Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash

A New And Crazier Trump Would Threaten The World With War

Phil Garber

--

Four days before trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called his counterpart in Communist China to allay fears that trump could spark a war with China if he lost the election.

Then two days after trump supporters led a deadly riot at the Capitol, Milley again contacted the Chinese general to reinforce his assurances that the U.S. would not start a war with China.

The Washington Post reported that Milley contacted Beijing the second time partly because of a Jan. 8 conversation with then- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who had asked the general what safeguards were in place to prevent an “unstable president” from launching a nuclear strike.

“He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy,” Pelosi told Milley, according to a transcript of the call. According to the cited call transcript, the general replied, “I agree with you on everything.”

The U.S. could very possibly find itself in any even more dangerous situation if trump wins and if he wins, he will very likely not have advisors like Milley around to tone down his belligerence but will have a room filled with far, far right maniacs.

Trump has increasingly used words and images of Armageddon and violence and has been compared with historical tyrants, including Hitler. Days after trump gave a speech highlighted with the word “Bloodbath” in the title, trump posted a campaign ad that challenges reality. Trump called Biden and Democrats the “Party of Violence.”

As “proof” that Biden and not trump leads a candidacy of violence, trump featured clips of Biden saying he would take trump “behind the gym.” Trump neglects to note that Biden made the statement in 2018 after trump was found to have boasted that he could “grab a woman anywhere and she likes it.” Speaking at an anti-sexual assault rally at the University of Miami, Biden was asked if he would debate trump and instead said, “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

The ad also includes clips of several years of quotes from other Democrats and non-Democrats, including non-elected officials Madonna, Nicolle Wallace, Rick Wilson, Eric Holder, and Chris Cuomo.

Biden has given the Israeli government an ultimatum to halt the killing of civilians or risk losing vital U.S. military aid. Trump, however, has tossed proverbial gasoline on the fire while not calling for a cease fire.

As political and financial pressures mount, trump is becoming even more frantic and more desperate, using increasingly violent and provocative language and showing that he is more likely to take irrational actions that he believes will win him support from his base, including calling on Israel to annihilate Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Trump has used words like “bloodbath” to explain the results of a Biden win in November. Further evidence of trump’s use of violence in his campaign include a video he reposted on his social media site showing Biden bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck. The video clip, captioned “3/28/24 | LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK…” is set to somber orchestral music, showing a pickup truck speeding through the rain and decorated with trump campaign promos and a so-called “thin blue line” American flag whipping in the wind off its rear gate.

Trump also recently told supporters at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., that if Biden is re-elected, the U.S. will “cease to exist.”
Speaking at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Mich., trump told the rabble that if Biden wins in November, “It could be the last election we ever have. I actually mean that. We don’t win, I think this could be the last election we ever have. That’s where our country’s going.”

In response, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., offered words of hope and insisted that even if trump isn’t elected, Americans will still have things like elections, sunshine, rain, flowers, dogs, cats and Doritos.

In mid-March, Trump said on social media that the members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, rebellion should be jailed. In December he vowed to be a dictator on “day one.” In August, he said he would “have no choice” but to lock up his political opponents.

Trump used combative words that were also wielded by a far right Republican member of congress who suggested that Israel use nuclear weapons in its war against Hamas.

Trump surrogate Roseanne Barr had some chilling words when she spoke at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser for Kari Lake’s Arizona Senate campaign. The comedienne gushed about trump and weirdly warned college students to quit college or have their lives ruined by Democrats.

“So I’m just going to say to you, please drop out of college, because it’s going to ruin your liiiiiives,” Barr said. “Do me a favor, drop out, they don’t teach you nothing good, uh, email me or Twitter me or whatever you call me, and I’ll help you with your life, but you gotta get out of college, because it isn’t nothing but a bunch of devil-worshipping, baby blood-drinking, Democrat donors.”

And as the political season starts to boil, anti-Muslim rhetoric is again heating up as a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Arizona has cast aspersions against his opponent because of his Muslim roots and beliefs.

Trump’s latest comments came in the wake of an Israeli air strike that killed seven aid workers with the World Central Kitchen. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Israel “deeply regrets” the strikes, in which the military fired upon three vehicles carrying the aid workers on a coastal road in Gaza and he said Israel would make sure it did not happen again. But Netanyahu did not support a cease fire nor did he back away from Israeli plans for a major offensive in Rafah, despite objections from the international community, including those of President Joe Biden.

The conflict began after Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas killed 1,139 Israelis and foreign nationals including 766 civilians and 373 security personnel. Hamas also took captive 253 Israelis and foreigners. Israel declared war, tightened its blockade and launched one of the most severe bombing campaigns in modern history, before beginning a ground invasion on Oct. 27, 2023 to destroy Hamas. To date, more than 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, including more than 14,000 children and 9,000 women. Nearly all of the strip’s 2.3 million people have been displaced while Israel’s tightened blockade and attacks on infrastructure have led to a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, including a collapse of the healthcare system and an ongoing famine.

As demands increase worldwide for a cease fire, trump said in a recent interview that Israel needs to “finish what they started” and “get it over with fast” because Israel is “losing the PR war” because of the visuals coming out of Gaza.

“You’ve got to get it over with, and you have to get back to normalcy. And I’m not sure that I’m loving the way they’re doing it, because you’ve got to have victory. You have to have a victory, and it’s taking a long time,” Trump said in an interview with The Hugh Hewitt Show.

Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., 72, also referred to the war in Gaza and said he also wants to “get it over quick” and suggested the answer may be an Israeli nuclear attack to wipe out Gaza “like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.”

“We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,” Walberg said at a March 25 political rally in Dundee, Mich. “It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick. The same should be in Ukraine. Defeat Putin quick. Instead of 80 percent of our funding for Ukraine being used for humanitarian purposes, it should be 80 percent, 100 percent to wipe out Russian forces, if that’s what we want to do.”

After a firestorm of protest against his remarks, Walberg tried damage control and said he used the words Nagasaki and Hiroshima as a “metaphor to convey the need for both Israel and Ukraine to win their wars as swiftly as possible, without putting American troops in harm’s way.”

Walberg has been in Congress since 2007. As the longest tenured member from Michigan, he is the dean of Michigan’s delegation to the House. He also spent time as a pastor and as a division manager for the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago while continuing to live in Michigan.

Walberg is among the far right members of Congress as he rejects the scientific consensus on climate change because he believes “that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”

Walberg has co-sponsored a resolution to amend the constitution to ban same-sex marriage. On Oct. 8, 2023, he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Uganda, where he urged the African nation not to back down from its new law that prescribed long prison sentences and in some cases, the death penalty, for homosexual activities.

In December 2020, Walberg was one of 126 Republican House members who signed a brief contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, which trump claimed wrongfully was rife with campaign violations.

More doomsday words came from the right wing musician, trump backer and informal advisor, Kid Rock, who said Israel should threaten to bomb “30, 40,000” Palestinians “a f**king time” if Hamas militants don’t release the hostages they took on Oct. 7.

“The only wars we won were fucking ones where we were the most brutal motherfuckers on the planet,” the right-wing country rocker said. “I don’t disagree with what Israel is doing.”

In Arizona, Blake Masters and Abraham Hamadeh are engaged in an increasingly ugly campaign for the Republican nomination for Congress. Masters lost his 2022 bid for U.S. Senate while Hamadeh lost his 2022 bid to be the state’s attorney general.

Masters is running an ad showing Hamadeh in the holy city of Mecca, wearing Muslim garb known as an Ihram with minarets in the background and the words, “What does dishonest Abe Hamadeh believe?”

The ad claims that Hamadeh supported a Democratic amnesty bill “maybe because Abe’s parents were illegal immigrants… Dishonest Abe said America was founded on Islamic principles. He even said Israel was behind 9/11. Arizona can’t trust dishonest Abe Hamadeh.”

Reacting to the ad, Hamadeh posted a clip from the 2012 comedy “The Campaign,” featuring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, in which one candidate contemplates running an ad comparing his opponent who has a beard to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban because they also have beards.

Hamadeh has been endorsed by trump, who backed Masters in his 2022 primary race.

Trump continued his violent rhetoric when he endorsed Mark Burns, a candidate for congress in South Carolina who has called for LGBTQ+ executions. Burns, 45, is the pastor of the Harvest Praise & Worship Center in South Carolina. He was an early trump supporter and was a board member of “Pastors for Trump.” Burns lost two bids for Congress, in 2018 and 2022.

In 2022, Burns called for the arrest and execution of LGBTQ+ and transgender allies and individuals whom he accuses of “grooming” and being a national security threat.

“We need to hold people accountable for treason, start having some public hearings, and begin executing those who are found guilty of treasonous acts against the Constitution of the United States of America,” Burns said.

In November 2020, Burns echoed trump’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and said that “President Trump is the clear winner of this 2020 Presidential election.” After the storming of the Capitol in January 2021 by trump supporters, Burns claimed without proof that people associated with antifa, a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement, were responsible for the attack.

Burns claimed to have held a Bachelor of Science degree from North Greenville University and claimed to have served six years in the Army Reserve. In August 2016, CNN reported that Burns attended North Greenville University for one semester and did not receive a degree and that he served from 2001 to 2005 in the South Carolina Army National Guard, and not the Army Reserve. He admitted that he had lied about his education, but said he was attacked because he is “a black man supporting Donald Trump for president.”

Biden commemorated March 31 as “Transgender Day of Visibility” to “celebrate the lives and contributions of trans people, while also drawing attention to the poverty, discrimination, and violence the community faces.” The day was first celebrated on March 31, 2009, which has remained the date of commemoration for the past 15 years and this year, coincidentally came on Easter Sunday.

Trump called the commemoration “blasphemous” and demanded that Biden “issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Trump also showed his consuming and irrational narcissism and superiority complex, which clouds his judgement and is likely masking a deep inferiority complex. In recently resurfaced videos, trump claims “nobody knows more” than him. In the clip, trump says this overarching wisdom includes but is not limited to ISIS, taxes, technology, nuclear arms, drones and Democrats.

Some of trump’s omniscient statements included “Nobody knows more about nuclear weapons than me”; “I know the H-1B (virus). I know the H-2B. Nobody knows it better than me”; and “nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I’m the biggest contributor.”

--

--