Why is it some verbal slings and arrows do not bother Trump or MAGA?

  MAGA seems to dismiss certain verbal attacks on them by the libs as not just hot air, but they  ignore and sometimes even embrace what others call slurs and insults like the words fascists and dictators.  The most stunning recent development has been the millions participating in peaceful marches under the banner of "No Kings", a polite way of calling Trump a wannabe dictator who is destroying the democracy we have had for 250 years.  Trump just brushed that off before the entire world by not being offended by being called a dictator, but embracing it in Davos with "sometimes you need a dictator.. There is evidence that many in the MAGA movement agree, given CPAC and the implementing documents of  Project 2025 and actions unfolding before our very eyes on amateur and professional videos. They are either silent or in denial.

Is it time to call Trump a fascist kind of dictator? Dictators are not confined to specific ideologies. They can just as easily be communists as those on the farthest right. A recent case was made in the Atlantic that it was time to call Trump a fascist, despite the negative reaction it would inflame. My answer is to call specific actions the same as what fascists once did, instead of calling people or a group fascists. Fascist is still an insulting label, and hurling insults never was a good way to make friends and influence people. Yes, there are those within the MAGA movement who are there for reasons other than ideology or hero worship, are fearful, or have political and business ambitions. who would not like to be called fascists. Applebaum at the Atlantic, Maddow at MSNOW, and a bevy of historians and political scientists have doing a yeoman's job in educating what fascists in the last century did, but there needs to be more explicit linking the specific act to being similar to fascism,  similar to what the fascists once did.

The implicit message is, if you do not want to be called a fascist, then do not act like one. 

There is plenty of evidence that some in MAGA have already decided it would take a dictator to accomplish what they want to happen. What they want to happen sums it up in Make America Again, back to an era that resembles the 1950's, I suspect, though the "again" is never dated by  MAGA interviewees, but resembles their attitudes that look like before the civil rights legislation and DEI.  As evidence, CPAC(the conservative political action committee) began holding meetings in Hungary, whose dictator, Viktor Orbán, epitomized the kind of strong leadership that was their ideal. If that was not enough of a clue of what kind of America MAGA wanted to have govern us, they gave us another clue: Project 2025, which was a publicly printed blueprint of how to remove the checks and balances that kept a King, a tyrant, a despot, a dictator from becmiing "president", and used the placid term: unitary government. It would make the "president" be both the legislative and judicial branches, by subjugating those branches to his/her power. In his second term, the writers of that document were put in key positions to carry out the methods of achieving Project 2025 to replace all decision-making positions,  civil service protected, and appointee positions with appointees who were screened to ideological loyalty to the White Nationalist agenda. It was done under the banner of getting rid of the deep state. Laced throughout that document was the destruction of DEI in all matters. Trump appointed the Project 2025 architect as the person in charge of personnel and then proceeded to use the DOJ to threaten and to prosecute those who put up resistance or who did not resign.   Their weapon and tool was Donald Trump, who seems to have never enough absolute power to suit his appetite, even after his appointees on the Supreme Court gifted him immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump himself touted his lack of moral standards (he'll use his own version of what is moral, he told Davos) "transactional.. another polite term that means right is whatever favors him and his advantage and power, which he believes, and said so, in a recent interview that he has the power to do whatever he wants.

The other element in the MAGA equation, not openly expressed because there is still an element of political correctness, is, in my opinion, the belief that white people were superior to those of other colors and races, and they deserved to be the ones governing the country. The evidence is that they support a president whose racism ranges from calling brown migrants, legal or not, those who are "poisoning the blood of our country", sometimes referring to them bringing diseases", or who mostly were rapists and murderers as he descdended his golden escalator, and then to even call neo Nazis some fine people in the Charlottesville demonstrations. .  MAGA's silence when being called racists or supporters of the white race is as good as consent. They are supportive, or silent, of ICE targeting only those of color for their drag net, a racial profiling, mass deportation policy that not only got the murderers and rapists, but also deported far more who were only guilty of a misdemeanor by not having documents showing legal status. Even some who flashed proof of birth, passports, green cards, said they were citizens, were caught and sent to detention camps if they looked or had accents like migrants.

What has unnerved the MAGAs is that millions of white, middle-class people objected to the tactics of ICE by marching in every big city and red and blue hamlets in America.  They do not share the MAGA values. What word the citizens of Minneapolis coined was to call migrants of color their neighbors, in the spirit of the words spoken by Christ or some other moral standards.  They backed up their attitudes by helping those afraid to be snatched by ICE agents in danger because of their color, accent or language, even if they had proof of legal status. 

 The final straw that may put a dent in MAGA itself (maybe) or further inspired more protesters (for sure) was the suppression of white protesters whistling, shouting slurs, and videoing ICE take down atrocities and the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, white, middle-class protesters. Calling them immediately "domestic terrorists" has been a hard sell to most Americans as videos and backgrounds became more known and reported in more media. The "don't believe your very eyes" is the MAGA response that is wearing thin. Now, the arrest and prosecution of journalists like Don Lemon is a further attempt to suppress inconvenient revelations to the world of ICE's inhumane and unconstitutional tactics.  Trump has always called journalists the enemy of the people (meaning him?). The truths they reveal are not always convenient.

For those of us who have had personal experiences with both communist dictators and fascist dictators and/or who remember history lessons of the 1930s, or knew refugees from fascist Latin American dictators, the term describing how history is repeating itself, using the word fascism, is appropriate. What the Trumpists are doing is similar to what those we called fascists in the previous century also did. Calling a person or a group of people fascist is still too inflammatory, but accusing them of acting like one in specific ways has historical validity. 

 My response as a political opinion writer/journalist is to call whatever actions are the same employed by fascists and dictators in the recent past, as that. It is when the tactics and actions are the same used by these villains of the past, we should call out those acts as fascist. Such acts are what we once called evil.

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: My nagging question: why does fascism keep raising its ugly 

Yes, It’s Fascism - The Atlantic

Comments attributed to Trump:

Sometimes we need a dictator: it is common sense  President Trump at the World Economic Forum: “Sometimes you need a dictator.” #news #trump

July 23, 2019: At a Turning Point USA summit,, "Then I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." He made this claim while criticizing the Mueller investigation.

• August 2025: During a White House Cabinet meeting in his second term, when asked about potentially using the military domestically, he asserted, "I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States".
• January 2026: In a New York Times interview, he refined this idea by stating that international law does not limit him, only his "own morality" and "own mind"   
• October 2023: In an interview with The National Pulse, Trump stated: "It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have".
• December 2023: At a campaign rally in Durham, New Hampshire, he repeated the claim, telling supporters that migrants from Africa, Asia, and South America are "poisoning the blood of our country".
• December 2023: During a later rally in Waterloo, Iowa, he doubled down on the rhetoric, alleging without evidence that migrants bring "crime and potentially disease with them".
• Truth Social Posts: Trump also used all-caps posts on Truth Social to assert that "illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation". 
• Sources above Google AI 

What is wrong with "America First" and isolationism? It depends; updated 9/9/23

Updated 9 6 2023 Reopening the issue: Bracing for Trump 2.0: His Possible Return Inspires Fear in America’s Allies—and Hope in Its Rivals (foreignaffairs.com)

Continuing with the original post but updated 9/9/2023 

So what's wrong with "America first" and isolationism.  It depends if we are talking about national defense or economic interests.  Sometimes, they cannot be separated.  Trade and military might have been partners throughout history,  with the military either used to preserve trade routes or to expand them. When it comes to national defense and security, isolationist policies shoot us in our own feet by making America alone, not first, with defense all on our own dime and blood. Acting isolationist does not make us isolated; it makes us a target, naive and unprepared in a very interconnected world with predators ready to fill vacuums left by those who withdraw. The power-hungry love vacuums. It is low-hanging fruit for them, and China and Russia are prepared, ready, and able to fill that vacuum America gifts them. The ability to look out after US national interests in a world in which there are powerful adversaries depends upon having a seat at the table and, better still, serving as the chairman of a powerful caucus of like-minded allies.  Isolationists would leave these seats vacant to be filled by those who have no interest in supporting US national interests. Biden attending the G20 and meeting with Modi of India in advance exemplify how involvement serves US national security interests. G-20 Summit: US says India is disappointed Xi and Putin aren't attending G-20, but Biden sees it as an opportunity | CNN Politics

 History is full of examples of how isolationism as a defense strategy failed. The most famous and instructive happened within the lifetime of some of us still living. For us, it is not history but an experience. It has shaped my view of the value of strong alliances and a disdain for isolationism. More than that: I consider those who embrace isolationism to be fools.   If America was not an isolated island at the beginning of World War II, it is even more interconnected now. Even then, eventually even in 1941, we realized isolationism was no longer in our national security interests. Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Fortress America did not make America great, but it made us vulnerable because our national interests extended way beyond our shores.  If we have seen that movie before, a replay will certainly be even more likely in this current era where we are now far more entwined economically and nationally security-wise in the rest of the world than in 1938-1941. This is true both in trade and in defense where alliances give us more boots on the ground. ships at sea and airpower above. Giving that up or crippling it by empowering these isolationists puts us in grave danger of losing control to determine our own destiny. We would be confirming our weakness and lack of resolve to influence events. We would be left to defend our own borders, and we know how difficult that is, don't we? We would then be at the mercy of both China or a reinvigorated Russian empire to be the pipers calling the tune to which we must dance. They are not our friends, and they will continue to build their empires until they cannot.  Always the threat of nuclear blackmail would be used to continue to keep us in line. Like the days before nuclear arms agreements (now trashed by Putin and the Iran version trashed by Trump)), the only brake on who pulls the nuclear trigger first is the fear of mutually assured self-destruction.  I do not want to even think about how that movie ends.

On the other hand, there is an advantage to decreasing dependence on manufacturing abroad, both positive impacts: increasing domestic job creation and in sectors related to national defense.  From the consumer viewpoint, we have benefitted from cheap imports from China. There is a balancing act there, and it is sometimes difficult to separate consumer advantages from national security in trade issues. Protecting trade routes and markets has always been a national security goal. We are beginning to tackle the problem by banning Tic Toc as a popular internet app that also benefits Chinese national security interests while damaging ours. Computer chips are fundamental to the operating armaments of both militaries, and we had given our domestic production to China. Cybersecurity is now a top security and economic worry, affecting both the private and national security sectors.  While we are already so entwined with China and trade in our economies, there is strong bi-partisan agreement that we should become less dependent on China for manufacturing. Trump's answer: raise trade barriers by imposing duties. That never worked partially due to Covid, but Biden's build-back better plan is just getting off the ground, and the chips act was the first initiative. The horse has already escaped from the barn when it comes to China stealing US trade secrets and academic research.  Closing the barn door in the future is problematic since industrial espionage is an international sport.

We are on the brink of conflict with China which is more adversarial than just trade and economic competition. China is threatening to supply Russia with weapons and military equipment to help them with their invasion of Ukraine.  This complicates our trade policies since we are so tied to China that sanctions to deter them could hurt us more than it hurts them.  US leverage on China over stopping an unholy alliance with Russia has been a thorny problem, sometimes successful and sometimes not, from the beginning of the Cold War until the current era.  Biden's wisdom and experience will count as never before in shaping US policy in this newest crisis.

America First Political Action Conference - Wikipedia