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WOULD “DICTATOR” TRUMP KILL HIS RIVALS?  
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Thom Hartmann
May 1, 2024
The Hartmann Report
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_ Trump has unleashed his inner psychopath and if he wins this
election it’s going to get uglier here in America than most people
today can imagine… _

Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington on Jan. 6,
2021., (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

 

TIME magazine reporter Eric Cortellessa spent hours interviewing
Donald Trump, producing a shocking cover story
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week. Converting one of his opening paragraphs into bullet points for
readability, he summarized that Trump fully plans:

— “To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more
than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be
willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military,
both at the border and inland.
— “HE WOULD LET RED STATES MONITOR WOMEN’S PREGNANCIES AND
PROSECUTE THOSE WHO VIOLATE ABORTION BANS.
— “He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds
appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers.
— “HE WOULD BE WILLING TO FIRE A U.S. ATTORNEY WHO DOESN’T
CARRY OUT HIS ORDER TO PROSECUTE SOMEONE, BREAKING WITH A TRADITION OF
INDEPENDENT LAW ENFORCEMENT THAT DATES FROM AMERICA’S FOUNDING.
— “He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused
of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom
have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury.
— “HE MIGHT NOT COME TO THE AID OF AN ATTACKED ALLY IN EUROPE OR
ASIA IF HE FELT THAT COUNTRY WASN’T PAYING ENOUGH FOR ITS OWN
DEFENSE.
— “He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard
to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House
pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with
acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was
stolen.”

While each and every one of Cortellessa’s points gleaned from
Trump’s admissions and brags have the potential to transform America
into a nation more closely resembling Russia or Saudi Arabia than
anything seen here since the violence of the Confederacy, the reporter
failed to ask Trump about his most troubling threat: to use
assassination as a political weapon the way Putin and MBS do
routinely.

ALONG THOSE LINES, CNN AND THE REST OF AMERICA LEARNED
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PAST WEEKEND THAT BILL BARR HEARD TRUMP REPEATEDLY CALL FOR THE MURDER
OF PEOPLE HE DISLIKES, BUT BARR SAYS HE THINKS IT’S ALL JUST
BLUSTER. LIKE THAT JANUARY 6TH “BLUSTER” THAT ALMOST LED TO MIKE
PENCE AND NANCY PELOSI ENDING UP DEAD, AND KILLED AT LEAST EIGHT OTHER
INDIVIDUALS, INCLUDING POLICE OFFICERS.

Historians will tell you that dictators throughout history started
just this same way, making vague threats to whip up their followers
and engaging in “bluster.” And then, when the blood starts
flowing, people realized, too late, that they should have been taking
that all rhetoric seriously.

KILLING HIS POLITICAL RIVALS HAS BEEN A THEME WITH DONALD TRUMP FOR
YEARS, AND NOW THAT HE’S PROMISING TO BE A “DICTATOR ON DAY ONE”
AND TO ENGAGE IN “REVENGE” AND “RETRIBUTION” IT’S PAST TIME
TO TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY.

Back in 2016, he bragged
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he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and his followers would still
vote for him.

IN 2020, WHEN IT WAS REVEALED THAT SOMEBODY IN THE WHITE HOUSE HAD
LEAKED THE FACT THAT TRUMP HAD FLED TO THE WHITE HOUSE BUNKER WHEN
BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTORS WERE DOWN THE STREET FROM THE
PRESIDENTIAL RESIDENCE, TRUMP FLEW INTO A MURDEROUS RAGE. AS _WALL
STREET JOURNAL _REPORTER MICHAEL BENDER WROTE IN HIS 2021
BOOK, _FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION
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“Trump boiled over about the bunker story as soon as they arrived
and shouted at them to smoke out whoever had leaked it. It was the
most upset some aides had ever seen the president.  ‘Whoever did
that, they should be charged with treason!’ Trump reportedly yelled.
‘They should be executed!’”

After calling our soldiers who died at Normandy “suckers
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and saying John McCain was a “fucking loser
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over Vietnam, Trump turned on General Mark Milley when he refused
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request for his soldiers to shoot Washington, DC Black Lives Matter
protestors “in the legs.” When Milley’s book telling the story
was published six months ago, Trump used his Nazi-infested,
money-losing social media site to call for Milley himself to be
executed, saying he deserved
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LAST MONTH, BEFORE HIS CURRENT NEW YORK TRIAL STARTED, TRUMP SAID HIS
SUPPORTERS WOULD RIOT AND KILL PEOPLE IF HE WERE CRIMINALLY CHARGED
FOR PAYING OFF A PORN STAR TO HIDE HIS MORAL FAILINGS BEFORE THE 2016
ELECTION. HE GLEEFULLY PREDICTED
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& DESTRUCTION,” ADDING THAT “SUCH A FALSE CHARGE COULD BE
CATASTROPHIC FOR OUR COUNTRY.” (ONLY A TINY HANDFUL OF PEOPLE HAVE
SHOWED UP TO SUPPORT HIM AT HIS TRIAL.)

Similarly, Trump also tried to get Mark Esper, his acting Defense
Secretary, to authorize the military to shoot protestors with live
ammunition; Esper, horrified, wrote
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it in his book _A Sacred Oath
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In the few weeks leading up to President Biden’s swearing in, Trump
broke a 130-year tradition of not executing people during the
presidential transition period: he killed so many federal criminals
during those few weeks that the BBC led with the headline “_In
Trump’s Final Days, a Rush of Federal Executions
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IN A DESPERATE EFFORT TO SALVAGE THE ECONOMY HE THOUGHT WOULD
DETERMINE HIS RE-ELECTION IN 2020, TRUMP AND KUSHNER DECIDED IT WOULD
BE “AN EFFECTIVE POLITICAL STRATEGY”
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LET BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE IN BLUE STATES DIE OF COVID WHILE BLAMING
THEIR DEATHS ON DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS.

THAT “STRATEGY,” ACCORDING TO THE BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL _LANCET
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LED TO AT LEAST 450,000 UNNECESSARY AMERICAN DEATHS FROM THE GRISLY
DISEASE. TRUMP, IN OTHER WORDS, KILLED ALMOST AS MANY AMERICANS AS DID
THE CIVIL WAR BECAUSE HE THOUGHT IT WOULD WORK TO HIS POLITICAL
ADVANTAGE. HE NOT ONLY NEVER APOLOGIZED FOR ALL THOSE DEATHS AND
SHATTERED FAMILIES; HE CONTINUES TO CLAIM THAT HIS RESPONSE TO THE
PANDEMIC WAS “PERFECT.”

Last month, Trump violated his bail by re-posting a video of President
Joe Biden hog-tied with an apparent bullet hole in his forehead,
laying 
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or helpless in the back of a pickup truck. Just a few weeks later, his
lawyers told the Supreme Court
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he could assassinate his political rivals during a second term. After
all, why pass up an opportunity to legally kill people when it’s so
much fun?

AT LEAST HE DIDN’T HAVE A DOG
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COULD SHOOT IN THE FACE.

Levity aside, the issue of Trump wanting to kill his “enemies”
came up again last weekend when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins interviewed
[[link removed]] Bill
Barr, who’d apparently witnessed several of Trump’s murderous
rages.

Barr, who corruptly helped George HW Bush
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prosecution for Iran/Contra crimes and then buried Robert Mueller’s
report on the Trump campaign’s many ties to Russia, brushed
Trump’s threats aside, arguing that Joe Biden’s “socialist
agenda” is more dangerous to America than having a man who aspires
to be a stone-cold killer in the White House.  

IMAGINING TRUMP AS A MURDEROUS DICTATOR IS APPARENTLY A BRIDGE TOO FAR
FOR MOST OF AMERICA’S MAINSTREAM MEDIA: THEY’RE TOO OFTEN BUSY
NORMALIZING HIM AND HIS CAMPAIGN. BUT THE SIMPLE FACT IS THAT EVERY
AUTHORITARIAN IN HISTORY HAS NOT ONLY USED IMPRISONMENT, TORTURE, AND
MURDER AS A TOOL OF GOVERNANCE, BUT MOST DELIGHTED IN KILLING THEIR
ENEMIES.

Mussolini brought the death penalty back to Italy specifically for
political “crimes against the state,” sentencing
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people to death by firing squad between 1927 and 1943 (26 executions
were carried out).

Hitler delighted in the torture and murder of people he believed had
wronged him. Sixteen months into his reign, on the _Night of the Long
Knives_, he ordered the murder, among others, of Ernst Röhm and other
leaders of the _Sturmabteilung_ (“Brownshirts”); the last
chancellor of the Weimar Republic, Kurt von Schleicher; his own 1932
right-hand-man in the Nazi Party, Gregor Strasser; ; the rightwing
former Bavarian Prime Minister Gustav von Kahr; Von Pappen’s
speechwriter and conservative firebrand Edgar Jung
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and the leader
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the rightwing _Catholic Action_ group, professor Erich Klausener. 

After several members of his military tried to assassinate Hitler with
a bomb, he had them tortured and finally killed by hanging
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from meat hooks punched through their flesh while alive and awake. He
made a movie of their murder for distribution among his Nazi
followers.

Putin has anybody he thinks is disloyal executed or thrown out a high
window, and most recently murdered his chief political rival, Alexi
Navalny. Viktor Orbán tried
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defy the European Union and bring the death penalty back to Hungary.
 

THE MEN TRUMP MOST ENVIES AND ADMIRES — HITLER
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PUTIN, XI, MBS, AND KIM — ARE ALL FAMOUS FOR DISPATCHING THEIR
OPPOSITION WITH POISON, TORTURE, PRISON, AND BULLETS.

MBS EVEN HAD AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST FOR _THE WASHINGTON POST,_ JAMAL
KHASHOGGI,_ _MURDERED, HACKED INTO PIECES, AND HIS BODY DISPOSED OF.
INSTEAD OF BACKING AWAY FROM THE RUTHLESS DICTATOR, TRUMP’S FAMILY
TOOK $2 BILLION FROM HIM AND TRUMP HIMSELF IS SWIMMING IN MBS’S CASH
FROM HIS LIV GOLF TOURNAMENT.

George W. Bush set the modern precedent for American presidents
ignoring due process and engaging in extrajudicial torture and murder.
Between Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (along with dozens of other dark
sites), America tortured and murdered
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perhaps thousands, of prisoners without any semblance of due process;
neither Bush nor any member of his administration was ever held to
account for it, which has to have given Trump encouragement in his
plans for violence and revenge.

Trump brazenly invited an armed mob to attack the Capitol on January
6th, demanding that his security people not make them go through
magnetometers because he knew the weapons they carried presented a
threat to Pence, Pelosi, and members of Congress rather than him. Five
people died and several police officers later passed away from
injuries they sustained on that day: Trump reportedly watched the
violence on TV in the White House with delight and fascination.

NOW HE BRAGS THAT HE’S GOING TO BRING VIOLENCE
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AMERICA IF HIS WILL IS THWARTED IN THIS FALL’S ELECTION, AND HIS
FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE ACTING SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, KASH PATEL,
RECENTLY WARNED THE AMERICAN MEDIA THAT A SECOND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
WOULD BE COMING FOR YOU AND ME.

“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government
but in the media,” _The New York Times
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Patel as saying. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the
media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig
presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether
it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

We — and the mainstream media — need to take Trump and his cruel
factotums seriously. Bill Barr’s bland assurances notwithstanding,
the next time won’t be anything like the last time: Trump has
unleashed his inner psychopath and if he wins this election it’s
going to get uglier here in America than most people today can
imagine.

_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author of 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

* Donald Trump
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* assassinations
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* 2024 Elections
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* Trump agenda
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