Nader shared his thoughts Wednesday during an interview with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman.
Following is part of what he said.
[Trump’s speech] was a declaration of war against the American people, including Trump voters, in favor of the super-rich and the giant corporations. What Trump did last night was set a record for lies, delusionary fantasies, predictions of future broken promises – a rerun of his first term – boasts about progress that don’t exist. In practice, he has launched a trade war. He has launched an arms race with China and Russia. He has perpetuated and even worsened the genocidal support against the Palestinians. He never mentioned the Palestinians once. And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza.
But taking it as a whole, what we’re seeing here defies most of dictionary adjectives. What Trump and Musk and Vance and the supine Republicans are doing are installing an imperial, militaristic domestic dictatorship that is going to end up in a police state. You can see his appointments are yes people bent on suppression of civil liberties, civil rights. You can see his breakthrough, after over 120 years, of announcing conquest of Panama Canal. He’s basically said, one way or another, he’s going to take Greenland. These are not just imperial controls of countries overseas or overthrowing them; it’s actually seizing land. Now, on the Greenland thing, Greenland is a province of Denmark, which is a member of NATO. He is ready to basically conquer a part of Denmark in violation of Section 5 of NATO, at the same time that he has displayed full-throated support for a hardcore communist dictator, Vladimir Putin, who started out with the Russian version of the CIA under the Soviet Union and now has over 20 years of communist dictatorship, allied, of course, with a number of oligarchs, a kind of kleptocracy. And the Republicans are buying all this in Congress. This is complete reversal of everything that the Republicans stood for against communist dictators.
. . . And where are the Democrats? I mean, look at Senator Slotkin’s response [to Trump’s address]. It was a typical re-run of a feeble, weak Democratic rebuttal. Just like the Democrats in 2024, which led to Trump’s victory, she couldn’t get herself to talk specifically and authentically about raising the minimum wage, expanding healthcare, cracking down on corporate crooks that are bleeding out the incomes of hard-pressed American workers and the poor. [Democrats] can’t get themselves to talk about increasing frozen Social Security budgets for 50 years, that 200 Democrats supported raising, but Nancy Pelosi, when she was speaker, kept them from taking John Larson’s bill to the House floor. That’s why they lose. Look at her speech. It was so vague and general. They chose her because she was in the national security state. She was a former CIA. They chose her because they wanted to promote the losing version of the Democratic Party, instead of choosing Elizabeth Warren [or Rep. Summer Lee] or Bernie Sanders, the most popular polled politician in America today. That’s who they chose.
So, as long as the Democrats monopolize the opposition and crush third-party efforts to push them into more progressive realms, the Republican, plutocratic, Wall Street, war machine declaration of war against the American people will continue. We’re heading into the most serious crisis in American history. There’s no comparison.
For Democracy Now!’s complete interview with Ralph Nader, click here.
Related Off-site Links:
Trump Delivers Gloating, Grievance-Filled Speech Hours After Sending Economy Reeling – S.V. Date (The Huffington Post, March 4, 2025).
“Cowardly” and “Spineless”: 10 Democrats Join House GOP to Censure Al Green for Disrupting Trump Speech – Eloise Goldsmith (Common Dreams, March 6, 2025).
Critics Ask If Trump and Musk Are “Intentionally Crashing the Economy” – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, March 5, 2025).
Donald Trump Does Not Have a “Mandate” for Any of This – Michael Mechanic (Mother Jones, March 5, 2025).
Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism – The Humanist Report (March 6, 2025).
How the Media Walked Us Into Autocracy: An Interview with Ralph Nader – The Chris Hedges Report (March 6, 2025).
UPDATE: A Message to Democratic Leaders: Get Tough and Hold Unofficial Congressional Hearings By and For the People – Ralph Nader (Common Dreams, March 8, 2025).
See also the previous 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
• Robert Reich’s Ten Reasons for “Modest Optimism” During the Trump-Vance-Musk Regime
Today’s Economic Blackout
For more of Ralph Nader at The Wild Reed, see:
• Hope Over Fear
• Ralph Nader: Quote of the Day – January 20, 2022
• Ralph Nader: Quote of the Day – December 5, 2016
• Across America, “the Giant Is Awake”
Image: Ralph Nader, pictured in 2014. (Photograph: Getty Images)
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