Unlocking ‘American Monster’ — Donald Trump

Due to Trump’s violent threats, I am removing the paywall through weekend on my American Monster series. This is the fourth in a series on US criminals accelerating global fascism.

How many more passes does he get to instigate violence? Lock him up for f**k’s sake.

I am unlocking the entire American Monster series through the weekend. Please share with your pro-democracy networks, and thank you to everyone who supports me as I do this work. Please consider joining our community.

I intentionally profiled Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Roy Cohn as the first three in my American Monster series before getting to Donald Trump. Trump does not exist in his current form without Manafort, Stone, and Cohn.

• Gray cardinal Paul Manafort, fresh from installing a pro-Putin mobster into the presidency of Ukraine, then turned his attention to Trump, working for free to get ‘whole’ with Oleg Deripaska.

• Political ratf**ker Roger Stone had been grooming Trump for office since the ‘greed is good’ era. Stone, who like Trump, was mentored by Roy Cohn, a mob lawyer with a gift for amorality.

• Roy Cohn taught Trump and Stone to deny, deflect, countersue, and never admit defeat, while using indictments as an opportunity to manipulate the narrative away from facts and toward victimhood with a dose of patriotism and make-believing prosecutors had a vendetta.

In order to clearly see these US criminals impacts on global fascism, please read each of their profiles before diving into the fourth in the series — disgraced, impeached, and indicted US criminal Donald Trump.

Here is a link to all three previous reports:

“Amazing we had a megacrook in the White House — what a triumph for international evil.”—Ruth Ben-Ghiat

To understand what a triumph for international evil the installation of Trump was in our nation’s highest office we have to go back forty years…

• To that time Australia refused to allow Trump to build a casino in Sydney due to mob ties;

• To that time when Trump returned from Russia and began taking out anti-NATO ads in the nation’s top newspapers and talked about running for president;

• To that time he began selling Trump-branded condos in secretive, all-cash transactions — more than 1,300 — as lax regulations and oversight made it easier for the Russian mob to expand throughout the US;

• To that time he partnered with Russian-mob backed financiers to build Trump SoHo, and how one of the partners was allegedly involved in the prostitution of minors — arrested aboard the world’s largest yacht and later acquitted. The other partner in the deal’s father was a “syndicate crime boss for Semion Mogilevich,” according to the FBI. Mogilevich was once public enemy number one, wanted for fraud, money laundering, RICO conspiracy — who lucked out when former FBI director William Sessions took his money to reputation wash him. Multiple bagmen for Mogilevich lived in Trump properties — some were even busted hiding out in Trump Tower.

Any of the above would have been enough to qualify Trump as an American Monster, and any of the above should have disqualified him from holding the office of president. But being under contract to NBC, Unreality TV knowingly sold a myth.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”—Trump, July 27, 2016, inviting the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton

When Trump made that statement, it was clear he knew Russian intelligence was working for him — recall who his campaign manager was — American Monster No. 1 — gray cardinal Paul Manafort.

The Russians had hacked Hillary’s campaign — using Wikileaks to mule thousands of pages of documents. US intelligence agencies reported the hack was the work of Russians in order to benefit Trump’s election.

He memorably denied it was the Russians in a debate with Clinton — expertly deploying the tactical minimizing propaganda of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ — and why wouldn’t he? The Russians had been bailing him out for decades — including the time an oligarch bought a property from Trump for $50 million more than Trump had paid four years earlier, at a time when he conveniently owed Deutsche Bank $40 million.

He was famously a financial failure with a half dozen bankruptcies and 4,000 legal actions pretending to be a success, routinely bailed out with money stolen from the Russian people, and Trump’s flirtations with Russia were out in the open.

Do you think Putin will be going to the Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?—Trump tweet, June 18, 2013

It was obvious to even a casual observer, he was Russia’s candidate — Putin praised his intelligence, and Trump courted the dictator — Trump’s narcissism and need for flattery a well-known national security risk, making him an easy mark for kleptocrats.

I believe we will have a very good relationship with Russia. I believe I will have a very good relationship with Putin.—Trump, 2016

And he did. He declared his love for a mafia state.

While in office, he knocked everything off Putin’s checklist.

On June 6, 2020, I tweeted a slide shown in 2019 at a NATO officer’s briefing. It revealed the following Russian aims:

▶️ Reduce US role in providing European security ✅

▶️ Weaken Transatlantic links ✅

▶️ Undermine faith in US security commitments ✅

▶️ Weaken US Intelligence Community ✅

▶️ Challenge and undermine Western liberal values ✅

▶️ Erode US world leadership and global respect ✅✅

▶️ Weaken US society; undermine social cohesion ✅✅

▶️ Show the US as the enemy of Islam ✅

▶️ Establish post-truth, post-fact information space ✅

▶️ Discredit independent media ✅

▶️ See Russia treated as (equal) partner ✅

And last but not least:

▶️ Reach a grand bargain to ensure stability.🤷🏼‍♀️

A la Molotov-Ribbentrop, dividing Europe into spheres of influence where Russia gets one half, US/NATO gets to keep the other.

In other words, throwing the front-line states under the bus to appease Russia.

If Trump gets a second term, he will compete the mission.

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”—Donald Trump Jr., Moscow 2008

It’s important to understand that MAGA was a Russian op — it was recycled fascism from Manafort in Ukraine and Hitler in Germany. The mythic past is a fascist trope, and those who cast Trump off as a clown missed the point. He’s a ‘megacrook’ delivering us into the arms of fascism — ‘a triumph for international evil’.

Who were the heaviest promoters of MAGA in the run-up to the 2016 election? The St. Petersburg mindwar operatives run by Prigozhin — the figurehead for the International Research Agency and Wagner — both arms of Russian intelligence and the military.

From my Information Warfare thread:

14/ Let’s pause for a moment to hear from a man paid by Russians to build a cage for a fake Hillary paid by Russians at a fake rally hosted by Russians.—me, July 18, 2019

I took the time to run Trump’s 2024 announcement speech through Jason Stanley’s ‘How Fascism Works’ and the entire playbook is there — the mythic past, anti-intellectualism, unreality, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety. It’s worth revisiting:

Trump Unmasked: A Guide To Becoming A Demagogue

Ruth wrote earlier this week why she calls Trump a ‘competent authoritarian’, and it’s because “as a propagandist he has pulled off a rarity: convincing tens of millions of people of his lies —big and bigger— while operating in an open society with a pluralistic media environment. Most leaders who succeed at mass deception on this scale work within autocracies, not democracies.”

Why I Call Trump a "Competent Authoritarian"

So what makes Donnie run?

I once wrote a side by side comparison of Robert Mueller and Trump to reveal what kind of men they were. There was no comparison. Trump was a well-known POS, a chiseler who didn’t pay his workers — Mueller was a war hero, who took down mobsters.

Son of Fred

Woody Guthrie wrote a song titled Old Man Trump, based on the two years he rented an apartment from Trump’s father Fred in Brooklyn.

Here’s a verse:

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
He stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line

Represented by Roy Cohn in the ‘70s, Fred & Son settled out of court over racial discrimination charges brought by the Justice Department over racist policies at their 39 properties. In 1927, the New York Times reported Fred Trump was arrested at a Klan rally in Jamaica, Queens.

Trump’s life is well-documented — born in Queens, silver spoon, military school where he was a known bully, bone spur lies to avoid military service, a fake TV show, performed as his own fake publicist, ran with convicted sex offenders and was accused of raping a teenager, known for walking into the dressing rooms of beauty pageant girls, caught on tape bragging about being a sexual assaulter, had multiple model wives — including his first wife, whose father was an informant for KGB-adjacent Czech intelligence agents, and whose third wife was a sketchy model.

Tony Schwartz, who wrote the fake character that duped millions in ‘Art of the Deal’, said Trump’s father was “a brutal guy… with very little emotional intelligence” in a Frontline interview.

Trump rarely speaks of his Scottish-born mother, but he did get his elaborate hairdo from her.

When I watched him deploy the vocabulary of misogyny in 2016, it cemented my belief his ascension was an outright attack on women. The denigrating words he used — ‘pig, dog, blood coming out…’ — I knew it was going to be hard times, and I wasn’t alone.

“We are going to face attacks on every right we fought the last 60 years to gain... If you voted for Trump, I am tired of trying to see things your way while you sit in your holier than thou churches slash white-power meetups refusing to see things mine. Did I just lump you in with white supremacists? No you did that to yourselves. You voted for the same candidate as the KKK… If you voted for Trump, I do think you’re a racist. I do think you’re a homophobe. I do think you’re a misogynist…

I tried to be polite but now I just don’t give a damn, because let’s be honest, we don’t live in polite America anymore. We live in grab ‘em by pussy America now, so thank you for that. Being polite was exhausting…

And don’t come at me with how you just didn’t like Hillary. This was bigger than Hillary. This wasn’t your standard, ‘I just want lower taxes and smaller government’ Republican. We had Germans warning us that this guy was scary, and still you cried ‘emails’ or ‘Benghazi’ or ‘that voice.’.. I am so sick of damaged people damaging the rest of us… we’re all abused partners saying to each other, ‘but you don’t know what he’s like when he’s not racist.’”-Tess Rafferty, November 10, 2016

Thanks to those who elected Donald Trump, we don’t live in a decent or polite America anymore — we have to reclaim our decency, our politeness, our empathy. We can’t let monsters steal them, and they are trying. President Biden is a decent man, but Trump’s ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ cult is apparently unaware of Biden’s goodness.

We were warned in 2016, and we ignored the warnings. Germans, historians, mental health experts all tried to tell us Trump was using dangerous, fascist rhetoric. He emboldened racists, misogynists, homophobes, white supremacists. Angela Merkel warned us “the old certainties of the post-war order no longer apply.” Trump did that.

And why did the head of the FBI throw the election to Trump — a known con, someone whose victims I interviewed nearly two decades ago for promoting a pyramid scheme that left them broke — not realizing that Trump’s promises of wealth relied on stealing their own… not realizing that most of his business models were pyramid schemes. Trump U anyone?

When we reflect on the recent past, recall the Comey hearings in 2017, when asked by Eric Swallwell about Trump’s mobbed up partner in Trump SoHo, Comey refused to comment — the mobbed up partner had been an informant. But Comey threw the election to Trump when he announced he was reopening the Hillary email investigation days before the vote. The damage to our democracy is incalculable. Was it New York FBI officer Charles McGonigal — indicted for working for the Russians — who whispered in Comey’s ear? What happened to unleash that monster in our White House…

Trump weakened environmental protections — rolling back more than 100 environmental policies while in office during a time when the world is on fire — and for that he is a monster. His Republican activist plants on the Supreme Court continue to weaken environmental protections, steal women’s rights, and rollback the freedoms of a diverse America.

And even as a flurry of indictments reveal Trump to be a national security risk, I still go back to Helsinki — when his fealty to Putin caused a collective gasp in Langley.

He has remade whole parts of America in his ugly image — a fake rich guy, because all money launderers are fake rich guys — playing victim to pick the pockets of those who don’t know MAGA is a Russian op. At 77 years old, he’s playing to a crowd of his peers.

“What is Donald Trump to Putin? Just another Yanukovych.”—Michael MacKay, RadPod Ep66

Trump accelerated global fascism, denigrating the US on the world stage, while propping up dictators. He, like his billionaire backers, were betting on fascism winning.

Now, with the latest indictment, they’re not so sure and since they don’t have an alternate candidate, they have to still pretend they like the monster.

It’s important to read the indictment — it’s 45-pages of straightforward treason. He lied, he knew was lying, and he tried to steal our votes to stay in power.

A few months ago, I took the time to map out metrics, which revealed that Trump’s fanbase is shrinking, but the media is addicted to propping him up.

I wrote:

Despite his staggering number of legal entanglements and the fact that his speeches embody the fascist playbook chapter and verse, the media continue to prop up the metaphorical ‘corpse’ like a marathon viewing of  Weekend At Bernie’s, an American black comedy where a deceased mobster is the main star.

The Biggest Loser and Unstable Non-Genius: Donald J. Trump

A top GOP fundraiser called Trump “a metastasizing cancer who if he is not stopped is going to destroy the party. Donald Trump is a loser.”

The party is engaged in a massive criminal cover up for its roll in J6 — did you happen to see all those conspirators mentioned in the indictment? It’s not a short list.

When Trump stalked Hillary Clinton on stage during debates — skulking menacingly behind her — he looked and behaved like a monster.

And then he told Russia to hack her — knowing that Russian intelligence was already working to get him elected.

I’m sorry cult, but MAGA was a Russian op.

MAGA is a Russian op.

Woody Guthrie wrote another song, titled ‘All You Fascists’:

I’m gonna tell you fascists
You may be surprised
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose

On his guitar, were these words:

This machine kills fascists.

So does this one.

****

Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you as well to all those who support my work with your generous coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. Some of you prefer making subsidizing donations via venmo, and it’s always greatly appreciated. If you wish to gift a membership, you can do so by donating to the ko-fi or venmo accounts, and indicate it’s for a gift, or do so here.

Founding Members will be invited to our first monthly Founder’s Day event with ‘Russia’s War on Everybody’ author Keir Giles on August 20. All paid members receive invites to our ‘Speakeasy’ zoom salons, and weekly wellness checkins, Bette’s Happy Hour. Our next ‘Speakeasy’ zoom salon is August 13, at 1 pm PT, with ‘How to Stop Fascism’ author Paul Mason.

Also, a private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous@gmail.com. 🥹

We just have to see that the battle for democracy is broader. It's deeper.—David Pepper

I need people to see they're on the frontline. Wherever you live, if you’re doing this work, you are the frontline.—David Pepper

The message should be a fair deal… fairness everywhere.—Martin Sheil

💘

“I say a silent prayer of thanksgiving as I walk upon the earth.”-Audrey Peterman.

“May the viral hope for truth and humanity wash away the chaos of these years.”-S.C., Bette community member

“Something Sacred never dies in almost all of us, who can hear the invitation of Truth…”-words from a Bette Dangerous community member

“Non-violent protest is a life-affirming activity as it seeks to promote a more humane society.”-Ellen Zucker

“Nothing but blue skies from now on…”-Irving Berlin

💘

(Below, Trump denying he knows a close mobster business associate in a deposition, November 5, 2013)