Trump’s attempted coup was unique

Sam Smith - Something that gets lost in reporting and talk about Trump's attempted coup is that we have no precedent for it in American history. This is the first time an illegal significant takeover of the American government has been attempted on behalf an individual. Even the Civil War was about succession from the …

Trump: The beneficiary as well as the creator of evil

Sam Smith – Seventeen years ago I wrote “An Apology to Younger Americans” in which I noted that, “Even members of Confederacy had the grace to secede from the union; my generation has remained within like a deadly virus, subverting it, shaming it, screwing it, stealing from it, and finally strangling it. It will likely …

The New Confederacy

Sam Smith - Elsewhere is published something I wrote back in 2006 about the difference between fascism and Nazism. Although I still see strong connections between both and our own state of affairs, my thinking - in part due to the example of Latin American dictators' different cultures of impunity  - has added a new …

The Philly response to Trunp

Sam Smith -  Reading the lusty responses of Philadelphia Eagles and their mayor to Trump disinviting the team to the White House, helped me realize why I find it so strange that the president has conned so many Americans. As CBS reported, "Mayor Jim Kenney called President Trump a "tyrant" who "is trying to turn …

Grifter in Chief

Sam Smith - As I was continuing to puzzle over why it was so easy for me to see Donald Trump as a lying con man while millions of Americans still don't understand it, I happened to pick up an old Raymond Chandler novel, Big Sleep, featuring detective Philip Marlowe. As a teenager I had …

Trump’s new confederacy

Sam Smith - Almost 60 years ago, when I first started covering Washington, it occurred to me that while the South had lost aspects of the Civil War, such as slavery and secession, it continued to exercise stunning power over a nation that had allegedly defeated it.  Congress at the time seemed almost a southern …

Trump didn’t just happen

Sam Smith- The Trump disaster has been in the works for a long time. Seldom noted changes in our values and perceptions have made it easier for many to believe such a con artist and his promises. Here are a few examples: Television – With the arrival of television politics changed forever. Instead of careers …

Handling Trump lies

Sam Smith - If I were to tell a reporter that I had built Trump Tower or that 250,000 people had come to my birthday party, before the reporter wrote that story there would be a check of the facts. And if the story ran it would do so only as evidence that I told …

Trump is only the leader of this disaster

Sam Smith  - It is good to keep in mind that Donald Trump is only the leader of this disaster. What he is leading is the most reactionary and prejudiced party since the days of the Dixiecrats. Consider the times that Jeff Sessions has undermined black progress in his state, or Mike Pence has attacked …

How the media helped create Donald Trump

Sam Smith I covered my first Washington story 60 years ago. Which is one reason I’ve had a hard time understanding not why there were some who fell for Donald Trump but why there were enough to elect him president. I was blessed to come of age before the average American was seeing so many …