The videos show heavily armed men in tactical gear firing assault rifles and Taser weapons. President Trump defends him. Copy may not be in its final form. So, the reason that I bring all of this up is that my great fear is, if we defeat Donald Trump and hes no longer the president and we pretend that all of these bad things happened as a result of Donald Trump, then we really havent moved forward. His books Blackwater: The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield were widely celebrated and he could have gotten a high-profile job in mainstream media. John Feffer: Thanks for having me on your show. His podcast Intercepted just released the fourth chapter in a seven-part audio documentary series titled American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump. Copy may not be in its final form. Jeremy Scahill on Twitter American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump This is viewer supported news. Lets start with, once again, President Trump this time not saying liberate Michigan, but joining in a chant as the people around him call Lock he up, talking about Governor Whitmer, who was just the target of a plot to be kidnapped and perhaps lynched, brought to Wisconsin, where you grew up, to be tried. Donald Trump is a product of American imperial history. AMY GOODMAN: And then you have, for example, Kenosha, where they come together, where you have these white vigilantes come in, saying they are protecting private property, and the authorities there, the law enforcement authorities, are supporting them. As we look back at Trumps record, Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, says his flouting of international norms and bullying of other countries is in keeping with how U.S. presidents have long behaved. Trump represents a dark part of American history that we have never fully reckoned with. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We sent in the U.S. Now, we dont have all of the details, but Donald Trump is speaking about this as a political assassination of an American citizen on U.S. soil. His podcast Intercepted has just released the fourth chapter in a seven-part audio documentary titled American Mythology, which critically examines the Trump presidency and places it within a larger historical context. And it took Jeb it took Jeb Bush if you remember, at the beginning of his announcement, when he announced for president, took him five days. The festival of colours wouldn't be complete without the perfect dance playlist for your Holi party. Now, Obama wasnt running around whacking U.S. citizens on American soil, but he did assassinate citizens overseas, including a 16-year-old American citizen who was never accused of any crime of terrorism, who Obama had killed in a drone strike. We do not accept funding from advertising, underwriting or government agencies. Democracy Now! Jeremy, you say in your series, Like Pavlovs dogs, the bipartisan war machine responded accordingly. Lets go to some of the media coverage of Trumps attack on Syria. And we have both parties in this country have continued to empower Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the kind of guy who says, We need to murder the families of terrorists. Barack Obama actually did kill family members of suspected terrorists, including American citizens who were children. But I really want to emphasize that you cannot separate these white supremacist militias alleged plots to kidnap Democratic governors in this country from the fact that Trump has cultivated law enforcement as a political class, and he has openly and repeatedly encouraged them to act extrajudicially, to beat people harder, to not respect their rights. I think this is a dangerous, dangerous despot. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. Jeremy Scahill on Twitter "American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump" This is viewer supported news. It sounds, based on the presidents own description, that this was an assassination. We should have never been in Iraq. Respond to whats taking place right now. Fifteen minutes, it was over. Jeremy Scahill? This is what he said during a 2015 interview on Fox News. Im Amy Goodman. You know, on the one hand, Trump wanted to broker this deal with Kim Jong-un and North Korea. Iran is taking over Iraq, with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. It wasnt a mistake. Took him five days before his people told him what to say. I sort of in really carefully analyzing Donald Trumps war policy, I would say that he, thus far, has proven less murderous than George W. Bush and more of a war criminal than Jimmy Carter. So, all of this can be traced to the throughlines of white supremacist politics in official Washington, as well as the broader racist, xenophobic culture in the United States. AINSLEY EARHARDT: Well, we see that happening in Ramadi. Nothing brings the Democrats and the Republicans together more than a cruise missile strike or policy on U.S. policy on Israel. Its great to have you with us. And thats a very, very frightening, overt manifestation of a white supremacy thats at the core of this country, that has never been fully addressed. You can go back through history, through the coups and CIA. But that one was a beauty. On the other hand, he would threaten to wipe North Korea off the map entirely. Jeremy, welcome back to Democracy Now! They didnt want to arrest him. A seventh man was arrested in connection with the kidnapping plot and charged on Thursday with suspicion of material support in an act of terrorism. So, I would say that there are some overlaps between the way that Trump has approached his Afghanistan strategy, for instance, which has been to essentially pull out conventional forces and escalate the mass murder, escalate the killing. Our Daily Digest brings Democracy Now! You know, Trump has pardoned outright war criminals who have committed massacres against civilians abroad. All right? Please do your part today. Barack Obama engaged in regime change, deadly economic sanctions, dramatically expanded drone strike operations, surged troops around the world. You know, that is something that I fear, that if we focus too much on the threat of white supremacist private actors at the expense of recognizing how the taxpayer-funded official forces also serve that same function, and with the full backing of the White House, that were sort of being misdirected here. This is viewer supported news. Took 15 minutes. You know, when Trump was trying to actually end the Korean War and yes, he was doing it in an insane way, and I dont co-sign any of Trumps rhetoric, but wouldnt it be as Allan Nairn points out in our documentary, wouldnt it be a great thing for the Korean people if the Korean War ended? Jeremy Scahill on Twitter American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump This is viewer supported news. He was born on October 18, 1974, in Chicago, Illinois, United States and he is currently at the age of 45. The Red Deal: Extended Interview with Red Nation Members About an Indigenous Plan to Save Our Earth, I Felt the Need to Call the Police on the Police: Witnesses Describe Seeing George Floyds Murder, Incarcerated Activist Kinetik Justice & Others Severely Beaten in Alabama Prison, 2020 Ballot Initiative Wins: Abortion Rights, Lawyers for People Facing Eviction & Payday Loan Limits, "American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump", Part 1: Jeremy Scahill: Trump Has Incited White Supremacists & Emboldened Police to Act Outside the Law, Part 2: Jeremy Scahill: Trumps Xenophobia Is Horrific, But U.S. Immigration Policy Has Always Been Racist, Part 3: Jeremy Scahill: Trump Is Not the Root of the Problem, He Is a Product of American Imperial History, Part 4: Jeremy Scahill on Trumps Homicidal Pandemic Response & Whats at Stake in November Election, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, Jeremy Scahill on Trumps Homicidal Pandemic Response & Whats at Stake in November Election, Biden Pledges to Halve U.S. AMY GOODMAN: And he is not killed by federal authorities, as we saw happen in Oregon. While Anwar embraced a He has encouraged the police to act with more brutality. Weve had civil rights leaders and presidential candidates assassinated. Our Daily Digest brings Democracy Now! Only 40-something Democrats opposed it. And this is episode 125 of Intercepted. By Jeremy Scahill Twitter May 4, 2011 fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark May 4, 2011 Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Ronald Reagan attempted to kill Muammar Gaddafi. And I think as we all watch in horror at the kidnappings that have taken place of protesters, at the murder of unarmed Black people in this country, at the ramming with vehicles of police, that, again, we are a nation that has long assassinated its own people when they become politically inconvenient or when we consider them to be less-than-humans getting too uppity. It was over. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! It is wrong. And the Democrats repeatedly played with fire, particularly when Trump said, Lets get out of these foreign wars. You know, Donald Trump by all indications, it seems like one of the reasons why John Bolton was ousted as the national security adviser was because he was too belligerent even for Donald Trump. DONALD TRUMP: Its a horrible thing. By Jeremy Scahill Twitter April 24, 2013 fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark April 24, 2013 Anwar al-Awlakis youngest brother, Ammar, was nothing like him. JEREMY SCAHILL: You know, when it comes to sort of the current and ongoing wars, Joe Biden what we know about his time as vice president and as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, Biden and Trump actually have some similar ideas about how U.S. war should be waged. This is a systemic problem. Now, we can talk about the way that he has empowered white nationalists, white supremacists, encouraged their violence, but I think that its important to set that in a broader context of Trump being essentially a Trojan horse for the most extreme policies of the Republican Party. Jeremy Scahill: John Feffer. But lets start with what happened this weekend. And the Proud Boys of the world and the Ku Klux Klans of the world and the militias of the world, they essentially are auxiliary forces for official government forces that often function as effective white supremacist militias, particularly in Black communities. The powers of the executive branch have been so radically broadened, beginning really in the Ford administration, but particularly after 9/11. It is dangerous, not just for me and my family, but for public servants everywhere who are doing their jobs and trying to protect their fellow Americans. Twitter jeremy scahill View this post on Instagram In Novigrad, Croatia, which was hit hard during the Yugoslav civil war. So, what were seeing is Trump using a tactic that was used against Black people in this country for centuries, where you have these unofficial forces that are doing the lynching and then those in power are saying, Oh, well, we didnt do that. We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. But if we refuse to recognize how we got Donald Trump and the historical context of what hes doing as president and that it is rooted in American history, if we dont reckon with that, then voting Donald Trump out of office is just one step. 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Josh Hawley Votes No, Report: Haitian President Jovenel Mose Sanctioned Attacks on Civilians, Dems Introduce Act to Sanction President Juan Orlando Hernndez, Cut Aid to Honduran Police & Army, Indigenous Governor Sandra Liliana Pea Killed in Cauca, Colombia, Kuwaiti Women Demand Justice and Protections After Stabbing Murder Stokes Outrage, Protesters Demand Justice for Andrew Brown Jr., Lawyer Demands Release of Bodycam Footage, Meet Cariol Horne, Black Police Officer Fired After Stopping Fellow Cops Assault on Handcuffed Man, Cold-Blooded Murder: Chicago Police Officer Shot 13-Year-Old Adam Toledo with His Hands in the Air, Police Shoot Dead 16-Year-Old MaKhia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio. Now, you can take it any way you want. to your inbox each morning. Jeremy Scahill Twitter Jeremy Scahill is the author of the best-selling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. We do not accept funding from advertising, underwriting or government agencies. GOV. Over the weekend, federal prosecutors released videos of training exercises carried out by the men accused of plotting to kidnap Whitmer. Follow Jeremy Scahill on Twitter This is viewer supported news. And that record-shattering, more than $22 billion, greater than any Obama-era military budget was a bipartisan product. When theyre asked to condemn the violence of unofficial forces, they will grudgingly do that, while at the same time saying things like, you know, Stand down and stand by in other words, Wait and see.. Donald Trump is not the root of the problem. Were spending the hour with Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill. He went back: It was a mistake. We need your assistance to continue interviewing whistleblowers, & investigative journalists. And then you have . And he does the same thing abroad. And I think he and Donald Trump, on a foreign policy level, when it comes to war strategy, tactics, I think they have much more in common than the press will let on. Scahill says Trump has empowered white supremacist vigilantes and given permission to law enforcement to act extrajudicially to enforce a racist status quo, but he cautions that Donald Trump is not an aberration of U.S. history or some anomaly, but hes a very overt representation of many of the absolute most violent, destructive, racist, xenophobic trends in U.S. history.. Far more than international threats to the United States are white supremacist, right-wing extremists. Bill Clinton initiated the longest sustained bombing since Vietnam in Iraq, bombing Iraq on average once every three days at times. JEREMY SCAHILL: You know, I mean, and clearly, the Trump administration, if theyve even looked at that information, have taken that and said, OK, this is a good thing. Trump encouraged mayors and governors to beat them harder in the streets. AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to this, Jeremy? This is MSNBC anchor Brian Williams referring to a Pentagon video of U.S. missiles fired at Syria as beautiful three times in 30 seconds. Yes, weve stanched the bleeding. We got him. We still have this rotten system that can be exploited by another Trump, or even by a Democrat who claims to be hoping and changing, left and right. We can make mistakes. DONALD TRUMP: But were fighting a very politically correct war. AMY GOODMAN: FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned Congress that racially motivated violent extremism is the primary threat of domestic terrorism.