Senator McCarthy and POTUS Trump
“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205 — a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.” - “Enemies from Within,” 1950, Senator McCarthy
By Gregg Wall (2-15-2025)
In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s a dangerous demagogue would use communism and the Red Scare to incarcerate hundreds of citizens and blacklist and destroy the careers of thousands of Americans. That demagogue was Senator Eugene McCarthy of Wisconsin and by his side was an unusually ruthless lawyer, Roy Cohn. Roy was known for prosecuting the Rosenbergs, as Soviet spies, before his fame continued to grow during the McCarthy era. Mr. Cohn’s motto throughout his lengthy career was: attack, counterattack, and never apologize. From Mr. Cohn we can draw a straight line to Donald Trump, presently President of the United States. Mr. Cohn helped a younger Trump in the Manhattan real estate market and the two undoubtedly became familiar, if not by some accounts Cohn became Trump’s mentor.
Here again, we can see the demagoguery of the McCarthy years line up with the demagoguery of the Trump years. A cowed establishment, a complicit MSM, and a Washington in turmoil, where many were afraid to be ruined just by the accusation or the threat of being called a communist. The demagoguery of today extends to being called an antisemite; the demagoguery today… along with its chaos, smear tactics, and bullying… is a mask for the lust for power & narcissism of empty men willing to wield fear and lies to further great ambition and personal gain, by any means necessary. Remember Mr. Cohn’s motto, and we can quickly see POTUS Trump’s motto in real time… attack, counterattack, and never apologize… isn’t really that different than Silicon Valley’s objective, move fast and break things. These words are not dissimilar from the mantra of America’s healthcare insurance industry: deny, depose, and defend. No room for honesty, fairness, accountability, or apology anywhere?
We are not thirty days into the Trump-Musk (aka Trusk) second term presidency and already the familiar pattern from the first term has returned, that of endless chaos, pushing forward a populist agenda (that is narrowly defined as culture wars), while cronies, insiders, and sycophants make bank. With seemingly some new attack, idea, or proposal pushed forward every day to keep the establishment, the MSM, and the public on the back foot.
Meanwhile, key broken promises are already beginning to pile up. Trump promised to end the war in the Ukraine before entering office. The war continues on and in fact, Trump has promised to continue to fund the war in exchange for a share in the Ukraine’s rare minerals & natural resources. Candidate Trump promised to bring down prices and address affordability, after five consecutive years of corporate and supply-side greed have crushed essential Americans, left 60 to 70% of Americans living from check to check, and an ever-growing number facing homelessness and eviction. And yet, the post-election Trump, the now, 2nd term Trump has already said bringing down prices are not likely to happen. Moreover, Trump’s trade war and tariffs are much more likely to drive prices even higher for Americans already tapped out by America’s failed neoliberal, monopoly economy. And just this week, news that inflation is climbing again, even before tariffs have kicked in.
Simultaneously, co-president Musk is running riot throughout the government, hoovering up vast troves of data, shutting down bureaus and regulatory agencies, with nary a word about the world’s richest man’s obvious conflicts of interest. The aims of DOGE by now are clear cut: privatize government, strip social services, gut the regulatory agencies, consolidate power, & transfer greater wealth into the hands of a few. Moving fast and breaking things, government employees are being furloughed and locked out of their offices, funding has been impounded for various programs and agencies, including USAID. And while some of this trimming of government is undoubtedly good, there is the pungent smell of coup & dictatorship in the air, as well as, the running over of the legislative and judicial branches of government. Not that congress seems interested in reasserting its authority. Dems, per the usual, look forward to doing their part and will give Musk and Trump free rein, but look forward to raising money and campaigning on the chaos and fear for the midterm election. Many Americans, at this point, don’t appear willing to give Dems a pass on their role in walking Trusk (Trump/Musk) to power, with their abysmal stewardship of the economy, foreign policy, & government over the last four years. The only check now… no not congress, no not the corporate MSM… but rather the federal judiciary. And a constitutional crisis appears imminent.
In terms of foreign policy Trump did not run on making Canada America’s 51ststate, conquering Greenland in a hostile takeover, swiping the Panama Canal back again, nor making Gaza: Mar-Lago-Middle East. In fact, Trump promised in his first term to get the hell out of the Middle East. Instead of America-first, it appears that we are getting the Imperial Presidency, a doubling down on military might, and a GOP proposed increase in military spending. And yet another American president willing to pivot very quickly to foreign policy, as a way of demonstrating power, as domestic policy and campaign promises quickly give way to a nasty reality & the expectations of the donor class (first & foremost: preservation of an economy & government that caters to their every whim). In brief, the world knows no fury like a U.S. president with his domestic agenda scorned? In many respects, the first month smells… of disinfectant, urine, an elder care facility in congress… another failed gerontocracy leading a dying empire to ruin. See comparatively, the former Soviet Union, gerontocracy, and its final days. See also, catastrophic American and Soviet national debt. Hence, the frantic work of Mr. Musk to reduce costs & expense… the sudden pivot by Trump, in the last 72 hours, to cut defense spending in half and bring the war in the Ukraine to a close? (Perhaps the only place Trump is definitively winning is in the culture wars... fanning the flames of hate, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia... often by executive order and power grab. With too many of the MAGA base content to lap it up, while their economic circumstances continue to erode.)
Then again, Trump has always been all over the map. As reported in the NY Times: “He switched political parties five times before first running for president as a Republican in 2016, and at one point or another was for abortion rights, gun control, higher taxes on the rich and the invasion of Iraq before he was against all of them.” In fact, the only consistency appears to be Roy Cohn’s standing order: attack, counterattack, and never apologize or was it move fast and destroy things?
In terms of tariffs, who knows? Trump was going to slam Canada and Mexico and then backed off for thirty days, settling for the moment on reciprocal tariff action. But that path offers no certainty either… no guarantee that the economy, jobs, opportunity, and the tax base will return home. (Or even if that’s Trump’s true aim… instead Trump maybe looking for a new tax revenue stream so as to afford greater tax cuts & welfare for the oligarchy and Wall St.) Again, the tariffs are a heavy handed approach that attacks the U.S. consumer, the demand-side... not unlike using higher interest rates to address inflation. Both methods crush Americans and families, while failing to address corporate greed. Corp greed is the reason we have inflation, the reason why there's a trade imbalance, and the reason why the economy was sent offshore to exploit foreign labor, governments, regulatory regimes, and tax laws. The solution, if the aim is to return the industrial base and supply lines home, is windfall taxation that sticks it directly to the supply-side & Wall St.
Senator McCarthy & Roy Cohn
One thing is certain, Trump is causing friends & foes, allies & enemies to reconsider their partnerships, their economies, military alliances & supply chains… and their reliance upon the stability of the United States and dollar hegemony… as has not been done in decades. Gold soars, the dollar has in the last week dropped in value. In the North, the mercurial Trumpen Fuhrer, aka The Demagogue, has united Canada in a manner that has not been seen in decades… even causing voters to give Liberals a new look, a Liberal party whose obituary had already been written for the upcoming federal election.
At the end of the day, America is attempting to export the fallout from 45 years of failure --- Reaganism, libertarianism, financial bailouts, an insatiable & parasitic oligarchy, a corporate America addicted to financial engineering & monopoly, the disaster that is untrammeled free trade, an increasingly enraged & restive public, a failing democracy, and greed --- all of it resulting in $40 trillion in catastrophic national debt --- in a desperate attempt to right side the ship of state before she runs aground or sinks beneath the waves… the fate of all empires. See, for 45 years, America was content to export our economy & tax base offshore, so American robber barons could exploit foreign labor, tax loopholes, and dump foreign manufactured goods on American soil (for big fat profits)… the tradeoff was US dollar hegemony, a tyrannical empire & colonialism imposed upon the world, and absurd sums of debt… export nations, those that actually manufactured real goods, in turn used US dollars to buy financial services, Treasuries. This worked for a period of time, but our overhead… billionaires, DOD/MIC, AIPAC, Silicon Valley, ultra-scummy politicians, and Wall St... ran up $40 trillion in national debt. So, America needs our economy & tax base back or at the absolute minimum, a new taxable revenue stream to pay for all this f---ing overhead, again I present to you, the aforementioned: money sucking kleptocracy, DOD/MIC, the foreign gov – Israel, the Silicon Valley deep state, day trading sleaze in Washington, & Wall St leeches.
Someone has to pay for America’s kleptocracy and insatiable oligarchs, and it sure as hell ain’t going to be themselves, The Economic Royalists.
Put another way, America is attempting to turn the economy around, now that free trade has been revealed to be a complete disaster, along with dereg, empire, monopoly, & neoliberalism. Apparently gone are the days when America was content to allow mercantilist nations to park their trade surplus and U.S. dollars in Wall St banks, investments, and U.S. Treasuries. In short, America wants its economy back, its innovation back, its jobs and tax base back… but more importantly, America wants a new revenue stream to keep the U.S. government somewhat solvent and its oligarchy maintained in a manner to which it has grown accustomed. And seemingly, we, essential Americans, don’t mind at all that we will ultimately pay the Trump Tariff Tax (TTT).
But is being a bully, a demagogue, a tyrant the way to go? Can Trump help himself, even if he wanted to… and how much latitude does a compromised Trump actually possess at this point? It’s instructional that Senator McCarthy was exposed after a period of time during the Red Scare… caught in one too many lies, the public grew tired of him, the Supreme Court finally reined in and rolled the Senate. The Senator from Wisconsin was even censured by the Senate. Attacking and accusing the U.S. Army ultimately proved to be McCarthy’s undoing. From there it was a steady downward slide, culminating in McCarthy's death at age 48, due to the effects of alcoholism. And Mr. Cohn? Well, he died of AIDS, a closet homosexual, who looked down upon gays, vilified and persecuted them for much of his career (including during the McCarthy hearings, waging a Lavender Scare).
Perhaps that’s the epitaph for all demagogues: Those who live by the sword all too often perish by it?
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025
