Part 127: The Madness of Donald Trump – Hopefulness and Resistance in Los Angeles

Published November 6, 2024.

Nov 06, 2024

Members of the Los Angeles Police Department escort a gadfly out of Los Angeles City Council after a pro-Donald Trump outburst by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).

Please support my work with your subscription, or for direct support, use Venmo, CashApp, PayPal, or Zelle using zachary.b.ellison@gmail.com

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

Throughout the last year, I’ve almost fastidiously avoided writing about the “Presidential Election” precisely because of the obvious: the more attention paid to Donald Trump, the more it fed his ego and media machine. The fact though is that the national press couldn’t simply have shutoff Donald Trump, even knowing that he presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America. Simply put, he’s so unstable and unpredictable that his own national security establishment lost confidence in his ability to govern. This goes beyond just January 6, 2021, but rather to a persistent pattern of erratic behavior. The paranoid politics of Donald Trump are exactly the type I grew up fearing would take hold an increasingly petty, divided United States of America. The failure to imprison Donald Trump for attempting to overthrow the government may go down as the greatest political blunder in American history.

Simply put, President Joe Biden has underestimated how potent Trump’s radicalism was and how reticent the American public was to support yet another establishment Democrat. Speaking only days before the election, Mike Pence declared at Dartmouth that he could “never” vote for Kamala Harris, remarking that he was concerned about the “direction of the Republican Party.” Pence added, “I feel like the party—some voices in our party—are starting to pull back from supporting our allies, notably in Eastern Europe,” before suggesting that this was somehow equivalent to an issue to abortion. Pence’s description was an understatement. It’s not just that the so-called “Make America Great Again” movement risks nearly 80 years of established American foreign policy; it’s that it betrays it. Donald Trump has made no secret of his coziness with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and so it was that Putin did his part for Trump, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation identifying Russia as the origin of “hoax bomb threats...in five battleground states - Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania - as Election Day voting was underway.”

Donald Trump’s closeness with Vladimir Putin, despite being the source of mockery in many Saturday Night Live sketches, has never been fully unraveled. It’s worth remembering that the first thing Donald Trump did when elected President in 2016 was to hold secret meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The investigation into Trump’s links to Russia ultimately dead-ended under Special Counsel Robert Mueller, with the conclusion that:

“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would, electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Guardian journalist Luke Harding previously wrote that Donald Trump first traveled to Moscow in 1987 in his book Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, noting that it was arranged by “the top level of the Soviet diplomatic service.” A KGB file on Trump likely predated that visit, and Trump himself has made no secret of the contact and the hotel proposal it led to, describing it in his own ghostwritten book, The Art of the Deal. The consequences of a transition to Trump again are already clear, with the Biden administration scrambling to deliver military aid to embattled, free Ukraine, according to a Politico report by journalists Paul McCleary and Jack Detsch. They write that “Trump surrogates have crisscrossed Europe and embassies in Washington for months to talk about plans presented to the candidate to either flood Ukraine with weapons or cut off all support if no peace deal is reached.”

This doubt about his course of action escapes all prior context that Trump in fact is extremely pro-Russia. So even as the primary axis of debate about American foreign policy has swirled around the conflict in the Middle East between Israel, Hamas, Iran, and its proxies in Yemen and Lebanon, the Middle East in global terms remains simply a second front. Eastern Europe and indeed our allies at large should fear what a Trump presidency would mean for American foreign policy grounded in “containment” dating back to the administration of Harry Truman. Even as so many Americans have been essentially brainwashed, it’s important to remember that Truman had actually served in the military in World War I, unlike Trump, who was unfit for military service. Is it any surprise that a number of the most esteemed American military leaders have denounced Trump? Respected military leaders such as General Mark Milley, General Jim Mattis, General John Kelly, and Admiral Bill McRaven have all denounced him, with the first three having served under Trump. The failure to hold Trump accountable for attempting to overthrow the government has simply opened the door to further madness, and it’s absolutely dangerous.

No amount of issue polling or ethnic politics can justify allowing American national security to be so blatantly undermined. Another investigation alone is unlikely to yield clear answers and is equally likely to be obstructed as the prior investigation was under Mueller. It’s not to say that America needs a military coup, but stopping investigations as the Department of Justice reportedly is now that Trump appears likely to take office is a complete disservice to the basic idea of law in this country. This isn’t to say that disorder is the solution. But given the gravity of the threat posed by Trump to Ukraine, with a reported 10,000 North Korean soldiers now set in addition to a fleet of Iranian-made drones set to attack, it’s outrageous to simply allow our allies to betrayed on the battlefield. The people of Russia aren’t our enemy, but Vladimir Putin clearly is, and so it should come as no surprise that Kremlin-backed media is already celebrating Trump’s success. This situation is simply unacceptable, and it’s important to remember that Trump himself ahead of the election showed zero-respect for the idea of voting.

Many have questioned whether the media itself has fed into this dynamic of disbelief about what a second Trump administration will mean in concrete terms. Trump’s blatant, desperate, false red-baiting strategy was despicable, a new low for American politics lacking even the veneer of legitimacy of McCarthyism. Just how foolish has the American electorate become to accept such demagoguery? This isn’t the nation that I grew up revering, and it’s strangely unclear whether a course correction can be achieved. America has always been a land of petty grievances, even as it’s expanded across the continent, such that the idea of courage itself is now openly mocked. Trump has made fun of military veterans, even Medal of Honor winners, and political opponents such as the late John McCain. Donald Trump is so fundamentally un-American that there should be no rationalizing this election as anything but betrayal.

Closer to home in Los Angeles, there have been some bright spots. Challenger Ysabel Jurado has defeated incumbent Councilmember Kevin de León, who himself had embraced what some characterized as Trumpist tactics. Measure A, which would make permanent a local County-wide funding stream for homelessness services, overperformed. So even as Trump has sought to demonize immigrants in Highland Park, claiming they would “poison the blood” of our country, Jurado, the daughter of Filipino immigrants, stood resolutely. Beginning her remarks by noting her father had warned her to watch her language, haven controversially to some said “Fuck the Police” in a dirty trick recording, Jurado, who might be the closest thing to the Obama legacy running in Los Angeles, at 33 years old, takes office representing the most development-friendly district in the city. A tenant rights attorney, dressed in pink, described how “oh man, did they try to break you. They slashed our tires, they ran us off their lawns, they grabbed us, they stalked us, and they ridiculed us and belittled us, and they tried to pit us against each other.” Jurado recounted the verbal abuse she’d been at the receiving end of, saying, “But here’s the thing: they must have forgotten that I’m HLP (Highland Park) born and raised, and it takes a whole lot more than that to scare us out of standing up for our community.” Jurado then said she was “unbroken.”

Standing in the heart of progressive Los Angeles with current local politicians such as Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia, Hugo Soto-Martinez, and Eunisses Hernandez present, it was hard to see how the second largest city in the country wouldn’t again simply try to hold off Trump’s demagoguery just as we had before. Politico journalist Melanie Mason characterized this as “resistance,” quoting a bevy of California officials, including newly elected Senator Adam Schiff, a nemesis of Trump, who didn’t mention Trump by name in his victory speech over former Los Angeles Dodgers player Steve Garvey, instead remarking on “the big fights to protect our freedoms and protect our democracy.” Yet Adam Schiff’s attempts to be at the forefront of Congressional resistance in twice impeaching Donald Trump have all but seemingly backfired. Los Angeles Times journalist Gustavo Arellano asked Soto-Martinez what he thought of Trump’s victory, and all his shrug-off was simply like that Trump was over there seemingly across the country. Whether Los Angeles, much less California, reacts to Trump’s victory and how this time may be more muted than the recent rioting after the Dodgers won baseball’s Major League World Series. Fencing had ringed the First Street Federal Courthouse that morning in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles City Council was its usual disordered self. A gadfly wore an inflammatory sign in reference to the religion of City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield. New President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who has announced his intention to crack down on such behavior, took a picture with his iPhone of the man, who was later ejected after a pro-Trump outburst in the closing minutes of the meeting. Councilmember Kevin de León was absent as he was this morning. Times journalist Gustavo Arellano had written about KDL’s response to being questioned about his blatant, condescending lying about Ysabel Jurado: “Oh, we can sit down, we can go through all of things, if you want. Trust me.” Except hardly anyone outside of the Los Angeles Police Department seems to really trust De León anymore, nor should they. It’s almost Trumpian; once you start lying, it’s hard to stop. De León partied at the more established San Antonio Winery. Jurado’s 55-44% lead was still holding solid, wider than Trump’s 51-47%. I had started the evening at the Paramount on Cesar Chavez Boulevard in Boyle Heights. With national political talk predominant about the Latino swing to Trump, it was a younger crowd at the Los Angeles Public Press/L.A. Taco/Capital & Main party. Could it be that in one of the Democratic-led cities so reviled by Republicans that we’re just better at weeding out the phonies and the frauds?

Never in the history of this country has confidence in elections been so low. The Westside Current had published a story by Jamie Paige suggesting that efforts to get the unhoused to vote were exploitative in castigating the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in writing “a seemingly benign detail but one that raises accountability concerns, mainly when the same volunteer names repeatedly appear on multiple ballots.” Jurado had credited the group in her victory speech. In contrast to Kamala Harris, a former California politician much like Kevin de León, Jurado who actually had the backing of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, hadn’t simply tried to runaway from the socialist label, much less communism. Could it be that Donald Trump, who scorned the idea as part of his pattern dishonesty, is actually much closer to the actual communists than he cares to let on? Page, using a supposed expert’s quote, characterized the DSA’s homeless voter outreach tactics as “aggressive canvassing” and called them “wrong.”

Ysabel Jurado had noted her campaign had knocked on 170,000 doors. Former City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who was present at Jurado’s election night part, wrote on this platform, in his piece “Looking for a silver lining in Los Angeles,” that “I still can’t fully fathom the impact of the huge MAGA victory, but I am determined to stay engaged in the battles to come.” Donald Trump’s movement has been successful precisely because it knows where the darkest parts of America come from. As former Los Angeles Times journalist Matt Pearce recently wrote about the dynamic, “The blood-and-soil nationalist movement in the United States is led by a real estate developer who’s oddly less interested in the soil.” I couldn’t agree more, Trump’s success came in real estate and at the end of the day, it’s the soil in Ukraine that he likely cares more about than say New Jersey. It’s not just that Trump operates like a mobster or that “Obsessions with gore, disfigurement and death run through Trump’s rallies, public appearances and record of governance.” It’s like the Soprano’s but without the panic attacks; after all, that’d be too soft for Trump, a man so depraved that in a leaked recording made by deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, he recalled about Trump: “His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside.”

Donald Trump has poisoned America. It all started with a lie: that President Barack Obama wasn’t really born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but rather Kenya. That such obvious fraudulent tactics have found such great success in this country raises critical concerns about our democracy in relation to national security. While I understand the desire to have faith in the electorate, a candidate should be able to pass basic security clearances before assuming office; otherwise, we’re at the mercy of corruption. The lack of even basic safeguards for vetting candidates for office raises serious concerns about whether American national security has been so fundamentally compromised that even with the concession of Kamala Harris, there shouldn’t be renewed, immediate focus on governance reforms. Perhaps even the Los Angeles City Council can meet at night, when people are able to attend, as a less reputable parallel to the opaqueness of the U.S. Congress. No, I won’t be dropping the “Obama” from this publication, not while Trump is still lurking around town.

Link: Mike Pence Offers His Prescription for Politics

Link: Hoax bomb threats linked to Russia target polling places in battleground states, FBI says

Link: Controversial Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak is leaving the US

Link: Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election

Link: The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow

Link: Biden team prepares to rush last-minute aid to Ukraine

Link: Military leaders who served under Trump sound the alarm about him winning a second presidency

Link: DOJ moving to wind down Trump criminal cases before he takes office

Link: Putin’s Pals Gloat Over His Cunning ‘Play’ to Help Trump Win

Link: The anti-Trump resistance roars back — with California at the forefront

Link: Column: Kevin de León takes a page from Trump’s playbook at Boyle Heights debate

Link: Column: Political novice Ysabel Jurado celebrates on her road to Eastside history