“What I’m Going To Do To You Is Going to be Fucking Disgusting…”

Trump makes mob-style threats. Only instead of, “I’m going to mess up you and your family,” it’s now, “A whole civilization will die tonight.” He must be impeached now…

Donald Trump used to have Michael Cohen to make his threats for him (after Roy Cohn died and could no longer serve Trump and the New York Mafia families). When journalist Tim Mak, then working for the Daily Beast, was producing an article about Trump’s first wife, Ivana, saying he “raped” her when he was angry because his hair plugs she recommended didn’t turn out well, Cohen called Mak and said:

“So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. Do you understand me? Don’t think you can hide behind your pen because it’s not going to happen. …

“I’m more than happy to discuss it with your attorney and with your legal counsel because motherfucker you’re going to need it. And it’s going to be my absolute pleasure to serve you with a 500 million-dollar lawsuit, like … I did to Univision. …

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know. So, I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

It’s apparently one of many such communications. He famously threatened Fordham University that if they ever released Donald’s grades, “we will hold your institution liable to the fullest extent of the law including damages and criminality.”

G-d only knows how many of the thousands of women and small businesspeople who sued or threatened to sue Trump for stiffing or otherwise screwing them got a similar treatment; it’s probably in the thousands, since we know he’s been involved in over 4,000 lawsuits, according to a USA Today analysis.

Cohen ended up on the receiving end of Trump’s bile when he planned to publish his own book about their time together and was thrown into a notorious New York jail; he’s since turned on his former employer.

So, now Trump makes the mob-style threats himself. Only instead of, “I’m going to mess up you and your family,” it’s now, “A whole civilization will die tonight.”

Bullying is fundamental to Trump’s style. It’s how his psychopath father raised him. It’s how he treats reporters, calling them “piggy” and “stupid” and “low intellect.” It’s what he did to Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy — the victim of Trump’s mentor and fellow bully Putin — in front of a horrified world.

Remember when Trump bragged that he’d told a NATO leader he‘d “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to European countries?

Or when he told a meeting of police chiefs:

“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon… you just see them thrown in, rough — I said, please don’t be too nice. … Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head… I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”

And now he’s going after his own followers who are turning against his Iran decision. Some of them were even still trying to hang onto him outside of that one issue, but his attack yesterday against Megan Kelly, Candace Owen, Tucker Carlson, etc., was extraordinarily vicious.

Not to mention the insanity of publishing a snuff video, as he did yesterday. Yes, the President of the United States published a video on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site of a woman being murdered.

When he was a small-time New York real estate developer and incompetent businessman with a long string of failed companies, his inability to do anything other than bluster and bully didn’t matter much to the world.

But now this same guy commands the most powerful military on the planet and has successfully emulated Putin and Saddam by surrounding himself exclusively with lickspittles and toadies who’re so terrified of his ire that they’ll wear shoes that don’t fit and slather him with unctuous, drooling praise in humiliating public meetings.

The danger that represents — both to America and the world — is that his default mode of threatening and intimidating to get what he wants has left him without anybody who’ll tell him, “No,” explain reality to him, or restrain his worst impulses.

It wasn’t this way during his first term. When Trump was outraged about the Black Lives Matter protesters, he asked his former Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Fortunately for America in 2020, Esper was able to talk Trump down.

Similarly, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley talked Trump out of his suggestion that the military should be mobilized against the protesters to “crack their skulls,” “beat the fuck out of them” and “shoot them in the leg or maybe the foot.”

There’s no Mark Esper or Mark Milley in the White House today, and there won’t be come election day.

When Trump backed down on his threat to vaporize 90 million people it was almost certainly the price of gas and the collapsing stock market that constrained him, not a humanitarian impulse or the wise advice of an experienced diplomat in the White House. There are none anymore.

This is the classic story I told in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy about what happens when a leadership style built on threats, intimidation, and loyalty doesn’t stay personal but gets genuine power. The same tactics used against journalists, critics, and small businesses begin to shape how the government itself operates, both internally and with other countries.

When the systems designed to constrain power — checks, transparency, dissent — start to give way, the risk isn’t just political: it’s systemic.

And the stakes — the future — don’t just involve America, but democracy and global stability itself. This man could, you can say without exaggeration, trip off World War III, and we and our children may not survive it.

That’s why it’s so urgent that Congress impeach Trump and remove him from office now. Let your elected officials know. The phone number for the congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.

Louise’s Daily Song: “Tread Lightly”

My newest book, Who Killed the American Dream?: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told is now available for presale from bookstores nationwide.