Summary
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz Tim Walz warns that Trump may soon arrest political opponents and potentially groom one of his sons, likely Donald Jr., as a successor.
“It’s going to get very dark,” Walz told CNN, citing Trump’s defiance of a judge’s order on Venezuelan migrants and calls to impeach a federal judge as evidence of authoritarian tendencies.
He expressed concern that Democratic leaders underestimate Trump’s authoritarianism and public frustration with both parties.
Walz criticized Schumer’s handling of the GOP spending bill and questioned how Democrats will rebuild institutions damaged by Trump.
I wonder if Walz will become the George Washington of America, while AOC and Bernie can be Founding Parents for other aspects of a reformed nation?
Could trump be our hoover/Reagan and Walz end up being our Roosevelt/Gore?
History rhymes, but I’m not saying we’re gonna see ground breaking changes that bring the federal government back from the brink. Walz just seems like a possible candidate for garnering mass approval across the board and potentially unopposed enough to social programs to maybe implement some.
There could be several people Trump has in mind for the first political enemy to be arrested, but my money would be on Anthony Fauci. They have been setting this guy up in a very elaborate way for years, but especially since last summer.
Below is a comment I made about the autopen pardon claim, but I’m just pasting it here so that more people can be aware of some facts before Trump starts making more bs claims to justify his bs policies:
Not sure if he has already said anything about the Fauci pardon, but almost certainly will be making the argument against him too.
I wrote about it a little in the post I made and plan to update with more information in a longer follow up post.
So Biden’s pardon to Fauci is backdated to 2014, the year the NIH issued pause on funding for gain of function (GOF) research. The pause was only meant to apply to research that increased the contagion or virulence of a pathogen with enhanced pandemic potential (ePPP).
From the time the notice was issued, many scientists were worried about the use of the term GOF because most virology and vaccine research involves what is by definition GOF research. Any modification of genetic material during an experiment could meet the definition of GOF. Whether it is traditional vaccine research where genetic alteration is used to increase yields for vaccine strains or even steps of genetic modification for mRNA vaccines which don’t require an inactive or weak pathogen to create a vaccine.
Anyway, this past summer during House Oversight COVID-19 Select Subcommitee Hearings into the NIH funding for the EcoHealth Alliance collaboration with Wuhan Institute of Virology, the subcommitee asked the deputy director of the NIH this question:
Rep Lesko: “Dr. Tabak, did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth?” Dr. Tabak: “It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research. If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did…the generic term is research that goes on in many, many labs around the country. It is not regulated. And the reason it’s not regulated is it poses no threat or harm to anybody.” https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing-wrap-up-nih-repeatedly-refutes-ecohealth-alliance-president-dr-peter-daszaks-testimony-tabak-testimony-reveals-federal-grant-procedures-in-need-of-serious-reform/
The Subcommitee claims this contradicts previous testimony given by Anthony Fauci. It seems pretty clear Fauci was referring to GOF as it was used in the 2014 NIH pause and Tabak was using it regarding the broad definition. However, the conclusion of many is that Fauci willingly misled the American public when he said the NIH does not support GOF research.
Biden has never acknowledged this is what the pardon was about, but it would be quite the coincidence if the 2014 backdate had nothing to do with this.
And of course the Heritage Foundation has jumped on to the we need to end dangerous GOF funding train https://www.heritage.org/public-health/commentary/president-trump-should-reinstate-president-obamas-moratorium-risky
Out of a concern for public safety of course.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see political opponents falling from windows before the next midterms.
Nah, unless some things change very quickly, he will want to make retaliation against famous political enemies very public
Falling out of windows will be reserved for lesser known journalists, citizens, and even Republican law makers that dare to speak out against any of his policies.
I imagine famous political enemies at best night experience something like Putin’s wet dream from The 3rd empire novel:
“representatives of the American elite: President [George] Bush III and former presidents Bill Clinton, Bush Junior, and Hillary Clinton; current and former members of the cabinet, the House, and the Senate; bankers and industrialists; newspaper commentators and television anchors; famous attorneys and top models; pop singers and Hollywood actresses. All of them passed through Red Square in shackles and with nameplates around their necks. … The Russian government was letting its own citizens and the whole world know that Russia had fought with and vanquished not only the American army but the American civilization.”
Here is a snapshot of an Atlantic article from a few years ago about the novel. It seems to quite literally be Putin’s playbook with some fanfiction about his deepest hopes and desires. The lady that wrote it is a professor in the U.S. that fled Russia and has been trying and failing to warn people about this book for years.
If democrats are underestimating him then they’re stupid as fuck.
Guess what. They are stupid as fuck.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MohJLPgutKQ&pp=ygUgc2FkZGFtIGh1c3NlaW4gYmFhdGggcGFydHkgcHVyZ2U%3D
I hope they can see some historic parallels. Shit can get really real in one afternoon.
That was horrifying. Thank you for sharing. Krasnov is frothing at the mouth to attempt that.
It really pisses me off they were sounding the alarms during the election. Then he was elected and the majority of them just go on as if nothing of not happened.
It’s almost as though they were never serious about stopping fascism and never will be.
Idk what happened, idk if they’re just seeing the writing on the wall and trying to cover they’re asses or if it was all just a performance from the beginning, but most of them are complicit at this point in my book.
Most of them never cared. Liberals are as useful as a wet tissue
I’m talking about Democrats, not liberals. Two different things; the Democrat party consists of more than just liberals. Don’t conflate the two.
The Democrat party is run by liberals though. Their base is primarily liberal, or at least they think it is. The Democrat party may be a “big tent” party but they do not actually act like one.
That’s a red flag.
Jesus maybe they shouldn’t have fucking muzzled this guy during the election.
It became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that he was by far the more compelling candidate for president. If the Dems would put aside their obssession with only offering presidential nominations to minorities and women, they could do a lot more good for those constituencies by getting elected over empty election martyrdom. They need to be reminded that the first rule of politics is “Get Elected,” not making futile, empty gestures of being “first.”
Stop spreading this bullshit. Her being a minority had nothing to do with her losing. She lost totally on her own merit. Fearmongering about minorities losing elections only creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where no minority can run. Also, they chose Biden, a straight white man, so no they don’t only run minorities.
centrists see the excitement behind AOC and want to prevent her from running. That’s all this is about.
That Dems are more opposed to supporting an actual progressive candidate than they are to the current administration (if we can still call it that) is very telling.
The right had a vision, a story (a dark one but nonetheless). The dems platformed on nothing in particular. Obama won overwhelmingly on Hope and Change (only to squander much of it trying to cross the aisle). Having a vision makes all the difference.
I dosnt say she lost because she was a minority, she lost because the Democratic party would rather skip their best candidates in favor of being the first woman, or black, or black woman, etc. president. At this point in history, we need someone who the electorate will perceive as strong enough to stand up to our enemies, and a woman is probably doesn’t going to generate that perception. I hate saying that, but with two losing women candidates, the Dems have to stop shoving that issue down everyone’s throats, amd consider some new strategies for WINNING.
The problem is not the minority or gender association, it’s the platform. People said a black man couldn’t win the presidency until Obama ran as a progressive and won handily. I don’t give two shits that Kamala Harris wasn’t white or a man. Biden was both of those things and I didn’t like him any better. I still voted for both of them because even a wet dog turd is better than Trump, but we need people to get excited about an alternative, not just vote against Trump.
Sure, YOU voted dems anyway, but not everyone did. And it’s those others that didn’t that you need to consider if you want to win elections. Is it that they didn’t vote Kamala because she is female and belongs to a minority? Honestly it’s not unlikely that that is the case. Obviously it shouldn’t matter, but it still seems like it does.
Where is the actual evidence that the reason the voters sat out is because she is a woman/poc and not because she was running as an establishment dem candidate. Your reasoning is how we get dems saying that its ok to throw trans people under the bus because they are clearly to scary to the average voter.
The evidence is all the news articles claiming progressives aren’t electible until enough people are parroting it that the only options are conservative horror or conservative status quo.
You’ve got to give it to the mainstream media, they have managed to convince so many people that they are not smart enough to think for themselves even though they are wrong so often.
Yeah this is the real problem - the Dems care WAY too much about seniority and ‘whose turn it is’. They care more about that than electability or messaging or, god forbid, formulating a platform that actually speaks to the average American that would inform all of the above.
On voting day I’m going to hold my nose and vote for anyone that isn’t a fascist criminal. But I promised my leftist friends that the rest of the time I’m going to do what I can to push the Democratic party to actually represent us, and that’s what I intend to do.
I wouldn’t so much blame Democrats as a whole, but definitely Biden. He dropped out late and then “crowned” his successor. I didn’t mind her all that much, compared to the orange nightmare, but I was still pretty pissed the Democrats essentially bypassed a democratic process of choosing a nominee.
The lack of a primary does two things: It prevents the selection of a good candidate, but also robs the anointed of legitimacy. The DNC doesn’t believe in democracy, and told voters as much by putting its fingers onto the scale. Or removing the scale outright, in the case of Kamala.
You cannot prove your merit, if there is no contest.
I didn’t mind it too much (the naming Kamela part - Biden staying in the race for so long with a dead campaign was a travesty). As Vice President she was already voted by the American people to be his successor, so making her the nominee was just asking the public if that was still the case. With so little time before the election, avoiding factionalizing the Democratic party was important - people will eventually get over their candidate losing and vote for the winning nominee, but there wasn’t time for a nomination and for those feelings to fade before November.
I only wish she’d kept the energy and progressive drive of the first few days of her candidacy rather than falling victim to the same advisors that ruined Hillary and Biden’s runs. This election should have been an easy win for even the lamest Democratic candidate, but it seems Democrats learned nothing from Obama’s success (well, unless you count “shut down progressives early before they gain momentum”).
Immigrants are being loaded onto planes and shipped off to places they probably won’t return from - without having even been accused of a crime, much less tried in court. Supporters of the president don’t care because they’re immigrants.
Now swap “immigrants” with “jews”, “planes” with “trains”, and “president” with “chancellor”, and what do you get?
The alt-reich.
Turd Reich
In some cases, to places they’ve never even been to.
It’s purposely cruel.
That prison in El Salvador is a damn death camp.
Actually, the supposed Venezuelan gang (assuming it really was and wasn’t just some people who were inconvenient), why did they send them to El Salvador and not Venezuela?
the Salvadorian prison is profiteering from this.
so it’s literally human trafficking then. add it to the list of US war crimes I guess
From what I’ve heard, none of them have been confirmed to be gang members, and around half have been confirmed to not be gang members.
An issue I see with US politics from the outside is the fact that when a party loses the candidate just disappears from the map and the party that’s supposed to be the opposition to the one in power is now stuck without a leader. The Republicans changed that with Trump as he kept control over the party during Biden’s tenure and that meant that the Republicans that got elected just got in the Democrats’ way whenever Trump said something even if it contradicted their previous position…
The Democrats need to wake the fuck up and not wait until the last minute to choose who will be their next presidential candidate. They need someone in the driver’s seat ASAP and having someone campaigning for the next four years (LIKE TRUMP DID!) would only increase their chances to make people realize how fucked up things are right now!
AOC should start running right now.
Not just when they lose. If you have a fully successful president that does both terms they also then fuck off to obscurity. They aren’t unpopular among their base, they just retire.
I think the problem with this is, nobody really wanted Biden or Harris. They were just the best we had. Like, nobody is going to listen to Harris now. But people love Trump, so he doesn’t have that issue.
Edit: The democratic party does not care what their voters want, they need only provide the lesser of two evils to get votes. They believe that so much, that Harris’ entire campaign was to talk about what Trump was going to do rather than what she was going to do. “Look at all these things Trumps gonna do, at least I’m not him!”
Another edit: Indeed, as multiple of you have pointed out, “the best we had” was a poor choice of words. Hell, I think even Walz was a better choice, so it’s not exactly like you need to go looking far for one.
Being the lesser of two evils was just not enough. The Democratic party has been failing to appeal to the working class and alienating groups of what are normally reliable Dem voters by neglecting them.
They were not the best by any measure.
The best we had? …or had the most money and bullshit marketing and PR?
The best the party machinery had produced at the time.
Lmao, they literally weren’t the best the democrats had. That kind of thinking is what saddled them with biden and harris.
I agree. Poor choice of words on my part.
Yes and no, even with the best candidate ever that’s how US politics work.
We need more people with platforms saying this shit.
Its crazy that the republicans even at this point is not impeaching him. He has definitively ignored a court order. The only lever left is impeachment to retain our system.
Its crazy that the republicans even at this point is not impeaching him.
Why? They don’t give a shit about the laws. With Trump in power, they stay on his good side, they have run of the place.
The USA we all knew is now dead. There is no coming back from this. If you have money in US funds or US companies, move it. It won’t be worth anything after civil war break out - and it will.
Crazy that we’re watching the death of an empire in real time. Would be kinda interesting if it weren’t for the needless human suffering and that whole existential threat to civilisation thing.
being a congressman won’t mean anything if the executive controls all. this is their last chance at relevance.
That’s quite the doom and gloom take.
That’s not the only lever. Nom nom.
Its the only *legal lever
- except according to the man in question you commit no crime when saving the country so executing him in public would be legal.
There have been a countless number of sycophants that have sold out their country throughout history. This is just another bunch of them. More sour grapes from the vines of humanity.
You underestimate how many scared and poor people actively welcome authoritarianism.
We know Tim. We know.
But hey, our representatives are voting as hard as they can, right? That’ll show em!
Yeah, we know. But I don’t think we’re exactly representative of the average voter. The lack of politicians coming out and saying this shit is alarming, and we need more of it.
It’s so frustrating. You don’t have to warn anybody, it’s already happening! You have to do something.
Doing something requires courage, and the vast majority of our current Dems are feckless cowards. Most are content to hide behind their job descriptions and enjoy their free healthcare and when the time comes, deploy their golden parachutes.
More than courage it takes organization.
They’re voting as hard-right as they can, you mean.
They are voting against their own interests, that’s for sure.
They are voting against OUR interests. They’re absolutely voting for their own. At least Schumer and the other Dems that passed the CR the other day
There were warnings at least a year before the election, many people laid out what is to come, it was barely taken serious, mostly ignored. And even now the media and government types are doing mostly a half assed “we’re stunned he’s doing this, but oh well, another day another decree”
It is too late, there will come an indefinite next term of Trump’s hegemony, and when he dies his son will take over as new/official king. He himself might not want to take up the title soon but when his next in line is ready it will start to be brandished about.
The writing is on the wall with how he is already tearing up any legal restrictions laid on him.
The current “proposals” for a 3rd term are only there to get people acquainted with it under the guise of “let him finish the job” but it will get hammered through, objections will not be tolerated.
The fucking MAGAts said so many times that project 2025 was not going to happen.
I can’t tell you how many times I was told I was being dramatic and/or crazy. All I have is a bunch of fuck you’s for all the people who would not listen to me. I’m so angry seeing “in four years” statements when I know damn well there will be no more legit voting. I am still wanting to slap everyone for being so fucking dense to the reality. I don’t think usa is worth saving at this point, everyone is just too fucking stupid and I’m tired of swimming upsteam.
Political opponents are already being targeted.
They’re just going to ramp it up.
We’ve all been understanding this even while Walz et al were talking about how they might run in a few years.
Only argument is I see no way trump trusts don jr with even being a figurehead.
They’re gonna put in Barron because he knows how to turn on a computer. That’s a step of competency above his other sons. Also, they’ll want the youngest one in for the longest-lived dictatorship.
Further, Barron has made inroads in the right wing podcast ecosystem. The other Trump boys are still living in the 90’s, they’ll want someone who understands the modern era and can influence it.
Barron is really good with cyber
Long term maybe, but short term Barron is too young and the Constitution isn’t ambiguous about the age limits - and even if it’s worth little more than toilet paper it serves the Republicans to keep it around as a zombie so they can keep pretending this is a democracy.
Dude, they already stopped giving a fuck about the Constitution. We’re literally in the middle of a Constitutional crisis. They’re ignoring the courts.
I’m so tired of hearing this “blah blah blah Consitution doesn’t allow” they will make it allow it. Just like how Bannon was quoted that they’re working on Trump’s third term, which means they’re just going to re-interpret everything into their favor.
Just like how they just argued that they needed to deport Venezuelans with no criminal history because somehow that means they’re more dangerous to the US than those with a criminal history.
Just stop this checks and balances nonsense, that shit’s over. In four years it will be dead and in it’s grave.
He prefers to groom Ivanka anyway.
Democrats won’t do a thing. They are in on it. They have been ratcheting towards oligarchy little by little.
They need to be replaced.
Most of them, but there are ones like him who still have integrity. Don’t toss them aside.
AOC and Bernie are on tour. Walz might be ok, but he’s still on probation until he shows true spine, not just very good rhetoric.
I would very much like to know of other Federal office holders we can count on. I am serious, not baitin’. Looking to find some hope and figure out who to boost or help.
He’s touring now as well https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/20/politics/tim-walz-democratic-party-future-town-hall-tour/index.html
Oh no didn’t you get the memo? Democrats are worse and more to blame for what’s currently happening than Republicans and you’re a dirty liberal if you disagree.
No nuance allowed.
All I’ve seen him do so far is talk and be part of a losing Presidential ticket. What is he doing?
Following Bernie’s lead and doing town hall meetings in Republican districts, which is where all of these sound bites are coming from. And he’s not gaslighting us or sanewashing the actions of the GOP right now which is refreshing.
I’m not sure what else he could be doing right now tbh, he’s governor of Minnesota and we’re pretty gridlocked politically at the moment - nationally the only thing he’s got is being on that losing presidential ticket, his main motivation seems to be the Democrats winning elections to make people’s lives better even if he isn’t the presidential nominee in a few years.
