Letters from an American - July 11, 2024

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

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July 11th, 2024. Yesterday, Raw Story reported that Ivan Reiklin, Trump's self-declared Secretary of Retribution, has compiled a deep state target list of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for treason if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists he considers to be Trump's enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6th, 2021. Representative

Jamie Raskin, a Democrat of Maryland, told Raw Story, his hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom. The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Reichen said the list was just the beginning. This is just the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay? Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has tried to distance himself from the radical extremist blueprint outlined in Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Today, videos surfaced of Trump cheering the project on from the start.

At a Heritage Foundation dinner in 2022, Trump, slurring his words, said, our country is going to hell. This is a great group and they're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that's coming. On a right-wing podcast yesterday, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said that Trump's agenda and Project 2025 have tremendous overlap. There are some quibbles and differences of opinion here and there, which not only is OK, but it's actually good, Roberts said. I mean, we're going to be able to sort those out once the presidential administration declares what their priorities are.

He said that Trump's attempt to distance himself from the project was a political, tactical decision. Media Matters uncovered a video in which Project 2025 director Paul Danz said that Trump is very bought in with this. The Heritage Foundation, the key author of Project 2025, is a sponsor of the Republican National Convention. Today, the Heritage Foundation preemptively accused the Biden administration of cheating in the 2024 election and warned that Biden might try to hold the White House by force.

It said that Biden and his administration could circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president. There is no indication that Biden, who has repeatedly said he will accept the election results, will try to launch a coup against the United States government. government. In contrast, Trump, who has refused to say he will accept the election result unless he agrees with it, has already done exactly what Heritage is trying to pin on Biden. Trump tried to stay in office against the will of the voters in 2021. Trump is currently under criminal indictment for that attempt, although the Supreme Court's eye-popping July 1st decision in Trump versus the United States, declaring that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes

committed as a part of a president's official duties, means Trump can challenge those indictments. Indeed, in the wake of that decision, Trump's lawyers have filed a motion to vacate the jury's conviction of Trump on 34 felony counts related to the falsification of business records in his attempt to skew the 2016 election and to dismiss the indictment. of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, Aaron Banco of Politico reported yesterday that Trump advisors have told foreign officials that Trump plans to scale back U.S. cooperation

and support for NATO, including reducing the sharing of intelligence with NATO countries. This seems likely to be related to the news that the U.S. intelligence discovered a series of Russian plots to assassinate executives from European defense companies that are supplying arms to Ukraine. Americans took that intelligence to Germany and foiled a Russian plot to kill the chief executive officer of a German arms manufacturer. manufacturer. Trump has stayed home playing golf for the past two weeks, but on Tuesday, he held a rally at his Doral Golf Club outside of Miami, where he kept the audience waiting outside in 90 degree heat before he showed up an hour late. His 75 minute speech was,

as the Guardian's Richard Luscombe reported, full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent, baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the U.S. most of their prisoners, and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000. He also claimed that Biden had quadrupled the price of bacon and said, we don't eat bacon anymore. Trump did not mention his vice presidential pick. For the first time since 1988, it appears the Republicans will go into their convention without knowing who that pick will be. Luscombe reported that the crowd appeared mostly subdued, yawning and playing on their phones. Today, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Trump is the only

candidate in the race who is patently unfit for office, any office, and an imminent threat to democracy. If the Republicans had any decency left, it wrote, they would dump him. Voters, the board said, must see the election as a referendum on our 248-year democracy and a choice between a trustworthy public servant who upholds American values and a serial liar who wants to push the country into authoritarianism. Almost two weeks after calling for Biden to step out of the 2024 race for the

presidency, the editorial board of the New York Times also said that Trump is unfit to lead the United States of America and urged voters to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it. There was continued good news today about the American economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, had collected more than a billion dollars in overdue tax bills from millionaires. That crackdown was possible thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded an initiative to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have an income of more than $1 million and owe more than $250,000 to the IRS.

Republicans have repeatedly tried to cut the funding that made this enforcement possible. Today's inflation report for June showed that inflation continues to cool, falling in June for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It declined in June by 0.1% as gas and electricity prices dropped and as rent had its smallest monthly increase since August 2021. Statistics also show that workers' wages continue to grow more quickly than prices. Yesterday, the AFL-CIO Executive Council voted unanimously to reaffirm its support for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying, Unions have never wavered in our support of them because they've never waited in their

commitment to working people. The bricklayers and allied crafts workers union quoted that statement and added, BAC is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters across the labor movement in supporting the Biden-Harris re-election campaign. In a press conference this evening, Biden championed the economic boom his policies created for the middle class and reminded attending journalists that none of you thought that would happen. In that press conference, held after he presided over the three-day NATO summit and thus focused on foreign affairs,

he reiterated the importance of NATO and reminded reporters that he was key to reinforcing the alliance after Trump weakened it, then went on to talk about foreign affairs more broadly. He also noted that, I've spent more time with xi jinping than any other president adding and by the way i handed in my notes this was a reference to the fact that in an unprecedented move trump infamously refused to disclose the notes from one of his conversations

with russian president vladimir putin at the same time that biden was holding a press conference notes from one of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the same time that Biden was holding a press conference that focused on NATO and foreign affairs, Trump was meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Putin ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. On social media this evening, Trump indicated that he is trying to conduct his own foreign policy, although the Logan Act prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, and reiterated his support for Putin's call for peace in Ukraine. Their plan calls for giving Putin the eastern regions of Ukraine that were central to his 2016 support for Trump.

Trump's 2016 campaign manager promised Trump would look the other way as Putin absorbed them. Orban, who has openly called for Trump's reelection, posted, Peace Mission 5.0. It was an honor to visit President Trump at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day, he's going to solve it. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.