Donald Trump’s Voters Are Angry At What They Voted For

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Derik Schneider

“As hundreds of thousands of Americans are starting to experience the disastrous effects of Donald Trump’s tariff policy and subsequent trade war with empty shelves, higher prices, and increased market volatility, Trump’s approval rating and polling numbers are reflecting our new reality. Chris Williamson breaks it down on Rebel HQ.”

Source:Rebel HQ with a look at a Trump voter.

From Rebel HQ

Peter Schiff is a Libertarian an economics background. I don’t agree with him on everything, (obviously as a JFK Liberal) but he’s damn right about the President’s tariffs and who pays for them:

“And that’s why our treasuries — see, Trump doesn’t understand who pays the tariffs. He thinks it’s external revenue. The reason we have an income tax is because the government made a deal with the middle class by saying, if you allow the income tax and you let us amend the Constitution, we will eliminate the tariffs that are paid for by the middle class and the poor, and we will replace tariffs with an income tax that will be paid exclusively by the rich. So tariffs are a direct — are an indirect tax, but they’re paid for by the middle class and the poor. China doesn’t pay our tariffs. Canada and Mexico don’t pay our tariffs. Americans, hard working middle class Americans pay 100% of those tariffs.”

From Media Matters For America

From what I wrote about Donald Trump’s voters back in February:

“I’m going to be the prick here and lay in to the people who voted for Donald J. Trump for President and are now having to live with that the very consequential decision. And what do I mean by that? I’m the guy who says to other people:

“We warned you. You voted for Donald Trump anyway. We did our homework about the 2024 presidential election. You obviously didn’t… or are on some national or political suicide mission and have some death wish that Donald J. Trump can deliver for you.”

Kyle Kulinski literally said in his video when talking about the 2024 presidential election: “Not trying to be an asshole. But we warned everybody. We warned everybody…

But if you look at the urban dictionary of asshole: “A person who is intentionally cruel, obnoxious and heartless. Assholes are most often male. A female who follows these traits is referred to as a bitch.”

At least with a prick, that person is going to let you know what’s wrong with you, what’s not working, and that’s probably all they’ll do for you. So I and the rest of The New Democrat weren’t being pricks in 2023-24, when we were putting out all that information about why Donald J. Trump shouldn’t even be eligible for a tour of The White House, (even if he paid for it with his own money) let alone ever be anywhere close to winning his party’s nomination for President again. We, along with almost the entire Democratic Party, not just the leadership, we’re making it very clear why Donald J. Trump has no business ever being President of the United States again.

But we have a lot of voters who are simply too dumb, too lazy, or simply don’t give a damn about their own future’s, or the future of the country, or were on a national or political suicide mission, to pay attention to the presidential election and current affairs in this country…

From The New Democrat

I can’t feel sorry for people who shoot themselves in the foot… even after they were not just warned not to do that, but even advised to put the gun down before anyone could get hurt, including themselves. And if you want to call me an asshole, or coldhearted, or whatever, for feeling that way… you have a right to be wrong about me and anyone, as well as everything else.

Did Donald Trump’s voters expect him to crash the economy and send it into retraction for the first time since 2022, perhaps not. But when someone tries to jump a car over a lake and ends up crashing the car in the lake instead, because they misjudged how much horsepower the car had and far big the lake was, etc: who’s fault is that? It can’t be the people who said: “Don’t do it. You’ll never make it”.

And Democrats, as well as even Conservative Republicans, (you know, the real Republicans) warned American voters, really since 2019-20, when he decided to run for reelection and of course after the attempted insurrection of 21, or, go back to 2015-16 when DJT really just looked like nothing more than a “reality TV star” and almost no one was even taking him seriously, and of course the 2024 campaign itself… that Donald Trump is not just completely unqualified to be President of the United States, but doesn’t even have the moral character for that office. And his policies, especially economic policies might even be worst… and 80 million people voted for him anyway. Including people in Appalachia and North Carolina, who didn’t get their disaster relief for those winter floods this year, because the President cut them off, but who voted for him in 24.

Whatever you think of Donald J. Trump, he’s doing what he said he would do when he ran for President of the first place. He’s not delivering on his campaign promises as far creating a great economy and lowering the cost of living. But his nationalist, protectionist, economic policy is now in place and the economic contracted during the 1st quarter. He said he would use government force to go after people to tried to oppose him, even if they’re just doing their jobs and that’s what he’s doing as well.

I hate to break it to uneducated American voters, (and perhaps I’m sounding like an asshole now) but the presidential election in America, really isn’t a popularity contest. Or, it sure as hell shouldn’t be. That office has so much power and can do so much bad and good from 1 office, that you really, at the very least have to have the most qualified and the best person running for that office, win that election. Otherwise, you are putting not just the economy, but the future of the country at risk, when the wrong person wins the election.

And voting for President because you think that person is “cool”, or because they speak their mind, they act like a “reality TV star”, or a “rockstar”, or “badass”, (whoever your pop culture idol is) is not the way educated voters vote. Because they love their country too much and don’t want to run by a professional entertainer, who is only looking out for themselves and doesn’t care about anything or anyone else.

Source:The New Democrat

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Kevin Williamson: Donald Trump is a Socialist

Posted on May 8, 2025 by Rik Schneider

“Donald Trump is a socialist.

When I write “socialist,” I do not use the word the way most right-leaning commentators use it, meaning: “bad.” If you want to get a feel for exactly how insipid and repetitious the contemporary online right is, do a search for “cackling socialist”—you don’t even need to include “Kamala Harris.” You’ll be hip-deep in stupid in two clicks.

The thing about socialism is, it stays socialism—whether you like socialism or dislike it. It is a word that means something, and what it means isn’t every dumb thing you don’t like up to and including publicly funded sex-change operations for currently incarcerated illegal-immigrant felons.

Socialism doesn’t mean high taxes or an expensive welfare state. You don’t need socialism to have a portfolio of social-welfare programs. Japan has an extensive social-welfare apparatus, and it is far from socialist. Singapore is super-capitalist, and it offers my favorite kind of welfare: direct money payments to poor people. Even the big-spending Scandinavians have long abandoned the experiments in socialism that wrecked their economies in the postwar decades: In the high-tax European countries that so many of our progressive friends profess to admire, the trend for a generation has been away from state enterprise and central planning and toward privatization, trade, and investment. American progressives say they envy European health care systems they generally know nothing about; their European counterparts sincerely envy an American entrepreneurial ecosystem that they understand all too well but remain unable to replicate. It’s a funny old world.

Socialism does not mean government-funded education and retirement benefits and health care subsidies—those things are simply welfare, and there are better and worse ways to go about doing such things. Socialism means a centrally planned economy, one that is dominated by state action irrespective of whether it is dominated by formal state enterprises. Food stamps are welfare—socialism can mean state-owned farms and grocery stores, but more often it means a state apparatus that runs the farms and grocery stores as though it owned them, setting prices, negotiating the terms of employment, and determining how business is to be done—a little more of this crop, a little less of that commodity, etc.

V.I. Lenin described his ideal society as one managed as though it were “one big factory.” The Leninist view, it is worth keeping in mind, was profoundly influenced by some of the big ideas and most influential and prestigious thinkers of late 19th-century and early 20th-century capitalism, especially the mania for “scientific management” associated with Frederick Winslow Taylor.

Karl Marx was right about one thing: The means of production really do shape the intellectual landscape in profound ways, and the advent of standardized, interchangeable, mass-produced industrial parts made by power machinery—machines making other machines, an innovation that owes much to Samuel Colt—suggested a parallel vision of social organization: rational, standardized, uniform, efficient, subject to constant refinement and improvement under the benevolent gaze of engineers and scientists and professional managers. We Americans still talk about society that way, e.g., as though the job of schools were not to educate human beings but to “produce workers” or, better still, “produce workers custom-trained for employers’ needs.”

The push toward cartels and monopolies in the age of the so-called robber barons was not exclusively rooted in self-interest—there also was a sincere belief that this was the way to make production more efficient, by eliminating wasteful duplication of work and products, “destructive competition,” and “overproduction,” sentiments that one can still hear today when Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump complain that American children have too many toys and school supplies or too many choices of deodorant. (I have been to Sanders and Trump campaign events, and I can attest that the splendiferous overproduction of deodorant is not a pressing American problem.) Lenin did not dream up the idea of society as “one big factory” on his own—American capitalists got there before him, swerving, as they still do, far outside of their lanes.

Donald Trump does not know the first thing about how a factory operates, of course, and neither do most of the private-equity dorks and middling media figures with which he has stocked his administration, a veritable museum of minor Fox News figures. But he has been inside Macy’s, and even had a product-licensing deal with the department store once upon a time—ghastly shirts and ties with a predictable Gordon Gekko meets Liberace aesthetic.

And so Trump’s version of quasi-monarchical Leninism is no surprise. It’s not one big factory: It’s one big Macy’s, with him leading the parade.

We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it. They don’t have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries. … What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries—some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else.

…

I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.

President Trump’s vision of the U.S. economy in a global context, then, is that of a giant department store … run by a guy who doesn’t know how a department store works.

If you ask the president what the U.S. balance of trade with Eritrea should be (and if you then explain to him that, unlike “Nambia,” Eritrea is a country), he’ll give you a dumb answer, of course. But the problem won’t be that the answer goes off in one direction or another but that he—and people like him—think there is an answer, and that it is the job of the president of the executive branch of the federal government to provide one and act on it—that the president can somehow determine this “according to the statistics and according to everything else.”

It’s the “according to everything else” that gets you, of course. Never mind a big department store—take a simple grocery store, which typically has something like 40,000 to 50,000 unique products. If you want to determine what the “correct” price of each product should be, even within a fairly narrow range, and how much product “should” be stocked relative to current inventory, again within a fairly narrow range, throw in a few other important variables, and then consider all of the possible permutations, you end up with a number of possible distributions expressed by a number that has about 200,000 digits. If you took one second to consider each possibility—because you, a responsible central planner, are considering every option!—it would take more time to run the numbers for a single suburban grocery store than has passed since the Big Bang: All the time in the world, literally, wouldn’t be enough.

Trump can’t put names to faces for half of the people who work directly for him and invents imaginary countries from time to time. But, somehow, he knows what imported bananas from country X absolutely should cost relative to those from country Y—because neither a sparrow nor a drop of rain in Ecuador falls without his knowledge.

Yeah.

Donald Trump’s vision of the economy is classic socialism. And if you want to say that what it really is is classic nationalism, fair enough: As Jonah Goldberg observes, at the level of practical economics nationalism and socialism are the same thing: nationalized industries are socialized industries, socialized industries are nationalized industries, nationalized medicine is socialized medicine, etc. Bernie Sanders thinks and speaks as a nationalist, as do left-wing writers at places such as Dissent magazine—see J.W. Mason’s “A Cautious Case for Economic Nationalism.” Barack Obama’s economic views were explicitly nationalist. Trump’s view of a man at a desk moving pieces of the economy around like rooks and pawns on a chessboard is what socialism is all about—though the old tyrants in Moscow at least had the humility to assume that a committee of experts would be necessary to manage the economy according to “scientific” principles or at least the guile to pretend that they believed it, whereas Trump apparently has swallowed his own silly god-man horsepucky, being, as he is, an ass of exceptional asininity.

It’s as though somebody rewrote The Road to Serfdom as a third-tier Monty Python skit:

“These policies are going to make it more expensive to buy Christmas presents for my kids.”

“Well, maybe your kids don’t need so many presents.”

“But wasn’t your plan supposed to make us all rich?”

“It will. Think of all the money you’ll save when you can’t afford to buy ANYTHING!”

The same people who used to laugh at the Russians and their five-year plans for wheat production now prostrate themselves before the Committee of One, confident in the knowledge that Comrade Trump knows where the Hallmark Channel should be filming its next Christmas-themed rom-com and what percentage of the subcomponents for the flux capacitors should be manufactured in Canada. But, no, we didn’t elect the cackling socialist. Trump, to my knowledge, doesn’t cackle. But he is economically more in Lenin’s camp than in Adam Smith’s and Milton Friedman’s and Ronald Reagan’s. He already imagines himself as a kind of royal figure—any guess who the serfs are going to be when we get to the end of this road?”

Source:The Dispatch columnist Kevin Williamson.

From The Dispatch

From Bakari Sellers:

“Bakari Sellers joins Abby Phillip and a panel of commentators on CNN NewsNight to dissect Donald Trump’s chaotic approach to the economy. From ration-style messaging to sweeping tariffs and unchecked control over pricing, Bakari challenges the idea that this is bold economic strategy—calling it incompetent, authoritarian, and deeply out of touch with working Americans. The group discusses whether Trump’s rhetoric aligns more with socialist or strongman regimes, the real-life impact of tariffs on everyday goods, and why conservative outlets like The Dispatch and National Review are raising red flags.”

Source:Bakari Sellers on Newsnight With Abby Phillip.

From Bakari Sellers

This is what I wrote about this on Monday:

“So when MAGA’s Dear Leader President Donald J. Trump, tells Meet The Press Anchor Kristen Welker:

“I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls … they don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

The President doesn’t even sound like a Republican. He sounds more like a Communist, because he’s telling everyone what he personally thinks, every American needs to live well… at least on this issue. And that’s what Joe Walsh was congratulating (I’m sure sarcastically) MAGA and I’m sure everyone else who voted for Donald Trump last year: “Congratulations! You voted for a Communist for President!”

If Americans wanted to spend more money for less, tax hikes would not just be popular in this country, but all the Socialists in America would be emptied out of their closets… all the Socialist closets would be emptied, because leftists would no longer fear about being outed as Socialists.”

From The New Democrat

This is what Kire Schneider wrote about this yesterday:

“So there’s this new anti-MAGA term going around on social media, that The New Democrat has been promoting as well: it’s called MAGA Communism. Which I’m sure sounds like a luxury economy car, or a cheep yacht, small mansion, short sky scraper, skinny elephant, etc. But that’s what MAGA is talking about and promoting now…

“Yes, Communists believe in sacrifice, though the definition and context of “sacrifice” can vary within communist ideology. Communists often believe that individuals must sacrifice their personal interests for the collective good and the advancement of the revolution. This is often seen in the context of social and economic equality, where individual wealth and possessions might be seen as a hindrance to the collective goal of a communist society.

Communists frequently call upon individuals to sacrifice personal comfort and even their lives for the cause of revolution and the establishment of a communist state. This idea is rooted in the belief that the existing capitalist system is unjust and requires a fundamental transformation.

Communists believe that the collective good, including the well-being of all members of society, should take precedence over individual desires and possessions. This can manifest as a willingness to work for the collective good, even if it means sacrificing personal time or resources.

Some communist ideologies, particularly those rooted in Marxism, advocate for the abolition of private property and the sharing of wealth. This can be interpreted as a call for individuals to sacrifice their own possessions for the common good.

Communists emphasize the importance of collective action and working together towards a common goal. This often requires individuals to set aside their individual interests and prioritize the needs of the group.

In essence, the concept of sacrifice is central to communist ideology, with the form and extent of sacrifice often depending on the specific political context and goals of the communist movement or state.”

You can find all these comments about communism by searching “Do Communists believe in sacrifice” on Google…

From The New Democrat

One of Kevin Williamson’s key points here is quoting President Trump himself about how he sees the American economy:

“We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it. They don’t have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries. … What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries—some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else.

…

I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.

President Trump’s vision of the U.S. economy in a global context, then, is that of a giant department store … run by a guy who doesn’t know how a department store works…

And Kevin Williamson’s quote from President Trump, matches up pretty well with Mr. Williamson’s description of socialism:

“Socialism does not mean government-funded education and retirement benefits and health care subsidies—those things are simply welfare, and there are better and worse ways to go about doing such things. Socialism means a centrally planned economy, one that is dominated by state action irrespective of whether it is dominated by formal state enterprises. Food stamps are welfare—socialism can mean state-owned farms and grocery stores, but more often it means a state apparatus that runs the farms and grocery stores as though it owned them, setting prices, negotiating the terms of employment, and determining how business is to be done—a little more of this crop, a little less of that commodity, etc.

V.I. Lenin described his ideal society as one managed as though it were “one big factory.” The Leninist view, it is worth keeping in mind, was profoundly influenced by some of the big ideas and most influential and prestigious thinkers of late 19th-century and early 20th-century capitalism, especially the mania for “scientific management” associated with Frederick Winslow Taylor…

I could give you old cliche to talk about whether or not Donald Trump is a Socialist or not, by saying: “If it quacks, like a duck, walks like a duck.. but hopefully you want to hear something more interesting than that. I sure as hell want to say something even more original and interesting (ha, ha) than that.

I think what’s going on here, is the President and The White House know they’re in trouble:

House Republicans are freaking out about not just losing the House in 2026, but getting blown out and not having much of an opportunity about winning it back in 28.

Senate Republicans are even worried that maybe even their majority will be at risk in 26, because of what House Republicans are worried about as well, which is who unpopular the President is, especially as it relates to his economic policy.

And The White House is out of believable, positive spin, The Donald himself has even run out of decent lies in how to spin his bad economy, (I guess the Trump tariffs have even hurt TrumpLies.Inc) so they’re desperate and are trying to come up with anything that they can think of at the time, to try to justify (because they can’t spin) the weaknesses in the American economy right now.

So Donald John Trump: the Manhattan real estate mogul, the self-proclaimed billionaire, the “king of reality TV”, sounding like a Socialist, because he’s talking about sacrifice and the need for Americans to cut back. When no one in his White House, including himself, would ever even consider cutting back anything that they enjoy in life, to benefit someone else who isn’t doing as well… I don’t think there’s anything more to it then what I just laid out. Donald Trump is not a Socialist… but he’s a desperate politician, to the point if sounding like a Socialist is what he needs to do to improve his political fortune, that’s exactly what he will do.

Source:The New Democrat

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President Joe Biden Takes Responsibility For Donald Trump’s Reelection

Posted on May 8, 2025 by Erik Schneider

“Former Pres. Biden Says He ‘Takes Responsibility’ For Pres. Trump’s Reelection: ‘I Was In Charge'”

Source:The View talking to former President Joseph R. Biden (Democrat, Delaware) 46th President of the United States.

From The View

“Former president Joe Biden sat down for his first TV interview since leaving office on “The View” Thursday morning, and when asked if he takes any responsibility for Donald Trump’s reelection, he offered a direct answer: yes.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “Because, look, I was in charge and he won. So, you know, I take responsibility.”

From Yahoo News

From what I wrote about this back in December:

“Remember then citizen Joe Biden promising not to run for President in 2020:

“Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term.

While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.

According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president.

“If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.”

Even by October, 2023, it would’ve been too late for President Biden to drop out. But it would’ve been better than dropping out 6 months ago:

“Bill Maher called on Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election, saying the 80-year-old incumbent is too old to run for president and likened him to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The host of “Real Time with Bill Maher” mocked Biden on Friday night, describing the president as the “only democrat who can lose to Trump,” despite the men only having a four-year age difference.

“Someone has to convince President Biden that if he runs again, he’s going to turn the country back over to Trump and go… down in history as Ruth Bader Biden, the person who doesn’t know when to quit and so does great damage to their party and their country,” Maher said, referring to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg notoriously decided to not retire during the Obama administration when she could have been replaced with a liberal justice, only to die at the age of 87 in September 2020 during the Trump administration.”

I don’t agree with comedian Bill Maher on everything. But when he’s right, he’s damn right. (You put that stronger) And he called it in October, 2023:

“The issue with President Biden isn’t if he will be replaced – it’s who will replace him.”

To put it simply: if President Biden announced let’s say by April, 2023, that he promised not to run for reelection in 3-1/2 years a go to assure voters that he would pass the torch (so to speak) and because it was time “for a new generation of leadership”, the Democratic Party would’ve had a full primary season and Vice President Kamala Harris probably wins the nomination anyway. And she would’ve been my preferred candidate right out of the gate. And all those townhalls, those debates, those TV interviews, that she didn’t want to do this summer and to a certain extent this fall, all those things would’ve been taken care of during late 2023 and early 2024.

And it’s not just that President Biden broke his promise not to run for reelection. It’s why he did that is even worst, his lack of reasoning for it. He made it about the economy and that he was the only person up to task of bringing down the high cost of living. When the fact is he knew damn well that his background as a public servant is not economics. He made his carer in Congress as a foreign policy and national security expert. As well as criminal justice and the Constitution. Not economic policy…

From The New Democrat

From what Ederik Schneider wrote about this in April:

“But as Erik Schneider said, had President Biden simply kept his promise to to a one-term President and announced like in April of 2023, that he wasn’t running for reelection, he might not have been an issue in 2024, at all. Because whoever the new Democratic nominee would be, that person would have had about a year or so to introduce themself to the country and lay out exactly what they want to do as President and not have to worry about what the President thinks of their agenda. And Vice President Harris might have won the nomination anyway.

We’ll never know this because the people around the President, who knew he was struggling mentally and had low energy, didn’t have the courage, the character, to either tell the President that he shouldn’t run for reelection and why, or at the least leak what they know about his physical and mental conditions, or resign and go public with what they know about him.

You think Democratic donors would’ve been backing the President the way they did, financially, up until his debate, if they knew he was struggling to remember names of people he knew very well, struggling just to get through his work schedule, physically, getting stuck in-between thoughts when trying to speak? Of course not. If they knew this 2 years ago, if the public knew as well, the Democratic leadership, even, would’ve called for the President not to run for reelection…

From The New Democrat

So I give President Biden credit for at least acknowledging that he’s somewhat responsible for the American nightmare (also known as President Donald Trump) returning to The White House as President again. Rare, if ever, that you even hear a former politician take any responsibility for anything that goes wrong on his or her watch, especially when they’re an executive. It’s like seeing people jumping out of air conditioners, flying rattlesnakes with wings… you almost feel like you have to be high on meth to see any of those things. Especially even a former politician take any responsibility for anything bad happening on their watch, especially an executive. So I give President Biden credit for that.

But the problem here is (and you can rewatch the interview with The View) it’s what he’s taken responsibility for. He’s taking credit for doing all these things like the infrastructure, the research and development, the prescription drugs, the jobs and economic growth, etc. But the only problem was (according to President Biden) that these benefits come later before Americans can feel them and his administration (perhaps including the President) didn’t do a good enough job of selling the benefits of what they were doing.

So on 1 hand President Biden is taking responsibility for the fact that he was too unpopular to even run for reelection, but then he’s sort of qualifying that concession by saying it’s the voters fault for not seeing the benefits if what he and his administration were doing. But that’s more than Donald Trump would give you when he screws up, or any other crooked politician.

Had President Biden said something like:

“Opening the border was a big mistake. We should’ve kept it close and kept arresting illegals to enter the country illegally. While at the same time I try to get a deal with Congress on a broader immigration package, to deal with the current illegal immigrants, who are only here to work and make a better life for themselves, but who aren’t criminals. And we should’ve done more early on, especially in the 2021 economic package to fix the supply chain and increase economic production, before inflation could become the problem that it became in 2022.”

Had President Biden taken full responsibility for why he was so unpopular, (trying to run for reelection with a 36% job approval) along the lines I’ve suggested, he would’ve earned a new respect from me as Liberal Democrat, who voted for him in 2020, who comes from the same Scoop Jackson/JFK wing of the Democratic Party, that Joe Biden comes from, because then it would be clear that he gets it. Instead of tying to qualify anything that was bad that happened on his watch.

Source:The New Democrat

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Leigh McGowan: 10 Things You Can Do For Democracy

Posted on May 7, 2025 by FredSchneiderUS

“I understand this is all so crazy. The question is what do we do about it? Here’s a list of 10 things…

Source:Politics Girl Leigh McGowan.

From the Politics Girl

I think Leigh McGowan’s “10 Things You Can Do For Democracy” is solid. But she’s really speaking to the left-wing of the Democratic Party and perhaps left-wingers, especially young people, who perhaps aren’t registered as Democrats, but maybe don’t want to go way over to the left with the Green Party. And sure, those folks need encouragement in order to vote, especially for Democrats. And if the “PoliticsGirl” can help with that, more power to her.

My message is more for the populist who don’t like either the Democrats or the Republicans, who are somewhere between center-right and center-left as far as how they describe their own personal politics, as well as blue-collar Democrats, who like MAGA’s populist economic message, but don’t won’t America to become some fascist, nationalistic, dictatorship. I think these are the voters who quite frankly, look like they’re half asleep when they go to the voting booths… perhaps flip a coin to decide who they should vote for… who don’t do their homework before deciding who to vote for.

The only way the Donald John Trump’s of the world are ever even allowed to visit The White House, let alone become President of the United States: 40% of the country (give or take) who don’t know who they’re voting for. People who ignore the warning signs about these candidates.

My list is shorter than 10. If the future of the country, all the great American liberal values that most of us take for granted, that protect all those great individual rights that we all take for granted… if the:

Rule of law

Separation of powers

Checks and balances

U.S. Constitution

The Bill of Rights

Personal responsibility

Fiscal responsibility

Limited government

if all these great liberal values that used to be the bedrock of the Republican Party and still is the bedrock of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party… if these are the values that you care about as a voter, this is what you can do to protect them in 2025-26:

1. Know who the hell you are voting for, before you even consider voting for someone. Check to see if their rhetoric matches up with their record. Don’t just rely on their social media feed, their talking points, their own soundbites and what their campaign and campaign supporters are saying about the candidates who are running in your district or state. Do that work yourself.

2. If you are registered Republican, but you are not a MAGA person, (I respect you for hanging there and trying to preserve the Republican Party. More power to you.) and you care about the values I’m talking about here, don’t vote for the MAGA person in your district or state. There will probably be a center-right Republican in that race. Vote for that person. And if you do your political homework, you’ll be able to tell who is the real Republican and who is the Donald Trump wannabe.

Leigh McGowan is talking to the left-wing of the Democratic Party and young Democrats who really only vote, when they think it’s cool and the there’s a cool candidate in the race. And more power to her for that. But if you believe in the democratic values that I think we both believe in, this really isn’t that difficult, if you want to conserve them:

Do your own homework

Vote for the democrat in the race. And I’m talking about the candidate who believes in American democracy. So in a Republican primary, that means voting for the Republican who believes in American democracy. Not necessarily just voting for Democrats and letting MAGA win their primaries. And if the general election is between a pro-democracy Republican and a pro-democracy Democrat, you’ll have a real choice there.

And of course vote. What’s the point in doing your political homework, if you don’t turn it in?

Source:The New Democrat

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Jesse Dollemore: Silver Spoon Billionaire Says: It’s Time for YOU to Sacrifice!!!

Posted on May 7, 2025 by kireschneider

“Jesse talks about Scott Bessent’s utterly tone deaf remarks in an interview yesterday when he said, “The other thing too is this reporter behind me was quite snarky the other day when President Trump talked about the girl having two dolls and he said, well, what president didn’t take the question, but he said, what would you tell the girl? I said I would tell that young girl that you will have a better life than your parents, that you and your family, thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents, which working class Americans had abandoned that idea. Your family will own a home. You will be able to the advance. You will have a good education. You will have economic freedom. That’s what we are advancing now.”

Source:Jesse Dollemore with a look at MAGA Communism.

From Jesse Dollemore

This is the main problem with Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent:

“I’m willing to cut Donald Trump’s government officials some slack, in this sense: most of them weren’t even politicians, or appointed officials before they got their current government jobs. Most of them are oligarchs or very hyper-partisan political activists and commentators from MAGA Land, with very little if any government experience before becoming secretary of this, that, or the other thing.

And because of the business and political backgrounds that these Trump officials have, that makes them very out-of-touch with even everyday MAGA voters who are paying President Trump’s higher prices today, because of his tariffs and the retaliatory tariffs that these countries like in Europe are placing director on Donald Trump’s own voters: people who live in small towns and rural communities, who can’t afford to pay higher prices on their basic necessities of life.

I mean this would explain how a man who is worth 500 billion-dollars would make the statement: “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,”. Because higher prices on basic necessities doesn’t affect him…

From The New Democrat

This is what Rik Schneider said about MAGA Communism on Monday:

“Before some whacked-out leftist try’s to tell me that Communists don’t believe in “paying more for less”… fine. I’m not actually saying that they believe that. More like that tends to happen when Communists are in power: empty store shelves and whatever is left, is too expensive for the average consumer in that country.

As Bernard of Clairvaux so accurately said: the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. Meaning that you shouldn’t just look at the intent of any policy, especially government policy, but the consequences of that policy as well.

Communists might not want their people to spend more money for less, but in an actual Communist State, (take North Korea) that’s exactly what tends to happen. Because the national government is the only source in town for the basic necessities and there’s no one there pushing them to be as efficient and productive as possible. And 1 of those reasons, is the people there can’t even complain to their government, (without risk of going to jail) when state-run-businesses aren’t producing enough affordable goods.

So when MAGA’s Dear Leader President Donald J. Trump, tells Meet The Press Anchor Kristen Welker:

“I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls … they don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

The President doesn’t even sound like a Republican. He sounds more like a Communist, because he’s telling everyone what he personally thinks, every American needs to live well… at least on this issue. And that’s what Joe Walsh was congratulating (I’m sure sarcastically) MAGA and I’m sure everyone else who voted for Donald Trump last year: “Congratulations! You voted for a Communist for President!”

If Americans wanted to spend more money for less, tax hikes would not just be popular in this country, but all the Socialists in America would be emptied out of their closets… all the Socialist closets would be emptied, because leftists would no longer fear about being outed as Socialists.”

From The New Democrat

To Jesse Dollemore’s credit, he covered Secretary Bessent’s lost in the real world, I guess after being deported from Paradise (I’m guessing not by Donald Trump) mentality and got in to what makes this man so out-of-touch, without actually calling him “out-of-touch”.

The Donald J. Trump Administration is the Scribed and Pharisees Administration: “Do what we say, not what we do. Sacrifice is good for you, not for us.”

So there’s this new anti-MAGA term going around on social media, that The New Democrat has been promoting as well: it’s called MAGA Communism. Which I’m sure sounds like a luxury economy car, or a cheep yacht, small mansion, short sky scraper, skinny elephant, etc. But that’s what MAGA is talking about and promoting now. And from my own Google searches, this is what Communist actually believe in:

“Yes, Communists believe in sacrifice, though the definition and context of “sacrifice” can vary within communist ideology. Communists often believe that individuals must sacrifice their personal interests for the collective good and the advancement of the revolution. This is often seen in the context of social and economic equality, where individual wealth and possessions might be seen as a hindrance to the collective goal of a communist society.

Communists frequently call upon individuals to sacrifice personal comfort and even their lives for the cause of revolution and the establishment of a communist state. This idea is rooted in the belief that the existing capitalist system is unjust and requires a fundamental transformation.

Communists believe that the collective good, including the well-being of all members of society, should take precedence over individual desires and possessions. This can manifest as a willingness to work for the collective good, even if it means sacrificing personal time or resources.

Some communist ideologies, particularly those rooted in Marxism, advocate for the abolition of private property and the sharing of wealth. This can be interpreted as a call for individuals to sacrifice their own possessions for the common good.

Communists emphasize the importance of collective action and working together towards a common goal. This often requires individuals to set aside their individual interests and prioritize the needs of the group.

In essence, the concept of sacrifice is central to communist ideology, with the form and extent of sacrifice often depending on the specific political context and goals of the communist movement or state.”

You can find all these comments about communism by searching “Do Communists believe in sacrifice” on Google.

And the thing that Jesse Dollemore said that I completely disagree with… and this gets to the discussion in the Democratic Party about exactly it should function as the opposition minority party in the Federal Government right now, about whether they should be act as an alternative party and lay out what they would do instead of MAGA right now, or should they just try to hold MAGA accountable right now and block them where they can, but not become the issue themselves and remind voters why they were thrown out-of-power in the first place in 2024 and Mr. Dollemore’s comment about taxes:

“We need a tax system that makes being a multi-billionaire something that’s unattainable because we need to support the rest of us. It doesn’t mean we make it illegal to be a billionaire. That just every dollar after after your first 50 million per year the that the those dollars are taxed at 70% like it was during Republican administration. Eisenhower liked it.”

See, if American voters wanted our top tax rates to be anywhere between 70-90% right now… at the very least, Socialist Bernie Sanders would’ve won the Democratic nomination for President… at least in 2016 and perhaps 2020 as well. Americans don’t like communism, but they don’t like democratic socialism either. They don’t want Americans to have to pay a lot of taxes, simply because they make a lot of money. They just want to be able to live well, be able to afford what they need and make sure there’s plenty to go around. As well as being able to move up in life and enjoy life as well. Not pay a lot in taxes, simply because they can afford too.

Source:The New Democrat

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What Do Socialist Democrats Stand For?

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Ederik Schneider

“Democrats STILL Unable to Separate From CRAZY LEFTISTS”

Source:Yaron Brook with a look at U.S. Representative Alexandria O. Cortez (Democratic Socialist, Bronx, New York)

From Yaron Brook

As my colleague Rik Schneider said last week in response to Matt Lewis’s column about the same issue that Yaron Brook was talking about on Sunday:

“I think Matt Lewis made his point here when he said: “Meanwhile, the GOP — formerly the domain of Dockers dads, pious prudes and Young Republicans — pulled off the unthinkable. They became the chaos agents. The punk rockers. The party of middle fingers. The reversal has been astonishing.”

Whoever your “hipster hero” is, whether it’s George Clooney, (if you are a Gen-Xer like myself and Matt Lewis) perhaps Brad Pitt for my generation… maybe Bruce Willis or Sam Jackson for the Boomers.. or whoever that person might be and from whatever generation, people who are “cool”… are just that. They don’t have to tell people that, they don’t have to act that way, because they just are. They’re genuine articles when it comes to “coolness”.

I think especially in politics and government when someone tries to look or seem “cool’… to “go viral” on social media, they look like the 45-50 year old dad, who has 3 kids, who is bored with himself and his life, so he decides the way to “fix his life” is to:

grow a goatee,

wear their heir back with an entire bottle of gel, everyday

speaks exclusively in pop culture references and catch phrases

is always seen staring at his phone and with a coffee cup, etc… they don’t look real. They look like someone who is suffering through a middle age, pop culture crisis. They look like they’re trying to be something that they’re not…

From The New Democrat

And I’ll respond to what Yaron Brook said as well and where I disagree with him.

First of all, Democrats as a political party don’t have to be popular to beat MAGA in 2026, especially in swing districts, or even states where the Republican Party nominates a MAGA person to run statewide in let’s say Louisiana, or Georgia… maybe Senator Thom Tillis gets successfully primaried in North Carolina by a MAGA member. The Democrats, individually, just need to be more popular than whatever “Republican” that they’re running against in that district or state, to win that election.

When the party in power in unpopular, (like today) the opposition party generally just needs to convince the people that they’re different and better than the people they’re running against. And it doesn’t take some bold legislative agenda to do that. All you need to do is convince the voters that you oppose the President and the party in power and that you represent the concerns and issues of the district or state, better than your opponent.

And I agree with the point that both Matt Lewis and Rik Schneider were making. I think the left-wing of the Democratic Party, looks like a real-life, Hollywood political film, or “or reality TV show”, where everyone else is trying to “out viral” the other person and use that to jumpstart whatever career that they want to have for themselves.

But could you imagine if Socialists, even in the Democratic Party ever came to power in America? I mean their whole lifestyle, their culture, their way of life, is dependent and completely subsidized by the American capitalist and liberal democratic system. And most of them know that. Most of these folks are educated. Most of these folks make good livings for themselves, even millionaires.

Representative Alexandria O. Cortez couldn’t even afford to pay her own rent in Washington, when she moved here in 2019. Now she’s worth $30 million dollars. That’s what can happen to you become famous and have a large following of young hipsters, who think you are the coolest thing since skinny jeans and smartphones and you write a book or 2.

So 1, I don’t see Socialists ever coming to power in America, even if they’re “Democrats”. Because once people start thinking about what it would mean to have a socialist government in America, voters stop being impressed by all the hipster catch phrases and other fashion statements that these folks make and start thinking about how much a socialist government would cost them.

And 2, the left-wing in America, when the rubber meets the road, when everyone is at the starting gate, when the 2 warriors meet in the ring, etc… when it’s time to get down and do some business… they don’t want a socialist government either, because that would destroy their way of life and ability to joy life and afford all the high-end things that consumes them. But it’s cool to sound like a militant hipster, (especially with young people) who wants to “take down the man” and wipeout poverty, disease, bigotry, etc. But when it gets down to how you do those things and how you pay for them, not even Socialists are interested in doing that in America.

Source:The New Democrat

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Ben Gleib: MTG Just Sabotaged The GOP in This On-Air MELTDOWN

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Derik Schneider

“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) warned that Republicans are on track to “lose the midterms.” Comedian Ben Gleib breaks it down.”

Source:Rebel HQ with a look at U.S. Representative Marjorie T. Greene (MAGA, Georgia) & Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (MAGA, Louisiana) perhaps you can tell for yourself who is who.

From Rebel HQ

So I think Ben Gleib made the key point here when he said:

“The Republican party is of course these days built around Trump’s personality. It is a cult of personality and also a cult cult regular style But it’s not a real platform.”

I mean that’s my main point about Donald Trump and his MAGA political cult. This is not a political ideological movement. And it’s sure as hell not a conservative movement built around conservative values like:

tradition,

U.S. Constitution

rule of law

fiscal responsibility

individual rights

limited government

federalism

personal responsibility

innovation, etc…

All the conservative values that made the Republican Party a governing party again in the 1970s and 80s. If MAGA believes in conserving anything, it’s small town, blue-collar, Anglo-Saxon and perhaps other Northern European cultures. But their movement is not a political ideological movement. They’re not interested in conserving the:

U.S. Constitution (their Dear Leader on Sunday said he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to defend the Constitution or not)

MAGA is not interested in the rule of law, especially when it gets in their way or is imposed on 1 of their own members.

Fiscal responsibility? Remember, deficits and debt doesn’t matter… when there’s a Republican President and Congress.

Individual rights? Only for the “real Americans”.

Limited government? It’s not big government when MAGA does it.

Federalism? That only applies to the states and localities who govern the way MAGA wants them too.

Personal responsibility? Well, again according to their Dear Leader, everything that goes well, he should get credit for it. But it’s always someone else’s fault.

Innovation? Just as long as MAGA likes the politics and culture of the innovators and those products are made in America.

I think the main problem that Donald Trump and MAGA has, is that they only won the 2024 General Elections with 49% of the presidential vote, 220-435 House seats and only have 53-100 Senate seats. And yes, that means there’s a “Republican” President and Congress. But barely.

And when you don’t have a mandate to govern on your own and you dear leader is less popular now than even when he was in November, (44% approval according to FOX News) and on top of that your own movement doesn’t seem to have any governing philosophy that lays out what you should be doing when you are in power, and the opposition party is 100% united against you and has the troops in Congress to speak out against you and even obstruct you in Congress, you become a governing party with nothing to govern… or nothing to govern with.

You can’t govern a country with around 40% of the American public behind you. Your own members either get in your way, or you end up getting blown out in the mid-terms, or both at the same time. Which seems to be what’s happening with the “Republican Party” right now.

Source:The New Democrat

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Bernard Goldberg: Voters Will Tolerate a Lot — Until They Start Losing Money

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Rik Schneider

“Voters Will Tolerate a Lot — Until They Start Losing Money

Let’s begin with a question now that President Trump has crossed that traditional marker of 100 days in office: How much chaos are Americans willing to tolerate if their money is in the crosshairs?

Yes, the MAGA faithful — the ones who would jump off a cliff if the president told them to take a flying leap — are unshakable. Maybe they make up 25% of his base.

But the real story lies with the broader coalition that put Trump in office — folks who weren’t obsessed with him, just tired of being ignored. They didn’t show up for the circus; they showed up because they liked the promise: secure the border, shrink government, stop the woke madness, and put America first again.

Give Trump credit. He pretty much shut down the southern border — illegal immigration went from a flood under Joe Biden to a trickle now. And DEI is on the run. But Trump has problems: Americans have lost faith in his ability to handle the economy — and maybe more important, they’ve lost faith in Donald Trump himself…

Source:Bernard Goldberg talking about money, money, money!!!

From Bernard Goldberg

From Joe Walsh: Dear leader says the people only need 3 or 4 dolls. He says they only need 5 pencils. Dear leader is a communist. Way to go MAGA.

Aaron Rupar: Trump: “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls … they don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

From Joe Walsh

Today, I had a choice as far as best available stories to talk about. And since unlike with my colleague Erik Schneider, I haven’t seen any films recently that interest me, (ha, ha) it came down to a political satire piece about socialism, (1 of The New Democrat’s favorite verbal punching bags) or President Donald J. Trump (MAGA, Florida) trying to make the case for communism… the extreme version of socialism. So I’m sort of going with socialist humor and The Communist Don in the same post. I hope it works out.

Before some whacked-out leftist try’s to tell me that Communists don’t believe in “paying more for less”… fine. I’m not actually saying that they believe that. More like that tends to happen when Communists are in power: empty store shelves and whatever is left, is too expensive for the average consumer in that country.

As Bernard of Clairvaux so accurately said: the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. Meaning that you shouldn’t just look at the intent of any policy, especially government policy, but the consequences of that policy as well.

Communists might not want their people to spend more money for less, but in an actual Communist State, (take North Korea) that’s exactly what tends to happen. Because the national government is the only source in town for the basic necessities and there’s no one there pushing them to be as efficient and productive as possible. And 1 of those reasons, is the people there can’t even complain to their government, (without risk of going to jail) when state-run-businesses aren’t producing enough affordable goods.

So when MAGA’s Dear Leader President Donald J. Trump, tells Meet The Press Anchor Kristen Welker:

“I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls … they don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

The President doesn’t even sound like a Republican. He sounds more like a Communist, because he’s telling everyone what he personally thinks, every American needs to live well… at least on this issue. And that’s what Joe Walsh was congratulating (I’m sure sarcastically) MAGA and I’m sure everyone else who voted for Donald Trump last year: “Congratulations! You voted for a Communist for President!”

If Americans wanted to spend more money for less, tax hikes would not just be popular in this country, but all the Socialists in America would be emptied out of their closets… all the Socialist closets would be emptied, because leftists would no longer fear about being outed as Socialists.

Source:The New Democrat

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William Graham: Thief (1971) Starring Richard Crenna

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Erik Schneider

“A professional thief tries to break with his past but has to pull off one last job to pay off a gambling debt.”

Source:IMDB with a look at Angie Dickinson & Richard Crenna. Perhaps you can tell for yourself who is who.

From IMDB

“Here Is A Promo For The Movie Of The Weekend Presentation Of Thief.

Starring: Richard Crenna, Angie Dickinson And Cameron Mitchell.

Voiceover By Dick Tufeld.”

Source:MRGIOSB with a look at Hollywood Goddess Angie Dickinson. She plays Jean Melville.

From MRGIOSB

“Neal Wilkinson (Richard Crenna) would appear to be living a great life. He has a nice house in the suburbs. He has a beautiful girlfriend named Jean Melville (Angie Dickinson). As he heads into middle-age, he is still fit and handsome and charming. He dresses well, or at least well by the standards of the early 70s. (By the standards of today, a few of his ties are a bit too wide.) Everyone believes that Neal has a nice and comfortable job as an insurance agent.

Of course, the truth is far different.

Neal is a veteran con man and a thief. He’s just recently been released from prison and his deceptively friendly parole officer (played by the great character actor, Michael Lerner) is convinced that Neal will screw up again eventually. And, of course, Neal has screwed up. A gambling addict, he is $30,000 in debt. Can Neal steal enough jewelry from enough suburban homes to pay off his debt? Can a man like Neal change his ways?

This is a surprisingly somber made-for-TV movie. Just from the plot description and the film’s first few minutes, you might expect Thief to be a light-hearted caper film in which Neal and Jean work together to pull off one last heist so that Neal can retire. Instead, Neal spends almost the entire film lying to Jean and there’s hardly a light moment to be found. Neal says that he wants to retire from his life of crime but, as the film makes clear, that’s a lie that he’s telling himself. Neal cannot stop stealing and gambling because he’s as much of an addict as the wild-haired junkie (Michael C. Gwynne) who briefly confronts Neal at the parole office. At one point, Jean tells Neal, “The more I know you, the less I know you,” but the truth of the matter is that Neal is so deep in denial about the futility of his life that he doesn’t even know himself.

It’s not a particularly happy film. Richard Crenna is ideally cast as Neal, playing him with enough charm that the viewer can buy that he could talk his way out of being caught in a stranger’s backyard but with also with vulnerability that the viewer can see his fate, even if he can’t. Thief also provides a rare opportunity to see Cameron Mitchell playing a sympathetic role. Mitchell is cast as Neal’s attorney, who continually tries to get Neal to stop messing up but who ultimately knows that his attempts to reform Neal are just as futile as Neal’s attempts to go straight.

The movie ends on a surprisingly fatalistic note, one that suggests that there’s only one way to truly escape from a life of crime. I can only imagine how viewers responded in 1971, when they turned on their television and found themselves watching not a light-hearted caper film but instead a bleak examination of criminal ennui. It’s not a happy film but it is more than worth watching for Richard Crenna’s lead performance.”

From Lisa Marie Bowman

I guess I could’ve talked about President Trump’s interview with Meet The Press anchor Kristen Welker from Sunday morning. And I think she actually did a good job here, but all we got out of that was that he still takes no blame for anything that ever goes wrong on his watch and demands all the credit for anything good that happens… including things that didn’t happen on his watch, like the infrastructure law that was signed by President Biden and passed by Congress back in 2021. Americans must have thought they were voting for 7th Grade Class President when they went to the voting booths in 2024.

And there’s just too much Donald right now, especially for a Marylander like myself, who lives 30 minutes from The White House. So onto talking about a fictional thief (played by Richard Crenna) and enough about the career thief who is Donald J. Trump… for now.

So I was looking on YouTube and my homepage a couple years ago and the movie Thief (1971) was in my recommendations. And it said “with Richard Crenna”. So I checked out either that night, or a few days later.

If you are a Gen-Xer like myself who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, broadcast network TV films were everywhere, especially if your family didn’t have cable TV yet. I was 12 years old in 1988 when my family got a cable box. So the movies and TV back then were better (at least from my perspective) back then because they had to be. Because people had fewer options.

So ABC, CBS, NBC, maybe even PBS, and FOX in the late 1980s and early 90s, all had their own movie productions as part as their entertainment divisions and they would make and produce their own films, as well as show hit films from the big screens that came out a few years ago, as well as older films that are still very popular.

And the broadcast networks would show these films generally on Sunday or Monday night, or even do mini-series. ABC, CBS, and NBC, stopped producing and showing other films like 20 years ago. But CW is bringing that back with their network and showing weekend films again, and they also have their own sports division as well now.

Thief (1971) is an ABC network produced, TV film. It was 1 of their weekend films back in October, or November of 1971. Richard Crenna plays Neal Wilkinson, who is a professional thief, who has been sent to prison twice for that, who has lost custody of his son because of that. The mother of his son is an alcoholic and the boy is currently in a foster home.

I think there’s part of Neal that wants to go straight (as they say) but when you go to Reno, Nevada (not to play in the sand) but to gamble and you are not just a two-time convicted felon, but you not just lose $9,000 (which is $71,000 in 2025) but you cover those losses with bad checks and then you use your straight (and I don’t mean that in a sexual way) lawyer as a reference for your bad checks, I think that begs the question of whether a two-time felon, who is a professional thief, is ready to go straight or not. Or simply just trying to get other people to cover his losses for him.

On the surface, Neal Wilkinson (played by Richard Crenna) has an excellent support system as well as motivation to get his life together:

Neal just bought a house in Los Angeles in a neighborhood that looks like Brentwood. But I’m not an LA expert.

Neal has a straight job as an insurance salesman, earning $13,000 a year. (Which is $102,000 in 2025)

Neal has a gorgeous, successful, highly intelligent girlfriend, Jeanne Melville (played by Angie Dickinson) who knows within the first 5 minutes of the film that her boyfriend has not been straight, or even honest with her. But she thinks she’s in love with him and wants to help him out. She doesn’t even know he’s a two-time convicted felon.

And of course there’s Charlie Harris (played by the great character actor Cameron Mitchell) who is Neal’s lawyer, who serves more like an older brother, or stepfather, who’ll do what he can to keep his client from going back to prison and out of trouble… but as long as Neal is making that same effort for himself. And the reason why they split in this film because as Charlie told Neal on the phone:

“You don’t want somebody to help you. You want a pallbearer”. Neal wants someone to be around him to pick up the pieces for him, when he screws up. He doesn’t want an advisor or mentor around to show him the way and be able to stay out of trouble, by not getting into trouble in the first place.

Again, 1970s TV film, so you are talking about a great cast here of great, professional character actors to go along with the people I just mentioned:

Robert Webber as Reno casino boss Jim Calendar. Mr Calendar literally gives Neal a lecture on what it means to be a real father in the scene where they’re talking about the debt that Neal has to pay back and how much time he might get to make good on that debt, before Mr. Calendar turns Neal’s bad checks over to the Reno Police.

Ed Peck has a cameo role where he hits on Jeanne at the restaurant when she’s waiting for Neal

Bruce Kirby (the father of actor Bruno Kirby) plays the guy who talks too much in the Reno casino bathroom. Neal tries to jack Beffy’s wallet from his coat pocket and gets caught before by Beffy before he can even leave the bathroom.

Hurd Hatfield plays Neal’s fence in the film. Hurd is very impressed with the merchandise that Neal brings to him. But very reluctant to pay him for it. And has a “take it, or leave it” policy with Neal.

We’re only talking about an 75 minute (give or take) film here. And I really like the first 73 minutes. (Which might explain why I’ve seen this film like 10 times in the last 2 years) It’s the ending that doesn’t make sense and I think even unfair to the Neal Wilkinson character.

Sure, I could easily see Neal being arrested after this film, after he just made 2 scores that night alone to pay off his $9,000 (again, $71,000) in today’s money. But to have him shot in his own, damn, house, by and underweight, punk-junkie, (played by Michael Gwynne) who looks and acts like he could be a meth-head, who barely has the physical strength to even walk on his own 2 feet… seems out of place.

If a character like Neal Wilkinson, who is played by 1 of the great TV leading men (at least) from his generation (Richard Crenna) is taken down by anyone at the end of the film and it doesn’t end in a good way for him… it’s got to be by the Los Angeles Police, or the Feds. Not by 140 pound half-weight, who only just met Neal at the parole officer’s office, who probably had to hitch a ride, or take several buses from his Skid Row boarding room, just to get to Neal’s house in Brentwood.

I think Michael Gwynne is an excellent character actor. But having Neal Wilkinson taken out by this character, doesn’t even seem believable, let alone right. But the other 70 plus minutes of this film are really good, goes by very quickly and definitely worth seeing again.

Source:The New Democrat

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Roy Royland: Slander (1957) Starring Van Johnson & Steve Cochran

Posted on May 2, 2025 by FredSchneiderUS

“For Entertainment Purposes Only. A successful smooth talking mogul (Steve Cochran) who makes his living publishing a “muckraking” magazine tries to blackmail an “up and coming” performer to get smut about another famous entertainer. Bad goes to beyond worse while Van Johnson and Ann Blyth struggle as victims. The story is as relevant today as ever. Really about libel (not slander)…

Source:Susie Robinson with a look at Slander (1957)

From Susie Robinson

From IMDB:

“In an effort to improve the circulation of his notorious scandal magazine, unscrupulous owner, editor and publisher H. R. Manley spares nobody.”

Source:IMDB with a look at Van Johnson Ann Blyth & Steve Cochran.

From IMDB

So, you know it’s a slow news day anytime you are seeing The New Democrat talk about a classic film, instead of President Trump’s latest unconstitutional executive order, or who he threatened to lock up, if that person kept saying and reporting negative things about him. But it’s Friday, the 2nd day of May, which feels like a summer day in Washington, D.C., which is pretty common for this time of year. And there just isn’t much going on today. Besides, as it says on our home page, TND is about current affairs, sports, and entertainment… not just current affairs.

So the more I see Van Johnson, the more I like him. He’s the sort of classic, Classic Hollywood leading man and great supportive actor:

Tall

Good looking

Well built

Excellent sense of humor and comedic timing.

Van Johnson was the perfect actor for soap operas both in film and on TV in the 1950s and 60s, but go to the 1970s… even the 1980s as well. Even in his 60s, he would’ve been great on shows like Dynasty. He would’ve been a great late night talk show guest for the reasons I just gave as well.

So Slander is not really what you would call a classic soap opera, but it has those elements:

A big shot star (played by Van Johnson) that a tabloid reporter (played by Steve Cochran) wants to take down… or at least seriously hurt, because he can and it would sell a lot of paper for his publication.

What I’m about to say, is not a newsflash for anyone who has a solid grasp of American history, or even Hollywood history. But well before what’s called reality TV, the internet, blogging, or even the tabloid news magazine shows from the 1980s and 90s… this is how Americans got a lot of their news about their favorite stars… tabloid print publications.

And like today with serious news organizations, or even 70 years ago, it was up to the individual reader to be able to figure out what was trash, what was incomplete, and what was real when it came to their news diet.

And Slander is sort of about how people got their news back in the 1950s, where you have a tabloid print reporter trying to take down a star, because he can and it will sell a lot of pint for him. And doing that with trash, or at best half-truths. I’m going to watch it tonight and I might have more about on The New Democrat next week.

Source:The New Democrat

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