep the populace in the dark. “Trump,” she writes, “instead recruited Fox News, Newsmax and One American Network (OAN) and used social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to sway public opinion in his favor.” He used Twitter to reach his 88 million followers and “propagate self-serving narratives and blatant lies.” 

Dr. Hill is a Russian expert and makes clear: She tells Wallace she fears America is headed in the same direction. 

In her book, There’s Nothing Here for You Now, Hill, who immigrated from Great Britain, writes: 

As a result of all this eagerness at the top to embrace fictional narrative’s for purely personal and domestic political purposes, the United States under Trump joined the historical pantheon of states promoting conspiracy theories. America was no different from Hitler’s Germany or czarist, Soviet, and modern Russia.

 

The “Big Lie,” that the 2020 election was stolen, Hill adds, was a George Orwell, 1984, kind of moment. And that’s an insider’s view from a White House run by President Donald J. Trump.