TOM in the starring role as Joe McCarthy

 

May 3, 2025 (103/1461)

Ahhhhh. Ok this isn’t directly TOM related (though he did make TOM comments so I’m taking liberty), Warren Buffet is retiring!! By year end he plans to phase himself out of Berkshire Hathaway. “I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end,” Buffett said.” But he did manage to get in one TOM dig before the mic drop. With this “criticism of President Trump’s trade policies as a mistake: “Trade should not be a weapon,” Mr. Buffett said. “I don’t think it’s right and I don’t think it’s wise.” That should send a few ripples out across the White House. I wonder what deprecating superlative TOM will come up with to describe Mr. Buffet.

Every day TOM proves to me yet again that he is longing for the 1950’s. “For years, President Donald Trump blamed “communists” for his legal and political troubles. Now, the second Trump administration is deploying that same historically loaded label to cast his opponents — from judges to educators — as threats to American identity, culture and values. Trump himself explained the strategy last year when he described how he planned to defeat his Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in the White House election.

“All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country,” he told reporters at his New Jersey golf club in August.” TOM is Joe McCarthy part two.

“ After Joseph McCarthy’s Senate censure, in 1954, right-wing organizations and self-proclaimed McCarthyites vowed to keep the flame alive against a corrupt, treacherous, and deluded liberal establishment. And it doesn’t require a conspiracy theory to get from then to now. McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, famously served as one of Trump’s early mentors, a tutor in the ideological and practical workings of American politics.” 

Great choice of mentor. How do you put yourself out there with those political beliefs? The mentor of hate, intolerance, and intimidation? The slogan “we will find you” – which TOM’s gov has already used in letters (mistakenly) sent to Ukrainians earlier this year. Mistakenly because all of them were here legally. As refugees.

And the indoctrination at all levels of his admin has been swift and thorough. “On Thursday, senior presidential aide Stephen Miller stepped to the White House podium and uttered the same c-word four times in about 35 minutes during a denunciation of past policies on transgender, diversity and immigration issues. “These are a few of the areas in which President Trump has fought the cancerous, communist woke culture that was destroying this country,” Miller told reporters.” The staff are mimicking and parroting the words of an angry, deranged, bitter old man. A man who always plays the victim card. A man wronged by all of those….communists!

Let TOM take note, however, he may not want to follow too closely in Joe’s footsteps. “Joseph McCarthy's career and influence declined dramatically after the Army-McCarthy hearings and a subsequent Senate censure. He was censured in 1954 for abusing his power and refusing to cooperate with investigations into his own conduct. This event effectively ended his political power and influence.”