Keith Olbermann makes a convincing case that President Trump is ensuring the military will be behind him when he, as he certainly will, goes too far. The evidence is there.
Olbermann, on his “Countdown” podcast, notes that this past Friday night Trump fired the (Black) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “and replaced him with a junior officer he brought back from retirement whom HE claims once wore a MAGA cap in his presence.” Then he fired the Chief of Naval Operations, a female, as well as the Judge Advocates of the Army, Navy, and the Air Force.”
Trump made the remark while deriding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country was invaded by Russia in February 2022.
President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s invasion of the country three years ago, arguing Kyiv could have made a deal to avoid the conflict.
“You should have never started it,” Trump said of Ukraine while criticizing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had expressed concern that his country was not included in talks between the U.S. and Russia in Saudi Arabia.I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well. But today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort. “You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
U.S.-Russia Meet to Talk End of Ukraine War—without Zelenskyy
Trump went on to say: “I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way.”
The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks.
The U.S. and Russia on Tuesday agreed to re-establish embassy staffing, diverging from previous American policy on the matter. Zelenskyy said earlier Tuesday that “Ukraine did not know anything about it.”
Trump, who said last week that he and President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone about ending the war, has made several comments bolstering the Russian president. He said during an interview with Fox News last month that Ukraine should not have fought when it was invaded by Russia.
Trump also criticized Zelenskyy when asked by reporters if the U.S. would support Ukraine holding new elections as part of a potential peace deal with Russia.
“When they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to, wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, ‘You know, it’s been a long time since we’ve had an election.’ That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also,” Trump said.
Ukraine last held a presidential election in 2019.
President Trump is aggressively rolling over the government, closing agencies and firing government workers, as well as giving his billionaire buddy the green light to go through personal files of American citizens, violating all kind of rules and laws. Hal Ginsberg and I discuss the first crazy weeks of this administration on my weekly appearance on Hal’s YouTube videocast Halitics. We discuss immigration, Guantanamo, Gaza, nuclear weapons and more……
A very serious constitutional crisis is unfolding. Can the Trump/Musk dictatorship be stopped? Here’s what the New York Times editorial board is thinking…..
The U.S. Constitution established three branches of government, designed to balance power — and serve as checks on one another. That constitutional order suddenly appears more vulnerable than it has in generations. President Trump is trying to expand his authority beyond the bounds of the law while reducing the ability of the other branches to check his excesses. It’s worth remembering why undoing this system of governance would be so dangerous to American democracy and why it’s vital that Congress, the courts and the public resist such an outcome.
Among legal scholars, the term “constitutional crisis” usually refers to a conflict among the branches of government that cannot be resolved through the rules set out in the Constitution and the system of checks and balances at its heart.
Say, a president who openly disregards the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit and asserts a right to remain in office indefinitely.
But there’s no need to get ahead of ourselves. Right now, in February 2025, only weeks into President Trump’s second term, he and his top associates are stress-testing the Constitution, and the nation, to a degree not seen since the Civil War.
A partial list would include flouting the express requirements of multiple federal laws, as though Congress were an advisory board and not a coequal branch of government. It would include feeding entire agencies into the “wood chipper” (their words), an intentionally gory metaphor for the firing of thousands of civil servants without the legally mandated congressional approval. It would include giving an unelected “special government employee” access to the private financial information of millions of Americans, in violation of the law. And it would include issuing an executive order that purports to erase one of the foundational provisions of the Constitution on Mr. Trump’s say-so.
There is also reason to fear that powers that solely rest with the president, and therefore don’t raise direct constitutional concerns, are being abused in ways that weaken the constitutional order. His mass pardon of Jan. 6 rioters, for instance, is technically legal, but it both celebrates and gives license to anyone who wishes to engage in violence to keep Mr. Trump in power.
Any one of these acts sets off major alarms. Taken as a whole, they are a frontal assault on the laws and norms that underpin American government — by the very people who are meant to execute the law.
The most useful way to answer that question is to focus less on discrete events and more on the process, in which one branch pushes the limits of its authority and then the others push back. When those in power understand that their first obligation is to the Constitution and the American people, this process can be normal, even healthy.
When they don’t — well, that’s what we are watching play out.
Voters gave Mr. Trump a Republican-controlled Congress, and those lawmakers are within their right to try to pass the president’s agenda through the legislative process. That doesn’t relieve either chamber of its constitutional responsibility to the American people to serve as a check on the power of the president.
With virtually no exception, Republican leaders in Congress have made clear through their inaction that as long as they and Mr. Trump hold power — until January 2027, at least — they will stay out of his way. One reason, however, that Mr. Trump is using executive orders so often is that many of his plans would find resistance from Congress because of the Republicans’ slim majorities and the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
While it may seem that the Republican leaders in Congress are free to abdicate their power to the president if they choose, that is not the case. As the sole branch granted lawmaking authority, they can repeal a law only by passing another one — not by failing to complain when a president chooses not to follow the ones he doesn’t like. That ensures that every law passed has the support of a majority of members elected to represent this diverse, divided country.
The United States Agency for International Development, for example, is funded through the congressional appropriations process. Would the current Congress vote to cut that funding? Perhaps. But at the very least, the House speaker and Senate majority leader should be putting the question up for a vote.
And Congress plays another important role: When the president or his administration is believed to have broken the law, it’s up to Congress to investigate and, when appropriate, use its censure powers. There is no sign that lawmakers plan to hold Mr. Trump accountable in this manner.
The willingness of Republican congressional leadership to watch passively as its own rights and responsibilities as a coequal branch of government are undermined leaves only one other branch actively checking the excesses of this overreaching presidency: the federal courts, where nearly all intragovernmental disputes eventually wind up.
However it may play out, the refusal to obey a Supreme Court ruling — from which there is no appeal — would be the moment that America’s constitutional order completely fails. That is a clear red line separating countries that operate under the rule of law from those that do not. If he crosses it, Mr. Trump will have created the precise scenario the nation’s founders fought a war and established an entirely new government to avoid. And if that happens, no part of society can remain silent.
There is disagreement among even legal scholars about whether the country is all the way to a constitutional crisis yet. Regardless, the statements from the White House and the unwillingness of Republican leaders in Congress to even consider acting as a check should be taken as a flashing warning sign. If we have learned anything from the past decade of living with Donald Trump, it’s that when he tells you about what he will do with power, believe him.
Who is in charge of the country? The people or the Trump/Musk regime ? I go on Hal Ginsberg‘s YouTube videocast Halitics an make the case that we are undergoing an illegal fascist-style coup that is getting worse by the hour? Will Trump and Musk even recognize the validity of court decisions? Hal is a bit more sanguine but is also worried.
So, JD Vance is now saying that he and Trump don’t have to obey federal judges, tweeting, “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” This is how autocrats run things; it’s an extraordinarily dangerous moment.
It was Tuesday, July 17, 1787 and the men writing the Constitution had convened in Philadelphia to debate the separation of powers between the Congress, the presidency, and the courts. They drew their inspiration for that day from French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu, whose 1748 book The Spirit of the Laws had taken the New World and the Framers of the Constitution by storm.
In it, Montesquieu pointed out the absolute necessity of having three relatively co-equal branches of government, each with separate authorities, to prevent any one branch from seizing too much power and ending a nation’s democracy. In The Spirit of Laws, he laid it out unambiguously:
“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty. … Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive.”
As the topic of the separation of powers was being debated at the Constitutional Convention that day twenty-nine years after Montesquieu’s book had been published, “Father of the Constitution” James Madison rose to address the delegates:
“If it be essential to the preservation of liberty that the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers be separate, it is essential to a maintenance of the separation, that they should be independent of each other. …
“In like manner, a dependence of the executive [president] on the legislature would render it the executor as well as the maker of laws; and then, according to the observation of Montesquieu, tyrannical laws may be made that they may be executed in a tyrannical manner.
“He [Montesquieu] conceived it to be absolutely necessary to a well-constituted-republic, that the two first should be kept distinct and independent of each other … for guarding against a dangerous union of the legislative and executive departments.”
If the president were ever to dictate all terms to the Congress, which then became a compliant rubber-stamp regardless of how excessive or even illegal the president’s actions became, that, Madison said, “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
We’re there now.
In simplified form, the system Madison and his compatriots came up with that summer gave the power to create and fund government agencies (including the federal court system) to Congress (Article I), the first among equals.
The responsibility of the president was to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution); in other words, to manage the institutions of government envisioned, authorized, and funded by Congress.
And the role of the Article III Courts was to make sure neither overstepped their authority, and independently arbitrate disputes between them. Their decisions must be final for the system to work.
However, as a result of a 44-year-long effort by morbidly rich American oligarchs to corrupt our government to their own gain (the so-called Reagan Revolution, Bush, Trump, 1500 radio stations, three television networks, multiple newspapers and other publications, over 200 television stations, hundreds of billions spent to purchase and then elect politicians), all of this American democracy and government— after 240 years — is finally on the verge of collapsing and being replaced by something very much like Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
The GOP-controlled Congress has, in both houses, become a pathetic rubber-stamp for whatever billionaires, Trump, Musk, and industries like fossil fuels, crypto/tech, and banks want.
The president is nakedly breaking laws and daring both Congress and the courts to do anything about it.
And now JD Vance claims Trump can do whatever he wants and ignore the courts. (Only federal marshals can enforce federal court orders, but they work for Pam Bondi and Donald Trump.)
That is the very definition of a constitutional crisis.
As a result, every Republican and most Democrats are terrified of Elon Musk or some other billionaire destroying them in the next primary election. The result has been legislative gridlock, a paralysis of the legislative branch.
Going a step farther, Trump has authorized a drug-abusing, Putin-conversing, government-contracting billionaire — his single largest donor who probably was responsible for him becoming president — to access the private information of every American citizen and corporation, dismantle entire agencies created and funded by Congress, and stop multiple investigations into his own business practices.
This is more correctly defined as a war against America and our system of government than mere politics.
A war that must be absolutely delighting America’s enemies, particularly Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi. Especially now that Musk is calling for the shutdown of the Voice of America that both Putin and Xi hate as much as they both hated USAID.
But it even goes beyond that. Trump and Musk are rapidly moving America — with their attacks on the press, voting, and truth itself — toward the kind of authoritarian police state that several of the men Trump appears to love have established.
Further defying the Constitution, Trump has empowered the richest man in the world to attack and possibly destroy multiple federal agencies that were, just coincidentally of course, investigating his businesses:
— The FAA’s Administrator had launched an investigation into SpaceX after a spectacular rocket explosion; he’s now been fired. — The Department of Justice was looking into possible violations of securities and other laws by Musk and Tesla; it’s probably safe to assume that investigation won’t go any farther. — The USAID Inspector General was investigating how Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite terminals, purchased with USAID funds, were used in Ukraine’s war to defend itself from Russia. — The Department of Defense’s Inspector General opened a review in 2024 into alleged repeated failures by Musk and SpaceX to properly disclose their contact with foreign leaders; he’s now fired. — The USDA Inspector General’s office was investigating alleged animal abuse at Neuralink, Musk’s brain implant company; he’s been fired. — The National Transportation Safety Board, overseen by the DOT, had several open probes into Tesla regarding its remote and self-driving vehicles; odds are they’ll be dropped if they haven’t been already. — The EPA had settled multiple lawsuits with Tesla in recent years over Clean Air Act and hazardous waste law violations; now that the EPA is being gutted there probably won’t be any more. — The National Labor Relations Board, overseen by the Department of Labor, had 17 open investigations against Tesla and SpaceX for alleged unfair labor practices, safety violations, and discriminatory work practices that are probably now moot. — The FCC was carrying out investigations and had issued court orders related to Musk’s businesses. — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was overseeing some of Musk’s companies and had a consent decree in place. — Additionally, the Air Force and the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security launched reviews in November 2024 regarding Musk and SpaceX’s compliance with federal reporting requirements.
Musk’s $277 million investment to get Trump elected — legalized by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court — has, so far, paid off well.
Welcome to Madison’s “very definition of tyranny.”
Now that Republicans control Congress and have surrendered their authority to Trump, the last bulwark against the president converting himself into the sort of monarch we fought the Revolutionary War against is the Supreme Court, which will probably begin weighing in over the next few weeks.
And, in the face of this, the vice president is arguing that he and the president should feel free to ignore court orders.
This attack on our republic represents the most dangerous moment America has experienced since the Civil War.
Neither the Supreme Court nor Congress are entirely capable of ignoring public opinion: It’s vital we all reach out to our elected officials (particularly Republicans) to demand they reclaim their rightful role in our republic and speak out against this illegal, unconstitutional power grab.
It’s also crucial to make our opinions known in every way and every venue possible.
If America is to retain any fidelity whatsoever to our Constitution that was written and survived more than two centuries’ investment of blood and treasure, it’s time to raise absolute holy hell.
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