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The History of Presidential Grift

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Ted Rall
Everyone knows that Donald Trump is the Grifter-in-Chief. Earlier this month, the president and his family raked in approximately $5 billion from meme coins, stablecoins and tokens. His businesses skimmed about $2.5 billion in profits from politically-connected real estate deals during his first term. People eager to suck up to the leader of the free world are paying tens of millions to join Mar-a-Lago and stay at his hotels. Trump’s shares in his social-media outfit Truth Social are worth $2 billion—value that would instantly go poof were he no longer president. And there’s still time for him to partner with Israel to develop post-genocide Gaza. As with his tariffs, deportations and suppression of dissent, it’s important to point out that, while Trump’s unseemly pigging out at the capitalist trough is rightfully shocking, it is not new. Many of his predecessors paved the corruption-paved road on which Trump is profiteering, but very little was done to stop it from happening again.…
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Jimmy Kimmel Enabled Censorship

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Ted Rall
First they came for Jimmy Kimmel, but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t…a lameass? No. In this Niemöller scenario, the deplatforming of the host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” comes at the end of the slippery slope, not the beginning. ABC canned Bill Maher 23 years ago for mocking Bush-era propaganda about our sainted Middle East occupation troops. Also at the request of right-wing Bushies after 9/11, MSNBC fired Phil Donahue—despite having the network’s highest ratings—for being too liberal and not pro-war. CBS News fired Dan Rather on a trumped-up ethical breach, and CBS radio fired Don Imus. Lenny Bruce died in 1966 while appealing a prison sentence for obscenity. The Smothers Brothers, a top-rated comedy show, was canceled by CBS at the request of LBJ in 1969. As broadcast television matured and corporatized over the better part of a century, it sanitized itself of content whose politics unabashedly leaned left, replacing Norman Lear’s 1970s progressive social-commentary programs like “All…
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Why Americans Love Political Violence

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Ted Rall
“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” Voltaire said. But not really. Stephen G. Tallentyre wrote it in his 1906 book about Voltaire, as a paraphrase of his attitude toward free speech. Actually, that’s not true either: “Tallentyre” was a pseudonym. “He” was really a she: Evelyn Beatrice Hall. That this most famous quotation about standing up for free expression with integrity turns out to be fake is perfect. As we grapple with the gruesome public assassination of 31-year-old right-wing ranter Charlie Kirk, Americans say they support free speech. Some of them even believe it. The truth is, the only freedom of speech most Americans support is the speech they agree with. Shortly after Kirk was gunned down, the President of the United States appeared on Fox News. Ainsley Earhardt asked him: “Because we have radicals on the right as well. We have radicals on the left. People have…
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The Mamdani Effect

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Ted Rall
In his classic 1954 treatise on his human comparison theory, the social psychologist Leon Festinger stipulated that human beings assess their social standing by comparing themselves to those around them and how those other people are evaluated and received. The corporate liberals who, despite being underrepresented in their own party’s electorate dominate the national Democratic Party apparatus, appear not to be familiar with Festinger. The DNC establishment’s reaction (revulsion, fear, rejection) to the rise of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is perfect evidence of this. Democrats pretend to be a “big tent” party. But it’s the centrists’ party. Leftists are only invited as long as they shut up and vote as they’re told—for centrists. Months after he won by a landslide, state and national Democrats like New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Minority Leader/New York Senator Chuck Schumer, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and House Minority Leader/Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries have still not endorsed their own party’s candidate…
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Trump’s War Against Tradition

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Ted Rall
As American schoolchildren, we are taught that the great genius of the Framers was to create a constitutional balance of powers that wouldn’t rely on the assumption that “enlightened statesmen will…always be at the helm.” This structure is presented like an ecosystem, as self-regulating and auto-correcting. As the liberal political strategist Neera Tanden observed, however, “The American system of checks and balances is only as strong as the leaders who have the character and courage to enforce them.” A more detailed and sharply defined set of rules might not depend as much upon the monarchical-like happenstance of whether an era’s politicians are venal or self-sacrificing. As we have had it since 1788—despite Alexander Hamilton’s best efforts—the system’s effectiveness relies on their willingness to be, in those most undefined of personality adjectives, decent and polite. When we consider the rules that govern American politics, we focus on the written ones: the Constitution, laws and major court rulings. Many of these are…
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Trump Is Testing Us by Militarizing Cities. We’re Failing.

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Ted Rall
The first time I encountered a police checkpoint was in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. My first reaction was excitement. I’d read about this facet of autocracy; here it was! It quickly gave way to fear. The men posted on the Almaty street intersection were armed. They had the power of the state. They could do anything they pleased. What if they arrested me? What if they beat me? Shot me? What if what if what if? They robbed me. Relative to people in other countries, we in the United States have long enjoyed great freedom of movement and freedom from government tracking. Unlike the French, who are required by law to carry a national ID card or similar government-issued document when they leave their homes and present it upon request to police, Americans may leave their wallets at home unless they’re driving a car. Most nations force citizens to provide their identities before being permitted to vote. Until…
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In Defense of October 7th

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Ted Rall
Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Commandos on land vehicles and paragliders  killed 1,137 Israelis, injured about 5,400 and seized about 250 hostages. A few hours later, Israel launched its genocide of the Gazan people. The IDF has since killed at least 200,000 Palestinians, injured countless more and seized thousands of hostages, and left almost every building flattened. Whether Israel responded in self-defense or took October 7th as an excuse to fulfill its longstanding goal of ethnically cleansing and annexing Gaza into a Greater Israel is subject to debate. What is objectively true is that Israel’s atrocities so outweigh and outnumber Hamas’ atrocities that most of the world—the U.N., international courts, most nations—are focused on the Israeli side of the bloodshed equation. That’s fair. Yet I wonder. Might the monstrosity and thoroughness of Israel’s one-sided assault wash away our chance to carefully consider the morality and ethics of the October 7th incursion? For supporters of Israel, October 7th is…
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The Case for Political Performance Ratings

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Ted Rall
Political opinions are like posteriors; with a few exceptions, everyone has one. And, like rear ends, what comes out frequently looks and smells terrible, the more so after the passage of time. Political opinions are the most dangerous kind of opinions, more so than almost any other kind of subjective thought. Political opinions can lead to discrimination, wars and genocide. A poorly-considered movie or restaurant review wastes a few hours of your life and may, at worst, cause food poisoning. While a doctor whose opinions are wrong may kill some patients, one quack’s death count amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to those of the pundits and politicians who falsely opined, say, that Iraq has WMDs and had to be invaded lest Saddam nuke us. That opinion killed over a million people. Given the high stakes, it’s surprising how little accountability there is for having and expressing—loudly expressing—a political opinion that turns out to have been deadly wrong.…
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Israel No Longer Has a Right to Exist

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Ted Rall
In certain traditional societies, troublesome individuals who were perceived as threats to communal harmony were labeled as “witches.” To restore calm, accused witches were sometimes reintegrated into society via a ceremony of ritual cleansing. Other problematic people, particularly those whose socially unacceptable behavior persisted, were banished or killed. As a political entity, Israel is a witch. Its conduct is incompatible with 21st century civilization. To whatever extent it ever had one, Israel no longer has a right to exist. The Netanyahu government’s cynical exploitation of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 raid is the last straw. With gleeful bloodlust that appears to have no limits, Israel has intentionally slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians. It has reduced a bustling territory filled with high-rises and seaside resorts to rubble. It has cruelly imposed a blockade of fuel, water and food that has resulted in outbreaks of long-vanquished diseases like polio and meningitis. It has created a man-made famine a few miles away…
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Make Funny, Make Money

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Ted Rall
In media, does satire generate profits? Or do profits permit satire? Causation is elusive. But there is a correlation between how much money a media organization generates and how much funny it publishes or puts on air. When print newspapers were dominant and highly profitable, satire was a significant part of their content. Based at The Washington Post through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Art Buchwald’s syndicated column appeared in more than 500 newspapers worldwide. His droll takes on Beltway politics and everyday absurdities reached millions of Americans and was extremely influential. Mike Royko of The Chicago Daily News and Sun-Times blended populist snark about institutional corruption and sarcastic ethnic humor in hundreds of newspapers, inspiring a generation of journalists. Other influential widely-syndicated columnists included those who blended gossip, news and jokes like Herb “Baghdad by the Bay” Caen of The San Francisco Chronicle, satirist of suburban life Erma Bombeck of The Dayton Journal Herald (which I delivered to my…
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