Michael Jochum on the Thanksgiving Message That Had No Heart

There is something especially obscene about a man with no conscience sending a midnight Thanksgiving message to the nation, a holiday literally built on gratitude, and using it to vomit hate, fear, and xenophobia into the bloodstream of a hungry country. Donald Trump doesn’t give thanks. Donald Trump takes. And takes. And takes again. Until there’s nothing left but the gristle of whatever moral muscle used to hold this country upright.

His late-night rant wasn’t a greeting; it was a diagnosis. A man who cannot feel empathy trying to imitate it, like a broken instrument straining to play a hymn it never believed in. He speaks of immigrants like they’re a disease, of refugees like they’re vermin, of human beings, real, breathing, suffering human beings, with the cold detachment of someone who has never cared for anyone but himself. Not his country. Not its people. Not its future. Not even his own supporters, except as props to inflate the rotting balloon of his ego.

He’s not thankful for America.

He’s thankful for the billionaires who finance his delusions.

He’s thankful for the cruelty that keeps him relevant.

He’s thankful for the fear that keeps people from looking too closely at what he’s really doing, gutting a nation for parts and selling its soul wholesale to the highest bidder.

This wasn’t a holiday message; it was a threat disguised as patriotism. A promise to punish the weak so the powerful can keep their supremacy. A sermon from a false prophet whose only gospel is greed, whose only religion is himself.

While families struggled to stretch their last dollars into a meal, Trump spent the holiday reminding them that he blames them, the poor, the vulnerable, the displaced, for everything he himself has broken. He cannot conceive of a world in which human dignity is not transactional. He sees suffering and calls it weakness. He sees compassion and calls it treason. He sees immigrants and calls them invaders because he cannot imagine any experience beyond the gold-plated prison of his own emptiness.

This is not leadership.

This is not patriotism.

This is the howl of a frightened man whose only weapon is the misery of others.

And on Thanksgiving, of all days, he chose to use his voice not to lift the country, not to soothe a battered people, not to reflect, not to give thanks, but to darken the room even further. To remind us that fascism doesn’t rest. It doesn’t pause for holidays. It doesn’t bow its head in gratitude. It uses every quiet moment as another opportunity to rewrite the story of who deserves to be here and who doesn’t.

Trump has no passion for humanity because he has no humanity left in him. He doesn’t love this country. He loves the sound it makes when it kneels.

I am disgusted. I am furious. And I am not fooled.

Because the truth is this: A Thanksgiving message without empathy is not a message at all.

It’s a warning.

And America would do well to listen.

– Michael Jochum
“The Thanksgiving That Had No Heart”
via social media
November 28, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
Trump Vows to “Permanently Pause” Migration from Poor Nations in Social Media Screed – The Associated Press via NPR News (November 28, 2025).
Donald Trump Used Slur in Thanksgiving Post. What Did It Say? – Kinsey Crowley (USA Today, November 28, 2025).
Trump’s Thanksgiving Message to Americans: F#%k Your Food – Daily Kos (November 28, 2025).
Trump Rages Over “Seriously Retarded Governor” Tim Walz in Furious Thanksgiving Message – Emily Crane (New York Post, November 28, 2025).
Trump’s Thanksgiving Message: Only “Patriotic” Immigrants Welcome – CK Smith (Salon, November 28, 2025).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Jason Duchin on the “Trumpian White Supremacist Lie” That Must Be Confronted
• Protesting Trump’s “Dystopian” Immigration Policies
• Thanksgiving Prayer
• Giving Thanks: A Spiritual Act of Trust
• Tommy Orange: Quote of the Day – November 23, 2017
• Something to Think About – November 23, 2016
• Michael Greyeyes on Temperance as a Philosophy for Surviving
• Something to Think About – November 24, 2011


Image: President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after speaking to troops via video from his Mar-a-Lago estate on Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 27, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (Photo: AP Photo / Alex Brandon)

Jason Duchin on the “Trumpian White Supremacist Lie” That Must Be Confronted

Trump and his ilk, in their ruthless attempt to rewrite American mythology, want to cast the immigrant as the enemy. The outsider. The contaminant. The refugee, here to take what is yours. The threat.

Trumps army storms through our neighborhoods like wolves. Sewing fear, drumming up panic, uncertainty, and suspicion. They pit neighbor against neighbor while ICE, Border Patrol, and the National Guard descend on communities as instruments of intimidation. They are the rampaging nightmare extensions of Stephen Miller’s demonic cruelty and Donald Trump’s bottomless appetite for division.

Their real project isn’t security. It’s psychological warfare. They want to condition us to stop seeing ourselves as one nation and start seeing only fragments: red vs. blue, native-born vs. arrived, Black vs. white, citizen vs. other. They want permanent fracture. Permanent hostility. Permanent distraction so they can consolidate power and money all while elevating whiteness.

They seek to shred the complex histories that built this country and replace it with something borrowed from the darkest chapters of world history. A mythology rooted in exclusion, fear, and bloodline.

The Trumpian white supremacist lie must be confronted at every turn. Their machinery must tirelessly be exposed. Their perverse distortion of who we are must be defeated at the ballot box, in the courts, in the streets of public conscience.

Because immigrants didn’t weaken this nation. They built it. The people who were brought here against their will, or came here fleeing oppression, or came to find a dream. They all built the country we now inhabit [with all its] faults and triumphs.

No oppressive regime of fear gets to erase our nation’s truth.

– Jason Duchin
via social media
November 28, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
Trump’s Thanksgiving Attack on Immigrants Likened to “Stuff You Hear Coming Out of White Nationalists” – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, November 28, 2025).
Trump Vows to 'Permanently Pause' Migration from Poor Nations in Social Media Screed – The Associated Press via NPR News (November 28, 2025).
After D.C. Shooting, Trump Sends More Troops and Pledges Crackdown on Afghan Immigrants – Stephen Prager (Common Dreams, November 27, 2025).
“Policy Violence”: ICE Raids and the Shredding of Social Safety Net Are Linked, Says Bishop William Barber – Democracy Now! (November 26, 2025).
How We Treat Immigrants Is How We Treat God – Stephen Mattson (Sojourners, June 25, 2018).


See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Jason Duchin: “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Bowing to an Idol
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love” in Responding to Trump’s Dismantling of Democracy
• Brent Molnar on the the Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel: “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• Memes of the Times – September 2025
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”
• Marianne Williamson: We Need an “Expanded Version of What it Means to Be Political”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – October 6, 2025
• “If a Praying Minister Isn’t Safe, None of Us Are”
• James Greenberg on Trump’s “Larger Design” – the Construction of a Military Dictatorship
• Historian John Lestrange on the Meaning and Manifestations of Fascism, Past and Present
• Mark Sandlin: “Of Course Trump Wants Columbus Day Back”
• When Terrorism Charges “Reek of Political Theater”
• “We Intend to Defend Our Democracy”: The “No Kings” Protests of October 18, 2025
• The Gospel of Jesus Vs. Project 2025
• “A Power Grab the Likes of Which This Country Has Never Seen”
• “A Case Study in How a Bully Behaves When He Can’t Rely on Fear”
• Memes of the Times – November 2025

See also:
• Protesting Trump’s “Dystopian” Immigration Policies (2025)
• Demanding Justice and Embodying Compassion for Separated Families (2019)
• 2000+ Take to the Streets of Minneapolis to Express Solidarity with Immigrants and Refugees (2017)
• Historian: Trump's Immigration Ban is a “Shock Event” Orchestrated by Steve Bannon to Destabilize and Distract (2017)
• On Holocaust Remembrance Day, James Martin Labels as “Appalling” President Trump’s Plan to Demonize Immigrants (2017)
• On International Human Rights Day, Saying "No" to Donald Trump and His Fascist Agenda (2016)
• Rallying in Solidarity with the Refugees of Syria and the World (2015)
• Something to Think About – June 25, 2012
• Fasting, Praying, and Walking for Immigration Reform (2007)
• May Day 2007

The Power of Dance

Dance is incredibly powerful because it is the physical representation of music.

Music and its harmonies are the melodic representation of the universe.

When you dance you're expressing your connection to reality on the deepest level possible.

– Fawn Delong

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Art of Dancing as the Supreme Symbol of the Spiritual Life
• “Then I Shall Leap Into Love”

• Love’s the Only Dance
• We All Dance
• The Dance of Life
• And As We Dance . . .
• Our Dance
• “I Came Alive With Hope”
• The Premise of All Forms of Dance
• Finding Balance in the Presence of the Beloved
• Our Bodies Are Part of the Cosmos
• Flexibility and Flow
• Move Us, Loving God
• A Prayer for Dancers
• Not Whether We Dance, But How
• Trusting the Flow
• The Soul of a Dancer
• Aristotle Papanikolaou on How Being Religious Is Like Being a Dancer
• The Body: As Sacred and Knowing as a Temple Oracle

Images: Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor dancing in a nightclub, from the 2023 Doctor Who Christmas special “The Church on Ruby Road.”

Instant Winter

Writes Paul Huttner of MPR’s Updraft blog:

Welcome to instant winter in Minnesota and the entire Upper Midwest.

Our first real widespread wintry storm caused serious problems for many in our region. This particular system delivered a combination of high winds and sticky snow that coated trees and roadways.

. . . This storm produced heavy wind-whipped snow across our region, as expected. The first inch that fell largely melted on contact on warm ground making it difficult to include in overall snowfall totals. Double-digit snowfall occurred around Duluth and more than 12 inches of snow fell in the lake-effect zone in northwestern Wisconsin. Between 5 and 10 inches fell across a swath from west-central Minnesota through Duluth and the North Shore.

Around the Twin Cities snowfall totals ranged from around 2 inches to 5.7 inches. Officially 3.1 inches fell at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. St. Francis, Brooklyn Park, and Ham Lake recorded 5-plus inches of new snow in the northern Twin Cities area.

Our weather pattern mellows as we move into Thanksgiving Day. It will be cold but dry and travel should be fairly good through most of Friday with a mix of chilly sun and a few clouds. Highs will be in the 20s

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• It Begins (2022)
• Photo of the Day – November 13, 2021
• Autumn Snowburst (2020)
• After the Season’s First Snowstorm, a Walk Through the Neighborhood (2019)
• Autumn Snowfall (2017)
• Just in Time for Winter
• Winter’s Return (2014)
• First Snowfall (2010)
• November Musings
• Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards
• Time to Go Inwards
• To Dream, to Feel, to Listen

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Tony Pentimalli on Marjorie Taylor Greene: “A Demagogue Brought Down by Her Own Fire”

Political analyst and social commentator Tony Pentimalli has written one of the best commentaries I've read so far on Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and her recent announcement that she will be resigning from Congress effective January 5, 2026.

Pentimalli first shared his piece, titled “Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Final Act: A Demagogue Brought Down by Her Own Fire,” via social media on Saturday, November 22, 2025.

________________

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s political career ends the way it always operated, in a blinding flash of grievance, spectacle, and self-inflicted ruin. Her resignation is not a tragedy or a surprise. It is the final collapse of a figure who mistook attention for power, cruelty for courage, and conspiracy for truth. She spent her years in Congress treating the House of Representatives like a stage set, the American public like an audience to provoke, and democracy itself like a toy to break for the cameras. Now she walks away from the wreckage she helped create, insisting she is a victim, when history records only an arsonist fleeing her own fire.

Her departure comes at a moment of extraordinary national consequence. Greene did not simply embarrass herself. She weakened the institutions she swore to protect. She normalized stochastic terror by elevating voices that encouraged violence against election workers. She laundered white nationalist rhetoric into the bloodstream of the Republican Party. She targeted journalists, judges, and public servants in ways that eroded their safety and undermined the rule of law. She fueled distrust in vaccines, in elections, in the military, in intelligence agencies, and in any source of truth not sanctioned by her preferred demagogues. This was not harmless noise. It was a campaign of degradation, and the country is still paying for it.

Her cruelty was not theoretical. It was personal, direct, and often aimed at the vulnerable. She once chased a teenage school shooting survivor down a sidewalk while he was lobbying for safer classrooms, demanding he debate her and calling him a coward. This was who she was long before she entered Congress. She did not grow or evolve or rise to the office she held. She dragged the office down to meet her.

Greene fashioned herself as a warrior. A defender of forgotten Americans. A Christian soldier in a cosmic battle with evil. But the reality was always smaller and sadder. She was a bully with a camera. A propagandist who believed her own conspiracies. A chaos merchant who needed perpetual outrage to justify her existence. Her legislative record is a void. Her notable achievements are a parade of humiliations: incoherent committee hearings, viral meltdowns, petty feuds, and public tantrums that reduced Congress to a punchline. She mistook volume for strength. She mistook cruelty for conviction. She mistook Trump’s approval for destiny.

And then the spell broke. When Donald Trump finally turned on her, calling her a traitor and backing a challenger to her seat, Greene discovered the truth she refused to learn. Power in the authoritarian ecosystem she helped build is conditional, temporary, and transactional. She joined a movement that devours its own the moment loyalty falters. She helped create a culture where humiliation is a political weapon, turned on anyone who slips from favor. Once Trump withdrew his blessing, her entire identity collapsed. Her resignation is not evidence of principle. It is evidence of someone fleeing a primary defeat so total it would have ended her career in public disgrace.

She now insists she is stepping down because she has been mistreated, cast aside, misunderstood. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. For years she mocked others as weak or unfit. For years she celebrated the destruction of colleagues who dared to oppose Trump. For years she reveled in cruelty and demanded absolute obedience. The moment the cruelty came for her, she declared herself a victim. After spending a career belittling the vulnerable, she now asks to be treated as one.

Her resignation is not an isolated collapse. It is part of a wider unraveling inside MAGA itself. The movement she once epitomized is entering a phase of internal purges and ideological hardening. Trump’s inner circle is shrinking. The loyalty tests are intensifying. The space for independent voices, even the loud and unhinged ones like Greene, is disappearing. Her fall is a warning to every Republican who once believed proximity to Trump guaranteed safety. Authoritarian movements do not build stable coalitions. They create cycles of devotion and destruction, and Greene is simply the latest casualty in a machine that requires constant sacrifice.

Her exit echoes a familiar pattern in American history. Joe McCarthy burned hot, terrified opponents, dominated headlines, and then imploded under the weight of his own excess. His power vanished the moment the country finally saw the emptiness behind the fury. Greene is not McCarthy in stature or intelligence, but she shares his trajectory. She built her career on accusation, conspiracy, and the relentless belief that fear was a political strategy. And like McCarthy, she ends her career diminished, discredited, and abandoned by the very forces she once commanded.

There will be no lasting legacy. No major legislation. No meaningful reform. No record of courage or leadership. What remains is a cautionary tale about what happens when a conspiracy theorist becomes a member of Congress and confuses her paranoia for prophecy. She entered office to tear things down. She leaves having succeeded only in tearing down herself.

History will not remember Marjorie Taylor Greene as a fighter or a leader or a voice for the forgotten. It will remember her as a symbol of the chaos that overtook American politics in an era when rage outpaced responsibility and performance replaced public service. Her political obituary is not tragic. It is overdue. The nation will not mourn her exit. It will exhale.

– Tony Pentimalli
“Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Final Act:
A Demagogue Brought Down by Her Own Fire”
via social media
November 22, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
Marjorie Taylor Greene to Quit Congress After Break with Trump over Gaza, Healthcare and Epstein – Democracy Now! (November 25, 2025).
What to Know About Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Resignation and Falling Out with Trump – Ali Rogin and Kaisha Young (PBS Newshour, November 22, 2025).
Jeffrey Epstein, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the Future of American Politics – Jay Caspian Kang (The New Yorker, November 25, 2025).
What Is Up with Marjorie Taylor Greene? – Heather Digby Parton (Salon, November 20, 2025).

UPDATE: The Shift: What does Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Resignation Mean for the Growing Fight Over Israel in the GOP? – Michael Arria (Mondoweiss, November 27, 2025).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Jeff Sharlet on the Fascist Ideology of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell

Anand Giridharadas on the “Elite Network” Around Jeffrey Epstein

It’s very convenient for the American power elite to think about this as a story of one depraved man. But, in fact, what the emails show, if you actually read them, is that [Jeffrey Epstein] had chosen this particular kind of social network, this American power elite, because he could be sure that it would be able to look away at what he did, because it was very gifted at looking away over a generation from so much else . . . so much other abuse and suffering; whether [it be] the economic crises members of that network often helped cause, the wars that members of that network helped push fraudulently, or the pain of technological obsolescence that members of that network pushed on the American public.

So, this was a group of people well chosen by Jeffrey Epstein, because this American power elite, these circles that he moved in, if they have any superpower, it is the ability to hear the cries of people without power and close their ears.

. . . I would respectfully correct something that Virginia Giuffre said. She said she was trafficked to a bunch of leaders. I would say she is a leader who was trafficked to a bunch of cowards. . . . [A]ll these women have proven themselves to be the actual leaders, because leaders are brave, they take risks, they do what’s right even when it’s not convenient. And what has been revealed, ultimately, by this Epstein story is that we are led by a group of people who do not deserve to be called leaders. And these women point to what leadership looks like.

– Anand Giridharadas
Excerpted from “'The Epstein Class’:
The Elite Network Around the Sexual Predator
Democracy Now
November 25, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
Epstein's Secret Network Unmasked: Emails Show Deep Ties to Influential Leaders – Sourik Saha (India Today, November 26, 2025).
Emails Reveal Epstein’s Network of the Rich and Powerful Despite Sex Offender Status – Jesse Bedayn (PBS Newshour, November 26, 2025).

Love Will Not Lose

By Steven Charleston

Love will not lose.

Even if the evidence of the daily news
Seems to suggest that it will
Even if we despair of the values we thought we shared
Even if we imagine the divisions between us
Have grown too wide:

Love will not lose.

Love cannot be constrained by legal walls
Political pieties or institutional fear.
Love is the subversion of power by mercy.
It is the uncontrolled spirit of hope
That erodes the authority of oppression.

Love is the human soul made visible.
Once we see it in one another’s eyes
No force on earth can compel us to deny its reality.
No matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes

Love will not lose.

– Steven Charleston
in Spirit Wheel: Meditations
from an Indigenous Elder
Broadleaf Books, 2023

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• When We Choose Love
• Until the Light Returns
• What the Wind Says
• Secret Language of the Heart
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love”
• Our Lives as LGBTQI People: “Garments Grown in Love”
• In Australia, “Love Has Had a Landslide Victory”
• “What I Want to Remember Are the Moments of Love”
• A Light That Will Always Shine
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Mystical Participation
• A Sacred Pause
• Susan Raffo: Quote of the Day – September 11, 2012
• To Be Alive Is to Love
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Ilia Delio
• In the Garden of Spirituality – James B. Nelson

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Memes of the Times

NOTE: This first meme features a quote from American socialist activist and trade unionist Eugene Debs (1855-1926). Debs was recently highlighted in a piece by Michael K. Smith in CounterPunch. According to Smith, Debs “[made] socialism as American as the Liberty Bell.”

Related Off-site Links:
Who Was Eugene Debs? – Michael K. Smith (CounterPunch, November 14, 2025).
Trump’s Flailing on the Economy Is Worse Than Biden’s – Aaron Blake (CNN, November 11, 2025).
Wake Up! Trump Is Moving Swiftly to Become the First American Dictator – Thom Hartmann (Common Dreams, October 1, 2025).
Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It – Michael Tomasky (The New Republic, October 10, 2025).
How to Stop Tyrant Trump From Destroying Our Country – Ralph Nader (Common Dreams, October 26, 2025).
“Trump’s Gestapo”: Chicago Marches to Resist ICE and National Guard Deployment – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, October 9, 2025).
Pastors Speak of Brutality of Arrests at Hands of Local Cops at Broadview ICE Facility – Violet Miller and Casey He (Chicago Sun Times, November 16, 2025).
Soldiers Must Disobey Unlawful Orders Under Trump – It’s Their Legal Duty – Marjorie Cohn (Truthout, November 25, 2025).
“Absolutely Pathetic”: Senate Democrats Denounced for Caving to GOP in Shutdown Fight – Jon Queally (Common Dreams, November 10, 2025).
“The Epstein Class”: The Elite Network Around the Sexual Predator – Democracy Now! (November 25, 2025).
Emails Reveal Epstein’s Network of the Rich and Powerful Despite Sex Offender Status – Jesse Bedayn (PBS Newshour, November 26, 2025). 86 Democrats Join GOP in Voting for “Very, Very Stupid” Resolution Condemning Socialism – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, November 21, 2025).
Denouncing Socialism Can’t Stop a Generation That’s Embracing It – Sou Mi (Left Voice, November 24, 2025).
What’s Next for the Left: An Interview with Jill Stein – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, November 16, 2025).
The British Mamdani? Meet Political Star Zack Polanski – Mehdi Hasan (Zeteo, October 23, 2025).
Kamala Harris Paid the Price for Not Breaking With Biden on Gaza, New Poll Shows – Ryan Grim (Drop Site, January 15, 2025).
Kamala Harris Admits Biden Administration Failed Gaza – Novara Media, November 13, 2025).
Introducing California Governor Candidate Rudolph “Butch” Ware – CBS News Los Angeles (September 5, 2025).
Despite the Smiles, Mamdani Must Know That Trump Remains a Fascist Rattlesnake – Norman Solomon (Common Dreams, November 25, 2025).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

THE RISE OF FASCISM IN THE U.S.
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• “If a Praying Minister Isn’t Safe, None of Us Are”
• Historian John Lestrange on the Meaning and Manifestations of Fascism, Past and Present
• James Greenberg on Trump’s “Larger Design” – the Construction of a Military Dictatorship
• “A Power Grab the Likes of Which This Country Has Never Seen”


THE FAILURES OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
• Authoritarianism With a Blue Sticker
• Robert Reich on the “Big Ugly Cave” by Senate Democrats
• Kshama Sawant on the Democrats’ Shutdown Cave
• David Norton: “The Democratic Party Serves Capital, Not You”
• Mike Figueredo: “Elected Democrats Have No Real Interest in Doing What the Base Wants”
• Tony Pentimalli on the Fallacy of the “Safe Political Center”


ISRAEL AND GAZA
• Two Years of “Indescribable Horror”
• No Justice, No Peace
• Progressive Perspectives on Kamala Harris’s Book, 107 Days


DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
• Matthew Cooke on the Fallacy That Socialism “Doesn't Work”
• No, Hitler and the Nazis Weren’t Socialists
• Socialist Equality Party: Quote of the Day
• “Hopeful and Grounded”: Omar Fateh’s Vision of Democratic Socialism
• Mark Harris: Quote of the Day


ZOHRAN MAMDANI
• Zohran Mamdani and the Future of the Democratic Party
• Progressive Perspectives on Zohran Mamdani’s Win in New York City
• Matthew Cooke on the Real “Mamdani Effect”
• Quote of the Day – November 21, 2025
• Trump and Mamdani: “A Case Study in How a Bully Behaves When He Can’t Rely on Fear”


BUTCH WARE
• Butch Ware on “Red & Blue vs Green Politics”
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – October 6, 2025
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly


SIGNS OF HOPE
• Kanipawit Maskwa: “The Land Still Remembers”
• “We Intend to Defend Our Democracy”: The “No Kings” Protests of October 18
• “The Answer, Actually, Is Hope”
• Eddie Glaude: A “Radical Refusal” Is Happening
• “One Badass Lady”
• What the Wind Says


See also:
• Memes of the Times – September 21, 2025
• Memes of the Times – July 27, 2024
• Memes of the Times – May 21, 2020
• Signs of the Times – April 25, 2017
• At the Minnesota Capitol, Signs of the Times (May 16, 2011)

“A Case Study in How a Bully Behaves When He Can’t Rely on Fear”

Michigan-based digital creator Bruce Fanger has written the most insightful commentary I’ve read so far on yesterday’s extraodinary (some have said “bizarrely chummy”) meeting at the White House between President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Bruce titles his piece, “Thirty Minutes in the Lion’s Den: The Interview Trump Thought He Controlled.” It’s reprinted in its entirety below.

_____________________

There’s a strange thing that happens when you watch the full thirty-minute interview instead of the clipped version the internet tosses around. The edges soften. The masks slip. And you start to see the actual geometry of the interaction – where power sits, where insecurity leaks, where the tone changes, where the truth speaks by accident. The viral clip makes it look like a moment. The full meeting reveals a dynamic.

This wasn’t a showdown. It wasn’t a humiliation. It wasn’t a triumph for either man. It was something far more revealing: a case study in how a bully behaves when he can’t rely on fear, and how a principled politician behaves when he refuses the role of the victim.

The meeting begins as all Trump meetings do – with noise. The first five minutes are pure Trump: monologues disguised as greetings, numbers inflated beyond physics, scattered recollections of the 1980s like the era froze and preserved him in amber. You can practically hear his brain flipping through its greatest hits, trying to set the tone: This is my room. My chair. My story.

But Mamdani doesn’t react to any of it. And that is the first hinge of the meeting.

A man like Trump needs emotional feedback to function. Fear works. Flattery works. Even anger works. Mamdani gives him nothing. He sits there with the calm of someone who refuses to let the other person set the emotional tempo. It’s a small thing, but with Trump, it’s enough to break the cycle.

Then comes the shift – the “gracious Trump” phase.

People mistake this for maturity or diplomacy. It’s not. It’s a reflex Trump only deploys when he can’t dominate the room. The tone goes soft, the eyebrows lift, the compliments come out in forced, syrupy bursts – “You’re doing great work.” “New York is lucky to have you.” “You’re a very smart guy.”

It sounds statesmanlike until you remember the same man called him a communist threat two weeks earlier. What’s happening here isn’t respect — it’s adaptation. A chameleon trying to match the color of the wall. Trump is gracious when graciousness benefits Trump.

As Mamdani shifts to policy, Trump drifts into autobiography. This is the most telling stretch – minutes twelve to eighteen. Mamdani tries to talk like a mayor-elect: transit, housing, Rikers, federal cooperation, immigrant protections. Real issues, real stakes, real governance.

Trump responds by vanishing into his own mythology. Crime statistics from memory that don’t exist. Grievances about prosecutors. Stories from “the old days.” Complaints about how unfairly he’s been treated.

It’s not sabotage – it’s incapacity. Mamdani is speaking a civic language Trump’s brain can’t decode. They aren’t having the same conversation. They aren’t even on the same continent.

Then comes the moment everyone’s dissecting – the “fascistic tendencies” line.

And yes, it happened in the room, not after. Mamdani doesn’t weaponize the word. He doesn’t turn it into a headline. He does something more dangerous: he analytically names the pattern. Immigrant raids. Political retribution. Targeting dissent. Erosion of checks and balances. Threats against the judiciary. He lays out the evidence and names the behavior: fascistic tendencies.

Trump nods and smiles like someone being told he has an excellent golf swing. It’s not bravado. It’s not denial. It’s something almost sadder: he doesn’t understand the language of critique unless it’s blunt and emotional. Mamdani moved the discussion into the realm of political analysis, and Trump’s instincts don’t live there. So he simply . . . accepts it. Not because he agrees, but because he can’t absorb what the words actually mean.

The last ten minutes are the clearest portrait of Trump’s psyche. Once Mamdani refuses to bend, Trump compensates by overcorrecting into flattery: “You’re going to surprise people.” “I feel very comfortable with you.” “We’re going to get along great.”

It’s dominance disguised as benevolence. When Trump can’t conquer, he tries to adopt. He folds the other person into his narrative: You and I are the same. We’re allies. You approve of me. I approve of you. It’s a kind of political camouflage – digest the threat by complimenting it.

Mamdani doesn’t take the bait. He doesn’t fight. He doesn’t flatter. He just continues speaking plainly. Which leaves Trump in the one position he hates most: performing civility for an audience that isn’t fooled.

The full interview isn’t about Mamdani calling Trump a fascist. It’s not about Trump pretending to be gracious. It’s not about a progressive mayor meeting an authoritarian president.

What the meeting showed is simpler and more damning: Trump is only powerful when the room fears him. Take the fear away, and he becomes oddly gentle, strangely polite, and completely unable to dominate the conversation.

People think tyrants rage because they’re strong. But the truth is they only rage when they know the room will absorb it. Mamdani didn’t absorb it. So Trump didn’t rage. He folded. Nicely. Neatly. Like a man who knows the cameras are watching and doesn’t want the world to see what he looks like when the mask cracks.

And if there’s a lesson here for the rest of the country, it’s this: Fear is the oxygen of authoritarianism. Take it away, and even a strongman starts to sound like a man.

– Bruce Fanger
“Thirty Minutes in the Lion’s Den:
The Interview Trump Thought He Controlled”
via social media
November 21, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
After Threats Throughout NYC Campaign, Trump Lauds Mamdani at White House – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, November 21, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani Knew How to Handle Donald Trump – Peter Dreier (Jacobin, November 22, 2025).
Trump and Mamdani Meet in Oval Office After Months of Trading Insults – Liz Landers and Ali Schmitz (PBS Newshour, November 21, 2025).
Mamdani Announces “Partnership” with Hated Would-be Dictator Trump – Joseph Kishore (World Socialist Web Site, November 21, 2025).
“Cheering for Him”: Key Takeaways from Trump-Mamdani White House Meeting – Alastair McCready (Al Jazeera, November 22, 2025).

UPDATES: Who’s Afraid of a Socialist Mayor? The Corporate Media – Ari Paul (Common Dreams, November 23, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani’s Pragmatic Socialism Is Paying Off – for Now – Jeet Heer (The Nation, November 24, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani Won on Substance, Not Just Style – Ashley Bishop and Spencer Snyder (Jacobin, November 24, 2025).
Despite the Smiles, Mamdani Must Know That Trump Remains a Fascist Rattlesnake – Norman Solomon (Common Dreams, November 25, 2025).


See also the following Wild Reed posts:

ZOHRAN MAMDANI
• U.S. Democratic Socialists: Quote of the Day – November 21, 2025
• Matthew Cooke on the Real “Mamdani Effect”
• “The Answer, Actually, Is Hope”
• Progressive Perspectives on Zohran Mamdani’s Win in New York City
• Zohran Mamdani and the Future of the Democratic Party
• Memes of the Times – September 2025
• The Rational National’s Take on Zohran Mamdani
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Dorothy Lennon: Quote of the Day – June 26, 2025
• A Timely and Important Conversation


THE RISE OF FASCISM IN THE U.S.
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• “This Is Fascism”
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• The “Creeping Fascism of Trump’s America”: A View from Australia
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – October 6, 2025
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• The Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel: “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• Jason Duchin: “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• The Choice Before Us
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• Historian John Lestrange on the Meaning and Manifestations of Fascism, Past and Present
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025


Image: U.S. President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani shake hands as they meet in the Oval Office on November 21, 2025. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)