Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and Fox love dictators. Surprised?

Do Donald Trump’s attempted coup and illegal efforts to stay in office remind you of how a dictatorship works?

Trump loves and admires dictators. Remember his ongoing love affair with Vladimir Putin and his comments about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

He described the Russian president as “very savvy.” “‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine—of Ukraine—Putin declares it as an independent.”

And there was his love affair with North Korea’s brutal dictator, Kim, the guy who killed his uncle with a cannon.

Trump said, “He’s a strong guy. A great negotiator.” “He’s got a very good personality, he’s funny, and he’s very, very smart, and he’s a very strategic kind of a guy.” Trump said he and Kim “got along very well” from “the beginning.”

As for China’s dictator, Xi, Trump said, “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great, and look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”

Trump said Libya would be better off if (dictator) Gaddafi were in charge right now.”

To ruthless Philippine dictator Rodrigo Duterte, Trump said, “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem.”

Regarding Turkish dictator Erdogan, Trump said, “Frankly, he’s getting very high marks. He’s also been working with the United States.

“We have a great friendship, and the countries—I think we’re right now as close as we’ve ever been … a lot of that has to do with a personal relationship.”

Regarding Egyptian President Abdel, who instituted a coup (sound familiar?), “We agree on so many things.

I just want to let everybody know in case there was any doubt that we are very much behind President el-Sisi.

He’s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation.

We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt.

The United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong backing.”

In every case, Trump indicated his appreciation for a dictator’s approach to law and order, i.e., harsh, bloody crackdowns, which is why the attempted coup at Congress should be no surprise to anyone following him.

Then, there is Tucker Carlson, Fox’s #1 Trumper. He went to Hungary to suck up Victor Orban, the nation’s dictator, for life.

Carlson met with Orbán in Hungary for the interview and suggested that the US was less free than the European country, where Orbán has targeted his country’s media, judiciary, and political system.

Orbán has also implemented widely-condemned policies against migrants and the LGBTQ community.

Then, Carlson continued his dictator appreciation tour:

Last year, Tucker Carlson traveled to Budapest to celebrate Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s aggressively illiberal and xenophobic prime minister, by filming a week of episodes that included “lessons” the United States could draw from his anti-democratic, immigration-restrictionist rule.

In a sit-down interview, Carlson nodded approvingly as Orbán railed against “post-Christian, post-national societies­” and their “very risky” mixture of Muslim and Christian communities.

This week, Carlson visited another country undergoing an alarming democratic erosion and fawned over its far-right ruler: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

Broadcasting from both Rio de Janeiro and the capital, Brasília, Carlson has been urging his viewers to pay attention to what’s happening there.

Bolsonaro, who has been president of Brazil since 2019 and is an ally of former President Donald Trump, has weakened environmental protections, including the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and reallocating land pledged to indigenous tribes.

He has also spread conspiracies about COVID-19 vaccines.

Carlson’s goal with these field trips is to rehabilitate the images of reactionary leaders who have rightfully earned international scorn.

But by parachuting into Brazil without any apparent grasp of its politics and culture, Carlson ended up on a sort of confirmation-bias egg hunt: finding evidence everywhere that the real threats in global stability are coming from a liberal internationalist order.

Is it a coincidence that Trump engineered a coup attempt after praising dictators and Carlson is out there also praising dictators? Or is this just a normal outgrowth of Fox and the Republican party?

Think of a political party where almost none of the Senators and Representatives has the courage, political or physical, to say a bad word about the dear leader.

Does that sound like America or more like Russia, China, and North Korea?

And if the GOP has its way, that will be America. Already, the Republicans have installed six Supreme Court Justices who vote in tandem to restrict the poor’s voting and reproductive rights.

Already, the GOP has installed officials in each state who will do precisely as Trump tried to do in 2020: Create Presidential electors to the electoral college, who will vote for a Republican President, no matter what the popular vote may be in each state.

We are about three months away from a sudden awakening that voting doesn’t matter as much as loyalty to the GOP. We can see it already, where despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, a large segment of the population and virtually all Republicans claim that the election was stolen.

10 new state laws shift power over elections to partisan entities

Each law was enacted by a Republican governor or by Republican-controlled legislatures voting to override Democratic governors’ vetoes.

These new laws include one that requires local election boards in Arkansas to refer election law violation complaints to the State Board of Election Commissioners — made up of five Republicans and just one Democrat — instead of their respective county clerks and local prosecutors

Another generally bars the executive and judicial branches in Kansas from modifying election law

Arizona Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, can no longer represent the state in lawsuits defending its election code.That power now lies exclusively with the Republican attorney general — but only through Jan. 2, 2023, when Hobbs’ term ends.

In Kentucky, where the Republican secretary of state and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear were heralded for their bipartisan collaboration to give electors absentee and early voting options they’d never had before, state law now explicitly opposes such coordination during a state of emergency.

Beshear vetoed this bill, which curtails his office’s emergency powers, but the Republican-majority legislature voted to override him.

The bottom line to all of the above:

1. Trump admires dictators so much he attempted a dictatorial coup to avoid being thrown out of office
2. Rather than condemning the coup, Trump’s followers supported the proven-false narrative that the election was stolen from him.
3. The GOP, having lost all sense of morality, slavishly supports Trump.
4. Because of America’s “minority rule” election system, the Republicans, despite having a minority of votes, managed to place people in positions of control over electoral votes.
5. The Republicans also have placed a super-majority of right-wing ideologues into the Supreme Court.

We are now on track to having a fascist government that will restrict women’s rights, and the rights of non-Christian, non-white, and non-wealthy people who were not born in America.

That is the GOP goal. That is the religious right’s goal.

That is Trump’s goal.

And that is about to happen, with or without Trump himself.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.

The most important problems in economics involve:

1. Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
2. Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics. Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone
3. Social Security for all
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
5. Salary for attending school
6. Eliminate federal taxes on business
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually. 
8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
9. Federal ownership of all banks
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9% 

The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY