​“Trump has habitually attacked the news media in rallies, responses to reporters’ questions, and many hundreds of tweets. He has repeatedly called the press “fake news,” “the enemy of the people,” “dishonest,” “corrupt,” “low life reporters,” “bad people,” “human scum” and “some of the worst human beings you’ll ever meet….More than 600 of Trump’s tweets targeted specific news organizations, led by The New York Times, CNN, NBC and MSNBC, Fox News and The Washington Post. He called the Times, among other slurs, “fake,” “phony,” “nasty,” “disgraced,” “dumb,” “clueless,” “stupid,” “sad,” “failing,” and “dying.” He characterized the Post as “fake,” “crazy,” “dishonest,” “phony,” and “disgraced.”
 
--"The Trump Administration and the Media," Committee to Protect Journalists (2020) 
 
And this was during his first term, when he demeaned and undermined the press at every opportunity. Brace yourself for what will follow.
 
Consider the 2024 presidential campaign. Both Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos, owners of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post respectively, overruled their editorial staffs and instituted a new policy of not endorsing presidential candidates. Unquestionably, these decisions were prompted by a fear of offending the eventual winner, Donald Trump. Both owners have interests outside their newspapers linked in multiple ways to federal policies. It appears that years of Trump’s threats got to them and they backed off from further offending him. Their white flags of surrender were the worst possible developments for defenders of a free press.
 
That is, until the immediate aftermath of the election. Scurrying to be the first media sycophants past the post, MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, hastened to Mar a Lago to kiss Trump’s…ring. The cable network’s viewership was shocked that two of its most vigorous Trump critics turned tail and ran from their brand so quickly and so abjectly. Since their grovel, the network has hemorrhaged viewers at an alarming rate and may not survive.
 
Not to be outdone, ABC announced that it was settling a defamation suit against it and one of its stars, George Stephanopoulos, for $15 million, for calling the decision in Trump’s losing case brought by E. Jean Carroll, a “rape.” This despite the fact that the Judge in the case also termed it a rape, and that, had the defamation action gone to trial, it was likely to result in a slam-dunk victory for ABC.
 
Nevertheless, Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, which owns ABC, decided to settle for reasons similar to those motivating Bezos and Soon-Shiong, subservience being the better part of valor.
 
It remains to be seen what some of the other Trump media targets will do. He recently sued the Des Moines Register, its hapless* Gannett parent company, and Ann Seltzer, its pollster, for “election interference.” Their “crime?” A pre-election poll showing Kamala Harris up by three points on Trump. Again, this case is ridiculous and certain to be laughed out of court, should it come to that. The timorous folks who run Gannett may well follow ABC’s capitulation and also succumb to Trump’s threats.
 
*In 2023 Gannett eliminated many of its op-ed columns because opinion pieces “may offend some readers.”
 
Trump has also threatened CBS for a positive Interview of Harris prior to the election. No word yet on whether the network that at one time harbored the greatest collection of broadcast journalists ever assembled (e.g., Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid et al.) will, like its fellow media mavens, also cave to Trump.
 
Should the monumentally unqualified Trump toady, Kash Patel, become Director of the FBI, it is a given that he will go after additional media outlets and personalities. In his 2023 excuse for a book, Government Gangsters, he included an “Enemies List” of individuals, several of whom are members of the media.
 
Topping this off, there is certain to be more to come of threats and intimidation of the media from Trump and his vassals. The worst possible outcome of all of this is the across-the-board caving of the American media, something I never anticipated. If the surrender continues without resistance, you can kiss the great American experiment goodbye.
 
Combine all of this abuse with the continuing death of local journalism, which plays directly into Trump’s hands. For the last several years, the attrition has amounted to 2.5 local newspapers closing their doors every week. Today, almost 60 percent of U.S. counties are “news deserts” with little or no access to local news. The only “news” Americans may get will be Trump administration propaganda supplemented by whatever conspiracy theories spread on the Internet.
 
Don’t think that the American people will rise up and express their outrage at what Trump is doing. They appear to care not at all that the information rug is being pulled out from under them. They’d rather wax hysterical about drones in the night skies than contemplate anything serious.
 
Trump doesn’t have to win his barrage of lawsuits. It is the chilling effect they are already having on the media that is the real victory.
 
Are we witnessing the end times of the American Fourth Estate? It is an open question whether it will survive the second Trump era.
 
Dick Hermann
December 27, 2024

​In 1492, it took Christopher Columbus’s three ships more than three months to make landfall in what he believed was Asia, but was in fact the New World. To keep his sailors from mutinying as the days and weeks passed with the precarious little ships moving farther away from Spain, and no sign of terra firma, the Admiral of the Ocean Seas kept two ship’s logs: a secret one indicating the accurate distances the flotilla traveled each day; the other a fake log showing that the explorers had traveled a much shorter distance. Columbus shared this log with his sailors to calm their anxieties about being far from home.
 
In short, the Discoverer cooked the books.
 
Five hundred years later, cooking the books became an unfortunate feature of company practice in a series of notorious episodes of corporate financial fraud. Enron became an early 21st century poster child for book cooking in order to appear much better to shareholders than its actual performance would warrant. A few years later, the now defunct Lehman Brothers did something similar that went a long way to triggering the Great Recession. It was not alone among its Wall Street brethren when it came to lying about its finances. Subsequently, the Trump Organization was found guilty of cooking the books, first to shower senior executives with perks in order to evade paying taxes; then again to cover up the true purpose of what came to be labeled “hush money” payments to Trump’s paramours.
 
Book cooking became a “thing” on Day One of Trump’s first term, when he and his horseholders insisted that his inauguration crowd was the largest ever, an absurdity easily disproven by photographic images. Then, during his tenure, there were attempts to intimidate career civil servants tasked with collecting and reporting economic and other statistics when they were not favorable to the administration. These efforts included multiple, and fortunately unsuccessful, attempts to distort the accuracy and legitimacy of census population counts used to distribute seats in the House of Representatives, draw electoral districts, and allocate more than $1.5 trillion annually in federal funding; 1,400 changes to federal agency websites that eliminated science-based information on climate change and environmental issues (per Silencing Science Tracker);  harassment of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) when its data (e.g., economic growth, unemployment rates, rate of inflation) did not reflect positively on the administration; and threats against the independence of the Federal Reserve when it did not lower interest rates. Because Trump and his MAGA advisors were government greenhorns, the Era of Alternative Facts was just getting started, and there were still some guardrails, as well as guardians of the public trust in high positions, the damage was for the most part, contained.
 
Containment will be less likely the second time around. The cabinet and other senior appointees Trump has chosen for the top administration jobs will not hesitate to doctor the data if it appears unfavorable to him. If, for example, the inflation rate rises, a furious Trump will probably pressure BLS to tone it done a bit for public consumption. A more pliant Federal Reserve, fearful of losing its independence, may be less inclined to raise (or not lower) interest rates if threatened by Trump. The career civil servants who tote up the numbers, write and issue the economic reports every week or month are probably not going to be around for long if they persist in dealing in and doling out accurate data.
 
Cooking the federal government’s books is a huge problem. Data suppression or alteration poses serious risks across the board. Millions of businesses rely on accurate data in order to plan ahead, make investment decisions, decide whether to expand their workforces or not, loan money and so forth. Similarly, the health, welfare and economic status of various demographic groups are affected by government data. Should Trump 2.0 make this bleak scenario come to pass, mayhem will surely follow.
 
Dick Hermann
December 21, 2024

The giant middle finger that President-Elect Donald Trump is wagging at the American public by virtue of his cabinet and other appointments is fraught with incredible danger. He—and they, if confirmed—will on day one be confronted with a world rife with perilous crises everywhere, both foreign and domestic. Any one of these could suddenly escalate into a major national security event. If these appointees lack the background, capacity and judgment to act and react wisely to these multifaceted and incredibly complex and inter-related situations, the United States and our allies are likely to be in serious trouble. For example:
 

• Cold War 2.0—This is the big one. Maneuvering through the 40-year first Cold War required the total attention and creativity of America’s best strategic thinkers and national security megastars. This new trilateral version involving the U.S., Russia and China, is even more challenging. Among them, they have 12,500 nuclear warheads aimed at one another, overlaid by highly complicated trade relationships, alliances, global competitions, proxies and clashing interests. If Ukraine succumbs to the Russian invasion, can Taiwan be far behind? China’s Xi will be heavily influenced by what happens there. If U.S. oil production increases (as Trump wants) and oil prices consequently plummet, threatening Russia’s finances, will a desperate Vladimir Putin throw aside whatever constrains his aggressive instincts today? There are many more vexing questions around Cold War 2.0. The U.S. government will need all the brainpower and experience it can muster to answer them.

 

• North Korea—Kim’s love affair with Trump did nothing to temper his nuclear ambitions and threats hurled at South Korea. The latter’s current domestic chaos makes an invasion by the North ever more tempting. Trump and his cronies do not appear up to the task of defending our ally. Will Trump’s disinterest in honoring our defense commitment spur the South to develop its own nuclear weapons?

 

• ran—The Mullahs are clutched. Their Middle East proxy troublemakers—Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and to a lesser extent the Yemeni Houthis—have been severely diminished. Their drone and missile attacks on Israel failed. Their own people despise them and wish them gone. Their entire geopolitical strategy is in shambles. All they have left is their nuclear program. International Atomic Energy analysts believe Iran could build a serviceable nuclear weapon in a month, thanks in large part to Trump’s reckless abandonment of the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA). Iran last week successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. If Iran goes nuclear, will Israel attack? Will Saudi Arabia rush to develop its own nukes? What will that do to our ability to keep a lid on potential Middle East turmoil?

 

• Nuclear Proliferation—see above.

 

• Gaza—The war will likely continue because Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot, for very personal reasons, allow it to end. If and when it does, he may lose his job and even end up in prison.

 

• Lebanon—Hezbollah is beaten for the moment, but like a bad penny, terrorist groups never seem to stay down for long (see the Syrian example, below). At some point, both Hezbollah and Hamas could be back.

 

• Syria—With the butcher Assad ousted by the sudden surge of a rebel al-Qaeda offshoot, Syria could become yet another destabilizing force in the Middle East with evil intent towards Israel and the United States. In addition to the conquering rebels, a number of other armed groups occupy different parts of the country, including remnants of ISIS. Syria could easily become a hornets’ nest for the U.S., which still has 900 troops stationed there. It could also represent an opportunity for us to gain some influence in the region if we assist whatever new government emerges. Trump’s “hands-off” policy is short-sighted, naïve and dangerous. This is an incredibly delicate situation and requires managers with expertise and experience.

 

• Germany and France—both of our principal continental allies and the European Union’s biggest economies have recently descended into political chaos. French President Macron’s government had to resign following a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly. Next week, Olaf Scholz’s German government faces a similar vote in the Bundestag.

 

• The UK—New Prime Minister Keir Starmer is seeing his approval rating plummet. Only five months into his term following a landslide election victory, a plurality of voters say that they would vote for the Conservatives if an election were held today. This is an unprecedented turnaround.

 

• Sudan—The U.S. needs to pay attention to this gruesome human tragedy. Continued neglect will only lead to more problems in the Horn of Africa.

 

• Climate—We may have already lost the battle to tamp down global warming and the devastating weather events it generates and that keep intensifying. Trump’s denial of this existential threat will only make things worse.

 

• Pandemic Preparedness—If Trump’s first term handling of Covid-19 is an indication, good luck. Moreover, this time around, the key figures tasked with this function have absurd ideological aversions to taking prophylactic measures. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an anti-vaxxer in charge, is the worst possible person to perform this critical function.

 
This is only a selection of major issues that will confront the second Trump administration. Throw in public health, immigration, the regulation (or not) of artificial intelligence, crypto currencies’ impact on the global financial system, mass shootings, and growing income inequality and the table looks set for a disaster of historic proportions should many of Trump’s singularly unqualified and ill-equipped appointees take office. Picture a drunken managerial train wreck like Pete Hegseth in charge at the Department of Defense; whale and bear gourmet RFK, Jr. at Health & Human Services making polio, MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis), hepatitis B, HPV and varicella (chickenpox) vaccines unavailable, not to mention Covid-19, influenza, RSV and pneumonia jabs inaccessible or just harder to get. Or Tulsi Gabbard, an intel know-nothing, purveyor of Russian propaganda and secret fan of Syria’s Assad supervising the vital work of 18 intelligence agencies. The ensuing madness and negative consequences if any of these oddballs or their equally weird and whacko fellow nominees assume their intended roles in Trump II are incalculable. We could be severely weakened at the very time we cannot afford to be or look frail. And don’t think that our adversaries won’t notice. According to former Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, they are already celebrating in the Kremlin and I should add, likely salivating in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
 
The thin red line of defense against this predictable tragedy is the U.S. Senate. If its Republican majority has any sense of responsibility and any backbone left at all, it needs to reject the unqualified clowns, creeps and criminals (see. e.g., soon-to-be top trade advisor, Peter Navarro) Trump has middle-fingered for the top positions in government. If it allows these nominees to assume their appointments, those who approve them will be equally complicit in whatever catastrophes might follow.
 
For four years, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris told us that they were fighting for the “soul of America.” A recent survey found that 59 percent of Americans think the Trump transition is going along just fine. If Senate Republicans endorse this Dope-ler Effect red shift away from sanity and competence, we will witness the putrefaction of America’s soul.
 
Now the good news, such as it is:
 
I am not overly worried about a nudnik like Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. This is a guy who was ousted from leading two veterans organizations with miniscule staffs because his management prowess was found wanting. The thought that he could manage an outfit with 3 million employees is laughable. Moreover, DoD has a long history of stymieing and surviving the worst instincts of its top civilian leadership, many of whom were highly capable. The careerists who run the Pentagon are likely already lining up some shiny objects to distract Hegseth, such as giving him a nice airplane and helicopter so he can travel around the world and inspect cool things like F-35 Strikefighters, aircraft carriers and the latest in guided missile cruisers and killer drones. The idea would be to keep him occupied with diversions and away from the serious stuff.
 
I am also not all that concerned with a bozo like Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Even the highly competent professionals who have served in this recently created position have had little success in achieving its mission of coordinating the intel produced by 18 disparate agencies, each one of which has two decades of experience resisting this office. If they could confound James Clapper and Dan Coats, they won’t have much of a problem with a mediocrity like Gabbard. Moreover, our allies, from whom we gather around 60 percent of our actionable intel, will be reluctant to share their information with someone they view as a highly unreliable Russian asset with the judgment of a demented gnat.
 
The appointment that should concern us the most is RFK, Jr. as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He would be in a position there to do immeasurable damage should he follow through on his long-time skepticism about childhood vaccines. The damage he could do if he takes them off the table or just bad-mouths them to the public will cost lives.
 
These cranks are just the tip of the iceberg, but a critical tip nonetheless. Many other proposed Trump appointees are poised to do big-time damage to agencies they might head and which they have advocated eliminating. Fortunately, the bureaucracy is quite adept at damage control.
 
Let us hope.
 
Dick Hermann
December 14, 2024

​So much for the moral high ground.
 
President Biden gave his son, Hunter, the most blanket of blanket pardons ever issued in order to keep him out of jail for a crime for which he was found guilty by a unanimous jury of his peers, another for which he pled guilty, and whatever else he might have done during his name-dropping in return for riches in Ukraine and China.
 
Pardoning Hunter is something Biden insisted multiple times he would not do. I understand that a parent does not want his offspring to suffer, but a president is not just any parent. Rather, he is the pater familias of all of us. He takes an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, which includes honoring the rule of law. Biden just set that aside.
 
The worst aspect of Biden’s hypocrisy is not that he went back on a promise. Presidents do that all the time. No, it is that by pardoning Hunter, he has played directly into Trump’s filthy little hands, giving him the gift of justification for the many corrupt pardons he is likely to grant to the January 6 insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow the government of the United States. This will amount to a traitorous criminal president pardoning people who committed the high crime of treason. Trump will draw a false equivalency with Biden’s corrupt use of the pardon power, which will temper any criticism by Democrats or the media. Moreover, voters will not process that. It will soften the outrage to “ho-hum” levels.
 
Hunter Biden is no innocent victim. He spent years shamelessly parlaying his father’s name in return for big bucks, and he committed at least two criminal offenses–buying a gun illegally and evading taxes. He was legitimately prosecuted, not persecuted. I’m sorry he became an addict, but that does not obviate his also being a criminal.
 
Until Biden’s reckless abuse of his presidential power, I believed that only Trump was above the law, thus rendering the now completely discredited refrain that “no man is above the law” a joke. The Supreme Court saw to that with Chief Justice Roberts’ preposterous presidential immunity opinion last summer tailor-made as a get-out-of-jail-free card for Trump. Roberts’ lame opinion was reminiscent of the indulgences (a.k.a., get-out-of-Hell-for-a-fee cards) the Catholic Church dispensed back in the 16th century that led to the Reformation. As I said in this column before, this was the worst decision in the history of the Court, dwarfing Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu v. United States, as well as the plethora of other horrible Roberts Court decisions.
 
I was appalled when, in his last days in office, Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, Roger, wiping out his drug conviction. But this is worse, even more shameful because it provides Trump with what he will argue is a great excuse to pardon the scum of the Earth now rotting in jail for their crimes of defiling the Capitol and the Constitution.
 
Add one more nail to the coffin of Biden’s legacy, to go with keeping a Hamlet-like, hesitating nonentity like Merrick Garland as Attorney General despite his slow-motion bungling of Trump’s prosecutions; half-baked support of Ukraine in its desperate fight for survival; unmitigated support of Netanyahu’s Gaza butchery; gifting Afghanistan to the Taliban; and feeble attempts at trying to convince voters that their lyin' eyes could not see how great Bidenomics was despite having to pay a king’s ransom for milk, eggs and bread every week; etc.
 
Oh, and one more thing: Hunter’s post-pardon announcement statement that “I took responsibility for my actions” is nonsense. If he really did, he would reject the pardon, face the consequences of his actions, and do his time.
 
The race to the bottom continues. I am sad for our country. America imploding is not a pretty sight.
 
Dick Hermann
December 6, 2024

​Historically, the Doge was the head of the Venetian government in the glory days when Venice dominated the Mediterranean world and controlled trade with the East. Venice became stinking rich and never had to concern itself with debt or deficits.

Today’s DOGE is something quite different. It stands for Trump’s extra-governmental agency, the “Department of Government Efficiency,” to be directed by the two-headed monster, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The DOGE is tasked with cutting the government down to size by eliminating waste in addition to entire government departments and agencies.

Notwithstanding Musk’s bloviating about slashing government and the federal budget by at least a third, this will be no easy undertaking. The vast majority of government spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, other health programs, national defense and veterans benefits, all of which Trump has pledged not to mess with. That does not leave much for the dynamic duo’s shears. Musk is sure to recommend eliminating NASA, which would leave his own SpaceX company in command of the space program. The conflict of interest this represents is gargantuan, but distractions such as this never bother Trump.

Compounding Elon’s and Vivek’s dilemma is the major fiscal cliff coming up next year when the bulk of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire. Now with Republicans in total control of Washington, they are certain to extend them and thus add a couple of trillion more to the debt and deficit. Moreover, if you listened to what Republican candidates were saying during the campaign, they do not intend to stop with an extension. They are certain to go for additional tax cuts because that is what fuels Republican fever dreams. “The fact that they will be staring at a deficit of almost $2 trillion when they start down this path is of no interest to them (or to Democrats, I might add, who never let an opportunity for shiny new spending objects pass). Thus, don’t hold your breath waiting for Congress to come up with offsets to pay for any tax cuts.

Other than voting “No” and trying to look fiscally responsible via their public comments, Democrats have no good options. Their only hope, and it’s a bad one for the rest of us, is that Republicans rushing headlong to cut taxes as much as they can, will fuel inflation and doom themselves in future elections. In other words, that they will have learned nothing from the Biden example.

The only hope for Congress to stymie these efforts is members’ sensitivity to protecting their constituents. If there is a threat to take something away from voters, I suspect that their Senators and Representatives won’t like it.

Which brings us back to the Musk and Rama show. Judging by their public statements, they have no clue as to where federal money goes. It is likely to be a rude awakening when they find out. These guys are going to be in deeply over their heads. They may propose a few gimmicks that are likely to be rejected. Look for them to slink out of town quietly when they realize what they are up against.

Dick Hermann
December 2, 2024