The Good Actor has Words; the Bad Actors have Daggers

Robert DeNiro offered some advice yesterday.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men.  I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.

Over the years, I’ve met gangsters here and there. This guy tries to be one, but he can’t quite pull it off. There’s such a thing as “honor among thieves.” Yes, even criminals usually have a sense of right and wrong.  Whether they do the right thing or not is a different story — but — they have a moral code, however warped.

Donald Trump does not. He’s a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself — not the people he was supposed to lead and protect, not the people he does business with, not the people who follow him, blindly and loyally, not even the people who consider themselves his “friends.” He has contempt for all of them.

We New Yorkers got to know him over the years that he poisoned the atmosphere and littered our city with monuments to his ego.  We knew first hand that this was someone who should never be considered for leadership.  We tried to warn the world in 2016. The repercussions of his turbulent presidency divided America and rattled New York City beyond imagination. 

Remember how we were jolted by crisis in early 2020, as a virus swept the world. We lived with Donald Trump’s bombastic behavior every day on the national stage, and we suffered as we saw our neighbors piling up in body bags. The man who was supposed to protect this country put it in peril, because of his recklessness and impulsiveness. It was like an abusive father ruling the family by fear and violent behavior.  That was the consequence of New York’s warning getting ignored.

Next time, we know it will be worse. Make no mistake: the twice-impeached, 4-time indicted Donald Trump is still a fool. But we can’t let our fellow Americans write him off like one. Evil thrives in the shadow of dismissive mockery, which is why we must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously.

So today we issue another warning. From this place where Abraham Lincoln spoke — right here in the beating heart of New York — to the rest of America: This is our last chance. Democracy won’t survive the return of a wannabe dictator. And it won’t overcome evil if we are divided.

So what do we do about it?  I know I’m preaching to the choir here.  What we’re doing today is valuable, but we have to take today into tomorrow – take it outside these walls.   We have to reach out to the half of our country who have ignored the hazards of Trump and, for whatever reason, support elevating him back into the White House. 

They’re not stupid, and we must not condemn them for making a stupid choice.  Our future doesn’t just depend on us. It depends on them. Let’s reach out to Trump’s followers with respect.  Let’s not talk about “democracy.”  “Democracy” may be our holy grail, but to others it is just a word, a concept, and in their embrace of Trump, they’ve already turned their backs on it. 

Let’s talk about right and wrong.  Let’s talk about humanity.  Let’s talk about kindness.  Security for our world.  Safety for our families.  Decency.  Let’s welcome them back.  We won’t get them all, but we can get enough to end the nightmare of Trump, and fulfill the mission of this “Stop Trump Summit.”

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The anti government, patriarchal, supremacist, isolationist people would prefer to have no government at all unless the government is doling out money to them and nobody else. It’s amazing what lengths they’ll go to to stop government from working.

Some were willing to choose the lies of con men and have spent 3 years trying to steal the presidential election from the majority of voters and the majority of electors. Some committed violence - assaulting cops and threatening to kill elected people.

With both efforts convincingly blocked due to no evidence of any fraud -except by the con men -there’s still another group trying to prevent government from operating. That group is known as House Republicans. The House can conduct no business at all without a chosen House Speaker and it’s becoming clearer every day that a dozen or so Republican members prefer to have no Speaker so nothing can get done.

Observers regularly suggest the impediment is the steadfast Freedom Caucus members - the 8 members that pulled the plug on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy because he refused to rearrange the federal budget to their liking then held off their efforts to cause a government shutdown. But the problems preceded the beginning of that Fleadom Caucus by many years.

For quite awhile, only the most extremist government assassins have even wanted the job of Republican House Speaker. McCarthy was part of the election denier group. He wanted the job But the Fleadom Circus had to be persuaded one by one to approve him. Quietly he made concession after concession and only after a record number of votes was he approved. One concession he regrets, the rule change that allowed one member to call for another vote that could force him out of the Speakership. Matt Gaetz was happy to use it when McCarthy broke another secret deal.

His dismissal set the stage for another fight for the job. Another Frodo Caucus guy - Jim Jordan - wanted the spot. To boost his chances, he sought and got the endorsement of Wannabe King Donald. But many a McCarthy supporter, pissed at his ouster, staged a mini revolt so Steve Scalise got more votes than Jordan. But Scalise couldn’t get enough votes to actually win the contest either and ultimately pulled his name from consideration. Which was a good thing, as the Louisiana Republican was even more extremist than Tiny Jim. He was one of a handful of Republicans who previously opposed federal or state holidays for Black men - like MLK - and his past also included a speech he gave to a notorious anti-Black white supremacy group (and lied about it) as spelled out by the guy who broke the story back in 2014. It’s a long thread by Louisiana writer Lamar White Jr that lays out every shocking detail. Scalise even billed himself as ‘David Duke without the baggage.’

But rewind the years backward to 1999 when Illinois Republican Dennis Hastert sought and got the job. He served for 8 years, the longest of any Republican Speaker in history. Another far right extremist, as a state legislator he had opposed a bill that barred discrimination against gay citizens. Once he got to Congress, he helped block the Equal Rights Amendment. And when the House banking scandal occurred, it was revealed he’d bounced 44 checks in the House Bank. He helped block President Clinton’s healthcare plan in 1993, was an abortion opponent and fought to keep the death penalty. Labor groups rated him at zero and the League of Conservation Voters rated him as a mere 13.

Earmarks bringing projects to his district included the building of a highway that even the Illinois Dept of Transportation opposed. As a secret member of a nearby land trust, when the bill passed, he made several million in profit. It was also alleged that during his tenure as Speaker, he was receiving illegal payments from Turkey’s government. Though he denied it, after he left Congress, he worked as a lobbyist for the Turkish government.

After a 3 year investigation by the FBI regarding unusual bank withdrawals it was determined he’d been making hush money payments to a man that Hastert had sexually molested when he was a boy on the high school wrestling team Hastert had coached. In 2016 when he was sentenced to serve 15 months in prison for banking violations (because the sex abuse charges had passed the statute of limitations), the judge called him a serial child molester who had molested at least 4 boys with one as young as 14. Another man then emerged saying Hastert had molested him at age 9 but no charges could be filed there either due to the statute of limitations.

It’s rather ironic that current Speaker candidate Jim Jordan was also a college wrestling coach who’s been accused by half a dozen former wrestlers of helping cover up the sexual abuses of a notorious Ohio State athlete’s physician who abused more than 100 athletes. Several reiterated their accusations this past week while Jordan campaigned for the powerful position.

The next Republican Speaker was John Boehner, who served from 2011-2015. He too, was an extreme rightwinger who was anti-gay, anti-abortion, wanted to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70, fought against Obama’s Affordable Healthcare plan, tried to enact spending freezes on food programs and defense programs. His main positive was his outspoken criticism of Ted Cruz who he once called ‘Lucifer in the Flesh.’

As far right as he was, he was regularly harassed by the more extremist Tea Party members and was forced to resign the Speakership by them. Since leaving office, he’s turned much more moderate. In his 2021 memoir, per Wikipedia, “he lambasts Cruz, Michele Bachmann, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Trump. It also covers how the Tea Party movement led to the far-right Freedom Caucus, which forced him to retire, and then morphed into Trumpism.”

He also now chairs a lobbying group called the National Cannabis Roundtable.

Then came Wisconsin Rep Paul Ryan. Though his college education was paid via Social Security benefits, he fell in with a really bad crowd: Libertarians. So he championed the privatization of Social Security and Medicare and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. When Mitt Romney ran for president in 2012, the extremist right Tea Party members weren’t supportive… until Romney chose Ryan to run as his VP. He was rated as further from the center politically than any VP candidate in the 20th and 21st centuries. But the tiny group of Tea Party had to be appeased. It’s the group now called the Fiefdom Cacas that’s been monkeywrenching the House Speaker candidates since 2010.

After they got rid of Boehner, that’s when Kevin McCarthy first tried to succeed him but those ultra-rightest few forced him to withdraw and - while Ryan publicly rejected their initial overtures, the outgoing Boehner made it cler that he was the only potential Speaker the Tea Baggers would accept. So he reversed himself and became Speaker from Oct 29, 2015 for the next 38 months.

For his Chief of Staff, he promptly chose a lobbyist for the Heritage Foundation, Ford, AT&T, Delta, Berkshire Hathaway, MetLife and Sheldon Adelson’s effort to outlaw online gambling (since he felt it would cut into his casino profits). The lobbyist previously had been Chief of Staff for Mississippi’s anti-Civil Rights Senator, Trent Lott.

Ryan left the Speakership after the Republicans lost the House majority in the 2018 midterms. While he didn’t succeed in his efforts to downsize and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, his major achievements included the Trump tax cut for the wealthiest Americans that added an astounding $1.5 trillion to the budget deficit and another budget buster bill that expanded defense spending. Like most Libertarian Republicans, he greatly expanded government spending to provide welfare to the richest.

So the track record for Republican Speakers has been pretty muddy for three decades, with an extremist minority of their members regularly twisting the House’s gonads. The question now is whether they’ll succeed in getting the scandal plagued little wrestling coach elected Speaker or find another extremist to elect who’ll loyally kiss their asses.

If they can’t shut down representative government with a violent insurrection, they still may find a way by blocking all House legislation till the November 17 deadline. They’ll still get paid, but many government employees won’t. It’ll cost taxpayers plenty but at least it’ll cut nutrition programs for women and infants.