TRUMP, THE LOSER 11/03

 

Donald Trump is staring defeat in the face - not for the first time in his life - In what is being argued as being the most consequential USA midterm elections since 1966. Then President Johnson’s legislative program was stopped dead in it's tracks.by massive Legislative losses paving the way for the eventual Reagan Conservative Revolution in 1980. The 47th President faces his moment of truth on 11/03 - High Noon.

From sibling rivalry, to catastrophic bankruptcies to being restrained in policy making as the 45th President and his defeat in 2020 he has never admitted that he was a  “loser” -to him the worst designation on earth. To this day no one can become a member of his administration if they accept that Biden won the Presidency. War heroes like John McCain and those who died fighting for their country were incomprehensible  - “losers or suckers”. 

He literally doesn’t “get it”. But now it is for real he is going to win or lose as he faces the defining fight of his legacy. The electoral odds are stacked against him and worsening daily. He remains true to his delusional credo that he is omnipotent and America’s greatest President ever. Consequentially he is out on the trail convinced that to retain congressional power the faithful must pretend that “I am on the ballot”. His problem is that they do! He has one comforting thought he can alter the process and rig the elections as long as he appears to be acting within the scope of the Presidency - The Supreme Court absurdly made it constitutional. 

THERE IS NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS

Where he is not a “loser” is being outlandish, boorish, mendacious, narcissistic and amoral enough to be the center of attention in every world he has operated in. As the man about town, as the mom and pop New York property developer and garish Casino owner he has dominated and not really failed on the principle that “all publicity is good publicity”.

Trump finally found the medium where he could play out all his fantasies using his highly honed salesmanship and entertainment skills in the long running TV series “The Apprentice”. He then parlayed his newly won national persona repeating and repeating an unforgivable calumny that President Barak Hussein Obama was not an American. 

With his new national prominence and aforementioned skills he was able to maneuver a cynical deal with the Christian Evangelicals. This thrice married, self confessed adulterer and woman sexual assaulter, committed to being a supporter of anti abortion and would appoint  Supreme Court judges solely on that criterion. He was also emphatically anti immigration, (especially those from “shithole countries”). Starkly implicit in his MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN mantra was that he would strive to create a white and Christian land. His coalition paradoxically added those who had suffered financially as industry had mechanized and/or transferred their operations to China and Asia. Added to this coalition were the traditional Republicans as he had won the Primaries in 2015.

The Democrats the traditional party of the worker had focussed their attention on groups that had been prejudged against historically and that didn’t include white able bodied men. That led Trump to victory in 2016. In one of those contingency events that dictate history he was running against a woman who an overzealous FBI chief reopened an investigation into a few weeks before the election thereby tanking the then leader. Fast forward to the current moment which itself requires explaining but hey ho…..

Whichever way this is diced and sliced his long running series, “The Apprentice” was central to his national prominence where his spontaneous definitive judgements gave him the aura of a powerful successful leader and businessman a role which he played far better on the screen than in real life.  

FORWARD BACK TO NOW

Donald J. Trump the 47th President of America is not going to accept a crushing defeat that will lay him open to investigation, have the impact of exposing his double dealing, reject his nominees and witness the humiliation of some of the members of his cabinet impeached, let alone his good self. He has tried every trick in the book from getting red states to gerrymander the electoral map, sent in and threatened paramilitary forces into the cities at election time, used every possible legal avenue and presidential power to alter the running of the voting procedures - yet the polls have moved in the opposite direction.

Nevertheless he is in a constant state of denial that he isn’t the problem rather it is his party members. The latter feel the reverse, 61 0f the 72 close races have seen Republican nominees criticize or outright dissociate themselves from the President and his policies. With this reality and with an approval rating as low as 30% he has taken to the road to mobilize the Party as only “he can do ”. He alone can persuade the electorate that they aren’t really experiencing what they are. He can gloss over the fact that he has just broken every pledge he made in 2024, reassure the MAGA faithful that he is the Messiah he depicted, or Natalie did, on his social media company “Truth Social”. (Sic).

WHY CAN'T HIS SHOW JUST GO ON?

First time round he didn’t have the supporting team to push him across the line. His Attorney General resigned, his Security detail refused to take him to the Capital, his Defense Secretaries wouldn’t play ball and he was losing support of the Republican Congress leaders who were looking to the next election and revolted at the storming of The Capital. Now he fully controls the Speaker of the House, the Vice President and a collection of yahobs which would make the Queen in Alice in Wonderland look sane. So he has a cabal who will do nothing to stop any trick he will try and pull from declaring an Emergency, grabbing poll boxes, axing screeds of voters and on and on. 

 Trump acts within the knowledge that the Supreme Court manufactured Constitutional law by obscenely absolutely immunizing him against the law for any decision made in arenas where he has exclusive powers. That includes the Departments of Justice and Foreign Affairs and as it turns out controlling membership of expert Statutory Institutions such as the EPA - bodies that were enacted by the Legislative body. He was given “presumptive” immunity in matters that were not constitutionally afforded to him which thus far appears to include destroying half the White House to build a ballroom, accepting money from donors who then receive government contracts, deals with cryptocurrency as none of these actions pose any danger to his  presidential authority. The President has no immunity for “private acts” which presumably cover behaviors such as rape. He also knows that there is no way that his Justice Department will attempt to prosecute him for anything and he has absolute immunity for pardoning power and that doesn’t exclude himself.

So why is he bothering to even try not to be a loser when he can just “bring on the clowns”? Because he still needs the worship, adoration and acceptance of his cult and to prove he is not a loser. There are also practical matters such as the concurrent State elections.

WHY THE SHOW MUST GO ON.

The midterm elections involve the State Officials such as Governor, Attorney General and Election Officers. More often than not citizens vote down ballot of their Congressional Candidate. Those are the office bearers that ultimately certify election results and were one of Trump's his central targets in 2020 when he refused to be a loser.

Trump must be of the mind set that if his candidates could win the Primaries he just needs the his cult to come out once more. There are many indicators as to why they won’t, several pointers that literally “his” party is going to lose one or both Houses and overwhelming evidence that he is the reason. He is turning the election into a referendum on him so it makes sense that he carries on the one man act.  Of course if this fails which it will he has to continue with a reprise of “2020".

WHY HIS SHOW WILL CLOSE

 Frank Sinatra didn’t have as many comebacks as Trump. Even he called it a day. Trump even in his one smash hit “The Apprentice” had to eventually close down. Enough was enough as it was the same old same old. This 2024 Presidential encore, after a very short run, by public demand needs to “face the final curtain”.  Each day the outlook gets worse. With a month to go his approval rating is 30%. The distinguished pollster Nate Silver rates the chance of the Democrats winning the House at 94% and the Senate at 74%. The Cook Report, considered the golden standard has confirmed the crescenderIng downward movement. 

Trump ever ready with a fresh reason for the mess he has created placed the blame on the Prime Minister of Ukraine for the fuel crisis. As the Middle East war extends to the Gulf States, in particular Saudi Arabia, he has yet to accept responsibility for his ignoring his own intelligence service's advice that his rationale for going to war with Iran to effect regime change was delusional. So it is about to be all Netanyahu’s fault. 

He does not address the reasons why his supporters are falling over each other in the rush to the door. The abandonment of his promises, the protection of the Epstein elitists, the initiation of wars, the total sell out of the working class by causing their economic crisis in addition to taking away their health care, the callous barbarity of his paramilitary ICE, his desire to be a dictator and naked corruption  - apparently AMERICA HAS BEEN MADE GREAT AGAIN. There is even going to be a public execution just to bring us back to the glorious good old days. 

The numbers worsen even more as Obama, the most popular politician in America takes charge as the leader of the opposition. So it is time to open a new show or at least a rerun of 2020.

“2020” THE SEQUEL

With the failure to persuade that his incoherent claim that America is in a Golden Age an intensified repeat update version of “2020” must follow. He has suggested to “cheat” in the elections. The opening moves of intimidation have been massive crackdowns in big cities like LA, Minnesota and Chicago where in spite a couple of homicides the paramilitary were unceremoniously kicked out by protestors. The protests are national, spreading to the rural strongholds where added to the farmers woes are increased diesel costs and incomprehensible tariffs. There are nationwide uprisings against Trump’s MAGA allies allowing the erection of Data Centers which gobble up the resources of the small communities. The "No King's" movement has expanded and expanded and once again a massive whole country effort is scheduled for October 17. 

So it is left to take over the system through the courts and/or grab the ballot boxes, elect people who won’t declare Democrats winners - seen the movie before. The Supreme Court have not given him the right to control elections but have helped out by allowing States to Gerrymander seats to decrease black representation for example and allowed unlimited money into the elections.  

But as seen in “2020 - The Original”, when he loses he certainly isn’t going to call Barak, Hakeem and Chuck concede defeat and offer to work together. He is going to take them on. It will be showdown at High Noon.

 HIGH NOON(11/03)

High Noon, the movie was conceived as an allegory to the  infamous Senator McCarthy witch-hunt which labelled a wide range of the opposition as Communists and ruined their lives. Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn was the Chief Counsel. So history sometimes rhymes. High Noon the movie is when good ultimately confronts evil. When the upholder of law faces a life or death struggle against evil. It was one of the first 25 Films to be named by Congress as being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.

Trump will accelerate evil as the clock strikes, High Noon.There will be pressure on election officials, there will be alternate slates of those “elected” that the sitting Congress will have to choose from. There will be attempts at intimidation but it is difficult to stop a tidal wave. But he will try. Maybe the pardoned Oath Keepers, Proud Boys or Three Percenters, the unofficial paramilitary will move in again. However there is legally constituted group that thus far have been involved in all manner of “law enforcement”, ICE.

 

 Trump’s big big move will be try to nominate different winners of elections claiming fraud tra la la. He will try and have election results not certified. Ironically there is a majority of Democrats remaining in the Senate and they will undoubtedly accept the voters’ choices. House Speaker Johnson will have a hard time holding onto his slim majority to refuse the incoming majority as the writing is on the wall that Trump is on the outs. He can declare an Insurrection or an Emergency there are after all a number of ongoing wars that he is involved in. In all probability Trump will have his Justice Department investigate and take as much revenge as he can.

 

But somehow this blue wave and more significantly the abandonment of the Trump experiment by enough Republicans means like Frank Miller and his henchmen in High Noon, when the dust clears, he will be lying on the floor. He has lost support from the electorate and many of the candidates. Maybe even The Supreme Court will take an emergency motion to see that The Constitution which they took an oath to protect is protected. Under less dire circumstances they rushed to defy the intent of the Constitution to hurry George W. Bush's victory against Al Gore overruling the State's domain.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

The Supreme Court decision on immunity was judicially outrageous at worst and incompetent at best. Their job definition includes what the scope of their rulings could encompass. 

Trump's pandering and supporting Putin is unconscionable at best and treasonous at worst. 

This time round Trump’s Party has literally billions of dollars more. Good old Elon has already  poured in over $300 million. Not bad for an immigrant from a shithole country.

It is interesting to note that the turnaround against President Johnson in 1966 was mainly because of cost of living issues, especially the cost of milk. Suppose it is a parameter of an unfair distribution of resources.

The real fight for American democracy will be in 2028.  The Dems need to start to get their act together. Republican states, N. Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Florida, S.Carolina are not trending their way under Bernie Sander’s lead. In fact two off his acolytes in Maine and Michigan are underperforming the general trend. They need to build a consensus platform to run on. A big tent is all very well but can leak in a storm but there needs to a manifesto that they all run on. 

NETANYAHU, ARAFAT, RABIN and NAZA and MAMDANI

On November 4, 1995 a fanatic right wing gunman assassinated the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin. In retrospect that was an example of an historical contingency comparable to the assassination on June 28,1914 of Archduke Ferdinand, of Justice Quartus de Wet on June 12, 1964 not sentencing Nelson Mandela to death after being found guilty of sabotage and conspiracy against the apartheid government and the gunman shooting Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968. While all these catastrophic derailments are examples of how the future was reordered. Jay H. Ell will focus on Rabin and the role that Netanyahu played. 

 Netanyahu since 1995 is still around claiming that Mayor Mamdani has become the real threat to all Jews while a documentary NAZA  allegedly "proves" genocide. And hijacking... is once again in the news. 

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RABIN AND ARAFAT - OSLO ACCORDS

In the early 1990's there was an optimistic mood in Israel. They had survived the War of Independence, Six Day and Yom Kippur wars and for practical purposes the First Intifada had been squashed. The surrounding Arab nations no longer provided an existential threat. Although in1979 the Ayatollah had pledged Israel's destruction, he had not as yet conjured up, trained and armed proxies that would later become the spearhead of the attempt to eliminate it. The principal danger then was Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, (PLO), He had introduced terrorism mainly in the form of hijacking to the world stage on a scale never witnessed before. However he was weakened and was tending to what was left of a six year long Intifada, (The First). 

On July 22, 1992, Israel elected the first Israeli born Prime Minister, Yizhak Rabin, in fact for the second time, to negotiate a peace for a country that had known none. Momentous peace talks with Yasser Arafat followed and the Oslo Accords, were agreed to. This barely more than a year after Rabin assumed office. The latter were then announced signed and sealed at White House at two meetings in September 1993. with President Clinton presiding. A year later the two leaders in addition to Foreign Minister Peres received the Nobel Prize for Peace. In that same year further talks took place in Cairo extending what was to be a gradual process of peace between the two peoples.

The Oslo Accords achieved fundamental agreements that were never to be followed through. These included recognition of Israel as a State and self rule in Gaza and the West Bank with the legitimatization of the PLO. At this stage Benjamin Netanyahu entered the scene. Like his father he was dead against Palestinians permanently occupying Gaza and the West Bank. 

NETANYAHU - RABID OPPOSITION TO RABIN

In 1994 Bibi Netanyahu was part of a demonstration against Rabin where a coffin was paraded with a noose while offensive signs dominated the environment. On the coffin the message screamed, “Rabin is killing Zionism”. Netanyahu's opposition hardened and became uglier as the leader of the opposition he stood on a balcony while crowds below yelled curses at Rabin. They waved posters of him in a Nazi uniform with an Arab kafiya on his head. His widow Leah Rabin, singled Netanyahu for creating the environment that led to the death of her husband and never forgave him, snubbing him publicly at his attempts to show sympathy.  

It is again one of those vagaries of history why Netanyahu succeeded Rabin and not Peres in the 1996 election. However in the next Ehud Barak won one of the rare clearcut victories in Israeli politics sending Netanyahu to the political wilderness for a decade.

Barak followed up with another attempt at a two state solution in 2000.This time Clinton outright blamed Arafat for rejecting the deal. The United States President subsequently remonstrated with the PLO leader that he had marred his Presidency.  While there was a counter narrative put out by Arafat as to why he reneged on the second Clinton attempt there was none on the first. That initiative was halted as a result of the Rabin death Arafat argued and Leah Rabin corroborated his version of events.

LEAH RABIN AND ARAFAT AND THE PEACE PROCESS

While Leah Rabin rejected Netanyahu’s denials of culpability she had every reason to support Arafat’s contention that he was committed to the peace plan. The PLO leader made a secret visit to her within days of the assassination in her apartment in the North District of Tel Aviv. He had wanted to attend the funeral but security concerns overrode that objective, So he flew in under tight security from Gaza by helicopter for a 90 minute condolence visit. He shared with the widow that her husband was “a hero of peace and a personal friend”. She responded that “ my husband regarded you as a partner in peace”. 

 

The evidence that this was not performative was argued by Arafat in an interview with Time at his headquarters in Gaza, where he claimed, “They were more than friends”, that they spoke regularly by phone and they had another special channel, a person who connected them. The sit down meeting came a week after Rabin’s assassination and it seemed. “…as it was a year….The man paid with his life for the peace of the brave”. Arafat hinted at coordination between the fanatics on “..both sides”. 

Arafat stated that he was now worried about the peace process. In the discussion it was noted that neither Netanyahu nor Hamas signed the agreement. However he believed Peres who was part of the agreement would deliver but Netanyahu intervened. In 2000 the PLO leader rejected Barak's effort. There were two other major initiatives made one by PM Sharon in unilaterally ceding Gaza to the Palestinians but Hamas won the election so there could be no unification. The other by Olmert in 2008 which Mahmoud Abbas declined.

AND THEN THERE WAS ONE - BIBI NETANYAHU AND NAZA

So now it is back to this decade who was the only one left of the original dramatis personae, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was clinging onto power. Sadly the world has turned against Israel rather than its Government. Also the Jews in the diaspora are being blamed as well. Antisemitism is at another peak in history. The scapegoat narrative today is that the Jews generally are the oppressors and the Palestinians are the oppressed. To add to the drama now is the emergence of a documentary purporting to “prove” Ethnic Cleansing entitled NAZA.

NAZA details that an AI application was used to inflict civilian deaths, “collateral damage” in attacks on Hamas. The production won a “Special Prize” in a film festival in Venice. At the conclusion of the viewing there was a standing ovation for 25 minutes. There were several reasons why such a revelatory documentary would be immediately accepted at face value. The enormous destruction of Gaza, Israel’s ongoing presence nearly three years into the war and the  reporting of the Gaza Ministry of Health of over 70,000 deaths, the overwhelming number being non combatants.

The authoritarian overreaction of Netanyahu to the two directors of the Gaza story became the story itself. He claimed that they were “….contributing to fuel global antisemitic sentiment…… The defamation prompted him to propose doubling the fines of those defaming the military and stripping individuals of their citizenship”. The two involved were born in Israel and very soon it became obvious that Netanyahu was giving the documentary world wide attention. This would have just become a boutique production in one of the plethora of these events, notwithstanding that it was backed by the UK newspaper The Guardian. Now everyone wants to see it! 

The problem with the reception of the audience and subsequent condemnation from no less than the Prime Minister of Israel is that there is counter narrative from one of the founders of the NAZA system which has been ignored. The lead story in The Times of Israel, (September 17, 2026), by former Lieutenant Colonel Sarit Zahavi was headlined “The filmmakers mistook the IDF’S system for limiting civilian casualties as something far darker. They should have asked me ; I helped build it.”

She continued, “A little less than 20 years ago, (Ehud Olmert was Prime Minister) I was one of the founders of the unit within the IDF that deals with warning populations on the other side of enemy lines and preserving civilian lives… I would have explained that the chart shown at the beginning of the film’s promotional material is not a ‘killing chart’, but rather a planning chart for a target identified as being used by Hamas……it’s purpose is whether to strike at all, who in the command echelon is authorized to approve the strike….In stark contrast (to what the film purported to represent),….’NAZA 500 - collateral damage’….. means that action must be taken to reduce the collateral damage…both Hamas and Hezbollah deliberately place their rockets and headquarters in the heart of civilian areas…it is precisely the IDF’S efforts to preserve lives….namely evacuation warnings and tracking evacuation status that have been interpreted as ‘ethnic cleansing’…ignoring the scope of terror infrastructure exposed inside and beneath villages in both Lebanon and Gaza in almost every house….”.

There is little doubt that there needs to be an investigation into the conduct of the war, but this explanation exposes the gross negligence of all involved in the NAZA documentary,  The story in “The Times of Israel” raises the issue as to why Netanyahu didn’t tell the world that the production had got it all wrong.. At least he could have argued a point made by the the Lieutenant Colonel as to why no-one in the Israeli Defense Force was asked to comment aa to what NAZA was. Bibi chose rather to politically grandstand and not contradict the premise of the movie and it was left to the IDF to explain. Perhaps he would rather not focus on the fact that it was initiated by Ehud Olmert and he was not going to investigate the conduct of the war Rather he was off to New York to attack Mamdani.

BIBI GOES TO  MAMDANI’S NEW YORK

Netanyahu was off to New York where he immediately began  a running battle with New York Mayor Yohran Mamdani who had originally maintained that he would arrest the Israeli Prime Minister when he arrived in the Big Apple. (Mamdani had not suggested the arrest of the President of Iran who was the country’s representative to the UNO Assembly or Russia’s Lavrov.  All the while he was having tea with another alleged war criminal, the President of the United States).

Instead of ignoring the Mayor, who in the grand scheme of the world stage is a nonentity, Bibi decided to run against him in the October 27 Israeli election using the General Assembly as his stomping ground. Mamdani isn’t on the Israeli ballot or an international leader. The PM said that Israel wasn’t committing genocide because he said so. The delegates in The Assembly walked out in droves before he started. Bibi has a way about him that endears him to no- one. He lives by his wits with unbelievable political and survival skills. So he sneered at those that left, “No moral courage” and invited those that had the moral courage to remain, to leave. 

Meanwhile outside in the streets of New York the demonstrations mumbled. One was “demanding” that the UNO “do something” about antisemitism. (Be careful what you wish for). About a 1000 attended that one which had representatives from every conceivable Jewish Organization. There were about a 1000 at the anti Netanyahu rally with 24 at a pro Bibi support group. The largest, a march was led by the Palestinian Youth Movement where there were “thousands”.

All in all Bibi was not going out with much of a bang in New York. The figure that had created a stir wherever he pitched up was no longer calling the shots. As Bill Clinton once said,“Who the hell does the guy think he is? Who is the world power around here?” It was a far cry from the last visit where he took over the Situation Room and persuaded Donald Trump that they could change the Iranian regime quicker than Putin thought he could overrun Ukraine. His foil now was the Mayor of New York. He screamed from the podium of the world that the Jews of New York fear Mamdani. Jay H. Ell believes they fear Netanyahu far more. (Blog: Israel and Jewish Angst).

AT THE END OF THE DAY

There was one moment in history on 1995 when the stars were aligned in that torn tiny piece of holy real estate in the Middle East. Bibi was central to them imploding before they joined. The climate in Israel was strong enough to carry peace attempts through till 2010  Since then Bibi has stridently gone in the other direction. He has to exit now and a new painful beginning of peace hopefully will start. If it does the world might pick up on the fact that it needs two states to create a two state solution.

What would have Netanyahu done without Mamdani and Mamdani without Netanyahu ? 

Just because many of the countries that are attacking Israel have said and done not much against antisemitism through the ages doesn’t exculpate the Netanyahu cabal for anti -humanitarian behavior. 

Fly El Al!