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"Allowing Obamacare premiums to soar appears to be one step too far" for Americans affected by the government shutdown, which is why the Democrats appear to be winning the "health care shutdown war," according to Salon's Heather Digby Parton.

Despite saying in 2015 that "nobody knows health care better than Donald Trump," the president and Republicans have shown "replacing the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] wasn't so easy after all," Digby Parton says.

Obamacare is successful, she writes, and that success is "the Republicans' worst nightmare." And shutting down the government over the Democrats' refusal to budge on health care subsidies, she says, is even worse.

"So naturally, drunk with power as they are, they’ve decided to take another stab at ruining it, which is why they decided to let the subsidies that have been in place for the last five years lapse," she writes.

Americans are already starting to feel the burn of the shutdown, Digby Parton says.

"People across the country are just beginning to receive notices in the mail showing their premiums will double, or worse, next year," she writes, and because of this, Republicans are unable to shirk the blame they were unsuccessfully trying to pin on the Democrats," she writes,

"Republicans knew this was coming, but they either thought they could escape blame for it or they are so deluded they actually believe it’s what people want," she continues. "As the shutdown moves into its second week, the consequences of their actions are starting to manifest."

Digby Parton also says that slashing Medicare and raising Obamacare premiums are only the beginning of the Republican decimation of health care. And the proof, she says, is written in , Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought's Project 2025.

"But as nefariously creative as Project 2025 was, at least in the area of health care policy it is nothing more than the same warmed over calls for privatization and deregulation, both of which will make Americans’ lives worse," Digby Parton writes.

The Republican Party's lack of strategy, she notes, "makes it clear the party is as flummoxed on this issue as they’ve always been, and they know it’s a loser for them." She points to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) breaking with the party over health care.

"When you’ve lost Marge, well…" Digby Parton snickers.

Democrats, she says, "have historically been in the driver’s seat when it comes to health care." And "with the government’s shambolic response during the first year of the pandemic and the damage being done every day by the administration to our scientific research community, I suspect a lot of people are feeling insecure about their actual health care these days."

The Trump administration, she writes, has done nothing to assuage Americans' fears over their health care — which is "on the front lines against this massive war of our social safety net."

"If Democrats can find the fortitude to hold out for their demands, they will have taken the first step in reining in this lawless administration and given the American people something to hold onto in these dark days," she says.

In an article published by The Bulwark on October 9, Never Trump conservative Bill Kristol examines the "guardrails" in U.S. democracy and warns that they're in trouble.

"The American Founders were very much on the side of good fences," Kristol emphasizes. "Good fences are what we tend to call guardrails. And they make for good, free government…. But the guardrails can crumble, and the guardians of the guardrails can falter. And in 2025, they’re crumbling — and we're faltering. Party loyalty has overwhelmed congressional resolution to defend its prerogatives against the executive. Foolish and half-baked doctrines have undermined the willingness of the Supreme Court to check the executive."

Kristol continues, "State and local governments have a limited ability to stand up to their big brother in Washington. And it turns out that non-governmental institutions can be seduced and intimidated into going along with an overreaching executive rather than resisting it. So the most visible guardrails aren't doing the guarding."

The United States' federal government, Kristol notes, also contains "internal guardrails" within its executive branch.

"Once the executive branch becomes large and powerful," Kristol explains, "it turns out that free government and good government depend on guardrails within the executive that check the excessive centralization, politicization, and personalization of government power. These include laws and rules and regulations that guard against the politicization of the military, and protect the career civil service. They include norms and traditions of independence or quasi-independence for the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the intelligence community. They include provisions for inspectors general and protections for whistleblowers."

Kristol warns that while the United States' "guardrails" haven't disappeared altogether, they have been seriously undermined.

"All of this means that our guardrails are in bad shape," the Never Trumper laments. "Yes, those grand institutional walls of Congress and the Supreme Court are crumbling. But the less visible fences within the executive branch itself are also being taken down.

"As both James Madison and Robert Frost knew, this will not end well. Good fences make for — are needed for — a free government and a just society," he adds.

Bill Kristol's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

Hours before the official announcement of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — and smack in the middle of an alleged deal between Israel and Hamas — Norway is bracing itself for a potential President Donald Trump Nobel Peace Prize snub, the Guardian reports.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said they reached their peace prize decision on Thursday, and "observers believe it is highly unlikely that Trump will be awarded the prize, leading to fears in the country over how he will react to being overlooked so publicly," the Guardian says.

Oslo must be “prepared for anything," said Kirsti Bergstø, leader of Norway’s Socialist Left party.

“Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergstø told the Guardian.

Noting that the Norwegian government has nothing to do with the prizes, Bergstø said, “The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him.”

Trump has relentlessly campaigned for the prize, insisting last year, "If I were named [former President Barack] Obama, I would have had the Nobel prize given to me in 10 seconds."

In July, Trump reportedly called Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s finance minister and the former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general, to ask about the prize. And at the United Nations last month, Trump claimed he's ended seven “unendable wars”, telling world leaders: “Everyone says I should get the Nobel peace prize.”

Norway's Green Party leader Arild Hermstad, disagrees, saying, "It’s good that Trump supported the recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Any step toward ending the suffering in Gaza is welcome. But one late contribution does not erase years of enabling violence and division.”

Newspaper columnist and analyst Harald Stanghelle said that Trump retribution could come in many forms — tariffs, demands for higher NATO contributions, or even "declaring Norway an enemy."

Nobel snubbing Trump, Stanghelle says, could present "a challenging situation."

“It’s very very difficult to explain to Donald Trump or to many other countries in the world that it is a totally independent committee because they do not respect this kind of independence," he said.

But he still thinks Trump will be snubbed.

He said that if Trump were to win it, it would be the “biggest surprise in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Nina Græger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, agrees, saying, “Trump’s retreat from international institutions, and his wish to take over Greenland from The Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally, as well as infringements on basic democratic rights within his own country, do not align well with Nobel’s will.”

President Donald Trump continues to resist efforts to make the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Jeffrey Epstein files public, claiming that Democrats who are calling for the release of files are merely waging a partisan attack against him. But the controversy isn't going away.

During a Thursday, October 9 appearance on CNN's "The Situation Room," MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) — a major Trump ally who disagrees with his handling of the case — stressed that the files should have long since been released, and that the public has a right to know what's in them.

"I'm talking about the Epstein list," Greene told hosts Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown. "This has been the most, I don't understand why, I genuinely do not understand why, there's been any effort to hide this and prevent it from coming out. But because of the efforts for years now to hide it and prevent it from coming out, it certainly makes you feel afraid when you're one of the ones truly on the front lines pushing it to come out."

The MAGA congresswoman continued, "I also serve on the (House) Oversight Committee, and we're leading that investigation there. So I'm involved on both fronts: the Oversight Committee investigation, as well as my signatures on the discharge petition."

When asked if the House Oversight Committee is "doing enough," she responded, "Actually, to tell you the truth, the Oversight investigation has the power to go much further than (Rep.) Thomas Massie and (Rep.) Ro Khanna's resolution."

Greene continued, "The Oversight Committee has subpoenaed a lot more information than Thomas Massie's resolution specifically calls for. But here's my stance: I'll work on any — this involves women who were raped, women at 14 years old, 14 years old who were raped. And they say there's more people involved. I don't know how anyone in their good conscience can be against letting that information come out. So I want to help on any front that I can."

When U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi angrily lashed out at Democratic lawmakers during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, October 7 — even implying, without any evidence, that Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), might be part of the militant far-left Antifa movement — she made it clear that she remains fully devoted to President Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda.

Yet within DOJ, not everyone is obediently going out of their way to please Trump. Some DOJ prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia made it clear that they saw no merit in the federal indictment of former FBI Director James Coney — a case that is being prosecuted by Trump loyalist Lindsay Halligan because others in the Eastern District want nothing to do with it.

Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor who is now serving as counsel for the group Protect Democracy, discussed the conflicts within DOJ during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast" posted on October 9.

Parker told host Greg Sargent, "(Trump) threatens somebody on a nearly daily basis with some form of retribution for opposing him — whether it's a person, whether it's an organization, whether it's a powerful person, whether it is an undocumented immigrant. He does it all the time, to the point where people become used to hearing it. And I think what's really important to do is to take a step back and ground ourselves in the fact that this is the United States of America."

Parker continued, "We have a Constitution. We have a democratic form of government based on the rule of law. And central to all of that has always been that people have a right to criticize their government, have a right to criticize the policies of the president. And even government officials have a right to push back and resist certain policies within the legal system. And the manner for the president to respond to that is through the legal system — and not by extrajudicial threats to just summarily put people in jail."

When Sargent noted that Trump chose "handpicked stooge Lindsay Halligan" for the Eastern District of Virginia, she noted that "nothing about" the Comey indictment "has any appearance of anything other than corruption."

"I mean, all the reporting that we have gotten, assuming that it is true, is that career professionals and political appointees alike looked at the evidence in this case and concluded that it was not sufficient to meet DOJ standards for bringing an indictment," Parker told Sargent. "Trump then publicly forced out that U.S. attorney and then, whether it was meant to be public or not, in a statement on his social media account that was published to the entire country, he made it very clear to the attorney general, (Bondi), that he wanted Comey, (New York State Attorney General) Letitia James, and various other people prosecuted — that it needed to be done, that it needed to be done because he had been himself indicted by these people and that his credibility was being destroyed as a result of all of it."

Parker, however, said that resistance to Trump in the Eastern District of Virginia is a positive sign.

The former DOJ prosecutor told Sargent, "You know, I think we can take some heart. I frankly was someone who was very concerned about, you know, Mr. Trump's agenda with respect to the DOJ and his desire to use the levers of law enforcement to retaliate against people is so clear that I have been a little bit concerned that people willing to stay and work on cases that involve these individuals that Mr. Trump has targeted, you know, might result in some people being willing to carry his water."

Parker continued, "But I do think we can take heart that people are paying attention to the fact that they have to protect themselves. Like, they have to think about whether what they are doing is legal and whether or not it is ethical. And they have to be willing to sacrifice their own careers and possibly put their own liberty in future jeopardy if they’re going to go forward with cases for which they just can’t find the evidence to prove a charge."

Listen to the full New Republic podcast at this link or read the transcript here.

Trump loyalist Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) went on "Fox & Friends" Thursday where, according to Mediate, he "dumped on the Israel-Hamas deal being promoted by President Donald Trump."

The deal, which includes an agreement between both parties and includes the return of all Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 attack, was the product of "negotiating with terrorists," Van Orden told host Brian Kilmeade.

Kilmeade asked Van Orden about prominent Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti, jailed in 2002 for planning attacks that killed five civilians during the Second Palestinian Intifada. CNN said Barghouti's release "could be a red line for Israel."

"The Israelis are reluctant to let him out. Do you have a sense of of what we should do or what they should do there?" Kilmeade asked.

Van Orden replied, "I think what the Israeli government needs to do is make sure that the members of Hamas adhere to these provisions. It’s pretty simple. So the amount of people that the Israelis are going to have to release to get their hostages back is just remarkable. And this is their decision–"

Kilmeade interjected with the number of prisoners expected to be released at "1,975, including 250 on death row," to which Van Orden balked.

"That’s correct. And Brian, honestly, I disagree with this strategy, but this is the Israeli government’s decision to get their people back. I am not a fan of negotiating with terrorists. These people are terrorists. That’s who they are yesterday. That’s who they are going to be today and tomorrow. So the Israeli government collectively has made a decision to give their people backing. I can respect that, but I respectfully disagree with it," he said.

Just six months after having his annual physical at Walter Reed Medical Center, President Donald Trump is headed back to the hospital Friday for what the White House is calling a "routine yearly checkup," prompting critics to ask just how healthy he reall is Newsweek reports.

Trump, who went to Walter Reed for his physical on April 11, is the oldest sitting president in U.S. history at 79 years old. His upcoming visit there comes among public scrutiny of his health, ranging from questions about cognitive issues to bruising on his hands (the White House doctor has attributed the latter to deep vein thrombosis).

"But despite persistently questioning Biden’s physical and mental capacity, Trump has long kept basic details about his own health secret," Newsweek says.

Following his April physical, Trump's doctor said he “remains in excellent health, exhibiting robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and general physical function” and that his “active lifestyle continues to contribute significantly to his well-being.”

A recent poll by YouGov showed 49 percent of Americans think Trump is too old to be president, 63 percent believe his health and age affect his ability to perform his job. Forty-nine percent believe he is suffering a cognitive decline.

Over 8,000 people signed a petition in July calling for Trump to release his full medical records, something he has yet to do.

Following White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt's announcement that Trump would be visiting troops and stopping by Walter Reed "for his routine yearly check up," social media sleuths raised red flags.

Journalist Prem Thakker wrote on X: “White House says Donald Trump will visit Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday. While there, he will ‘stop by for his routine yearly check up.’ But…Trump had his annual check up already. 5 months ago. On April 11.”

Cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Reiner wrote on X: “The White House announced that the president will go to Walter Reed on Fri for his ‘yearly check up’. It’s a bit early, as he’s not due for his annual exam until April.”

Liberal influencer Brian Krassenstein wrote on X: "BREAKING: Donald Trump Visiting Walter Reed Medical Center Tomorrow for what the WH says is "an annual checkup". Problem... He had his annual checkup on April 11th, less than 6 months ago. What is going on?"

Time wrote on X: "Trump to get second ‘yearly’ health screening in months"

Geoff Brown wrote on X: "Cankles is heading back to Walter Reed. JD and the tech bros are waiting in the wings."

Policy advisor Adam Cochran had the most questions, asking, "Why is the White House lying and when will the press push on it? They claim Trump is having his “annual checkup” at Walter Reed Friday. The problem is that he already had that back in April which they released results for. The annual checkup is a long set of tests and so takes significant time - what will Trump actually be doing at that time at Walter Reed? -Increasing droop face -increasing memory problems -randomly missing from camera for up to a week at a time And now: -lying about hospital visits. How the HELL isn’t the press pool pushing on these obvious lies?!"

A Republican voter — a military spouse and mother of two children with medical needs whose husband suffers from PTSD — called into C-SPAN to blast House Speaker Mike Johnson for refusing to allow votes to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government.

Apologizing to the Speaker for her voice sounding “shaky,” the caller, Samantha from Virginia, said, “I have two medically fragile children. I have a husband who actively serves this country. He suffers from PTSD from his two tours in Afghanistan.”

She explained that if the military does not get paid on October 15, “my children do not get to get the medication that’s needed for them to live their life, because we live paycheck to paycheck.”

Samantha urged Speaker Johnson to pass legislation to get the military paid, which she said, President Trump supports.

“You have the power to do that. And as a Republican, I’m very disappointed in my party, and I’m very disappointed in you, because you do have the power to call the House back.”

She blasted him for his refusal to do so, saying it was “just for a show.”

“I am begging you to pass this legislation. My kids could die,” she said.

“We don’t have the credit because of the medical bills, that I have to pay regularly. You could stop this, and you could be the one that could say military’s getting paid. And I think that it is awful, and the audacity of someone who makes six figures a year, to do this to military families, it’s insane.”

Saying he was sorry to hear about Samantha’s “situation,” Speaker Johnson said he’s “been so angry this week,” because of “situations just like yours.”

“I have one of the biggest military districts and military families in America. I have a lot of airmen and soldiers who are deployed right now, and they have young families at home, and they have children in health situations like yours.”

“This is what keeps me up at night,” Johnson professed, before defending his party.

“The Republicans are the ones delivering for you. We had a vote to pay the troops. It was the continued resolution three weeks ago.”

Johnson has repeatedly insisted that the House has done its job to re-open the government by having passed that bill, while repeatedly also saying he refuses to allow any votes on the House floor that are not in keeping with that legislation — including any Senate bill that might come over.

“The Democrats are the ones that are preventing you from getting a check,” he said. Before blaming Chuck Schumer, claiming the Senate Democratic Leader “is enjoying this.”

“My heart goes out to you,” Johnson said.

There's a simple reason President Donald Trump and the Republicans are keeping the government shut down, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) says: To block the release of the files of the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, reports The Daily Beast.

"This House is shut down because they don’t want to have the release of the Epstein files,” Khanna, who filed the discharge petition to release the files along with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), told The Daily Beast podcast host Joanna Coles.

“Every time [Republicans] take these extraordinary measures, like shutting down the Congress — not even having votes out of fear of releasing these files — it adds to the skepticism and anger of the American public who think that there’s something rotten there," he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) refusal to swear in Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who pledged to cast the 218th vote needed on a discharge petition that would compel a floor vote on the release of the Epstein files, has also contributed to Khanna's theory.

Despite Johnson's claims that Grijalva's swearing-in delay is due to the House being in “pro forma” session amid the ongoing government shutdown, Democrats have pointed out that he swore in two Republican lawmakers during a pro forma session in April.

"Can you imagine this? I mean, people want to have a vote today, tomorrow to pay our troops during the shutdown. The speaker and Republican leadership were saying, no, we can’t have a vote,” Khanna, 49, said. “Why? Because Adelita Grijalva will be sworn in — 218th person — and they’re going to have a vote on the Epstein files.”

Khanna says that the “sense is that there are powerful people and powerful forces that don’t want these files out," adding that "The Epstein saga is exhibit one for a government that has been corrupted."

One of the four Republicans to sign the discharge petition, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), claims a White House aide told her that pushing for the further disclosure of Epstein files would be received as a “very hostile act.”

Khanna says the push to release the files is about “standing up for survivors and protecting children,” rather than a political ploy to attack Trump, The Daily Beast reports.

Trump, he says, “could have been seen as a hero” to survivors had he committed to releasing all of the files, which many MAGA figures had long advocated for.

Although President Donald Trump is known for consuming copious amounts of Diet Coke and food from McDonald's, one thing he doesn't consume is alcohol. Trump points to his late brother Fred Trump Jr.'s battle with alcoholism as a key factor in his disdain for alcohol.

Trump, who was raised Presbyterian in Queens, is not an evangelical. But far-right white evangelicals are among his most ardent supporters. And according to reporting by journalist J. Oliver Conroy in The Guardian, the influence of evangelical "Christian nationalists" may be driving a teetotaler trend in the MAGA movement.

Although many Catholics and Mainline Protestants believe that moderate alcohol consumption is OK, alcohol is considered a sin in quite a few fundamentalist evangelical churches.

"Perhaps this is another manifestation of the cult of personality around Donald Trump, a Diet Coke enthusiast," Conroy reports in an article published on October 9. "Maybe the rising tide of Christian nationalism has revived an old-fashioned Protestant temperance. Or perhaps red-blooded right-wingers, eager to 'Make America Healthy Again,' are eschewing beer, barbecues and bourbon to become the sort of smoothie-drinking health nuts they might once have mocked."

Conroy continues, "Prominent right-wing or right-adjacent abstainers include Trump himself, whose older brother died of alcoholism-related heart attack; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spoken about his own substance problems; Tucker Carlson, a recovering alcoholic; and the activist Charlie Kirk for health reasons. (Vice President) JD Vance drinks, but his predecessor Mike Pence, a devout born-again Christian, did not. Joe Rogan, the podcaster and gym-bro whisperer who endorsed Trump in 2024, quit drinking this year for health reasons."

According to "War Room" host Steve Bannon, many of his Gen-Z employees are teetotalers.

Bannon told The Guardian, "None of my core team (of colleagues) under 30 drinks."

According to Gen-Xer and former Fox News host Carlson, 2025's young Republicans are way more health-conscious than their counterparts of the past.

Carlson told The Guardian, "I'm just from a different world. When I was 25, the health question was 'filter or non-filter?' And I always went with non-filter."

Read J. Oliver Conroy's full article for The Guardian at this link.

On Wednesday, October 8 in a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, former FBI Director James Comey pleaded "not guilty" to two charges: lying to Congress and obstruction of Congress. A trial date was set for early January 2026.

Many legal analysts on MSNBC and CNN have been highly critical of the indictment, describing the charges against Comey as highly flawed at best. And MSNBC's Joe Scarborough — a Never Trump conservative, former GOP congressman and 1990 graduate of the University of Florida law school — views the Comey indictment as politically motivated and a glaring example of President Donald Trump's thirst for revenge against political opponents.

During the Thursday, October 9 broadcast of "Morning Joe," Scarborough warned that the Comey case won't be the last of Trump's politically motivated indictments.

Scarborough told fellow host Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin and the Rev. Al Sharpton, "I just fear we've entered a new era, and this weaponization of justice is going to be a wicked cycle. And some of the very Republicans right now doing it may be the targets three years from now…. What goes around, comes around. And again, these lawyers who are smart enough to say, 'I want no part of this,' they'll be in good shape."

Scarborough continued, "We can look back to Donald Trump's first term. We can look back to the people that went out and did his bidding just because he was telling them to do it, who no longer have law licenses. Again, what goes around comes around. And if you're like going into court filing bogus charges because you were told to by the president — like, obedience, rev, (is) not a defense when you're in front of the bar committee."

Sharpton agreed with Scarborough's analysis, stressing, "We can't normalize using the justice system or judicial process for vengeance…. The Democrats should not do that, nor the Republicans."

Rubin lamented that the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Eastern District of Virginia "is in chaos right now" thanks to the Comey indictment. Federal prosecutors, Rubin noted, are telling Lindsey Halligan — who is prosecuting the case — that the charges have no merit.

The MSNBC legal analyst told the panel, "Morale is sinking there. Why? Because all these people are watching this prosecution take place that their own colleagues wrote an extensive memo to Lindsey Halligan about, saying: We don't believe this is in the interest of justice. We don't believe we can win a conviction. Under the justice manual — which is a bible for federal prosecutors — if you don't believe you can get a conviction, you're not supposed to bring the case."

President Donald Trump, who sees himself as "a preacher for the white Christian church of MAGA" is taking his "messianic" far-right movement to the bank, writes Salon's Chauncey DeVega.

Although America has had religious presidents before — Presidents Biden, George W. Bush, and Clinton have all expressed some form of piety — Trump is different, as seen in a recent fundraising email sent to his supporters, DeVega says.

"Never before has a president sent an appeal steeped in Christian nationalism," DeVega writes, "promising that 'the fight to restore America’s foundation of FAITH, FAMILY, and FREEDOM is just beginning,' and requesting that, 'if you can afford it, chip in and show the Radical Left that we will NEVER surrender…we’ll RESTORE the values that made America GREAT.'"

"Trump closed his sermon-like email with a familiar evangelical pitch," DeVega says. "By giving money, supporters will be," in his own words, "sowing a SEED OF FAITH into the future of our nation."

The president's sales pitch continues, saying, "The Bible tells us faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains."

“But if you cannot give right now, I want you to know this: your PRAYERS, your FAITH, your SUPPORT are worth more than all the gold in the world. With God as our refuge, and with YOU by my side, we will SAVE AMERICA," it adds.

DeVega says that "to outsiders — and especially non-evangelicals — Trump’s religious appeals may sound like biblical jabberwocky, absurd and surreal. But for the MAGA faithful and much of White Christian America, such sermons and promises hold real power."

That power, DeVega writes, taps directly into the wallets of Trump's most loyal followers.

"Like Trump’s attempt to hawk MAGA Bibles for a profit, the appeal to ‘sowing a seed of faith’ also copies the tactics of the worst of white evangelical prosperity gospel hucksterism, where God is a kind of divine slot machine,” said Robert P. Jones, author and president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute.

DeVega agrees, saying that "as a master marketer and performer, Trump understands the psychology and needs of his followers and how to manipulate them for maximum effect. His sermonizing and role as MAGA preacher are extensions of that power."

With MAGA viewing Trump as a messiah of sorts, his sermons become a shell game, and, according to Jones, there is "no level below which the Trump political campaign will not stoop to manipulate his followers or raise money.”

“You invest your dollars — not with God directly of course but with an authority claiming to be a conduit to God — and if you have enough faith, that investment will pay out, sprouting into health, wealth, and happiness,” Jones said.

Katherine Stewart, author of the book “Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy,” calls Trump's email "another fleecing operation" describing his fundraising efforts as “a pretty good example of how Christian nationalism works, why it is bad for the country, and why it has little to do with Christianity as most Americans understand the faith.”

DeVega says Trump's base will "not abandon him," despite the fact that "Trumpism is a form of religious politics where faith, emotions, culture, storytelling, disinformation, misinformation and conspiracism dominate."

Matthew Taylor, author of “The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy,” compares Trump's religious appeal to "the tropes of old-school televangelism," making Trump the "chosen ... vessel for America's redemption."

“All of this baptizes Trump’s authoritarianism and tells his base that Trump has to crush his enemies because they are filled with demons and are trying to thwart God’s agenda,” Taylor says.

“This is how you get church-going, Bible-believing Christians — who claim to follow a sacrificial savior who taught them to love their enemies — to hate their LGBTQ neighbors, to be terrified of migrants and ‘the Left’ and to unquestioningly support a wannabe tyrant. These are the voters who will likely never abandon Trump, because their attachment to him is not merely political; it’s religious," Taylor says.

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth heavily emphasized MAGA culture-war themes during a gathering of military generals on September 30, with Hegseth vowing to restore a "warrior ethos" to the U.S. Armed Forces by ending "woke" policies. But critics of the MAGA movement are arguing that Hegseth is making the military weaker, not stronger, with a series of purges — from the ousting of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown to the recent firing of U.S. Navy Chief of Staff Jon Harrison.

In an article published on October 9, Politico reporters Paul McLeary and Daniel Lippman describe the tensions and uncertainty the Pentagon is facing eight and one-half months into Trump's second presidency.

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's latest firing of a top Navy official injected a fresh wave of fear into the Pentagon over the cost of speaking up and who might be next," McLeary and Lippman report. "The Pentagon chief, in less than a year, has purged a handful of the military's most senior officials, terminated some of his closest advisers and last week warned a gathering of generals and admirals that many of them could face a similar fate. The sudden dismissal last week of Jon Harrison, the Navy chief of staff, has only added to concerns about Hegseth’s objectives, according to five current and former defense officials."

McLeary and Lippman add, "Most of his moves have come without public explanation, and led to a deepening sense of uncertainty throughout the department — one that risks silencing pushback on critical decisions that affect how the U.S. military interacts with the world."

A senior defense official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Politico, "(There's a) culture of fear. There's a culture of intimidation and retaliation. It's better just to keep your head down and not necessarily try to do anything to the advantage of the organization, because it's very much run from the top down."

Hegseth's "unspoken motivations for the firings," according to McLeary and Lippman, "have put many tied to the Pentagon on edge."

A former defense official, also quoted anonymously, told Politico, "It adds to the climate of fear when randomly, people are just suddenly done."

Read the full Politico article at this link.