Things that need to be said

Let’s start by calling the 57 missile strikes that have sunk boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean what they are: murders. The Pentagon cannot provide the names of the 192 people killed by missiles fired on civilian boats. The Pentagon calls the victims of the aerial bombings narco-terrorists or drug smugglers. No one knows the names of those who have been killed on the boats because no attempt has been made to learn their identities or to provide proof that what the boats and the 192 victims carried was indeed drugs. They just fire missiles and drop bombs and call what they are doing “authorized.”

Hegseth’s Pentagon could prove that they are hitting drug boats by picking up the debris left by the sunken boats and showing the drugs, if in fact there are any, but they don’t do that. They make another strike or multiple strikes to sink the debris, whatever it is – plastic wrapped boxes, stuffed garbage bags – it’s hard to see from the grainy videos they have largely stopped publicizing. In one early strike on a boat in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic reported retrieving packages filled with cocaine, but those packages, if they were recovered at all, have not been provided to U.S. law enforcement as evidence, because there were no prosecutions resulting from the boat’s sinking. The men on the boat were killed during the strike. Their bodies were not recovered, either, because the U.S. Navy makes no attempt to recover the bodies of the alleged drug smugglers or anyone found to have survived the missile attacks.

In what other context has the United States of America set out to kill alleged drug dealer or smugglers without evidence, much less an arrest, trial, and conviction resulting in a death sentence? None. I don’t believe if a drug dealer or drug smuggler was arrested, tried and convicted that there is a federal statute allowing a death sentence for a drug crime. The former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is currently in jail in The Hague awaiting trial for killing alleged drug dealers without trial and conviction. What he did as president is being described in charges as “crimes against humanity.”

Donald Trump commits crimes against humanity every day. There is a legal word for this campaign of murder that has been carried out on the orders of Donald Trump: impunity. The word connotes being exempt from prosecution or punishment or any legal consequences. The Supreme Court infamously issued its decision in Trump v. United States awarding Trump immunity from prosecution for decisions he makes and actions he takes as part of his official business as president. The immunity granted to Trump – and to any future presidents – was not described by the Supreme Court as transferrable to others if they follow his orders in carrying out what he claims are his official duties. But Trump has made it clear that he will pardon anyone facing prosecution for following one of his illegal orders, so that question is, for the time being anyway, moot.

Trump has expanded the immunity against prosecution granted to him by the Supreme Court. He has taken what is understood by legal experts to be a specific form of criminal immunity and applied it to practically everything he does. He did not have the legal authority to rename the Kennedy Center, but he did it anyway. He did not go through the legal processes mandated under the law that apply to making changes to the structure and appearance of the White House before he tore down the East Wing and began construction on his absurd “ballroom.” He just did it.

Perhaps most importantly, Trump did not seek the support of Congress under the Authorization for Use of Military Force Act before he ordered the massive bombing campaign on Iran. He just did it. The deaths of Iranian nationals, especially civilians, could be seen as murders because of his refusal to follow clearly written law. But that does not matter to Donald Trump. He can kill unidentified alleged narco-terrorists in boats on the open waters of the Caribbean and Pacific. He can kill anyone in the vicinity of the bombing of what he would call military targets in Iran.

Trump has taken the presidential immunity invented by the Supreme Court and turned it into permission to do anything he wants. He is taking the gilded Boeing 747 given to the U.S. government by Qatar and turning it into Air Force One, and when he leaves office, he is going to take the plane with him to be part of his “presidential library.” That is, by any rational measure, the theft of at least a billion dollars from the U.S. Treasury, but it is small beans compared to what he is trying to do by suing the IRS, over which he has authority, for $10 billion because his tax records were publicly released in 2020 by an IRS contractor. Recently, a so-called “settlement” of the case has been announced, whereby in return for dropping his lawsuit, a slush fund of $1.7 billion will be created, over which he has sole control, to pay off insurrectionists who attacked the Capital on January 6, 2021. It isn’t even clear if the pay offs would go only to those convicted of crimes committed on that day, whom he has already pardoned. Apparently, if you claim you attacked the Capital, you would be eligible to be paid “compensation,” for what isn’t clear, but what does it matter?

Trump would be barred from receiving any of the funds himself, but “entities” associated with Trump are not prohibited from applying for compensation. You can be certain that Trump has lots and lots of entities, and if he doesn’t have enough, he’ll invent more.

So, there will be no money for the 140-some police officers who were assaulted during the attack on the Capital, no money for the relatives of those who died on that day or afterwards. But lots and lots of money for the insurrectionists. If all 1,600 of those pardoned by Trump applied for compensation, there is enough in the slush fund to pay each of them a million dollars.

If there isn’t enough money after Trump has paid off anyone he wants to, including “entities” he controls, he’ll just grab some more money from the Treasury he already raids almost daily. Where do you think the money for all that gold leaf in the White House is coming from? Donald Trump?

MSNOW host Chris Hayes described in a BlueSky post having his “spirit leave my body” when he read the terms of the so-called proposed settlement of Trump’s IRS lawsuit.

I can speak only for myself and Tracy and the cats and Ruby, but our spirits leave our bodies as we watch what this criminal monstrosity is doing on a daily basis. People used to warn against “normalizing” Trump’s behavior by not calling it what it is.

We are far beyond worrying about any sort of normalization of Donald Trump. We are on a lost highway of wonderment at this point, looking around for signposts that might give hints of where we’re headed. But there are none. Trump does what he wants, and there is nothing to stop him. The law does not apply anymore. The Supreme Court took care of that.

We would be defenseless if we didn’t still have elections, but the Republican Party – aided and abetted once again by the Supreme Court – is trying to negate the right to vote along with the right to control your own body and your right to drive a car or walk down a street without being shot dead by an agent of the state wearing a badge that reads ICE or CPB.

It needs to be said that this country is in more trouble than it has ever been in. It can be saved by people of goodwill, but the question is, are there enough of them?