CAN MAGA TRUMP BE STOPPED?

The one endearing feature of President Donald J. Trump is that, to quote his Attorney General, “he is the most transparent President ever”. The President has made it abundantly clear that The Constitution gives him dictatorial powers and that he directly controls the military. Weaponizing these beliefs could set off a second Civil war with the objective of conquering “The Blue States”. Trump has to be taken seriously as the bipartisan Congress January 6 Committee concluded that he engaged in a multi part conspiracy to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, including by inciting a riot. So the question is can he be stopped?

Trump's immediate objective is to ensure winning, one way or the other, the 2026 Midterm elections. The Supreme Court could simplify his life by ruling IN TIME allowing the Southern States to gerrymander up to 12 Black Democrats out of Congress in 2026. However Trump cannot bank on that. 

 But Jay H.Ell is getting ahead of himself so let us go at this slowly because America is still a Constitutional Democracy albeit with an authoritarian Executive. First task Trump has to do is to inform the military establishment that America is at war with domestic enemies. He needs to create a situation that precipitates a response which he can call a rebellion or at worst an insurrection. Then he needs to persuade the Judiciary to believe that the situation needs the military to resolve it. 

Trump has a long way to go as at this early stage The Courts have been generallly unimpressed with his attempts to prove there is an uprising in certain “Blue” states. The Courts remain a constitutional obstacle to Trump's march to autocracy - The District and Appeal Courts particularly, The Supreme Court not so much.

The Republican controlled Legislature having abandoned its oversight responsibility, so it is left to “We The People” to help halt this march to a Putin like oligrarchical autocracy. “We The People” took protest to another level where in over 2,700 sites in America with over 7 million people took part in an anti Trump “No Kings Protest”. This was the largest single day protest ever by far which, in addition, creates the organization and motivation to turn this into ballot success.

But back to Trump's objectives to ensure winning the 2026 midterms.

TRUMP’S ADDRESS TO THE GENERALS SEPTEMBER 30 2025

Trump addressed an unprecedented meeting of all the military leadership, mostly the generals, having unilaterally renamed The Department of Defense, The Department of War a few weeks earlier. At the very beginning of his now customary rambling non sequitur rant he blandly stated, “….if you don’t like what I am saying you can leave the room…… of course there goes your future”. Trump then gave them a short history of how the woke people changed the name from Department of War to The Department of Defense in 1950. He slurred on and on from “sleepy Joe and his autopen”  till he finally hit his objective after 35 minutes,  “……we are being invaded from within……..”. Five minutes later, “We are at war ….and this is going to be a major part for some in this room…….. Our military heroes …. have taken on all foreign AND domestic enemies”. In the interim he pointed out where this war was now taking place in Democratic American cities like Chicago, Washington, LA, and Portland. 

So onto what followed, unsurprisingly didn't involve the generals, rather Trump set about to create a violent response to him sending a collection of thugs ostensibly to carry out raids on "illegals". 

"THE PLAN"

The mantra is that the "blue" cities are “crime infested” but more significantly they harbor “illegals”. This Trump believed allowed him to send in hordes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents (ICE). The latter armed to the teeth, faces covered with masks terrorized the cities with violence, tear gas, pepper and rubber bullets with arrests and deportations. Predictably this evoked protests from the citizenry which Trump claimed were uprisings or rebellions. Consequently he needed external militia to control the latter as he maintained that neither ICE, the City and State law enforcement were able to do so. 

Trump has not as yet called on the conventional militia rather he brought in the National Guards of the “Red” States. National Guards are state based military forces who also can serve as reservists in the US Militia. It is in the latter capacity that Trump  enlisted them. The cities that were under intense pressure were Chicago and Portland. His actions engendered legal challenges. 

Trump has not attempted to send in the regular militia nor has he declared an “Insurrection” at this stage. In fact he has claimed he would only declare an “Insurrection” if there were “hindrances” to controlling these "uprisings", including by the courts.

In response to the legal challenges in Chicago he had to convince the Judiciary that Trump was at war with the "domestic” enemy who are the brown immigrants, legal and illegal, the lunatic left and their mythical organization, “ANTIFA".

THE JUDICIARY

Thus far the Federal District and Appeal Courts have done a sterling job in interpreting the Constitution in relation to Trump’s attempts to claim that there are "unmanageable" rebellions in cities requiring military intervention. In Chicago, the Federal Courts, while giving The President’s assessment “the greatest deference” have ruled against his argument that his decisions cannot be reviewed. 

Chicago District Judge Perry in an exhaustive 51 page opinion stated that she found, “Trump’s witness accounts unreliable”. She further added that the Defendants’ declarations equated protests with violence. To show how far off the mark, the defense was, Judge Perry maintained “Defendants have offered no explanation supporting the notion that widespread opposition to immigration enforcement constitutes the makings of a broader opposition to the authority of the federal government”.Finally there was no evidence that the City, State and appropriate Federal enforcement officers were unable to contain what limited violence and crowd control that was necessary. 

The District’s Court was immediately appealed to the Seventh Circuit where Judge Perry was upheld by a unanimous decision by a three judge panel. Needless to say Trump has immediately appealed this to the Supreme Court who have helped create this monstrous authoritarian Presidency, (See Blog: “The Trump Roberts Supreme Court”, September 1, 2025). Likewise the Trump attempt in California at using National Guards as law enforcement was defeated in a District Court which was then upheld unanimously by a three judge panel in the Ninth Circuit. The latter bizarrely then over rode a Portland District Judge's refusal to allow the National Guard to intervene in the protests against ICE in that city. This is being appealed to the full Ninth Circuit Court. Sadly none of this matters as it is ultimately up to the Supreme Court, which seems enthralled with the concept of a muscular presidency. 

ICE AGENTS REPEATED USE OF FORCE

More disturbing is the outcome of a case brought by a group of journalists and protestors in Chicago who alleged that, “The ICE enforcement agents were targeting people engaging in peaceful activity, including multiple reporters, who said they had pepper balls fired on them despite being identified as the press”. Judge Ellis, who presided, issued a widespread Temporary Restraining Order, (TRO), on ICE and the US Border Control to cease their behavior. 

In short order the complainants were back in Court alleging that Judge Ellis’s TRO was being ignored. The Judge was furious, “I live in Chicago, if folks haven’t noticed, and I’m not blind right? So. I don’t live in a cave. I have a phone. I have a TV. I have a computer and I tend to get news”. The Judge stated further that the news reports made her believe that the Trump Administration was not following her instructions. She insisted that the agents wear body cameras and that the Head of the ICE Operation appear before her on Monday October 20. She stated inter alia that ICE agents could not drive a car into a crowd.

As Governor Pritzker has indicated, “The President said he wanted to go after the worst of the worst……when they tackle a 15 year old girl because she is brown and haul her in, when they take on a US citizen, a young woman, whose coming out of Waukegan City Hall because she’s brown……he’s not doing that..)".

But onto the most remarkable peaceful resistance movement that the country has seen since the Civil Rights Movement - Indivisible.

INDIVISIBLE - THE PEACE PROTEST MOVEMENT

It is no simple task to organize and co ordinate nearly 3,000 separate protest meetings in one day. Then following the Martin Luther King model conduct training sessions of those in charge, to among other matters, how to confront violence whether it be from”law enforcement” or “counter protestors”. Indivisible’s is a remarkable achievement especially when thus far they have been no reported arrests among the over 7 million “We The People” participants. 

The Founders of the entity, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg began by publishing an Agenda on how to oppose Trump’s Policies in 2016. It went viral and by 2019 they were named by Time as 100 of the world’s most influential people. They became a non profit organization and are growing from strength to strength. They followed up their June 2025 “No Kings” protest by adding 2,000,000 more protestors 4 months later. These events involved the cooperation and coordination of 200 groups. They have received vast grass root support and to the joy of the right wing bogeymen an over 2 million grant from The George Soros Foundation. 

There is little doubt that they are going to play an increasing role in the future. There is nothing like it on the other side. On Tuesday October 23 there is another mass call in to discuss what happens next. It appears that the next objective appears to get the voters out for the 2026 mid term elections 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

 The Supreme Court are sitting on two motions that could swing the 2026 midterm election to MAGA if they act in time. However so far Trump’s attempts at millitirization as a first move to win the mid terms in 2026 are under heavy pressure. 

The Epstein files hang over Trump's head like a sword of Damocles and sooner or later they have to hit the fan. He has all manner of diversions including bulldozing the WhiteHouse and demanding 230 million dollars in compensation from the Justice Department. There are daily references to Epstein - Prince Andrew has dropped all his royal titles including The Duke of York following the release of Virginia Roberts Guiffre’s posthumous memoir, “Nobody’s Girl”. The London police are investigating him!  Emails that have been leaked. The Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has kept the Chamber shut for 4 weeks so the Epstein Files can’t be debated. All this does is increase suspense, split MAGA further as the base demand the release. 

Of course Trump can declare war against Venezuela and hope that all bets are off.

One fact is for certain, thus far, “We The People” are doing their Constitutional bit to hang onto America’s imperfect democracy.

 At the end of the day there is one fact that needs to be emphasized, namely that Trump is not a rational actor and he will wing it from day to day. There is no master plan only a simple set of actions reliant on the Supreme Court ultimately declaring him a dictator. The position is fluid but what is indisputable - The Founders did not intend that 9 unelected individuals would decide if there should be another King.

CHARLIE KIRK, TRUMP, KIMMEL AND EPSTEIN

“Yeah I’d take a look at it…. I’d be inclined to do The Epstein. I’d have no problem with it”.  - Presidential Candidate Trump,  September 2024, (2 months before the Presidential election).

The Epstein files are still central to the American political scene. The recent tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, the firing and then rehiring of late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel and Donald Trump are all interconnected through the Epstein scandal. Trump is desperate to keep the files under wraps and considers any Republican calling for release as “hostile”. So far enough Republicans have risked his wrath to ultimately force a debate in The House of Representatives. Jay H. Ell will outline Kirk’s commitment to the release of the files, then profile the charismatic young man to show how influential and central he was to the Trump MAGA movement. The sequence as to how the connection between Trump, Kimmel, Kirk and Epstein played out and finally a note on how ubiquitous “the files” are in the current political scene and why they will continue to be a  central factor.

 KIRK, EPSTEIN AND TRUMP

During the 2024 campaign Charlie Kirk was in sync with  releasing The Epstein Files. Right until July 2025 he was a vocal critic of the Department of Justice for failing to release them. He demanded full transparency. He urged the Trump administration to “fix the mess by disclosing more information”. Under intense pressure from Donald Trump, as were several other right wing influencers, Kirk backed off. He fell in line announcing. “I am done talking about Epstein for the time being”.

 A day before his death on September 9 Kirk hosted a show entitled, “Do We Have The Epstein Files Or Not?”. So obviously frustrated by the Trump Administration, a day before his death, he once again called for, “the full unredacted release of the Jeffrey Epstein files”. He repeated his demand for “full transparency by the Department of Justice”. He linked his appeal to the broader unaccountability of elites in spite of a bipartisan congressional push.  Charlie Kirk’s podcast “The Charlie Kirk Show” was on the top tier of Apple Podcasts.

So the hope that the death of Kirk coincides with the burial of the Epstein files is just that  - a hope. Kirk himself a day before his death had resuscitated his own desire for the truth, in spite of Trump’s need to bury the whole matter. Who knows what Trump had reassured him in July to shut him up and who knows why Kirk had been no longer convinced by Trump’s pleas and elected to defy him?

But who was this Charlie Kirk who was in the tight inner circle of Trump whisperers?

CHARLIE KIRK

For those who only became aware of Charlie Kirk as a result of his assassination they have to have been bewildered by the fact that at his nationally televised funeral nearly the whole Trump cabinet was present. Furthermore the event was addressed by the Vice President and the President himself in front of a crowd of ninety - five thousand. The short answer is that Kirk was a phenom. He had to have been to be able to achieve this status at 31 years of age. He is generally recognized to have been the youth organizer of the Trump campaign that delivered young male voters who never normally show up to elections thereby, reportedly, tipping the 2024 Presidential election in Trump’s favor.  But he was far more than that.

Kirk founded an organization, Turning Point, at the age of 18, which was rapidly well funded so as to fill the void of a Conservative voice on college campuses. He took on all comers, one at a time, and in spite of his rigid beliefs was a skilled listener as well as orator. His fame in the latter area led to invitations to the illustrious historic debating halls of Oxford and Cambridge - not bad for a college drop out. He at the same time became very influential in the Republican Party, to be more specific, with Trump. Besides his radio talk shows, speech tours, conventions, he wrote three books the most influential being “The MAGA Doctrine”. The latter was an organized vision of the sometime ramblings of Trump. They are in line with his Budget Director and his Project 25.

Most significantly besides his conservative appeal to young male voters and his right wing schtick  - he called for “a patriot” to bail out the attacker who hammered the head of the 81 year old husband of Nancy Pelosi and organized buses to the January 6 Trump meeting at the Elipse. 

So he was solidly and unquestionably hard right MAGA but more than just paying lip service to the Christian part of Christian Nationalism. Kirk’s central message was faith, family and country. In addition he was about the manosphere, straightness -  no LGBT people and most importantly Trumpism. He totally dominated the right wing internet space much to the annoyance of Michael Fuentes the right wing extremist. On the other side pf the political spectrum Kirk was a lightening rod to the far left bloggists some of whom disgustingly celebrated his death. 

It is central to note that this remarkable young man besides all his organizational capabilities and charisma made strategic allegiances with the Evangelical Christians. First, there a short term relationship with the legendary Jerry Faldwell and then with pastor Rob McCoy forming the alliance Turning Point Faith. The objective was to engage pastors and church leaders into national politics so that the American society to could return to “foundational Christian values”. Reportedly over 5 million dollars was devoted to rally pastors and church leaders to apply themselves to this task.

So Charlie Kirk was a central figure in MAGA world. He was head of a crucial organization in Trump’s success in 2024, had solidified Evangelicals’ support behind Trump and was the leader with a vast following of the new Christian manosphere. He was arguably the most powerful individual on the political scene outside of conventional politics. 

To illustrate his importance to Trump, Kirk’s wife, when asked by Trump what he could do for her after her husband’s untimely death, she asked that he, The President, be just as available to her if she called as he had been to her husband, to which Trump replied in the affirmative.

 Kirk’s untimely demise led to a flood of coverage across the internet including the legacy media. One of the participants of this discourse was ABC’S late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel and therein lies a story of several dimensions.

KIMMEL, KIRK AND TRUMP, AND OF COURSE EPSTEIN

ABC’S Jimmy Kimmel the immensely popular and strident vocal critic of Trump, regularly satirized Trump not releasing the Epstein files. For example following The Wall Street Journal publication of Trump’s alleged birthday note to Epstein he maintained that the issue,“was a gift that keeps on giving”. 

Two days after the funeral of Kirk, Kimmel made the following political remarks but nothing near some of the bile being spewed on the internet. (Kimmel had already been forewarned by Trump that he would be the next comedian after CBS’s Stephen Colbert to be terminated):“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it”.

Pretty mild stuff as political comment goes but enough to set in motion Trump’s prophecy that “Kimmel would be the next to go". The message came from the extremely powerful Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Brendon Carr. The latter advised ABC, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way”. Within hours Kimmel would be suspended “indefinitely” by ABC evoking the largest protest from entertainment, the public and from all sides of the political spectrum. This was one of the cardinal American constitutional values “Freedom of the Press” that had just been blatantly axed. 

Within a week an emotional Kimmel was back on air stating that it was never his intention to make Kirk’s assassination, “funny”. A day later he was on about Trump being stuck on the escalator in order to distract from “The Epstein Files”.

THE RECURRING FACTOR IN AMERICAN POLITICS -EPSTEIN AND HIS FILES

Trump the populist was as an outsider who had sold the story that he was the supporter of those who had been left out and abandoned in favor of the elites and the powerful. For whatever reason pedophilia was associated with those “uber mensch”. (See Blogs: “This is Epsteingate”, “The Epstein Tsunami” and “Trump, The Second Civil War and Epstein"). In the 2016 campaign it was Hillary Clinton who supposedly conducted a pedophilia ring underneath a Pizza Parlor. In the 2024 campaign the key to what the powerful were hiding was in the files of The Kennedy Assassination, The Martin Luther King Assassination, 9/11 and The Epstein Files. Besides Trump, his Attorney General, his FBI Director and his Assistant all promised their release. They are now involved in the cover up. 

As Jimmy Kimmel mused in his monologue days before his suspension, “The Republican Senators just blocked a motion to force a motion on making The Department of Justice Release the Files…. The Republicans have spent the last four years demanding the release of The Epstein Files and the last four months screaming, ‘Do not release The Epstein Files’”. 

Two women who were in the best position to understand Epstein’s frame of mind prior to his death have recently claimed that they believe that he did not commit suicide, adding more drama to this saga. Julie K. Brown from The Miami Herald in a mammoth investigative three part series entitled “The Perversion of Justice” which led to Epstein’s rearrest in 2019 claimed that Epstein would have believed he could escape prosecution because he had obtained an undertaking from the Florida Federal Prosecutor that he could not be prosecuted for his alleged actions should he plead guilty to a lesser charge, (See aforementioned blogs), Ghillane Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted co conspirator maintained in a soft ball interview, where she exculpated Donald Trump for any untoward behavior, argued that she did not believe her co conspirator committed suicide. This needless to say has the conspiracy theorists spinning a web of plots. 

So what happens next?

CONGRESS AND THE EPSTEIN FILES

Even with the Shutdown of Government resulting in more threats to the social safety net, the Immigration and Customs, (ICE), personnel snatching people off the streets and the bizarre meeting of all the military generals who were addressed by the Secretary of War, (legally still Defense), Pete Hegseth and low energy rambling President Trump, Epstein just won’t go away. 

The vote needed to force the matter of the release of the documents, recordings. photographs and videos from the Epstein investigation in the House of Representatives was scheduled for October 7. However the Republican Speaker has closed The House of Representatives for at least that week. 

Democratic Representative Ro Khanna has claimed that once the matter hits the floor at least 40 more Republicans will vote for the release. If that is true that will be a wholesale rebellion against Trump who has claimed that a vote by Republicans in favor off the public sharing of the Epstein investigation “would be a very hostile act”. The Democrats believe that this is such a hot issue they are fundraising over it. Money is also being collected to put up a billboard in Times Square.

The Epstein Estate has already released some damning evidence to Congress including The Epstein Birthday Book which has very inflammatory entries allegedly by Trump and of Trump. There is more, Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, all luminaries of the Republican Party, are also mentioned in the files. In addition the Republican Congress women demanding justice for the victims have threatened to release, under protection of the Legislature’s rules, 20 of the names of men involved. To add to the President’s displeasure Secretary Lutnick in an interview just magnified the controversy by claiming that Epstein was the greatest blackmailer of all time!  Lutnick claimed that he wouldn’t have spent one day in the company of that “creep” who was Trump’s best friend for a decade. 

 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

For whatever reasons the Epstein saga must be pretty incriminating. While for the moment just a few Republican Legislators are protesting, the influential manosphere including the late irreplaceable Charlie Kirk have regarded pedophilia as a central evil and are consequently on the wrong side of the President’s revised position. The House of Representatives when they finally debate the issue will produce fireworks.