Timothy Snyder: “Of course it’s a coup”; Gaza as a distraction from Musk’s illegal takeover of the executive branch
Don't run after the shiny object. Focus on what is really going on.
Note to readers: We apologize for writing so many columns and sending so many emails.
But these are extraordinary times. A Republican-led coup d’état is in progress, while Republicans in the Senate and in the House of Representatives are knowingly complicit in an attempt to overthrow the rule of law and the Constitutional order in the United States.
BACKGROUND
1) Timothy Snyder, “Of course ut’s a coup; Miss the obvious, lose your republic,”Thinking about…, February 5, 2025 (6:31 a.m.);
2) Olga Lautman, “Trump’s Diversion Tactics; Stay Focused on the Hostile Takeover of the U.S. Government,” Unmasking Russia, February 5, 2025 (8:37 a.m);
It’s hard to know whether journalists at leading newspapers are just stupid, or whether their compromised editors are keeping them from reporting what is really going on. Olga Lautman and Timothy Snyder help tell the real news stories of the day, as do we here at Trenchant Observations.
On February 4, Donald Trump again revealed his brilliance at manipulating the press. His latest shiny object was his preposterous proposal that the U.S. take over Gaza and rebuild it, after all of the inhabitants had left.
Almost all of the journalists fell for the bait.
A week earlier Elon Musk demonstrated his own brilliance at such legerdemain, with his Nazi salute at a gathering of right-wing supporters. The press corps all ran off to cover the Nazi salute, failing to report much less investigate Musk’s power grab and progressive takeover of the government’s computers and the information stored in them.1
A careful reading of Trump’s Executive Order on Doge would have revealed what was going on, as we reported here.2
Are journalists just stupid, or are their editors keeping them from investigating and reporting the really important news?
Or is the fact that articles are now written by teams of four or five reporters responsible for such incomplete reporting?
The other day the New York Times reported that Musk’s team members had passed background checks and had been vetted for security clearances. They failed to note that for the highest top-secret compartmentalized security clearance all you needed was for Trump or the White House Counsel to add your name to a list —with no vetting—and that Musk’s team was hired bypassing all the regular hiring procedures.3
Reporters at major newspapers, with a few exceptions, are failing utterly at reporting not only the immediate details but also what is really going on.
We must hold our major media—particularly the New York Times—to a higher standard.
James Rowles, “UDATED WITH AUTHOR'S COMMENT ON MUSK'S NAZI SALUTE: Building the Techno-Fascist state? Elon Musk takes sole control of the Orwellian Department of Government Efficiency,” Trenchant Observations, January 24, 2025.
See James Rowles,”Is it too soon to speak of removing 47? REVISED; Better too soon than too late,” Trenchant Observations, January 29, 2025.
See Andrew Duehren, Maggie Haberman, Theodore Schleifer, and Alan Rappeport, ”Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Mr. Musk’s representatives at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending,” New York Times, February 1, 2025.
The New York Times reporters, giving a totally false impression, wrote the following:
The Musk allies who have been granted access to the payment system were made Treasury employees, passed government background checks and obtained the necessary security clearances, according to two people familiar with the situation, who requested anonymity to discuss internal arrangements.
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James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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