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His presidential win is not so much an embrace of Donald Trump--his negatives were even higher than Hillary Clinton's--but a repudiation of everything Establishment for the past two decades. (Photo: Reuters)
President Donald Trump and The Great Repudiation
How the most patently unqualified, the most offensive, personally odious presidential candidate in American history has just been elected president.
Nov 09, 2016
If ever there was a repudiation of "The Establishment," this was it.
The most patently unqualified, the most offensive, personally odious presidential candidate in American history has just been elected president. The Groper in Chief.
This is not so much an embrace of Donald Trump--his negatives were even higher than Hillary Clinton's--as it is a repudiation of everything Establishment for the past two decades, especially Clinton, the living embodiment of Everything Establishment.
It is the revenge of white, rural, blue collar, lesser-educated Americans over the cosmopolitan, urban, white collar, educated elites who have run the country as if the 99% didn't matter.
It is the repudiation of three decades of economic policies which have shifted massive amounts of income and wealth upwards, turning a democracy into a plutocracy.
Racism. Nationalism. Misogyny. Anti-Intellectualism. Authoritarianism. Those are Trump's unapologetic stocks in trade. The only thing we know is that we have experienced a tectonic shift of Rooseveltian proportions, only this time to the right, rather than to the left.
It is a repudiation of Establishment policies on trade, which shipped more than 7,000,000 well-paying factory jobs overseas so that corporations could make higher profits by employing Chinese workers for $1.00 an hour.
It is a repudiation of an Establishment foreign policy run by and for the weapons makers, which has embroiled the country in trillions of dollars of seemingly unending wars which it can never manage to win.
It is a repudiation of the Establishment ethic, the system, and the players that let 5,000,000 people lose their homes to foreclosure while transferring $17 trillion to the banks to restore the capital they destroyed in their sociopathic greed.
It is a repudiation of all of the slick lies of neoliberalism and its slick apologists in the media and the corporate shills of what we errantly call "think" tanks.
Mostly, it is a repudiation of the idea that you can run a country without its people, that capital is all that matters and to hell with labor.
Hillary had the money. She had the credentials. She had eight years in the making. She had the ground game. She had the embrace of every element of the establishment and celebrities from Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Warren to Beyonce, LaBron James, James Taylor and Bruce Springsteen.
A more star-studded cast of Establishment and celebrity endorsers could not possibly be assembled. And yet, the people saw through it. It was to be more of the same.
Trump's visceral repugnancy is precisely the measure by which neoliberalism and its shills and cancerous results have been rejected by the American people.
Hate is more easily mobilized than is hope, especially when Hope has been besmirched, debauched by false idols pandering to their own vanity and against the interests of their own people. This is a stark repudiation of Obama and Obama-ism.
We don't know how Trump will govern, or whether the country can be governed at all. We do know that with all three branches of government solidly in Republican hands we can expect a wrenching turn to the right. RIP Obamacare. RIP Supreme Court.
We don't know if Trump will be taken out by those whose stock in trade is endless war, as was JFK, or whether he can be domesticated to the martial imperatives of empire. I suspect the latter.
We don't know if big capital will go on strike, refusing to fund the government's massive deficits, or whether they will be content with Trump's lower taxes on capital and its gains. Overnight results from the stock market are not encouraging.
We don't know if this is the death knell to the environment and any hope of arresting the destruction of the planet occasioned by pumping 12 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. The portent of rampaging know-nothings in power is not salutary.
Racism. Nationalism. Misogyny. Anti-Intellectualism. Authoritarianism. Those are Trump's unapologetic stocks in trade. The only thing we know is that we have experienced a tectonic shift of Rooseveltian proportions, only this time to the right, rather than to the left.
We've seen two of those in the past century. One was in 1933, in Germany, which is to say, Hitler. The other was in 1980 in the U.S., which is to say Reagan. We honestly don't know enough about Trump to know which he will be, or whether he will be something entirely different. Only time will tell.
But it will not be a return to business as usual.
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Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I've ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That's why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we've ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here's the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That's not just some fundraising cliche. It's the absolute and literal truth. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
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Robert Freeman
Robert Freeman is the Founder and Executive Director of The Global Uplift Project, a leading provider of educational infrastructure for the developing world. He is the author of The Best One Hour History series whose titles include World War I, The Cold War, The Vietnam War, and many others.
If ever there was a repudiation of "The Establishment," this was it.
The most patently unqualified, the most offensive, personally odious presidential candidate in American history has just been elected president. The Groper in Chief.
This is not so much an embrace of Donald Trump--his negatives were even higher than Hillary Clinton's--as it is a repudiation of everything Establishment for the past two decades, especially Clinton, the living embodiment of Everything Establishment.
It is the revenge of white, rural, blue collar, lesser-educated Americans over the cosmopolitan, urban, white collar, educated elites who have run the country as if the 99% didn't matter.
It is the repudiation of three decades of economic policies which have shifted massive amounts of income and wealth upwards, turning a democracy into a plutocracy.
Racism. Nationalism. Misogyny. Anti-Intellectualism. Authoritarianism. Those are Trump's unapologetic stocks in trade. The only thing we know is that we have experienced a tectonic shift of Rooseveltian proportions, only this time to the right, rather than to the left.
It is a repudiation of Establishment policies on trade, which shipped more than 7,000,000 well-paying factory jobs overseas so that corporations could make higher profits by employing Chinese workers for $1.00 an hour.
It is a repudiation of an Establishment foreign policy run by and for the weapons makers, which has embroiled the country in trillions of dollars of seemingly unending wars which it can never manage to win.
It is a repudiation of the Establishment ethic, the system, and the players that let 5,000,000 people lose their homes to foreclosure while transferring $17 trillion to the banks to restore the capital they destroyed in their sociopathic greed.
It is a repudiation of all of the slick lies of neoliberalism and its slick apologists in the media and the corporate shills of what we errantly call "think" tanks.
Mostly, it is a repudiation of the idea that you can run a country without its people, that capital is all that matters and to hell with labor.
Hillary had the money. She had the credentials. She had eight years in the making. She had the ground game. She had the embrace of every element of the establishment and celebrities from Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Warren to Beyonce, LaBron James, James Taylor and Bruce Springsteen.
A more star-studded cast of Establishment and celebrity endorsers could not possibly be assembled. And yet, the people saw through it. It was to be more of the same.
Trump's visceral repugnancy is precisely the measure by which neoliberalism and its shills and cancerous results have been rejected by the American people.
Hate is more easily mobilized than is hope, especially when Hope has been besmirched, debauched by false idols pandering to their own vanity and against the interests of their own people. This is a stark repudiation of Obama and Obama-ism.
We don't know how Trump will govern, or whether the country can be governed at all. We do know that with all three branches of government solidly in Republican hands we can expect a wrenching turn to the right. RIP Obamacare. RIP Supreme Court.
We don't know if Trump will be taken out by those whose stock in trade is endless war, as was JFK, or whether he can be domesticated to the martial imperatives of empire. I suspect the latter.
We don't know if big capital will go on strike, refusing to fund the government's massive deficits, or whether they will be content with Trump's lower taxes on capital and its gains. Overnight results from the stock market are not encouraging.
We don't know if this is the death knell to the environment and any hope of arresting the destruction of the planet occasioned by pumping 12 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. The portent of rampaging know-nothings in power is not salutary.
Racism. Nationalism. Misogyny. Anti-Intellectualism. Authoritarianism. Those are Trump's unapologetic stocks in trade. The only thing we know is that we have experienced a tectonic shift of Rooseveltian proportions, only this time to the right, rather than to the left.
We've seen two of those in the past century. One was in 1933, in Germany, which is to say, Hitler. The other was in 1980 in the U.S., which is to say Reagan. We honestly don't know enough about Trump to know which he will be, or whether he will be something entirely different. Only time will tell.
But it will not be a return to business as usual.
Robert Freeman
Robert Freeman is the Founder and Executive Director of The Global Uplift Project, a leading provider of educational infrastructure for the developing world. He is the author of The Best One Hour History series whose titles include World War I, The Cold War, The Vietnam War, and many others.
If ever there was a repudiation of "The Establishment," this was it.
The most patently unqualified, the most offensive, personally odious presidential candidate in American history has just been elected president. The Groper in Chief.
This is not so much an embrace of Donald Trump--his negatives were even higher than Hillary Clinton's--as it is a repudiation of everything Establishment for the past two decades, especially Clinton, the living embodiment of Everything Establishment.
It is the revenge of white, rural, blue collar, lesser-educated Americans over the cosmopolitan, urban, white collar, educated elites who have run the country as if the 99% didn't matter.
It is the repudiation of three decades of economic policies which have shifted massive amounts of income and wealth upwards, turning a democracy into a plutocracy.
Racism. Nationalism. Misogyny. Anti-Intellectualism. Authoritarianism. Those are Trump's unapologetic stocks in trade. The only thing we know is that we have experienced a tectonic shift of Rooseveltian proportions, only this time to the right, rather than to the left.
It is a repudiation of Establishment policies on trade, which shipped more than 7,000,000 well-paying factory jobs overseas so that corporations could make higher profits by employing Chinese workers for $1.00 an hour.
It is a repudiation of an Establishment foreign policy run by and for the weapons makers, which has embroiled the country in trillions of dollars of seemingly unending wars which it can never manage to win.
It is a repudiation of the Establishment ethic, the system, and the players that let 5,000,000 people lose their homes to foreclosure while transferring $17 trillion to the banks to restore the capital they destroyed in their sociopathic greed.
It is a repudiation of all of the slick lies of neoliberalism and its slick apologists in the media and the corporate shills of what we errantly call "think" tanks.
Mostly, it is a repudiation of the idea that you can run a country without its people, that capital is all that matters and to hell with labor.
Hillary had the money. She had the credentials. She had eight years in the making. She had the ground game. She had the embrace of every element of the establishment and celebrities from Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Warren to Beyonce, LaBron James, James Taylor and Bruce Springsteen.
A more star-studded cast of Establishment and celebrity endorsers could not possibly be assembled. And yet, the people saw through it. It was to be more of the same.
Trump's visceral repugnancy is precisely the measure by which neoliberalism and its shills and cancerous results have been rejected by the American people.
Hate is more easily mobilized than is hope, especially when Hope has been besmirched, debauched by false idols pandering to their own vanity and against the interests of their own people. This is a stark repudiation of Obama and Obama-ism.
We don't know how Trump will govern, or whether the country can be governed at all. We do know that with all three branches of government solidly in Republican hands we can expect a wrenching turn to the right. RIP Obamacare. RIP Supreme Court.
We don't know if Trump will be taken out by those whose stock in trade is endless war, as was JFK, or whether he can be domesticated to the martial imperatives of empire. I suspect the latter.
We don't know if big capital will go on strike, refusing to fund the government's massive deficits, or whether they will be content with Trump's lower taxes on capital and its gains. Overnight results from the stock market are not encouraging.
We don't know if this is the death knell to the environment and any hope of arresting the destruction of the planet occasioned by pumping 12 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. The portent of rampaging know-nothings in power is not salutary.
Racism. Nationalism. Misogyny. Anti-Intellectualism. Authoritarianism. Those are Trump's unapologetic stocks in trade. The only thing we know is that we have experienced a tectonic shift of Rooseveltian proportions, only this time to the right, rather than to the left.
We've seen two of those in the past century. One was in 1933, in Germany, which is to say, Hitler. The other was in 1980 in the U.S., which is to say Reagan. We honestly don't know enough about Trump to know which he will be, or whether he will be something entirely different. Only time will tell.
But it will not be a return to business as usual.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.
LATEST NEWS
Omar, Ramirez Among First in Congress to Decry 'Unconstitutional' Trump Strike on Boat
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Sep 04, 2025
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
"Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
'Cruelty': US Appeals Court Blocks Order to Shut Down Alligator Alcatraz
"The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening!" said Florida Immigrant Coalition's deputy director.
Sep 04, 2025
Two judges appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump issued a Thursday decision that allows a newly established but already notorious immigrant detention center in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, to stay open.
Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida sought "to halt the unlawful construction" of the site. Last month, Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed by former President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida—ordered the closure of the facility within 60 days.
However, on Thursday, Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch and Barbara Lagoa blocked Williams' decision, concluding that "the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction."
Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a brief but scathing dissent. He wrote that the majority "essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court's determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities."
The 11th Circuit's ruling was cheered by the US Department of Homeland Security, Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared in a video that "Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we've always said, open for business."
Uthmeier's communications director, Jeremy Redfern, collected responses to the initial ruling by state and federal Democrats, and urged them to weigh in on social media. Florida state Sen. Shevrin "Shev" Jones (D-34) did, stressing that "cruelty is still cruelty."
In a Thursday statement, Florida Immigrant Coalition deputy director Renata Bozzetto said that "the 11th Circuit is allowing atrocities to happen by reversing the injunction that helped to paralyze something that has been functioning as an extrajudicial site in our own state! The Everglades Detention Camp isn't just an environmental threat; it is also a huge human rights crisis."
"Housing thousands of men in tents in the middle of a fragile ecosystem puts immense strain on Florida's source environment, but even more troublesome, it disregards human rights and our constitutional commitments," Bozzetto continued. "This is a place where hundreds of our neighbors were illegally held, were made invisible within government systems, and were subjected to inhumane heat and unbearable treatment. The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening! The only just solution is to shut this facility down and ensure that no facility like this opens in our state!"
"Lastly, it is imperative that we as a nation uphold the balance of powers that this country was founded on," she added. "That is what makes this country special! Calling judges who rule against you 'activists' flies in the face of our democracy. It is a huge tell that AG Uthmeier expressed this as a 'win for President Trump's agenda,' as if the courts were to serve as political weapons. This demonstrates the clear partisan games they are playing with people's lives and with our democracy."
While Alligator Alcatraz has drawn widespread criticism for the conditions in which detainees are held, the suit is based on the government's failure to follow a law that requires an environmental review, given the facility's proximity to surrounding wetlands.
In response to the ruling, Elise Bennett, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that "this is a heartbreaking blow to America's Everglades and every living creature there, but the case isn't even close to over."
Healthcare Giants Have Raked in 'Sick Profits' From Trump Tax Cuts While Stiffing Patients: Report
The report found that seven of America's biggest healthcare companies have collectively dodged $34 billion in taxes as a result of Trump's 2017 tax law while making patient care worse.
Sep 04, 2025
President Donald Trump's tax policies have allowed the healthcare industry to rake in "sick profits" by avoiding tens of billions of dollars in taxes and lowering the quality of care for patients, according to a report out Wednesday.
The report, by the advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst, found that "seven of America's biggest healthcare corporations have dodged over $34 billion in collective taxes since the enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that Republicans recently succeeded in extending."
The study examined four health insurance companies—Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; two for-profit hospital chains—HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and the CVS Healthcare pharmacy conglomerate.
It found that these companies' average profits increased by 75%, from around $21 billion before the tax bill to about $35 billion afterward, and yet their federal tax rate was about the same.
This was primarily due to the 2017 law's slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a change that was cheered on by the healthcare industry and continued with this year's GOP tax legislation. The legislation also loosened many tax loopholes and made it easier to move profits to offshore tax shelters.
The report found that Cigna, for instance, saved an estimated $181 million in taxes on the $2.5 billion it held in offshore accounts before the law took effect.
The law's supporters, including those in the healthcare industry, argued that lowering corporate taxes would allow companies to increase wages and provide better services to patients. But the report found that "healthcare corporations failed to use their tax savings to lower costs for customers or meaningfully boost worker pay."
Instead, they used those windfalls primarily to increase shareholder payouts through stock buybacks and dividends and to give fat bonuses to their top executives.
Stock buybacks increased by 42% after the law passed, with Centene purchasing an astonishing average of 20 times more of its own shares in the years following its enactment than in the years before. During the first seven years of the law, dividends for shareholders increased by 133% to an average of $5.6 billion.
Pay for the seven companies' half-dozen top executives increased by a combined $100 million, 42%, on average. This is compared to the $14,000 pay increase that the average employee at these companies received over the same period, which is a much more modest increase of 24%.
And contrary to claims that lower taxes would allow companies to improve coverage or patient care, the opposite has occurred.
While data is scarce, the rate of denied insurance claims is believed to have risen since the law went into effect.
The four major insurers' Medicare Advantage plans were found to frequently deny claims improperly. In the case of Centene, 93% of its denials for prior authorizations were overturned once patients appealed them, which indicates that they may have been improper. The others were not much better: 86% of Cigna's denials were overturned, along with 71% for Elevance/Anthem, and 65% for Humana.
The report said that such high rates of denials being overturned raise "questions about whether Medicare Advantage plans are complying with their coverage obligations or just reflexively saying 'no' in the hopes there will be no appeal."
Salespeople for the Cigna-owned company EviCore, which insurers hire to review claims, have even boasted that they help companies reduce their costs by increasing denials by 15%, part of a model that ProPublica has called the "denials for dollars business." Their investigation in 2024 found that insurers have used EviCore to evaluate whether to pay for coverage for over 100 million people.
And while paying tens of millions to their executives, both HCA and Universal Health Services—which each saved around $5.5 billion from Trump's tax law—have been repeatedly accused of overbilling patients while treating them in horrendous conditions.
"Congress should demand both more in tax revenue and better patient care from these highly profitable corporations," Americans for Tax Fairness said in a statement. "Healthcare corporation profitability should not come before quality of patient care. In healthcare, more than almost any other industry, the search for ever higher earnings threatens the wellbeing and lives of the American people."
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