Author Archives: Wayne Madsen

Musk has become a hostile non-state actor threatening America

Using Twitter as a weapons platform, apartheid child Elon Musk has become a major non-state actor threatening the national security of the United States. Treating what was once the world’s dominant social media conveyance as a toy, Musk decided to temporarily “disappear” Ukraine from Twitter’s virtual map of the world by eliminating the country’s code of UA used for two-factor authentication. In addition, Ukraine’s international phone code of +380 was also briefly deleted by Twitter as an option for creating or verifying accounts using the Short Message Service or SMS. Continue reading

DeSantis’s thugocracy and a dead body: Welcome to the Mafia state

It should come as no surprise that Florida’s neo-fascist mobbed-up governor and 2024 presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis now has the dead body of a close friend to deal with. In a scene reminiscent of the television series “The Sopranos,” the body of 50-year old Kent Stermon, a prominent Jacksonville, Florida political donor to DeSantis, was found in his vehicle on December 8. The vehicle was parked at the Mayport Post Office on Mayport Road in Atlantic Beach. A post office employee leaving work discovered Stermon’s body around 8 pm. The Mayport Naval Station is where DeSantis performs much of his Naval Reserve active duty as an officer in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps. Continue reading

Musk and Thiel are highly deportable

Two of the world’s wealthiest men—Peter Thiel and his friend and business colleague Elon Musk—became U.S. citizens through the naturalization process. Both are aiding and abetting neo-Nazi and other far-right causes in the United States and fit the bill of “undesirable aliens.” Thiel, through bankrolling the political campaigns of dangerous Nazi sympathizers like Blake Masters in Arizona, and Musk, in re-platforming hundreds of neo-Nazis on Twitter, pose a threat to the constitutional governance of the United States. Thiel and Musk are as deportable from the United States as were dozens of Nazis who were discovered to have carried out war crimes during World War II. In any event, Thiel does not seem to care very much about his acquired U.S. citizenship since he also carries a New Zealand passport and is attempting to obtain one from Malta. Continue reading

Biden playing the long game by moving South Carolina up to first primary state

Joe Biden may be 80 years old but only Republicans and a few wobbly Democrats who think the president is out grazing in a pasture are underestimating someone who is, first and foremost, a politician of the old school. Biden’s decision to have the Democratic Party hold its first primary in 2024 in South Carolina, thus edging out traditional first primary state New Hampshire, as well as the first nominating process—caucus—state Iowa, is a political master stroke of genius. As it now stands, South Carolina will lead the Democratic primary calendar on Saturday, February 3. Having the primary election on a Saturday will likely increase voter participation among two Democratic strongholds, African-Americans and college students. Continue reading

Get ready for the House “Roland Freisler” show trials

The world should gird itself for what can be expected to be the most vitriolic show trial seen since Nazi “People’s Court” Judge Roland Freisler’s theatrics in humiliating from the bench the White Rose underground leaders in Germany and the Operation Valkyrie plotters who tried to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944. Freisler is best known for flying into fits of rage in order to psychologically disarm defendants brought before his court. Continue reading

January 6th Committee Report—the devil may be in the details

As the House Select Committee on the January 6th insurrection by Donald Trump and his allies wraps up, there is hope that some details of the planned coup d’état will be found either in the main report or its appendices. As just one example, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have not advanced their investigations of who planted pipe bombs at Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters. Continue reading

A reference to a dystopian America is now officially enshrined in federal case law

U.S. judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida has struck down Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s Individual Freedom Act and the Stop-Woke (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, Walker cited the censorship provisions of DeSantis’s law as a violation of the First Amendment right of free speech and the ban on colleges, universities, public schools, and businesses having more than 15 employees instructing students or employees about cultural and racial awareness as a violation of the 14th Amendment on due process. Continue reading

The danger posed by nihilistic leaders

Although it was hardly a newsworthy event when Donald Trump, in a lackluster November 15 speech at his Mar-a-Lago grifters’ club in Florida, announced that he was launching another presidential campaign, it served as an example of the growth of nihilism among the “libertarian” right, fascist far-right, and various lunatic conspiracy-obsessed factions of the left in the world today. From Trump’s ongoing “Make America Great Again” traveling white nationalist carnival act and the BREXIT catastrophe in the United Kingdom to the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s imperialist threat to attack and occupy Taiwan, the “burn it all down” approach to governance has taken hold in the halls of power of dozens of nations, including those that possess nuclear weapons. Continue reading

Why Trumpism as a fascist movement will not disappear

While some high-profile Republicans are ditching Donald Trump after a series of major losses for the party in 2018, 2020, and 2022, the political brand of “Trumpism,” an anti-democratic fascist movement, is not likely to disappear any time soon. Militant political movements that double as cults of personality often long outlive their demagogic leaders. As significant far-right ideologies, Trumpism and its Tea Party forerunner may continue as a potent force within the GOP for several decades. Ronald Reagan left office in 1989, but his philosophy of Reaganism, itself an outgrowth of Barry Goldwater’s brand of doctrinaire conservatism, was only recently discarded with the ascendancy of Trumpism. Goldwater’s extreme conservatism was emblematic of a party that had, for thirty years, dabbled in the extremism of the pro-Nazi Germany American First movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, the postwar Red Scare politics of Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the unhinged conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society. Continue reading

The demonization of modern medicine and where it could lead

Make no mistake about it, those who have demonized modern medical practices, including vaccinations and women’s health care—pejoratively referred to as “abortion” by its opponents—have no place in the public commons as they issue forth snake oil treatments and, like Dr. Mehmet Oz, suggest that an abortion is between a woman, her doctor, and her local politicians. Continue reading

Judging by history, the Trump-DeSantis feud could turn very violent

The political civil war that is erupting in the Republican Party between loyalists of Donald Trump and Florida’s recently re-elected governor, Ron DeSantis, has the making for a full-blown Hatfield and McCoy-style feud. Although Trump supporters are largely cultists adhering to QAnon and white nationalist drivel, DeSantis supporters include several former Trump fans who are no less driven to settling scores on the streets. No sooner had he taken to disparaging DeSantis on his Truth Social platform, Trump began re-transmitting scores of anti-DeSantis postings from QAnon accounts. Continue reading

El primer estado fascista de América (America’s first fascist state)

In voting against their own interests, including maintaining Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ benefits, a majority of Florida voters not only decided to give the former Miami “rent boy” Marco Rubio a third term in the U.S. Senate but gave a second term carte blanche to Governor Ron DeSantis to continue his march to establish the first Latin American-style fascist state within America’s borders. However, in securing another term as governor to launch his 2024 presidential campaign, DeSantis has incurred the wrath of Florida’s most infamous landed oligarch, former President Donald Trump. But more on that later. Continue reading

America’s unthinkable has arrived

It was April 2007. My mother was visiting Washington, DC, during the same week that former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel announced his 2008 presidential run at a press conference at the National Press Club, an event we both attended. Later that day, supporters and friends of Gravel, ourselves included, gathered at his Arlington, Virginia condominium for a reception. At one point, I glanced over at the couch in the living room to see Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank in a conversation with my mother. Quickly figuring out that my mother was not a deep-pocketed donor to the Gravel campaign up from Florida, Milbank, doing his job as a political columnist, moved on to others in the room. That brief meeting between Milbank and my mother was foremost in my mind when I read Milbank’s October 28 column titled, “American Jews start to think the unthinkable.” Continue reading

A white Christian nationalist state produced Musk, Thiel, and other fascists among us

As we approach the Fifth of November, the day Britain resolves that there is no reason why the 1605 “Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot,” we should also remember that the two fascist billionaires, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, are products of the white Christian nationalist and racist apartheid state of South Africa. Musk’s ownership of Twitter, the world’s third-largest social media platform, and Thiel’s unveiled attempt to insert two of his hedge fund lackeys, J. D. Vance and Blake Masters into the U.S. Senate representing Ohio and Arizona, respectively, point to the export of apartheid fascism from the Boer veldt of South Africa to the shores of the United States. Continue reading

The Trump administration: the worst counterintelligence disaster in U.S. history

In an era marked by unprecedented events, it is not hyperbole to state that the Donald Trump administration and the twice-impeached disgraced ex-president’s post-presidency represent the worst counterintelligence disaster in U.S. history. An examination by WMR of court records, including criminal cases dealing with violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and Trump’s misappropriation of highly-classified documents at his private properties, points to over a dozen foreign intelligence services, most of them hostile to U.S. national interests, having gained access to America’s most guarded secrets. These include intelligence sources in countries and territories around the world, as well as the methods used to gather intelligence. Continue reading

Ron DeSantis: Stolen valor, stolen taxpayers’ money, stolen lives

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a lot of things, none of them good and one quite unforgivable. Just as he did in his 2018 race for governor, DeSantis has rolled out a television ad highlighting his “pumped up” Navy service. That service continues in the U.S. Naval Reserve, where DeSantis – who routinely questions the authority of his Commander-in-Chief, President Biden – wears the uniform of a Lieutenant Commander in the Judge Advocate General Corps. DeSantis’s political ad features him wearing various uniforms, including dress whites on which he displays a row of medals along with the Fleet Marine Force insignia. DeSantis, whose collateral duty during active service included that of “Awards Officer,” has made it a point of having his political ad, titled “Honor, Courage, Commitment,” focus on his chest of medals while having praise heaped upon him by his former JAG Corps commanding officer, retired Navy Captain Daniel Bean, now a Jacksonville, Florida attorney. Bean formerly served as a managing partner of the Republican-tilting Holland & Knight law firm. Continue reading

Signs of our times: Space Force anthem and campaign ad countering Nazism in Pennsylvania

There is an old Chinese saying that certainly applies today: “Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos” or its modernized version: “May you live in interesting times.” Perhaps nothing represents these bizarre times more than the new anthem recently rolled out by the U.S. Space Force, a creation of Donald Trump that continues to haunt us. The anthem was written by Jamie Teachenor, a Nashville singer and song writer. Its lyrics include a mix of Pentagon jargon like “warfighters” and the Marvel Universe reference of “guardians,” as in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” The anthem was the brainchild of the Chief of Space Operations, General James Raymond. The song and its lyrics sound like the intro for a 1960s Saturday morning cartoon. Continue reading

Florida: the Schwarze Sonnenschein Staat

Heinrich Himmler’s SS adopted the Teutonic runic Black Sun—Schwarze Sonne—as its favorite symbol. In May 2022, the neo-Nazi who massacred ten black people at a Buffalo supermarket wore the Black Sun on his body armor. On September 1, the would-be neo-Nazi assassin of Argentina’s Vice President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, wore a Black Sun tattoo. And, in keeping with the theme, Florida’s far-right Governor Ron DeSantis has quickly turned the Sunshine State into the “Black Sunshine State,” in homage to the Nazi Schwarze Sonne. Continue reading

A few royal memories

Many young stamp collectors, like myself, discovered who Queen Elizabeth was after constantly seeing her side portrait or silhouette on stamps from what seemed like everyplace in the world: from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to Malta, Tanganyika, Gold Coast, Bechuanaland, the Gilbert Islands, and Hong Kong. Crowned two years before I was born, it is amazing to reflect back to how many times I encountered something or someone having to do with the Queen. From living in one of her many realms – Barbados — for over two years to my first ever trip abroad to England in 1975, there was no getting away from the fact that Elizabeth was not only the Queen of England, but also of scores of other vestiges of the old empire. In addition, she was the head of the Commonwealth of Nations, many of which I had the occasion to visit after they had become republics. One could not but notice the high regard many of their citizens had for their former monarch or royal protector, whether it was in India, Cyprus, Uganda, Singapore, Sarawak, Brunei, Sikkim, or Fiji. Continue reading

Compromising nuclear secrets—it’s deja-vu

The revelation that Donald Trump had stored in Mar-a-Lago Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information/Special Access Program (TS/SCI/SAP) documents on foreign nuclear capabilities, which came on the heels of his owned-and-operated dime store federal judge in Fort Pierce, Florida ruling in his favor on halting the government’s damage assessment on Trump’s treason, brought back some vivid memories of 2003. Continue reading

Trump successfully judge-shopped for an unqualified South Florida right-winger

Donald Trump, the New York real estate mobster who fled Gotham City for Florida during his twice-impeached presidency to avoid the arm of justice in the Empire State, needed a corrupt and inexperienced federal judge to stymie the Justice Department’s investigation of his theft of thousands of highly-classified and other official documents from the White House. He found one in Judge Aileen Mercedes Cannon, a right-wing Federalist Society Cuban-American. Continue reading

DeSantis’s “Mongoose Gang” of intimidators and cronies

Florida is currently the closest thing to a fascist police state within the borders of the United States. That is primarily due to its Republican authoritarian governor, military “stolen valor” practitioner Ron DeSantis, acting like a tinpot caudillo or dictator, the type that frequently plagued the Caribbean and Latin America over the decades. DeSantis has continually abused his authority as governor. This includes his throwing elected Democrats out of office, in one case at gunpoint, and replacing them with far-right Republican cronies. Continue reading

Don’t look up (river): it’s not there

Rivers around the world are drying up. Some perennial rivers will eventually dry up permanently—many within this century—because the glaciers that feed them are disappearing at a rapid rate. This could be the plot line of a science fiction movie but this is science fact. Aside from the scientists, meteorologists, and environmentalists, too many people remain clueless about the Earth’s impending ecological crisis. One of the main reasons for this ignorance is the anti-science Luddism promoted by a gaggle of right-wing climate change deniers, medical quacks, junk scientists, lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians who have no business weighing in on subjects about which they have no ability or desire to understand. Continue reading

Pro-democracy candidates held their own in primary races in FL and NY

In two states that more accurately represent a microcosm of American voters—Florida and New York—candidates generally committed to democracy and the rule of law defeated a Republican hodgepodge of Qanon believers, Adolf Hitler admirers, and, in one case, an admirer of Russia and Vladimir Putin. The election returns also pointed to a collapse in the corporate media’s insistence that the Republicans will score victories at the expense of Democrats in this year’s midterm elections. Continue reading

Today’s Republicans: “Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt are dead, long live Hitler and Mussolini”

The United States is in the same vulnerable position today as Weimar Germany was in the early 1930s. German democracy died amid acts of violence by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. The United States now finds itself in a similar perilous position. The Republican Party under the Hitler-admiring Donald Trump eschews democracy and embraces fascism. Republican candidates for office this year are as violent, anti-Semitic, and racist as Hitler’s Nazi Brownshirts. Continue reading

Mar-a-Lago: a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”

The television news helicopter shots of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, a suspected major crime scene, reminds one of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s cautionary comment to Luke Skywalker in the first “Star Wars” film: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Obi-Wan was referring to the Mos Eisley Spaceport on the planet of Tatooine. The spaceport was a center for various criminals, smugglers, and customs officers on the take. If one could organize a line-up of the members and customers of Mar-a-Lago over the years, it would undoubtedly resemble the nasty-looking clientele of Mos Eisley’s cantina. Continue reading

Cheney’s loss predicated by Trumpist death threats

Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), the co-chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6th insurrection, faced constant death threats from supporters of Donald Trump and his hand-picked opponent to Cheney, Harriet Hageman. In a state like Wyoming, where handshaking retail campaigning is a key to electoral success, being forced to host small political events in living rooms proved to be an electoral disaster for Ms. Cheney. Death threats against other Republican and Democratic opponents of Trump have been reported from around the country, a fact that led some Republicans in the House to decide not to seek re-election. Continue reading

Walker, Pollard, Hanssen, Trump . . . America’s most traitorous spies

Donald Trump, with his affectation for Eastern European models during the Cold War, should have registered with the FBI early on as a potential spy for America’s enemies. Czechoslovak State Security (ŠtB) certainly believed that to be the case when they tripled their efforts to ensure that their two assets, Ivana Zelníčková and her father, Miloš Zelníček, applied a full-court press on Trump beginning in 1976 when Ivana first met Trump. A year later, ŠtB asset Ivana Zelníčková married Trump. The first Mrs. Trump and Warsaw Pact intelligence asset worked her way into top-level executive jobs in the Trump Organization, including president of the Trump Castle Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, later becoming the manager of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. These positions and her marriage to Donald Trump gave Ivana, and the ŠtB and, by default, the Soviet KGB, important access to the movers and shakers of American politics, business, and media. Ivana Trump, the mother of Donald Trump, Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, would continue to have access to her ex-husband and his business and political operations long after their divorce in 1992. These benefits included her use of Mar-a-Lago for one month a year pursuant to her divorce settlement with Donald. Continue reading

A very Trumpian national security scandal

There is every indication that the suspected theft of several boxes of highly-classified documents by Donald Trump and his closest aides bears Trump’s personal imprimatur. Had anyone other than the computer-averse Trump wanted to sneakily spirit away such a large amount of paper documents when they would have merely copied them to a small thumb drive and encoded the files with a commercial encryption product. That does not mean that the FBI could not successfully retrieve such documents pursuant to a court order but the presence of some 27 boxes of classified documents in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Florida estate provides an insight into the simple mind of Mr. Trump. And therein lies the possible smoking gun that prosecutors may use to show that Trump stole classified documents for personal gain, including financial arrangements with hostile foreign governments. Continue reading

What would past presidents say of Trump?

Donald Trump is, by far, the worst president of the United States in its 246 years of existence. All of the living presidents have pretty much said so. So have most legitimate historians and scholars of the presidency. But what would have those who served long ago as president think of the person who has become so reviled as the worst in their ranks? Some of America’s past presidents were no shrinking violets when it came to tossing barbs at those they despised. From Dwight Eisenhower’s dislike of Senator Joseph McCarthy to Thomas Jefferson’s contempt for John Adams, past presidents let it be known, in no uncertain terms, what they thought of their adversaries. Therefore, in examining the historical record, it can be deduced what past presidents would have thought of and said about president number 45. Continue reading

Alito undermines U.S. in Rome speech mocking allied leaders

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito took it upon himself to mock the leaders of U.S. allies in a keynote speech delivered on July 21 in Rome, Italy. Acting like a mobbed-up comedian performing a churlish stand-up routine on the Las Vegas Strip, Alito lambasted foreign leaders for publicly criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights previously guaranteed by the 1973 Roe v. Wade case. Continue reading

For the Republicans, overturning Loving v. Virginia is most certainly in the offing

As Republicans turn back the clock by outlawing abortions—even in cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother being at stake—same gender marriages and sex, and access to contraceptives, another right stands to be obliterated by that party that is enacting what the America First Committee, German-American Bund, and Ku Klux Klan could have only dreamed about in the 1930s: a ban on interracial marriage. Continue reading