Sunday’s Great News That’s Awful For Trump

Onward!

Scott Dworkin Mar 16

Before we start another week of Trump’s chaos, I’m pleased to have more good news for you today. I truly hope it gives you some relief, and shows you that—in our fight against tyranny—we are becoming stronger and louder, every single day.

The “Tesla Takedown” movement continued to spread this weekend, with thousands of folks protesting at nearly 80 events throughout the world. Hundreds of people showed up in Baltimore, Boston, and the Philadelphia areas.

The pushback against Musk’s unhinged co-presidency is working. Tesla’s stock is down around 48% since it peaked in mid-December. Multiple stock analysts agree that Elon’s activism plays a role in the stock plummeting. JP Morgan analysts wrote: “We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly.”

National protests took place this weekend, following the unlawful detention of activist Mahmoud Khalil—a legal permanent resident of the US, married to a US citizen. Nearly 1,000 people showed up in Times Square to call for Khalil’s release.

There was another protest held outside of the US consulate in Greenland’s capital city. Roughly 1,000 people gathered in what has been described as Greenland’s largest protest ever, rallying against Trump’s attempt to annex the island.

The country’s likely next Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said: "There is not the slightest chance that I will talk to Trump about Greenland becoming part of the US. Greenland will be Greenland.”

MN Gov. Tim Walz held his second town hall of the weekend yesterday—this time in GOP Rep. Don Bacon’s Congressional District, in Omaha, NE. The crowd of hundreds greeted Walz, a Nebraska native, with chants of “welcome home!”

Walz said this about Bacon, who refuses to do in-person town halls: “Do the damn job and answer the questions.” When asked about Trump’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the military, Walz said: “This nation is less secure and less safe because of that dumbass decision that was made … This is an outrageous attack.”

Walz also said: “There are a lot of ways folks in Omaha could spend their Saturday, but they’re fed up with Trump and want to make their voices heard. I’m here with local Democrats to listen.”

A judge put an immediate halt on Trump’s attempt to deport Venezuelan nationals using an archaic wartime powers act. The judge said the use of the “Alien Enemies Act” was illegal, and ordered all deportation flights in the air to be turned around. “However that is accomplished … make sure it’s complied with immediately,” the judge said.

Michelle Obama just launched a brand new podcast called In My Opinion, along with her brother Craig Robinson. In a yet to be released episode, recorded live from SXSW in Austin, TX, Obama said: “I worry about folks being out of work, and I worry about how we think about diversity and inclusion. I think about how we treat one another, and ... what models that’s setting for the next generation.”

Obama continued, saying: “But I find in those moments that it is better not to try to figure that stuff out alone. Share those concerns. We're not going to figure this stuff out on our own. We need each other.”

Reminding us of the power we have when we are united, Obama said: “The truth is, the small power that each of us has to do something is right in front of us. If we're all doing that, it outweighs anything that some big leader somewhere can do.”

Michelle Obama nails it. Trump can make all the big moves he wants, but we can absolutely stop him if we all do our part, and work together. That’s why we formed our activism arm—The Watchdog Coalition—so that we could unite the opposition against this wannabe-king, focusing on real actions that produce tangible results.

We’ve already sent more than 216,000 letters, and made countless calls to the House and Senate. We will never stop fighting against any cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the VA, and so much more.

And our social media following is one of the largest in all of politics, which we use to push our unmatched messaging campaigns. Like our “Hands Off Our Medicaid,” and “Republican Cuts Hurt Veterans” efforts, which generated more than a billion impressions in a matter of only weeks.

We do all of this, on top of delivering good news daily, as well as one-on-one exclusive interviews with changemakers. Unlike corporate media, we aren’t going to just copy and paste Trump’s propaganda, or repeat his lies.

We’ve been taking on Trump for 9 years, and we will never back down to him. Never.

We have zero outside investors, and we remain ad-free. Which means 100% of our funding comes from our paid subscribers on Substack. So if you haven’t yet, and you’re able, please support what we do by becoming a paid subscriber today:

No matter how you subscribe, thank you for making the world a better place.

Onward!

Scott

 

What Was That?

Joyce Vance Mar 16

Grandpa Simpson visited the Justice Department on Friday, giving a speech that must have given even his handlers pause, a campaign stump speech delivered in front of the Seal of the Department of Justice. It included both swearing—the prosecutions against him were “bullshit”—and an invective-filled screed against political rivals including Joe Biden and lawyers who have brought cases against him.

Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, started the program, sounding more like a presenter at a TV awards show than an attorney general. She lauded Donald Trump’s accomplishments fighting the war on drugs (although he’s been in office for only two months, not much time for major developments) and praised “the unsung hero Stephen Miller.” It was a political rally speech. It was not appropriate for the Justice Department.

It’s worth taking a beat to reflect on why politics and the Justice Department don’t mix. The power of the prosecutor is expansive. Prosecutors have power over peoples’ lives and liberty. An unscrupulous prosecutor could exercise that power in a fashion that inflicts damage on people who have done nothing to merit it.

Our system contains multiple checks, both internally at DOJ and in the courts, that make that sort of conduct by a rogue prosecutor unlikely and subject to severe punishment on rare occasions where they occur. Even inadvertent misconduct by prosecutors is treated seriously. But imagine a DOJ with no internal checks, a DOJ where “the boss”—the president—demands revenge, and prosecutors are instructed, either directly or, say, in the form of a speech delivered by the president, to go after people he considers enemies using all the power at their disposal. People who haven’t committed any crimes could be prosecuted, possibly jailed. They could be sued civilly. And because there would be power to shield misconduct from public view if DOJ itself has been corrupted—and we’re not talking about just a rogue lone wolf—there are far fewer limits on the damage that can be done.

Trump, for instance, called out lawyers who have brought cases against him in his speech. He has already, through executive orders, excoriated law firms he doesn’t like. He has signaled who he thinks is deserving of punishment. This could end with people in prison for no reason other than the fact that the current president doesn’t like them. And that’s no way to run a democracy. That’s not a democracy.

Typically, an event like this would have been open to employees, and anyone who was interested could have wandered by and listened from the balcony above the Great Hall if the seats down below were filled. NBC’s Ken Dilanian reported that career folks were told they could only go if they had an invite, and few of them were invited. Instead, the Great Hall was filled with Trump supporters, including red state attorneys general and people like Stephen Miller. What came next made clear why that was the case.

It was open season for petty vendettas and old wounds that are apparently still fresh for the president. It was a story in which he was the victim, condemning in others the same behavior he himself freely engages in. It was a speech that diminished both the presidency and the Justice Department in an era where there is already far too much of that going around. And he drew applause, repeatedly, from the crowd.

Trump referred to his former defense lawyers, who now occupy the key jobs at DOJ, by name as people he was with in front of “corrupt judges”—meaning judges overseeing criminal cases and civil cases against him. He referred to a senior counselor at DOJ and said he’d been “watching him on TV these last couple of weeks.” Trump’s political appointees at DOJ and their aides all get what the job is if they want to catch the boss’s attention. And he shouted out former general and former convicted (until Trump pardoned him) felon Mike Flynn “a man who went to hell.” He called Stephen Miller “something very special.”

Trump: “We must be honest about the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls … They weaponized the vast powers of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to try to thwart the will of the American people.”

Trump rehashed old grievances: Hunter Biden’s laptop, “spying” on his campaign, unspecified persecution of his family. He claimed outrage over the execution of a lawful search warrant, signed by a federal judge, for Mar-a-Lago, even though it uncovered classified documents Trump had in his possession, precisely what prosecutors told the judge they expected to find based on probable cause. It was a diatribe of lies and grudges.

Trump had trouble staying on topic. At one point, while discussing what he characterized as anti-Christian discrimination, he wandered off into “we did very well with the Catholic vote, so I want to thank them for that.” Rank, political stuff. Trump also mentioned his “mandate”—even though he won the election with less than 50% of the popular vote. Trump attacked lawyers by name, calling out Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, and Andrew Weissman in the course of his speech. He made it clear that he is still stuck on old, unfounded political grievances.

It was a disgraceful speech to give in an institution committed to holding itself outside of politics.

It was also bizarre and meandering, a president off script and rambling. He slipped in and out of talking about Bobby Knight and Indiana basketball, telling a story about meeting Knight, whom he characterized as a fan of his. He said Knight told him to call if he ever wanted to get into politics and gave him his phone number on a slip of paper and then a couple of years later Trump went looking for it and found it in a stack of paper. “It was a miracle,” he said. And then, free association in full bloom, he said that another miracle was his ear, which he gestured to, as a reminder of the July assassination attempt. The crowd applauded. A woman, perhaps Bondi, could be heard offering up an “amen.” Trump returned to talk of Knight’s support for him.

It was every Trump rally you’ve ever seen. But it was delivered in the Great Hall of Justice. In my day, we would have walked out of the Great Hall of Justice if anyone had tried to desecrate it like that. But in this environment, everyone seems to be afraid.

My friend, Law Professor John Barrett, tells the story of a very different speech coming from the Justice Department: “On Monday, April 1, 1940, Robert H. Jackson—age 48, three months into his service as Attorney General of the United States—gave one of his most important, famous, enduring speeches: “The Federal Prosecutor.” He spoke on that day to the country’s chief federal prosecutors, the U.S. Attorneys who then were serving in each Federal Judicial District across the country. They were assembled in the Great Hall at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., for the Second Annual Conference of U.S. Attorneys.”

The speech Jackson gave sat on my desk throughout my tenure in the Justice Department. It was something I reread frequently, and it remains with me. Jackson reminded those prosecutors to be wary of precisely such a man as Trump: “If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor.” Jackson understood that if politics pervaded prosecution, then people could be prosecuted because their views were unpopular or they were out of favor, not because they had committed serious crimes. Jackson, unlike Trump, encouraged prosecutors to guard against this and protect democracy.

Before Pam Bondi, there was another former Florida attorney general who became attorney general of the United States, Janet Reno. In her farewell speech, she said of democracy, “It is a fragile institution. The rule of law is fragile. The rule of law is based on people, and democracy is based on people.” She told prosecutors to do their best to protect it.

A very different message from a very different era.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Added: Don't forget to PRE-ORDER JOYCE VANCE'S BOOK since she's too modest to mention it:

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"AMERICA'S LEADERSHIP? MIA UNDER POTUS"

...the world no longer views America as the global superpower it once was. The decline isn’t just happening; it’s already happened.

Michael Cohen Mar 16

There was a time when the President of the United States was the de facto leader of the free world. When American leadership wasn’t just expected; it was demanded. The world turned to the White House for strength, guidance, and the moral authority to shape global events. But now? That role has apparently been handed off to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, who just delivered a speech that should have come from the Oval Office.

In a recent televised address, Starmer declared with absolute conviction that Ukraine shall continue to exist. He called upon all allies to ramp up pressure on Russia to negotiate an end to the war. A bold, clear, unequivocal message. The kind of statement that, in a saner world, should have been issued by the American president. But instead, we get silence; or worse, some half-baked, incoherent rambling from President Trump about how he alone could end the war in 24 hours if he just got a chance to have a nice little chat with Putin. Because that’s what diplomacy looks like to Trump: backroom deals with autocrats, maybe sealed with a greasy handshake over a Big Mac and fries.

Now, let’s get real. Donald Trump has never met a camera he didn’t love, a stage he didn’t crave, or a spotlight he wasn’t willing to push someone else out of the way for. This is a man who built his entire life around screaming look at me!—whether it was on reality TV, at his ego-stroking rallies, or standing in front of a golden elevator. So why, in a moment when the world actually needs a strong, decisive leader, has Trump willingly stepped aside and let someone else take center stage? Why has a British prime minister taken on the role that traditionally belongs to the President of the United States?

It’s because the world no longer views America as the global superpower it once was. The decline isn’t just happening; it’s already happened. And Trump, for all his bluster and bravado, isn’t interested in changing that. Why? Because being the leader of the free world means making tough decisions, taking moral stances, and standing up to dictators instead of cozying up to them. Trump doesn’t want to be the guy who pressures Putin to back down. He wants to be Putin. He admires strongmen. He worships their unchecked power. He’s spent his entire political career bending over backwards to prove that he’s one of them, not one of us.

Think about it. Why would Trump advocate for Ukraine when he’s made it crystal clear that he couldn’t care less if Putin steamrolls through Eastern Europe? Why would he rally global allies to take action when he’s spent years systematically dismantling those very alliances? NATO, the G7, the European Union; he’s insulted them, undermined them, and treated them like inconvenient roadblocks to his authoritarian fantasies. Trump’s vision of America isn’t about leading the world. It’s about isolating ourselves, cutting off our allies, and playing footsie with despots who don’t give a shit about democracy.

And that’s why Starmer’s speech is so telling. It’s not just about Ukraine. It’s about the vacuum of leadership America has left behind. It’s about the way the world now views the United States; not as a superpower to be respected, but as a cautionary tale about what happens when a once-great democracy lets a wannabe dictator take over. It’s about the fact that global leaders no longer expect decisive action from Washington. They don’t look to the White House for guidance anymore because they know Trump won’t provide it. If anything, they fear what his next move will be; will he pull support for Ukraine entirely? Will he embolden Putin even further? Will he sell out America’s allies for the right price?

So now, it’s up to the UK. And Germany. And France. And Canada. It’s up to leaders who still recognize the importance of standing against tyranny. Because under Trump, America isn’t leading anymore; we are barely even showing up. And the world has taken notice.

So, the next time Trump steps onto a stage and rants about how he’s going to make America great again, remember this: Greatness isn’t found in cowardice. It isn’t found in groveling to dictators. And it sure as hell isn’t found in relinquishing the leadership of the free world to a British prime minister because the President of the United States is too busy plotting his next self-serving venture or heading to the golf course.

The world is watching. And it doesn’t like what it sees.

(Kindly consider supporting this platform and all independent journalists here on Substack. Plus, the first 240 Founding Members to this platform receive a rare, signed, numbered edition of my NYT Bestseller “Revenge, How Donald Trump weaponized The US Department Of Justice Against His Critics.” Join now!)

 

A Sunday thought

Robert Reich Mar 16

Friends,

I cannot say this any other way: We are in deep sh*t. These are truly scary and rough times.

Trump appears at the Justice Department and calls for his opponents to be jailed.

He “detains” students who have committed no crime but peacefully expressed their negative views about Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza.

He invokes the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove unauthorized immigrants, without evidence or hearing.

Sides with Russia, China, and North Korea against Ukraine.

Purges career officials and installs political hacks more loyal to him than to the United States. Fires inspectors general. Demotes senior prosecutors.

Threatens law firms that represented people he considers his personal enemies.

Pardons the hoodlums who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

He and Musk mow down wide swathes of our government.

Republican lawmakers, fearful or unprincipled, say and do nothing.

Democrats are in disarray. Chuck Schumer green lights a continuing budget resolution that allows Musk and Trump to close down even more of our government.

And on it goes.

You have every right to feel depressed and enervated. You have every reason to despair.

But wait.

It’s possible that future generations will look back on this scourge and see something else — not just what was destroyed but also what was born.

Even prior to Trump, our democracy was deeply flawed. The moneyed interests were drowning out everyone else. Inequality was reaching record levels. Corruption — legalized bribery through campaign contributions — was the political norm (Musk is the logical ending point). The bottom 90 percent were getting nowhere because the system was rigged against them.

It’s entirely possible that future generations will look back on this awful time and see the seeds of fundamental reform.

Many of you are leading this. In hundreds of thousands of ways, you are beacon lights. You are the beginnings of positive change.

Whether it’s your appearances at Republican town halls, or your phone calls that are daily jamming the Capitol and White House switchboards, or your mountains of emails and letters, or your myriad actions protecting the vulnerable in your communities, or your grass-roots activism in Wisconsin and elsewhere: You are the groundswell of America’s new resistance, the green shoots of our future democracy.

The backlash to Trump is growing. His disapproval ratings have jumped nearly 10 points since he was sworn in. People are flooding meetings and rallies, demanding an end to Trump and Musk’s reign. Bernie, AOC, and other progressive politicians are drawing huge crowds.

These are terrible times — the worst I’ve lived through, and I’ve lived through some bad ones. (Remember 1968? Nixon’s enemies list? Anyone old enough to recall Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunts?)

But as long as we are alive, as long as we are resolved, as long as we are taking action to stop the worst of this, as long as we are trying to make America and the world even a bit better — have no doubt: We will triumph.

 

A Musical Genius

A Reason To Smile

Dan Rather and Team Steady Mar 16

Credit: Getty Images

Ever since the Super Bowl, I have been thinking about Jon Batiste, the Louisiana native who wowed us with his version of the national anthem. There was something infectious about Batiste’s demeanor. He exuded joy, almost like he couldn’t believe he got to do what he did. What he did was perform the heck out of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In his hometown. On the biggest stage imaginable.

I’ll admit, I didn’t know much about Batiste, so I did a little digging, and what a story! The multi-hyphenate musical phenom is the easy choice to be this week’s reason to smile.

A singer-songwriter-musician-composer-bandleader, he plays drums, acoustic and electric guitar, saxophone, and melodica, but on the piano he is a virtuoso. He started taking classical piano lessons at age 11 and learned to meld classical with the jazz, blues, and gospel of his native Louisiana.

Batiste grew up in a noted musical family in and around a noted musical city, New Orleans. He played his first gig at the age of eight, with the Batiste Brothers Band. He released his first album at 17, before attending Julliard, where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s of music in jazz studies.

“I started learning just from my family and friends in the neighborhood. I didn’t think about music as a profession. It’s just something that we did. It was a way for us to gather. And then I started to learn all of these sounds, classical music. I could step into a world and I could escape and then I learned that you could take that world and you could shape it,” he said in an interview with Michelle Obama.

Batiste’s improvisational skills are transformational. He can take a classical piece like Beethoven’s Für Elise and turn it into blues or gospel, on the fly.

At the end of his seven-year tenure as the bandleader on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” he explained his process to the talk show host: “I would take the music that [Beethoven] had written, and I was in conversation with it. I would change things. I would add things to it. Then I realized that was very frowned upon … But it’s been 256 years. He is due for an update. Music, you mold it and you add to it. And it won’t revoke anything that exists. It’s only adding to the continuum of human creativity.”

Batiste also writes and performs original music, for which he has won multiple Grammys and an Oscar. You can almost feel his irrepressible spirit in his song “Freedom.”

Michelle and Barack Obama recognized Batiste’s genius and executive-produced “American Symphony,” a documentary chronicling the composition of his first symphony while his wife, Suleika Jaouad, battled a recurrence of leukemia. She describes her disease as chronic.

If you want to see him perform live, Batiste is starting a U.S. and European tour in April. He is an incredible American story.

 

Meidas Founder Has Important Sunday Message

MeidasTouch Network and Ben Meiselas Mar 16

By Ben Meiselas

It’s Sunday. Grab your coffee or tea or water. Let’s chat.

First, thanks to all our subscribers to this Substack. Please subscribe now if you can and help us continue to get more views than Fox, Joe Rogan, and all cable news.

Second, did you see Trump is on vacation again at Mar-a-Lago this weekend? What a pathetic and vile thing he is.

He hosted a “Pink Hermès Bag” themed party at Mar-a-Lago where he showcased luxury handbags made of crocodile skin and gold, valued at $445,000 per bag.

Yes, as Trump and Musk are cutting Medicaid, calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, destroying the lives of veterans, firing most federal workers, destroying the federal government, and crashing our economy and our savings, Trump and his billionaire friends are flaunting their wealth at Mar-a-Lago.

While on his weekend vacation on the taxpayer dime, Trump declared America “is at war” with a “hybrid enemy” that apparently includes the country of Venezuela and “their gangs,” and on this basis, Trump invoked wartime powers to deport people at his whim. So, while Trump was vacationing and golfing, he made up a fake war and invoked powers of a dictator yesterday.

Trump previously claimed he was sending 30,000 migrant “gang members” to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but ended up only sending about 200 mostly non-violent migrants there, only to return them all to Louisiana last week.

Third, protests are picking up in America, slowly but surely, but they are raging in Putin-backed regimes abroad.

Belgrade in Serbia saw tens of thousands of people protest the Putin-aligned regime there. Similarly, tens of thousands of people protested in Budapest, Hungary, against the Putin-aligned Viktor Orbán regime.

As Trump has pulled the United States away from Europe and NATO and into the Axis of Evil with Putin, the adage that ETTD (everything Trump touches dies) seems to be inflicting his buddy Putin right now.

In Europe, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer held a major virtual meeting with the “coalition of the willing” nations of Canada and European nations (not America), to strongly rally behind Ukraine.

Europe, Canada, and Ukraine have masterfully inserted themselves into the efforts by Trump and Putin to carve up Ukraine while icing out Europe, Ukraine, and others from their dastardly schemes in bilateral negotiations. Trump and Putin are being outmatched and outmaneuvered by Europe, Canada, Australia, and Mexico.

Fourth, and finally, MeidasTouch continues to grow. For most of this week, we led Fox News in views. We have expanded our lead over Joe Rogan in podcast downloads, where we now get double the amount of downloads he does per month. MeidasTouch Editor-in-Chief Ron Filipkowski keeps cranking out the best summaries of the day’s events I have ever read. We are grateful to all the writers who have profiled us over the past few weeks. We have continued to showcase some of the biggest names in politics as guests on our program. We have some big surprises this week in terms of guests. Stay tuned. (Remember to add the MeidasTouch Podcast on audio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.)

Thanks to our subscribers here on this Substack, of course. We appreciate you. We appreciate all the Meidas Mighty. Unlike our competitors, we have grown with zero investors. Your subscriptions have helped us grow. If you aren’t subscribed, please consider subscribing now. You can always get subscriptions as gifts for people.

Thanks for having coffee with me. We have a big week ahead of us. My 5-month-old is waking up, so I have to run. From the bottom of my heart, thanks for all you do. Your contributions in fighting to restore freedom and bring back democracy are invaluable. The Meidas Mighty is making a huge difference.

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