The Trump Dictatorship

[b.c.]

More and more political analysts observers and scholars are coming around to the realization of the high LIKELIHOOD that Trump will somehow fuck with the November 2020 elections. He's ALREADY trying to suppress the vote and cast doubt on any process he figures would mean a loss for him or the GOP.

Like all the SHIT he stirred over California's special election. Until their candidate won. Then he STFU.

Like a dictator, Trump keeps chopping away at democracy | Salon.com

Step by ominous step, Donald Trump is eliminating or blocking every Constitutional check and balance on his administration to evade accountability for corruption.

The only path still open to save America from becoming an autocracy is the ballot box in November.

Even there Trump is working to rig the election with help from his secretary of State and various elected Republican leaders.

On national television, he has declared willingness to accept help from Moscow and Beijing, which would violate criminal law. But as Trump dismantles the mechanisms Congress created to ensure Executive branch integrity, who can stop him?

Trump fired four inspectors general since April 3. Their duty is to root out corruption and abuse of power in his administration.

He also replaced one IG with a loyal White House aide.

That ensures nothing will be done to expose abuses by Trump in handing out a half-trillion dollars of coronavirus relief. "I'll be the oversight, I'll be the oversight," Trump said, repeating himself on March 24 according to the official White House transcript.

Those words surely comforted embezzlers and fraudsters everywhere, not to mention the Trump-Kushner family of grifters. His relatives have long lapped up government welfare, hid documents from auditors and lied under oath for profit.

Trump also refuses to fill vacancies on the Federal Election Commission, leaving half of its six seats vacant. Lacking the required four-member quorum renders the agency powerless to act against civil and criminal violations of campaign finance law.

As the Kremlin interferes again in the 2020 election, as the Senate Intelligence Committee says it is already doing, who in the Trump administration will stand up?

Answer: nobody.

And anyone who tries will be shut down fast.
​

 

[b.c.]

Trump moves openly to steal the election: Democrats should impeach him again | Salon.com

Trump has had a plan to win in 2020, ever since his re-election campaign kicked off the second he was inaugurated: Cheat like crazy.

Donald Trump Plans To ‘Cheat Like Crazy’ To Win Re-Election, Writer Says

Trump is certain — and for good reason — that if more people get to vote, he's likely to lose. So he's freaking out. He's particularly sweating the possibility that voters in swing states will be able to vote by mail in large numbers, since he knows his best chance of winning those states lies in making sure that as few people vote as possible.

As Jack Holmes of Esquire pointed out, Trump is threatening two U.S. states in exactly the same way he threatened Ukraine: Claiming he will withhold funds authorized by Congress if the recipient doesn't help him cheat in the 2020 election.

This is election fraud and blackmail, but this time directed at Americans.
.​

Is Trump Setting the Stage to Dismiss the 2020 Election Results? | Vanity Fair

In the midst of a pandemic, Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to withhold federal funding from Michigan and Nevada, lying that the states—each of which is governed by a Democrat — are allowing illegal voting.

”The blackmail threats came as states across the country continue to fend for themselves against the coronavirus crisis, which has killed nearly 100,000 Americans as of Wednesday morning,

Trump has voiced strong opposition to the measures; he’s couched his objections in his fairytales about widespread voter fraud, which he’s been promoting since the 2016 election...

Indeed, Trump and his allies have expressed fears that increased voter turnout would spell their doom at the ballot box—even though measures like vote-by-mail have not been shown to favor one party over another, and are not, as the president claims, inherently prone to fraud.

The 2020 election is already poised to be rife with challenges... but things are likely to be made worse as the Trump campaign takes advantage of the crisis, falsely accusing Democrats of illegal voting practices.

Muddying the waters this way, along with Republicans’ brazen disenfranchisement efforts, could prove disastrous in November.

At the very least, Trump’s voter fraud lies could lay the foundation for him to challenge or throw out the results of the election should it not go his way—a potential threat to democracy in America that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago but that can no longer be easily brushed aside.​

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[HorseHung40's]

We don't live under a dictatorship!

Get out and vote!

Vote Trump out of office!

 

[keenobserver]

We don't live under a dictatorship!

Get out and vote!

Vote Trump out of office!

vote early, vote often.

 

[swingfun]

Open question...exactly which rights have you lost under Trumps "dictatorship"?

 

[b.c.]

Right. Something something about "when they came for me...."

IN OTHER NEWS:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/202...michael-moore-fears-trump-will-mess-with-2020
After Predicting 2016, Michael Moore Fears Trump Will Mess With 2020 | Vanity Fair

‘There will be no Nov. 3 election’: Michael Moore predicts chaos heading into 2020 voting – Raw Story

 

[gr8gatsby]

Right. Something something about "when they came for me...."

IN OTHER NEWS:
After Predicting 2016, Michael Moore Fears Trump Will Mess With 2020 | Vanity Fair

‘There will be no Nov. 3 election’: Michael Moore predicts chaos heading into 2020 voting – Raw Story

I've had that fear since January of 2017

 

[b.c.]

MANY are starting to have that fear, contrary to those who can't, don't, WON'T see it coming until it happens:

It's now become clear exactly how Republicans might try to overturn a Biden victory in November

If you’ve paid any attention to the news over the past few days, you might come away with the impression that Michigan is where Donald Trump’s hopes for reelection will rise or fall on November 3.

“Michigan sends absentee ballot applications to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!” Trump tweeted that afternoon, having been shamed into deleting a previous tweet which falsely claimed that actual ballots had been mailed out.​

It’s not the first time Trump has made baseless assertions about the integrity of American elections. Since winning the 2016 election, he has made innumerable false claims about “voter fraud,” including suggesting that more than 3 million voters making up Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin of victory had voted “illegally”, as well as claims about nonexistent Democratic malfeasance during the 2018 midterms (in which the only documented case of absentee ballot fraud was committed by a North Carolina Republican candidate for Congress).

And given Michigan’s importance as a potential source of electoral votes for former Vice President Joe Biden — Trump’s presumptive opponent — it’s no surprise that he’s a bit fixated on it.

After all, Michigan is one of the three states that handed Trump electoral votes that had gone to Democratic candidates for decades, and in doing so delivered the [Oval Office] into his hands. It’s also one of the states into which his campaign is pouring inordinate amounts of effort and resources, in hopes of keeping enough Michiganders in his corner to equal — or improve — his 10,704 vote margin of victory from four years ago.

Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who studies elections, said spurious claims about election results are par for the course for Trump.

“This is a pattern that we've seen ... where he, even after winning, wanted to throw down on the fact that he had lost the popular vote and made allegations about non-citizens voting that would explain why he had lost the popular vote,” McDonald said, though he took care to note that such allegations were “of course, completely unfounded”.

He added that Trump appears to be engaged in “a similar pattern of throwing down on the electoral system, where it may either in the future or afterwards adversely affect him”.

.​

 

[885840]

Open question...exactly which rights have you lost under Trumps "dictatorship"?

This is actually a very fair question that nobody in this thread seems to be answering. It’s just a circus of news articles being posted.

Personally, none of my rights have been violated by Trump. To be frank and not to say this because of politics, I think Trump is too dim witted and incapable of being a dictator, he obviously wouldn’t know what one was even if one was writing him a love letter.

The only place I see anybody’s rights possibly being diminished is not even at the Federal level. Each State determines its election system, and mail in voting is unfortunately not widespread. I personally believe in accessibility, and that voters should be able to mail in their ballot or go vote in person. Some States have not implemented mail in ballots, and I accept that there is some argument about purposefully suppressing the vote, I think the hesitation around implementing voting by mail has more to do with ensuring the authenticity of a mailed in ballot and related potential costs. Why do I highlight cost? Most of the States that do not have voting by mail are conservative ... which controlling Government spending is usually a principle on the conservative platform.

 

[b.c.]

Maybe it hasn't been answered because we consider it a stupid question, posed by one who's certainly been here long enough to have SEEN all the threads, topics, and evidence of the varied ways in which Trump & Co. have rolled back and chipped away at civil rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, worker's rights, consumer's rights,

anti discrimination laws in housing, environmental protections, healthcare protection, social safety nets, the right to sue, and a MYRIAD of other rights, benefits, protections, and civil rights legislation... all undermined or undone by Trump, the GOP, and by Trump's MANY appointments of far right judges, whose ideology by and large are ALSO retrogressive with regard to such.

Like the right to NOT die from Covid-19 for INSTANCE.

Trump and the GOP know the demographics. They KNOW who has been most negatively impacted by this virus, and which communities have been hit the worse. When his black surgeon general spoke of it, all of a sudden he sorta disappeared-like.

And THAT'S because they don't give a damn, and don't mind risking the lives of those who MOST likely will pay the penalty for a too early reopening. Which is ALSO why Trump and the GOP are fighting the availability of mail in ballots, a right that many of THEM have LONG partaken of.

Coronavirus death rates in Democratic areas of the country are TRIPLE those in places where people vote Republican – The Sun

Because they'd sooner risk OUR lives, by forcing us to vote in person while he and his cronies get a fkng test several times a day, and stay in isolation. They're HOPING people like me would stay home rather than risk our lives to vote in person.

I've got news for 'em. I'd walk through fkng FIRE for the opportunity to vote that clown OUT OF OFFICE.
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[b.c.]

Could THIS be the beginnings of Trump's modern day "Säuberung"?? Stay tuned:

Trump reportedly may form a commission to examine allegations of online bias

Trump has long accused tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter of harboring anti-conservative biases, and, though it's unclear if anything will come to fruition, it appear he's now trying to take action. "Left-wing bias in the tech world is a concern that definitely needs to be addressed from our vantage point, and at least exposed [so] that Americans have clear eyes about what we're dealing with," a White House official told the Journal.

The administration may also encourage similar reviews by federal regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission, the Journal notes.

If the plan builds momentum, it will likely face push back from the tech companies and free speech advocates. The American Civil Liberties Union's senior legislative counsel Kate Ruane said if the government does try to intervene, "what typically follows are debacles that undermine online privacy, safety, and speech."

Book Burning | The Holocaust Encyclopedia​

MEANWHILE:

Washington Group Reportedly Preparing For ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ If Donald Trump Disputes Election Results

According to a Sunday report from The New York Times, a group of “worst-case scenario planners” has been “gaming out” how to react in case ... Donald Trump disputes the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The group reportedly consists of Democrats and “Never Trump” Republicans who fear that the commander-in-chief will do all in his power to beat former Vice President Joe Biden and, if he fails, refuse to leave the White House — citing concerns over electoral fraud.

Fears that Trump might violate all political norms have reportedly intensified following his threats to withhold federal funding from states looking to switch to mail-in voting. As Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks explained, the mood in Washington has indeed changed.

“In the eight to 10 months I’ve been yapping at people about this stuff, the reactions have gone from, ‘Don’t be silly, that won’t happen,’ to an increasing sense of, ‘You know, that could happen,'” she said.

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​

 

[b.c.]

Der Fuhrer has spoken!
(and SOME of us have long seen it COMING)

Trump signs order targeting social media companies​

​

And the reason we've long seen it coming is because SOME of us can see the signs of FASCISM and authoritarian, dictatorship MENTALITY a fkng MILE AWAY. Seems, in HIS/THEIR particular MENTALITY, you can make up any kind of off-the-wall fallacy, PROPAGANDA and complete LIES, blown from one's ass.

Including slander, mischaracterizations, lies and fallacies, directed at one's political enemies - Like Trump's heinous campaign of baseless accusations of MURDER directed at Joe Scarborough.

But put up one tag directing readers to CHECK BULLSHIT before you buy into it, and der Fuhrer has a shit fit. AS EXPECTED, and as PREDICTED.

We TOLD YOU so.

,

 

[b.c.]

Trump Admits He Wants To Shut Down Twitter For Fact Checking Him

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Trump has made it very clear throughout his ()residency that his goal has always been to control what the American people watch, hear, and read about him. Trump doesn’t want a free press. Trump wants a fawning press.​

Kellyanne Conway And Trump Want To Tell You What You Can Watch and Read In The News

Twitter should put fact checks on all of Trump and every other political figure’s false tweets. Trump’s 2016 strategy was to use the mainstream press as a megaphone for his lies. He is running the same campaign in 2020, and he needs to be able to lie in an unchecked way, or else his reelection bid is doomed.

Trump wants to destroy the First Amendment. His Twitter distraction is a shot fired in his war against free speech.​

Trump White House Demands The Names Of Twitter's Fact Checkers


Meanwhile, MORE batshit crazy from yet another ass kissing, reich-winged, Trump ENABLER:
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Exclusive: Ted Cruz calls for criminal investigation of Twitter - Axios
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[b.c.]

Former top Justice Department official warns Trump may 'not cede power'

A former top Justice Department official told Yahoo News she is deeply worried that ... Trump could “delegitimize a lawful election” this November “and not cede power.”

Vanita Gupta ran the civil rights division at the Department of Justice from 2014 to 2017 and is now part of an informal, bipartisan group that has spent the past year preparing for Trump to potentially contest the results of the election. She argued [Trump's] attacks on vote-by-mail programs signal that he intends to say the election was unfair and should not be considered legitimate if he loses.

“He's already talking about how this will be a rigged election and saying if more and more people are voting using these so called mail-in ballots, that the election will be rigged,” Gupta told Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast. “This is out of a playbook.”

Gupta said she believes that while some people might consider her fears a “cuckoo crazy conspiracy theory,” she says the group she is working with anticipated Trump’s attacks on vote-by-mail programs. She sees those attacks as a deliberate attempt to undermine the election well in advance of voters casting ballots.

.MEA
MEANWHILE:

FBI's top lawyer, Dana Boente, ousted amid Fox News criticism for role in Flynn investigation

After a 38-year career with the Justice Department, the FBI's top lawyer Dana Boente was asked to resign on Friday. Two sources familiar with the decision to dismiss Boente said it came from high levels of the Justice Department rather than directly from FBI Director Christopher Wray.

His departure comes on the heels of recent criticism by Fox News for his role in the investigation of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Fox News has recently criticized Boente's role in the investigation of Flynn, whose criminal charge for lying to the FBI was recently dropped by the Justice Department based in part on the argument that his lies were not material to an underlying investigation.

Boente also said in a recently leaked memo that material put into the public record about Flynn was not exculpatory for the former national security advisor. The memo undermines the Justice Department's latest position that material about Flynn was mishandled by prosecutors.

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[thickdick_wv_38]

Idoits. Bold print... Snicker at the tds.

 

[b.c.]

^???

Moving along, LIKE the increasing number of political analysts and observers who are predicting some action by Trump to either delay or invalidate the election,

what what once was considered by some to be a rather far out theory re. Trump's will for complete authority over everything, has and is NOW increasingly being portrayed as evidentiary FACT:

Can we stop tiptoeing around the fact that Trump is behaving like a dictator? | Salon.com

There will come a time when we look back on ... the moment in our history when we finally understood that we have a man as [O. Office occupant] who is acting like a fascist dictator.

...in what became known as the "Tuesday night massacre," all four prosecutors in the case against Trump's longtime friend and political bad boy Roger Stone had resigned in protest of the intervention by Trump and his attorney general, William Barr, to reduce the sentence recommended by the Department of Justice in Stone's conviction for lying to congressional committees and tampering with witnesses.

All of this followed closely the "Friday night massacre" ... when Trump fired two of the impeachment witnesses against him, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman of the National Security Council and Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union.

But two "massacres" in a row was just the beginning.

Folks, let's not mince words: This is the kind of stuff we read about happening in dictatorships like Russia and North Korea and Iran. And yes, it's the kind of rule by strong-arm fiat that was practiced by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
​

And rather than impede Trump's determined march to complete totalitarian government, ultimately, under the rule and WHIM of Trump himself, the advent of the coronavirus pandemic has only allow him additional tools, means, and excuses by which he can achieve his ultimate GOALS:
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The Coronavirus Pandemic Is Infecting the United States With Dictatorship

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... we know that Trump’s commitment to the core principles of democracy and the whole idea of checks and balances is razor-thin to nonexistent.

His lawsuit-riddled business career shows that he views the law not as a check on arbitrary power or an essential ingredient of a liberal society but as a bludgeon to be used against one’s enemies.

He has repeatedly expressed his admiration for authoritarian leaders, whose unchecked power he clearly envies. His own lawyers—including Attorney General William Barr—have offered up half-baked legal arguments implying that he is above the law.

... consider what Trump is already doing. He’s been firing independent inspectors general and replacing them with loyalists.

Just as burglars hate home alarms, muggers hate police, and insider-traders dislike the Securities and Exchange Commission, would-be autocrats and corrupt politicians hate any sort of watchdog who can expose their malfeasance.

.​

 

[Freddie53]

Under cover of pandemic, Trump taking major steps toward autocracy: Where's the media? | Salon.com​

View attachment 16875751 ​

Autocrats don't announce it publicly when they're taking a step toward greater authoritarianism.

As long as there's a free press, it's up to journalists to call them out.

But even as Donald Trump and members of his administration have asserted greater and more unilateral executive power, our top news organizations have tended to interpret those moves narrowly and naively — giving too much credit to cover stories, marginalizing criticism as just so much partisan squabbling, and leaving the accurate, alarming description of what's really going on to opinion writers.

News reporters seem particularly susceptible to pronouncements from Attorney General William Barr — despite his history of deception, and even though the Department of Justice is the most dangerous tool Trump has, short of the armed forces.

Much of the news coverage of Barr's decision last week to drop charges against Trump crony Michael Flynn — on an absurd pretext, accompanied by hypocritical pronouncements — was stenographic, credulous and short-sighted.

The coverage failed to alert the public to how seriously Barr's move undercut the employees of his own department and to how it showed Barr targeting the department's big guns at Trump's enemies — starting with those inside the law enforcement and intelligence communities.

And while reporting on Trump's Friday night decision to fire the State Department's inspector general has been aggressive and critical, it too has failed to sufficiently alarm the public about the consequences — in this case, an executive branch freed of even the most basic, routine oversight.

Most of what Donald Trump does and says these days is intended to draw attention away from his failure to lead an effective national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. News organizations, generally speaking, shouldn't let themselves be distracted.

But some of Trump's actions merit much closer and more diligent scrutiny. They need to be exposed and contextualized as part of a bigger picture: Under cover of the raging pandemic, Donald Trump is taking consistent steps towards authoritarianism.

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Unfortunately, you are right. If somehow Trump manages to get reelected, you can kiss the American republic good by! Hello totalitarian state modeled after Putin's, his "significant other" friend.

 

[Freddie53]

Could THIS be the beginnings of Trump's modern day "Säuberung"?? Stay tuned:

Trump reportedly may form a commission to examine allegations of online bias

View attachment 17121901

Trump has long accused tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter of harboring anti-conservative biases, and, though it's unclear if anything will come to fruition, it appear he's now trying to take action. "Left-wing bias in the tech world is a concern that definitely needs to be addressed from our vantage point, and at least exposed [so] that Americans have clear eyes about what we're dealing with," a White House official told the Journal.

The administration may also encourage similar reviews by federal regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission, the Journal notes.

If the plan builds momentum, it will likely face push back from the tech companies and free speech advocates. The American Civil Liberties Union's senior legislative counsel Kate Ruane said if the government does try to intervene, "what typically follows are debacles that undermine online privacy, safety, and speech."

Book Burning | The Holocaust Encyclopedia​

MEANWHILE:

Washington Group Reportedly Preparing For ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ If Donald Trump Disputes Election Results

According to a Sunday report from The New York Times, a group of “worst-case scenario planners” has been “gaming out” how to react in case ... Donald Trump disputes the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The group reportedly consists of Democrats and “Never Trump” Republicans who fear that the commander-in-chief will do all in his power to beat former Vice President Joe Biden and, if he fails, refuse to leave the White House — citing concerns over electoral fraud.

Fears that Trump might violate all political norms have reportedly intensified following his threats to withhold federal funding from states looking to switch to mail-in voting. As Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks explained, the mood in Washington has indeed changed.

“In the eight to 10 months I’ve been yapping at people about this stuff, the reactions have gone from, ‘Don’t be silly, that won’t happen,’ to an increasing sense of, ‘You know, that could happen,'” she said.

.


​

Frogs are cold blood creatures. Their body temperature is the same as their environment. This can lead to a disaster for the frog.

Try putting a frog in a pot of hot grease. That frog will jump around frantically.

Put that frog in a pan of grease that is room temperature and turn up the heat very slowly. The frog will never whimper or show any discomfort like warm blood animals do.

The frog will die.

This is the game that Trump is playing.

The US is the frog!:

He deliberately mentions outlandish things and says that of course he is joking. On subject after subject, day after day, on and on. Month and month. And now a little over three years.

Trump with his lies and actions is making more and more of what was very wrong now be ever so right.

Issue after Issue. Person after person. On and on.

All this about states can't get federal funds unless they do this or that becomes normal.

Trump tells how much fraud there is in absentee ballots even so. That is the way he voted: absentee.

So come November Trump loses the state. Throw out the absentee ballots because they are rife with fraud. Just count the votes done in person. Darn! Wouldn't you know. Trump wins 80 % of the 9000 votes voted in person. Michigan goes to Trump!

This is so outlandish and illegal. Yep.

Remember the frog? The Robert's Court could hand Michigan's electoral votes to Trump.

The frog, that is those who are against Trump will accept is fate.

I have no idea of the who and how. But Trump has a team working on this for every state of the union.

The answer.

Bloomberg, who wants Trump out. He has enough money to finance the anti Trump campaign. As long as the name Biden isn't mentioned, there are no legal limitations on how much he can spend!

 

[deleted15807]

Unfortunately, you are right. If somehow Trump manages to get reelected, you can kiss the American republic good by! Hello totalitarian state modeled after Putin's, his "significant other" friend.

Frankly after one term of Trump and Moscow Mitch already I'd say horrific damage has already been done and not sure it could be rebuilt.

Who knew a president had so many dictatorial tools available to him? Most presidents believed in democracy but we don't have that anymore with Trump and with his party. We have a Latin American president on our hands now threatening to turn the military on it's own people. He already had peaceful protestors cleared with tear gas and

Defense Secretary Mark Esper: ‘I Do Not Support Invoking The Insurrection Act’
President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the law to deploy the military to police U.S. cities.

Barr personally ordered removal of protesters near White House, leading to use of force against largely peaceful crowd
Attorney General William P. Barr personally ordered law enforcement officials to clear the streets around Lafayette Square just before President Trump spoke Monday, a Justice Department official said, a directive that prompted a show of aggression against a crowd of largely peaceful protesters, drawing widespread condemnation.

The forceful effort to squelch the demonstration came as Trump has sought to flex the federal government’s muscles in response to a wave of unrest across the country, filling the streets in the District with federal law enforcement officers from multiple agencies.
​

America's Attorney General ordering protesters cleared for a photo-op. Violence for a photo-op let that sink in. No wonder Russia and China are laughing.

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[keenobserver]

Even the General is standing up - Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis denounces Trump as a threat to America, compares him to Nazis