A simple question - is Trump a tyrant? an Authoritarian? a fascist? There is a simple test.
Who does he surround himself with?
A leader knows he or she needs the smartest people supporting him, so they try to get people smarter than themselves to work for them. Does Trump do this? Are you kidding? Michael Bloomburg shared that Trump called him after the election:
"Bloomberg was reflecting on a phone call between the two after Trump's election in 2016.
"We had a pleasant conversation," Bloomberg said. "He asked what he should do. I said, 'hire people smarter than you,' and he said, 'there aren't any.'"
Bloomberg added that he tried telling the president-elect that he needed people who had knowledge of areas like defense and finance, and "all of these things that he knows nothing about."
"And he said, well, he did know something about it. But I said if you could get good people and delegate to them, then you can have a decent administration. And he said, 'Well, thank you very much,' he couldn't have been more polite as I remember. He did give me his private cell phone number, which I didn't bother to write down and I've never talked to him since," Bloomberg said."
Do we have an example of a tyrant that felt threatened by powerful, smart people under him? Yes. Stalin. Stalin famously purged his military of all the smart, powerful generals under him because he was afraid they would overthrow him. The result? When Hitler broke his promise to Stalin in WWII and invaded Russia, Russia lost 25 million people.
Trump has gotten rid of any semblance of smart experienced people, experts like Mattis and Kelly, and puts in people whose only qualification is blind loyalty to himself.
But, isn't Trump really smart? After all, hasn't he taken over the Republican Party? Doesn't he dominate conservatives? How can he do that if he isn't really smart? Uh, no.
You need to be smart to run a country. It is complicated. It takes focus, planning, delegation, staying on top of things, study, reading, brains. But Trump is not running a country. All he is doing is destroying things. Whatever the black president did before him he is destroying. It doesn't take brains to destroy things, it just takes heartless cruelty and hostility.
Wasn't Hitler smart? Didn't he almost conquer the world? He was a nitwit. The fool was conquering Europe and he opened a second front and attacked Russia, and then he declared war on the United States for no reason other than Japan's attack on Pear Harbor. Stupid.
So, it is easy to see whether Trump is a tyrant - since he surrounds himself with only sycophatic toadies, he is a tyrant. And since he only destroys rather than builds, he is a tyrant.
I hope my conservative friends see this clearly, and are as repulsed as I am.
