Thanks, Susan, for the kind words. These people make it very, very easy to come up with those kinds of lines. The frustrating thing for me has been that it doesn't take a lot of thinking to see how off his rocker he is. How can anyone view that True Sociopath post and think anything else? Why isn't that post the lead headline of every news organization in the country? Who says that kind of stuff? It's not just unpresidential, it's insane.
I appreciate the wya you wrote this...because for me, it sticks.
And yes. The felon is out of his mind and the true question is...why isnt any CREDIBLE news organization commenting on it??? Independent journalism is here to stay. And fuck the corporate media.
They'll realize eventually they have made a BIG mistake.
The common reason given is that mainstream media is all corporate. I'm not willing to allow journalists to hide behind that excuse. Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather worked for huge corporate news services, too. The New York Times has been owned by the same family forever.
The only thing that has changed during the Trump years is the introduction of journalistic cowardice.
It's one of the reasons I don't often read the refugees who have left corporate media and started a Substack.
There are no excuses for covering Trump with kid gloves. The old 60 minutes, run by a corporate media behemoth, would have shredded him every week.
Thank you, Charles, for that incredibly thorough historical deep-dive on the Panama Canal. I found the history of the Canal Zone essential context for understanding the gravity of the current military maneuvers. And I am very grateful for your generous endorsement and the kind words—it is a privilege to share a space with brilliant journalists like yourself.
I agree entirely with your ultimate conclusion: we cannot know precisely what comes next, but the immense danger is already clear. Even without a foreign war or a civil war, it is already evident that he will become the most deadly totalitarian leader the world has seen.
As you rightly argue, there is no strategy—only the whims of a ruined mind—and those whims are already destroying the infrastructure that saves lives on a mass scale, turning the government into a mechanism of population control and neglect.
It's necessary to underscore the specifics of the non-military threat he's engineering, which provides the necessary evidence for the "deadliest totalitarian leader" claim you made:
• A Global Health Catastrophe: The gutting of USAID and the dramatic cuts to global health programs like PEPFAR (HIV/AIDS) are having an immediate and fatal impact. UNAIDS projected that the discontinuation of PEPFAR alone could lead to an additional 4.2 million AIDS-related deaths and 6.6 million new HIV infections by 2029. This deprives millions of life-saving antiretroviral medication, allowing entirely preventable diseases to spread and severely exacerbating famine.
• Vaccine Sabotage & Preventable Illness: The influence of HHS Secretary RFK Jr. on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is creating a direct public health risk. The recent vote to limit the use of the Hepatitis B vaccine in newborns has been denounced by medical groups who estimate it could lead to at least 1,400 preventable Hepatitis B infections and nearly 500 preventable deaths per year among children. This action, coupled with the withdrawal of support for other childhood immunizations, guarantees a resurgence of unnecessary, preventable illnesses.
• Climate, Famine, and Disaster Fatalities: The intentional gutting of the federal emergency management and climate resilience structure, combined with chronic delays in aid delivery, ensures that climate change-fueled disasters—like the prolonged PNW flooding or the Alaska events—will result in higher death tolls and long-term suffering. The federal cuts are destroying the infrastructure needed to track drought, famine, and respond to increasingly intense storms, leaving already vulnerable communities unprotected.
• Mental Health & Healthcare Crisis: The cuts to Medicaid—which pays for about one-quarter of all U.S. spending on mental health and substance use disorder treatment—are stripping coverage from millions and making care unaffordable. Furthermore, the reduced funding for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for at-risk populations means that crucial intervention is disappearing, which will undoubtedly increase the number of suicides. This crisis is compounded by the trauma inflicted by policies that force women, including victims of sexual abuse, to carry a child to term because abortion is no longer possible.
The scope of this premeditated, policy-driven mass death is staggering:
• By 2032, an estimated 19.4 million people will die avoidable deaths as a direct result of these policies.
• Global Impact (Foreign Aid Cuts): ~18.7 million deaths
• U.S. Impact (Health, Safety Net, Environment): ~770,000 deaths
• For context: Hitler’s regime is attributed with approximately 12 million deaths.
Your call for immediate focus and action is absolutely justified. We must not let the geopolitical maneuvers distract from the mass death already being cemented by his policies
Thanks back at you. Your recent comment sparked this post... a great demo on the value of Substack post comments, especially when it is a different perspective than my own. I write a lot of opinionated posts, which can make some readers wonder if I think I'm a know-it-all.
I'm quite the opposite. I am shackled somewhat by the convictions of my opinions, so I always appreciate deeper looks.
I'm not wrong about him being a nut, of course. He's dangerously loopy. A threat to everyone, including the people around him. Maybe especially them.
Charles, I love that attitude of yours. And I agree on the Trump assessment. Just read what Patrice Mersault wrote on the H-1B Visa and that too is adding to his death toll. Some said in the beginning something like 40 Million people alone from the USAID shutdown.
I've written a number of stories on the brain drain and various funding cuts to agencies like NIH and the CDC. I didn't write anything on USAID specifically, because so many others covered it so well when it happened, as it was one of the first attacks by the regime.
One example of what I've written, which puts a lot of numbers to the gutting of healthcare:
Charles, thanks for sharing. The numbers you cite are devastating, and from a Project 2026 perspective they are clearly only the beginning.
My point was meant more broadly, and not specifically about brain drain or government shrinkage. Trump has already endangered the lives of more than four times as many people as Hitler murdered through his actions, and people continue to die daily as a direct result of Trump’s policies.
What makes this so shattering is the fragmentation: the harm is spread across so many moments, executive orders, and decisions that each cruelty gets eclipsed by the next. The scope disappears in the noise.
This was what I meant to point to. The scale.
And if you add the COVID death toll, Trump has by now become the second deadliest dictator in modern history, and almost no one is talking about it.
No, no, no. Let’s get this straight now. McDonald’s Happy Meal comes with a toy Noble Peace Prize. The toy battleship is one of the piece markers included in the original Monopoly board game. I know, because I always picked it. Monopoly was probably the favorite board game of the older broligarchs while growing up, pre video games. Which makes me wonder, why aren’t I morbidly wealthy, because I played Monopoly to win as a kid and I always won.
This is a great piece! I love history lessons like this... its sticks! I snorted and laughed and nodded my head through the whole thing.
"Can you imagine if they gave Kegsbreath such control? There’d be a bar at every palm tree. Now that I think about it, that’s not such a bad idea." 😂😂
"Excited like a southern Republican discovering a new sex toy after instituting book bans" 😂
👏👏👏👏👏 Very very good.
Now, we've got to find a way to do two things: 1) get him out of office 2) educate the American people to THINK!!!!!
Thanks, Susan, for the kind words. These people make it very, very easy to come up with those kinds of lines. The frustrating thing for me has been that it doesn't take a lot of thinking to see how off his rocker he is. How can anyone view that True Sociopath post and think anything else? Why isn't that post the lead headline of every news organization in the country? Who says that kind of stuff? It's not just unpresidential, it's insane.
I appreciate the wya you wrote this...because for me, it sticks.
And yes. The felon is out of his mind and the true question is...why isnt any CREDIBLE news organization commenting on it??? Independent journalism is here to stay. And fuck the corporate media.
They'll realize eventually they have made a BIG mistake.
The common reason given is that mainstream media is all corporate. I'm not willing to allow journalists to hide behind that excuse. Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather worked for huge corporate news services, too. The New York Times has been owned by the same family forever.
The only thing that has changed during the Trump years is the introduction of journalistic cowardice.
It's one of the reasons I don't often read the refugees who have left corporate media and started a Substack.
There are no excuses for covering Trump with kid gloves. The old 60 minutes, run by a corporate media behemoth, would have shredded him every week.
Thanks again :-)
You make an excellent point. 👍
Thank you, Charles, for that incredibly thorough historical deep-dive on the Panama Canal. I found the history of the Canal Zone essential context for understanding the gravity of the current military maneuvers. And I am very grateful for your generous endorsement and the kind words—it is a privilege to share a space with brilliant journalists like yourself.
I agree entirely with your ultimate conclusion: we cannot know precisely what comes next, but the immense danger is already clear. Even without a foreign war or a civil war, it is already evident that he will become the most deadly totalitarian leader the world has seen.
As you rightly argue, there is no strategy—only the whims of a ruined mind—and those whims are already destroying the infrastructure that saves lives on a mass scale, turning the government into a mechanism of population control and neglect.
It's necessary to underscore the specifics of the non-military threat he's engineering, which provides the necessary evidence for the "deadliest totalitarian leader" claim you made:
• A Global Health Catastrophe: The gutting of USAID and the dramatic cuts to global health programs like PEPFAR (HIV/AIDS) are having an immediate and fatal impact. UNAIDS projected that the discontinuation of PEPFAR alone could lead to an additional 4.2 million AIDS-related deaths and 6.6 million new HIV infections by 2029. This deprives millions of life-saving antiretroviral medication, allowing entirely preventable diseases to spread and severely exacerbating famine.
• Vaccine Sabotage & Preventable Illness: The influence of HHS Secretary RFK Jr. on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is creating a direct public health risk. The recent vote to limit the use of the Hepatitis B vaccine in newborns has been denounced by medical groups who estimate it could lead to at least 1,400 preventable Hepatitis B infections and nearly 500 preventable deaths per year among children. This action, coupled with the withdrawal of support for other childhood immunizations, guarantees a resurgence of unnecessary, preventable illnesses.
• Climate, Famine, and Disaster Fatalities: The intentional gutting of the federal emergency management and climate resilience structure, combined with chronic delays in aid delivery, ensures that climate change-fueled disasters—like the prolonged PNW flooding or the Alaska events—will result in higher death tolls and long-term suffering. The federal cuts are destroying the infrastructure needed to track drought, famine, and respond to increasingly intense storms, leaving already vulnerable communities unprotected.
• Mental Health & Healthcare Crisis: The cuts to Medicaid—which pays for about one-quarter of all U.S. spending on mental health and substance use disorder treatment—are stripping coverage from millions and making care unaffordable. Furthermore, the reduced funding for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for at-risk populations means that crucial intervention is disappearing, which will undoubtedly increase the number of suicides. This crisis is compounded by the trauma inflicted by policies that force women, including victims of sexual abuse, to carry a child to term because abortion is no longer possible.
The scope of this premeditated, policy-driven mass death is staggering:
• By 2032, an estimated 19.4 million people will die avoidable deaths as a direct result of these policies.
• Global Impact (Foreign Aid Cuts): ~18.7 million deaths
• U.S. Impact (Health, Safety Net, Environment): ~770,000 deaths
• For context: Hitler’s regime is attributed with approximately 12 million deaths.
Your call for immediate focus and action is absolutely justified. We must not let the geopolitical maneuvers distract from the mass death already being cemented by his policies
Thanks back at you. Your recent comment sparked this post... a great demo on the value of Substack post comments, especially when it is a different perspective than my own. I write a lot of opinionated posts, which can make some readers wonder if I think I'm a know-it-all.
I'm quite the opposite. I am shackled somewhat by the convictions of my opinions, so I always appreciate deeper looks.
I'm not wrong about him being a nut, of course. He's dangerously loopy. A threat to everyone, including the people around him. Maybe especially them.
Charles, I love that attitude of yours. And I agree on the Trump assessment. Just read what Patrice Mersault wrote on the H-1B Visa and that too is adding to his death toll. Some said in the beginning something like 40 Million people alone from the USAID shutdown.
In case you haven’t seen Mersaults note: https://substack.com/@patricemersault/note/c-188214206?r=1sss7q&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
No I haven't seen that Note, thanks for the link.
I've written a number of stories on the brain drain and various funding cuts to agencies like NIH and the CDC. I didn't write anything on USAID specifically, because so many others covered it so well when it happened, as it was one of the first attacks by the regime.
One example of what I've written, which puts a lot of numbers to the gutting of healthcare:
https://www.ruminato.com/p/american-apocalypse-the-trump-regimes
Thanks again.
Charles, thanks for sharing. The numbers you cite are devastating, and from a Project 2026 perspective they are clearly only the beginning.
My point was meant more broadly, and not specifically about brain drain or government shrinkage. Trump has already endangered the lives of more than four times as many people as Hitler murdered through his actions, and people continue to die daily as a direct result of Trump’s policies.
What makes this so shattering is the fragmentation: the harm is spread across so many moments, executive orders, and decisions that each cruelty gets eclipsed by the next. The scope disappears in the noise.
This was what I meant to point to. The scale.
And if you add the COVID death toll, Trump has by now become the second deadliest dictator in modern history, and almost no one is talking about it.
Can’t he just make do with the Erie Canal? Give him some toy battleships and let him play his little war games without bothering anyone else.
Maybe McDonald's can include the toy battleships in his next Happy Meal.
No, no, no. Let’s get this straight now. McDonald’s Happy Meal comes with a toy Noble Peace Prize. The toy battleship is one of the piece markers included in the original Monopoly board game. I know, because I always picked it. Monopoly was probably the favorite board game of the older broligarchs while growing up, pre video games. Which makes me wonder, why aren’t I morbidly wealthy, because I played Monopoly to win as a kid and I always won.
And once on Lake Erie, his toy battleships can fire on Canada.
I suspect spitting a little water is all those things are capable of