Heroes: those willing to take a risk and stand up to Trump.
Gov Gavin Newsom (D-CA)
Gov Janet (“See You in Court”) Mills (D-ME)
Harvard? (for now?)
Justice Katanji Brown Jackson and her 2 liberal associates
The liberal punditry: Robert Reich, Trae Crowder, Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert
50501 and everyone else who takes to the streets.
The cowards: they have the ability to stand up to Trump but chose not to.
Every Republican member of Congress, both houses
Paramount/CBS
ABC
Columbia University
The 6 conservatives on the Supreme Court
Those law firms that gave away their services to Trump rather than face a lawsuit
All he’s doing is talk. He isn’t actually doing anything. Even when he could.
Like, if he’d ordered the National Guard to ignore Trump’s mobilization order as illegal, they’d have had to actually stop and think about which order was legal and which wasn’t. That might have made a difference. But he didn’t.
Newsom might remember that Ike had federalized the National Guard at Little Rock. Still, he could at least make a gesture.
Looking at JFK’s (Ted Sorensen’s) Profiles in Courage, there’s a lot of futile stands and grandstands, some obvious omissions, and no few wrongheaded positions taken. But all of them cognizant acts of political suicide. That is entirely absent in the current landscape.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who’ve made sure that Paramount’s $1.5 billion paid for exclusive streaming rights to South Park and for another 50 new episodes, was muchly wasted, because Trump’s going to be very unhappy with any new episode that’s going to be put on the air. That $1.5 billion completely eclipses the $16 million Paramount paid in their bribe to Trump.
More liberal punditry: Dan Rather, Paul Klugman - although I hate calling it “liberal”. It’s more correctly called “accurate”.
Border czar Tom Homan was mouthing off about arresting Newsom, and Newsom told him to put up or shut up. And he shut up. That’s enough to make my list right there.
Can we add the EU to the cowards list. Yes a major trade war with the US would be bad for the EU, but they could at least have waited to see if TACO kicked in. Also now that they have showed their willingness to surrender, what’s to stop Trump from coming back in a year or two and demanding more. “Once you’ve paid the Trumpgeld you’ll never get rid of the Trump.”
In my opinion, you can add Jasmine Crockett to the list of heroes. There’s not a lot she can do legislatively, but she’s been tireless in calling out Trump and the Republicans for their destructiveness and hypocrisy.
Can we add Scotland to the Cowards list, which I’m loathe to suggest, but they caved and let the ‘Bloody Bloke’ build his golf course. Eric, the bright trump, suggested that they had an unlimited budget and they exceeded it.
Klugman, uh, Krugman agrees that the EU should have been tougher, since they’re an economic superpower and should act like it. On the other hand, his (free) substack today lays out how all of their investment and oil and gas purchase promises are totally empty. On the energy side, the EU couldn’t fulfill the promise to purchase more LNG even if they had the authority, which they don’t.
Anyway, sure, they pretended to give some concessions (which the NY Times promptly described as Trump winning his trade war…), but in reality, they conceded nothing at all.
On the hero side, how about those NJ? NY? politicians who were arrested protesting ICE facilities?
If we’re doing countries, might I suggest adding the Israeli government to the cowards-versus-trump list. If they’re not going to actively condemn someone who is an actual, literal Nazi, I think the chances are low of them having our back when it would take more than moral support. And that’s not even asking them to condemn Trump for his general heinousness, although that would be nice as well. Nah. They’re all in for Trump. It doesn’t matter what he does.
That’s my impression of all of his “deals” so far. He’s imposed new taxes on American consumers, and all he’s gotten in return is promises to “buy” stuff that governments don’t buy. I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, Trump fundamentally doesn’t understand how international trade works, and it seems to me that governments around the world are starting to take advantage of that. Make as many empty promises as they have to to get the tariffs as low as possible, knowing that that will never be zero, or even what they were before Trump. Trump loves tariffs, so you know there will be some, the game is to get them as low as possible.
Meanwhile, the other countries are doing whatever they can to diversify their trade, to eliminate as much US trade as they can.
Like it or not, the American people gave Trump real power, not just in the US, but around the world, because of the influence he inherited that was created by decades of US world dominance. The rest of the world can’t change that overnight, so they’ll have to deal with him no matter what.
I’d agree with that if he had actually done or said something meaningful while still in government. Instead, he quietly just went away. I haven’t read his book, but I believe he talked about it there. But again, this was after he could have had a real voice as a sitting senator.
There have been a number of officials who quietly resigned, which I suppose they saw as a form of protest. Not everyone has to be a hero, and there’s good reason to protect oneself from Trump and his minions. But someone like Romney (who has way more money than he needs) should have felt empowered to do more. However, even he was worried for the safety of his family, which is understandable.