Trump’s interest in rapprochement with Russia and his annoyance with Ukraine, embodied by last week’s Oval Office shouting match, has corporate pundits and politicians freaking out. Trump’s former national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, said Trump’s dressing down of Volodymyr Zelensky made him “ashamed for my nation”—something he’s never said about Guantánamo or torture or invading Iraq or even racism.

Whenever U.S. support for Ukraine gets questioned, count on militaristic whores to drag out cut-and-paste fearmongering from the Cold War era.

            Putin aims to “absorb Ukraine, all of it, and likely the other former states of the Soviet Union, too,” the editorial board of Canada’s Globe and Mail claimed in 2022.

            “Putin’s Ukraine invasion is the first time in 80 years that a great power has moved to conquer a sovereign nation,” Mitt Romney wrote in 2022. Um—Afghanistan? Iraq? Panama? “It echoes Hitler’s absorption of Czechoslovakia and his lust for Poland. But even more, it reflects Putin’s drive to reconstitute the Soviet Union—or at least its dominant sphere of influence.”

            “Putin saw the invasion of Ukraine as a key step toward rebuilding the Russian Empire,” Mark Temnycky of the Atlantic Council wrote in 2023.

            Dire warnings of the Russian threat have been around for a while. It’s not just Ukraine! They’re coming for YOU!

“[Putin’s] next move will be to invade the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. When this happens, the United States will need to move armored forces quickly to Europe, via Poland, in order to prevent NATO from being checkmated, and it’s going to have a problem doing that. Note that I said ‘when’ Putin invades rather than ‘if,’” Jerry Hendrix of The National Review wrote.

That was seven years ago, in 2018. We’re still waiting.

            No one can predict the future. All we can do is consider data and evidence, calculate the odds of the likeliest scenario and prepare accordingly.

            When you consider the issue objectively, without emotion, the odds that the Russia hawks are right—and that Putin is planning to invade Europe or, as Zelensky warns, that he plans to cross our “nice ocean” to attack the United States—are infinitesimal.

            The neocons love to say that Putin has said that he wants to reunite the Soviet Union. “Putin has openly declared his ambition to reassemble the Soviet Union, a goal he reiterated in his historical grievances aired before the Ukraine invasion,” Franz-Stefan Gady of the Center for International and Strategic Studies wrote last year in Foreign Policy.

            Nothing could be further from the truth. But, as the French social psychologist and philosopher Gustave Le Bon observed, “A lie, when it is repeated often enough, gains a sort of existence of its own, and the effort to destroy it becomes almost futile against the credulity of the masses.” Americans are drowning in propaganda.

            We don’t know what’s inside Putin’s brain. We do know what Putin has said. What Putin has said bears no relation to how he’s misquoted in the West.

            Putin did describe the 1991 collapse of the USSR as a “a major geopolitical disaster of the century” in  2005 State of the Union address. Considering that between 3 and 7 million former Soviet citizens died prematurely as a result and left Russia under the control of the inept alcoholic Boris Yeltsin, Putin has good reasons for his assessment. But that doesn’t mean he wants to get the band back together.

            “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart,” Putin has been saying since at least 2000, paraphrasing Disraeli. “Whoever wants it back has no brain.”

            “The West fears the recreation of the Soviet Union, despite nobody planning on one,” Putin mused on RT in 2015.

            “There will be no Soviet Union. The past will not come back. Today, Russia does not need this and this is not our aim,” Putin said in September 2022.

            I don’t know whether Putin is lying or telling the truth. I do know that government officials and respected, award-winning journalists have been repeatedly lying about what Putin says.

            We do, however, have concrete evidence of Putin’s intentions beyond official statements.

            If I were the president of Russia, and I was interested in reassembling the Soviet Union, I would start with the low-hanging fruit, the territories that would be most interested in coming back under the fold of Moscow. Belarus, where most citizens believe that life was better under the USSR and is slowly moving toward a union state with Russia, would be an easy lift. Most citizens of the Central Asian republics of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have a favorable view of Russia and nostalgia for the Soviet period. If Russia were to invade, the reaction would range from joy to indifference. And Tajikistan turns out to have a lot of oil and gas.

            Russia has expressed no interest whatsoever in resuming control of these former Soviet spaces.

            Why not? Reabsorbing Ukraine, the Baltics and the Central Asian republics would mean subsidizing countries that are poorer and less developed than Russia. Putin’s Russia, reliant on energy exports, doesn’t want to subsidize a new union the way the USSR did. The war in Ukraine is less about recreating the USSR than about ensuring that a buffer state doesn’t become a full-fledged NATO vassal state aligned with the U.S.

            Relax.

The Russians are not coming.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.)

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The post The Russians Are Coming? Not Really. appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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In this episode of “The TMI Show,” hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan dive into the latest developments in the Russo-Ukrainian War, spotlighting a fiery news conference between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The duo unpacks the contentious exchange that unfolded in the White House, where sharp words and clashing agendas left the room buzzing and Europe on edge. Joined by international relations expert Mark Sleboda, they explore Trump’s provocative stance, Zelensky’s pushback, and what it all means for the conflict’s trajectory.

Sleboda brings his keen insights to the table, dissecting how European leaders are rallying—or scrambling—in response, from diplomatic maneuvers to public statements. Ted and Manila pull no punches, questioning whether this marks a shift in U.S. policy or just another chapter in Trump’s unpredictable playbook. They also examine the ripple effects across NATO and the EU, where unease is palpable. Expect a no-holds-barred discussion that cuts through the noise, blending sharp analysis with bold takes on power, politics, and the human cost of war. Tune in for a raw, unfiltered look at a world teetering on the brink—only on The TMI Show.

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Of course it’s galling to see Donald Trump shake down his ally Ukraine for a massive share of its mineral resources. But let’s not forget, Joe Biden set the stage by offering assistance to Zelensky in the form of a loan rather than a grant.

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Now that Biden is out, Democrats who repeatedly dismissed claims of his dementia are shifting their stance, prompted by mounting evidence and political fallout. CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson’s upcoming book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” set for release on May 20, exposes a alleged “cover-up” of Biden’s “serious decline,” based on over 200 interviews with insiders. The book highlights how Biden’s team concealed his diminishing faculties, a narrative Democrats now grapple with post-2024 election loss.

Top figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, once silent or defensive, are implicated as likely aware of the truth, per sources like the Wall Street Journal. Even Barack Obama is suggested to have suspected Biden’s condition, yet the party maintained a united front. Tapper, previously downplaying concerns, now frames Biden’s re-election bid as “narcissistic” and “reckless,” signaling a broader Democratic reckoning as they distance themselves from the cover-up narrative they once rejected. This shift reflects both self-preservation and acknowledgment of a deception that cost them politically.

The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 195: Dems Finally Admit Biden Was Senile first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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The Trump administration has sparked controversy with aggressive moves to reshape the federal government and military. Budget director Russell Vought ordered federal agencies to plan mass layoffs, targeting thousands of workers at agencies like the IRS, FEMA, and Social Security Administration, aligning with Trump and Elon Musk. Over 20,000 federal employees have been fired, prompting lawsuits from unions and outrage from affected workers. Now a federal judge has ruled that all of those firings were illegal and must be reversed.

Simultaneously, Trump executed a dramatic Pentagon purge, firing Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. C.Q. Brown and five other top officers, aiming to make military leadership loyal to him, and plans to expel transgender soldiers, airmen and sailors. Critics, including lawmakers, warn this politicizes the military, with some alleging a rejection of “woke” policies. Courts are blocking other initiatives like changes to birthright citizenship. Public and political backlash is growing, with protests across the country, yet Trump presses forward, framing the chaos as a drive to achieve efficiency.

As the rapid, polarizing overhaul continues to unfold, “The TMI Show” hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan predict the road ahead for the mayhem in Trumpworld. Will the deep state strike back?

The post TMI Show Ep 88: Chaos in Trumpworld first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 88: Chaos in Trumpworld appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Trump’s decision to cut weapons sales to Ukraine means that a war that would have ended up in defeat years from now will end up in defeat now, instead. Sadly, billions of dollars in weapons sales will be lost.

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Historically, Bloomberg Economics has used a recession probability model that incorporates factors like housing permits, consumer sentiment, corporate profit outlooks, and Treasury yield gaps. It doesn’t always work. For example, in October 2022, they projected a 100% chance of a U.S. recession by October 2023, driven by aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes, tightening financial conditions, and persistent inflation.

Here we go again. Consumer confidence fell this month by the most since August 2021 on concerns about the outlook for the broader economy, Bloomberg notes. Many consumers think we’ll see a recession later this year. That pessimism has more than half of consumers delaying major life plans due to uncertainty over the economy and the consequences of Trump’s tariff threats. Of those, about a third said they were putting off buying a home while one in six have postponed education plans—and one in eight have pushed back retirement.

On today’s episode of “The TMI Show,” Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss the prospects for the economy with finance expert Aquiles Larrea.

The post TMI Show Ep 87: Recession Fears first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 87: Recession Fears appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The Feb. 28 consumer boycott is stupid and doomed to failure. This is because there is no real Left and therefore no one to organize it properly. Once again, the corporate Right (which includes the Democratic Party) will laugh their asses off. Pathetic.

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The post Tomorrow appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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When the Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2022, the U.S. and the West promised to help Ukraine win. But they only provided enough weapons for parity, turning the conflict into a meat grinder of attrition. And the Biden Administration didn’t just give money and arms to Ukraine—they were loans. Now that Ukraine has clearly lost to Russia, you’d think Russia would ask for money as reparations, but it’s not. Instead, in an act that would have even shamed the British Empire at the height of its colonial era, the Trump Administration is calling in the U.S. debt by forcing Ukraine to turn over a substantial percentage of its mineral wealth, crippling the Ukrainian economy during its postwar reconstruction phase.

On today’s episode of “The TMI Show,” Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss the bizarre and embarrassing specter of a superpower shaking down its defeated ally.

The post TMI Show Ep 86: Ukraine Shakedown! first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 86: Ukraine Shakedown! appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

In 2009, I posted an animated political cartoon about Bush. It got 5,900 views. 15 years later, YouTube is now censoring it for the under-18 set. YouTube’s censorship is unappealable. 15 years!!! Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGHjFgUOxYI The post 15 Years first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post 15 Years appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Democrats’ idea of “resistance” to Trump is considerably less substantial than actual resistance to fascism looked like during World War II. And it probably shouldn’t have started with a unanimous vote for neoconservative maniac Marco Rubio.

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The post Hard-Boiled Tales of Resistance appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

            For this essay, let’s not debate the pros and cons of our new old president. Detailing specific reasons that many Americans are upset with/scared of/annoyed by Donald Trump and the Republican Party would be a distraction from a point that desperately needs to be made. Suffice it to say, millions of people are angry, disappointed and would prefer entirely different political policies and priorities out of Washington.

The fact that we should linger upon is this: Many, many liberals feel very, very impotent. And this should be a major cause of concern.

When Republicans celebrate their win by mocking their opponents, they’re whistling past the small-d democratic graveyard of history. Winning an election is good. Crushing your opponents’ political will to live is dangerous.

For liberals, there is a lot not to like about politics since January 20th. Trump has signed a blizzard of sweeping executive orders on a myriad of controversial issues. His administration is attempting a radical revamp of the relationship between the American people and their government, much of it carried out by a brash break-things-move-fast tech-bro billionaire. Given the high stakes and the polarizing nature of the issues involved and that Trump’s approach is so radical, resistance should be expected from both Democratic politicians on high and street demonstrations from the grassroots.

Instead, Democrats at all levels have been compliant and largely silent. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a centrist Democrat, complains: “[Congressional Democrats are] failing to do what is their fundamental responsibility constitutionally—to be a check.” Republicans barely control the Senate, yet all of Trump’s nominees have been approved. Democrats even voted unanimously to support a far-right neocon, Marco Rubio, as secretary of state.       

Activists have been passive. There have only been sporadic protest marches. Trump’s proposal to annex and ethnically cleanse Gaza, a would-be war crime, elicited little measurable reaction from the anti-imperialist Left, certainly no protests analogous in size to last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests. Compared to the antiwar movement of the 1960s and similar demonstrations opposing Reagan, attendance at marches has been anemic. Seven out of ten Democrats are tuning out political news. Liberal-leaning cable news networks CNN and MSNBC have seen their ratings plummet and are shaking up their line-ups.

Democratic donors, taking note of the disarray, are closing their checkbooks. “[Democrats] want us to spend money, and for what? For no message, no organization, no forward thinking,” a donor told The Hill.

When a substantial portion of a republic’s population believes that there is nothing it can do to influence political leaders, the system is in trouble.

With Trump barely a month into his second term, history may record Democrats’ current beaten-down-dog mien as a momentary blip preceding a spurt of determined reenergization and a journey to recovery, reinvention and future victory. A devastating 1964 defeat left the GOP crestfallen and depressed. “Barry Goldwater not only lost the presidential election yesterday but the conservative cause as well. He has wrecked his party for a long time to come; it is not even likely to control the wreckage,” James Reston wrote in The New York Times on November 4, 1964.

He was wrong. Ray Bliss, chair of the Republican National Committee Chairman from 1965 to 1969, led the GOP out of the wilderness by patching up ideological divides and organizing at the local level. Nixon won in 1968—barely—and a landslide in 1972. Reagan shaped much of the way government looks today.

 But Democrats don’t seem likely to pull off such a trick. As they say in 12-step programs, the first step is admitting you have a problem. The party is addicted to campaign contributions from corporations like Big Pharma and Big Tech who influence it against doing much to appeal to the working-class voters they need to win elections and are migrating to Trump and the Republicans. But there’s no evidence they see that as a problem. Some top Democrats want to wean themselves off big corporate money by adopting Bernie Sanders’ proven small-contributor model, but the only suggestion we’ve heard from  new DNC chair Ken Martin is that the party needs more and better messaging.

“We also need to give people a sense of who we are as Democrats, what we believe in and what we’re fighting for,” Martin said on February 17th. While Democrats say they oppose Trump, they don’t seem to believe in much at all. They’re not fighting, whether for or against anything. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to them: “The courts,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says, “are the first line of defense” against Trump.

What of the Senate, where Democrats hold seven more seats than needed to jam up legislation with filibusters? They’re abdicating their checks and balances to the judiciary.

If you’re a liberal voter, the ideological battlefield currently looks like the Ukrainians’ situation. You keep losing. You’re deploying the same old failed strategies and tactics. No new miracle weapons are coming. There’s no reason to think that anything will improve.

Liberals see that there’s no hope. So they’re alienated and checked out.

So Trump runs wild and the streets remain empty.

If you’re conservative, the prospect of a Great Liberal Vanishing should spook you. In late-stage Rome, citizens got tired of politics and allowed themselves to be distracted by bread and circuses. The Republic slid into autocracy. German liberals disengaged from Weimar Republican politics as the SPD, the dominant left-leaning party at the time, governed in a coalition with bourgeois parties who blocked attempts to address popular priorities like unemployment relief after the depression began in 1929. In our time, low voter turnout correlates with stagnant governance and populist takeovers—and U.S. elections begin with a lower turnout rate than many other countries.

A democratic republic can limp along, hollowed out, for a while. But the less people care about the system, the easier it is for a demagogue to step in and claim, “I alone can fix it.” By then, no one’s paying attention.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.)

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When German politics shift to the Right, the world gets nervous. German’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party came in second in parliamentary elections, largely on the strength of German anger over the economy and anti-migration nativist sentiment. Has AfD peaked out? Does this presage results in France and other European countries? How should we feel and respond to the right of the German Right?

On today’s episode of “The TMI Show,” Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss the AfD’s victory in Germany.

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Even before the election, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times read Trump’s polls and censored their own Kamala endorsements. Then the tech bros who run social media donated to his inaugural. ABC News and Meta decided to punt in court and pay out big defamation claims Trump would probably have lost–were they bribes?Is Trump’s bullying chilling the media? It certainly looks like it. MSNBC has canceled Joy Reid’s primetime TV show. In another indication that journalists are under siege, a Mississippi judge ordered a newspaper to take down an editorial.On “The TMI Show” Ted Rall and Manila Chan, fresh from CPAC–where the big names didn’t bother to engage reporters–discuss the muzzling of the news media, the watchdog of democracy.

The post TMI Show Ep 84: Media Mayhem: the Trump Effect? first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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As Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting brigade ordered mass layoffs and targeted entire agencies, Democrats who tried to use the cuts to rally Americans may have been surprised to learn that the trials and tribulations of bureaucrats don’t resonate with voters who don’t understand what bureaucrats do in the first place.

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Hitler was elected democratically and consolidated his dictatorship after seizing power. Donald Trump just won a fair election. Is he plotting to subvert American democracy?

There are signs that suggest “yes.”

Presidents may only serve two terms, yet Trump repeatedly suggests that he ought to run and win a third term. A “Third Term Project” was announced at CPAC. This past week, Trump called himself “The King” and quoted the French Emperor Napoleon, who argued, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”

More materially, Trump fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other top military officers. He will be replaced with a MAGA loyalist. History shows that the military is key to a successful coup d’état or revolution. And Trump has a strong reason to want to stay in office: if and when he steps down, he again becomes vulnerable to criminal charges.

Is it 1933 in Germany? Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) talking about the prospects for democracy under Trump on today’s DMZ America Podcast.

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Moral injury, or the deep distress that can emerge when you feel that your values have been violated, either by yourself or someone else, is about to be added to the American Psychiatric Association’s D.S.M.-5, psychiatry’s classification of mental health conditions, to include the notion that moral problems could contribute to a mental health condition..

The resulting feelings of powerlessness, guilt and shame can lead to mental health problems like anxiety, depression and even suicidal behavior.

On today’s episode of “The TMI Show,” Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss Moral Injury. What is it? Is it a real mental phenomenon? Can you avoid it? What can you do if you suffer from it?

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The post TMI Show Ep 83: Are You Suffering from “Moral Injury”? appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

In many countries, politics happens 365 days a year. Citizens hold their governments’ feet to the fire when they’re unhappy. Not so in the United States. We outsource politics to the politicians and check in every two to four years to see how they’ve been doing.

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The post The Outsourcing of Politics appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

           As Democrats continue to deconstruct the root causes of their recent defeat and attempt to regroup for next year’s midterm elections, they might want to consider a new factor in American politics: the seductive power of a movement compared to a boring old party.

            On the surface, the 60th American presidential election was the usual two-way contest between the Democratic and Republican parties. But, as Democrats tried their best to run as normal and competent a campaign as they could despite Biden’s ill-timed withdrawal, Trump had re-branded and re-organized the Republican Party as a vessel of his MAGA movement.

            A movement is dynamic. Its number-one goal is building excitement and a sense of belonging.

            A party strives for constancy. It represents a set of principles through thick and thin.

All things being equal, a movement beats a party.

            “The difference between parties and movements is simple,” the progressive pundit David Sirota wrote back in 2009. “Parties are loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda. Movements are loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions it.” Democrats who were skeptical of military interventionism under Bush embraced it under Biden yet remained Democrats; the abortion-rights movement would vote Republican if the GOP were to come out as firmly pro-choice.

            Donald Trump has scrambled Sirota’s formulation.

Trump has built a highly-personalized movement detached from any discrete policy prescription. Rather than remain independent of party politics, his MAGA movement seized control of the Republican Party. Despite having achieved a sweeping victory, MAGA continues to act like an outsider insurgent movement.

Personality is everything. The dauphin J.D. Vance notwithstanding, it is impossible to imagine the MAGA movement without Trump. While I don’t give much credence to arguments that the president is a Nazi-in-waiting, there is an echo of the Führer Principle that gave the force of law to anything Adolf Hitler said. MAGA Trumpism is anything that Trump says at any given time.

At first glance at the man on the golden escalator in 2015, this highly individuated politics seems ill-fated. Trumpism is riddled with internal contradictions and existential hypocrisies. Trump’s habit of reversing himself, as he did recently by threatening Russia only to turn around and embrace it after a call to Putin seems destined, by traditional political standards, to turn off supporters who care about those issues. So does the conflict between his personal and political lives; surely evangelicals will turn against a crude serial adulterer who screws porn stars and doesn’t appear to have ever darkened the door of a church in session.

People who evaluate Trump by traditional metrics fail to understand that everything has changed. For a party, Trump’s inconsistencies and changing his mind 180° would be weaknesses to overcome or explain away. Not so for a movement. First and foremost, a movement moves. Where and how it moves is beside the point.
            A movement is entertaining. Think about Trump and his wild and crazy rants, not as appalling or racist but as unpredictable—and thus interesting. Think about Trump supporters and their giant flags, their sense of community.

Trump kept holding rallies throughout his first term—a party doesn’t do that. A movement does. A party doesn’t stick with an individual politician through thick and thin, as Trump supporters did through his legal troubles. A movement does. It has to, because it’s all about one man.

            If there is a 20th century authoritarian parallel to Trump, I have argued before, it is not the totalitarianism of Hitler but the culturally-centered rule of Mussolini. As the Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who grew up under Italian fascism, noted, “Contrary to common opinion, fascism in Italy had no special philosophy.” Mussolini, who started out as a socialist journalist, came to believe that people were drawn to action—any action—for its own sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection,” Eco wrote in an influential essay about fascism in 1995. “Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

            Writing at Salon, Chauncey DeVega complains: “President Trump and his MAGA Republicans and their forces are smashing American democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, the institutions and norms. Trump has enacted over 50 executive orders since Jan. 20, the most in a president’s first 100 days in more than 40 years. Some of the most egregious ones are blatantly unconstitutional and violate current law.” DeVega blames the media for normalizing Trump and Democrats for not taking him seriously enough to convince voters.

            What such mainstream analyses dismiss is how soul-deadening the technocrats who run the West have been. Not only have they been unresponsive to people’s complaints about internationalism and declining living standards, they have been boring.

            Democrats (and many Republicans) have repeatedly run on not promising anything. The only surprise is that they got away with it for so long.

            Whether Trump is influenced by Mussolinian tactics, or his acute political instincts rediscovered the potency of a “cult of action,” the United States was primed for the politician Trump had become by the time he ran a third time in 2024—energetic, focused, retributive, imaginative—and stormed out of his inaugural ceremony with a blizzard of pardons, sweeping executive orders and bold diplomatic initiatives.

            Asked if she would have done anything differently than Joe Biden during his presidency, Kamala Harris said: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

            And, four years earlier, Biden told a group of wealthy campaign donors that, were he to be elected, “Nothing would fundamentally change.” Turns out, he was truthful. Nearly a third of those who voted for him in 2020 didn’t turn out for Harris in 2024.

            Liberal Democrats I talk to are depressed and disengaged in this, the first month of the second term of Trump. They’re also jealous. Why, they ask, won’t the Democrats run a candidate who campaigns and governs as aggressively as Trump is doing now?

            As for those Democrats, the party faces a choice as it prepares to challenge MAGAism. It can reconstitute itself into something that looks and feels more like a movement, far less careful and far more energetic. Or it can keep going as a party that promises that nothing will ever fundamentally change.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

The post A Movement Beats a Party Every Time first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered Pentagon officials to draw up plans to cut 8% from the military over each of the next five years, the most radical attempt to rein in such spending ever.
There would be 17 exceptions to the proposed cuts, including military operations at the southern border. Cuts to defense will face opposition in Congress, where lawmakers focus on budget cuts that could affect their districts.
On “The TMI Show” Ted Rall and guest cohost Robby West discuss this shocking attempt to co-opt anti-militarism as an issue away from the Democrats.

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