Thursday, March 08, 2018

Historical evidence points to Trump's father being a Nazi sympathizer; possible wartime agent By The Wayne Madsen Report




Historical evidence points to Trump's father being a Nazi sympathizer; possible wartime agent
                                                     By The Wayne Madsen Report

An historian, who specializes on Nazi influence in America during the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s, has contacted WMR with supporting evidence that Fred Trump, Donald Trump's father and New York real estate baron, was not only a Nazi sympathizer during the 1920s and 30s, during the time of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, but may have also acted as an intelligence agent for Nazi Germany in wartime America.

Heretofore, the evidence that Fred Trump was a Nazi sympathizer rested on a June 1, 1927 article in The New York Times. The article, "Warren Criticizes 'Class' Parades," reported that "1,000 Klansmen and 100 policemen staged a free-for-all battle in Jamaica." Jamaica is a
neighborhood in Queens where Fred Trump resided at the time. Donald Trump has consistently sought to obfuscate the fact of his father's arrest, claiming in media interviews that it never happened and that his father never lived at 175-24 Devonshire Road in Jamaica, as claimed in The New York Times story from 1927. Fred Trump, according to the Times story, was released by Magistrate Thomas F. Doyle. It is noteworthy that Fred Trump and the six other defendants arrested with him at the Klan march were represented by ex-Judge Edgar F. Hazleton, described in the article as a "prominent member of the Knights of Columbus," the Roman Catholic fraternal society. Fred Trump and his fellow Klansmen were actually protesting against the "Roman Catholic" New York Police Department when the melee broke out with the hundred New York cops.

However, an announcement of the marriage of Fred Trump to Mary A. MacLeod, Donald Trump's mother, that ran in the January 22, 1936 edition of the Long Island Daily Press clearly states that Fred Trump of "175-24 Devonshire road, Jamaica." Donald Trump has a habit of calling any news unfavorable to him
and his family "fake news" from the "lying media." In fact, "lying press" (Lügenpresse) was a pejorative used by the Nazis in Germany to describe "Jewish, Communist, and foreign-owned" media. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the term "lying press" was resurrected by Trump supporters, including members of alt-right neo-Nazi groups.
The fact that a prominent member of the Knights of Columbus would represent Fred Trump and the other Klansmen is interesting because the 1920s -- which saw a KKK heavily steeped in anti-Catholic and anti-papacy beliefs -- would quickly subside in the 1930s and give way to the German-American Bund as the leading far-right political grouping in the United States. The Bund supported Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Because Hitler was a Roman Catholic, the American far-right toned down anti-Catholic fervor and concentrated their venom on Jews and blacks.

Fred Trump's parents hailed from Bavaria and, although they were ostensibly Lutheran, their home village in predominantly Lutheran Kallstadt was surrounded by heavily Catholic parishes. On the eve of the outbreak of World War II, Fred Trump, already a successful real estate mogul in Queens and Brooklyn, claimed that he and his parents were Swedish.

Claiming false Swedish lineage was no guarantee of avoiding accusations of pro-Nazi sympathies. During the 1930s, one of the biggest apologists for Nazi Germany was Swedish-American, Charles Lindbergh. "Lucky Lindy" was even awarded the
Service Cross of the German Eagle by Nazi Air Minister Hermann Goering in Berlin in 1938. Lindbergh was a prominent member of the America First Committee, which urged the United States to avoid
a war with Germany and which had much in common with the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. Donald Trump has resurrected "America First" in his political rhetoric.

Trump apologists claim that Fred Trump was probably arrested not as a marching Klansman, but as an innocent bystander attending what was billed as a Memorial Day parade honoring military war dead. This contention is without merit as seen in the June 2, 1927 edition of the Long Island Daily Press. [Pictured, right] The article on the KKK march clearly states that "when the police attempted to break up the formation of klansmen and resulted in the arrests of seven of the berobed marchers." Not only was Fred Trump part of the Klan march, but he was wearing the signature white robe and regalia of the Ku Klux Klan when he was arrested.
Donald Trump may try to convince his followers that The New York Times is "fake news" -- a ridiculous charge considering the Times article is from 1927, long before Trump's "fake news" meme gained any currency -- but he cannot explain why the same report on his father's arrest appeared in three others newspapers: The Daily Star of Brooklyn of June 1, 1927; The Queens County Evening News of June  2, 1927;
and The Richmond Hill Record of June 3, 1927. [Pictured right from top to bottom]

All three papers, along with The New York Times and The Long Island Daily Press, the Daily Press providing details about Fred Trump's KKK march participation and Klan robes, are certainly not "fake news," but legitimate references that would be relied upon by any historian or biographer. Four of the pa
pers include Fred Trump's address as 175-24 Devonshire, which Donald Trump claimed was never his father's address.

The Richmond Hill Record provides interesting details about
Fred Trump's fellow "Jamaica Seven" Klansmen. They hailed from around the New York area: John Kipp of Peekskill, New York; John Marcy of Yonkers, New York; Fred Lyons of New Hyde Park, Long Island; Thomas Carroll of Jamaica; and Harry J. Free of Carl Place, Long Island; as well as Thomas Erwin of West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The KKK march in Queens was no local affair and drew participants from beyond New York City. In the 1930s, Nazi meetings in New York, including the February 20, 1939, 20,000-strong "Americanization" rally at Madison Square Garden, drew participants from around the country, but especially from Long Island, upstate New York, New Jersey, and the Philadelphia area.

There is also the interesting fact that
members of the Knight of Columbus defended the ostensibly anti-Catholic Klan, with John P. Conlon, the marshal for five years of the Jamaica Division of the parade, being quoted as saying, "Police action was atrocious and entirely unwarranted. Police performed atrocities which were unpardonable. Without their interference the parade would have been perfect. I am a Knights of Columbus man and I do not agree with the principles of the Klan, but I do believe they should have been granted permission to participate in any parade to honor dead war veterans."

The K
lan marchers in Queens [pict
ured, left] believed that the NYPD was a "Roman Catholic" police force, so it would appear unusual for a leading Catholic organization like the Knights of Columbus to defend the KKK. However, given the situation in Europe with the steady rise of Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy, the right-wing Catholic rapprochement with the KKK is perfectly logical as both groups decided to make common cause against Communism, "Jewish Bolshevism," and socialism. The year 1929 saw the enactment of the Lateran Treaty between the Vatican and Benito Mussolini's fascist government, while the Concordat (Reichskonkordat) between the Vatican and Nazi Germany was signed in 1933 between Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII (the so-called "Nazi Pope') and Nazi Vice Chancellor Franz Von Papen. These two agreements resulted in Nazi and fascist groups around the world, including the KKK, making common cause with far-right groups, regardless of their Catholic ties.

Perhaps no one was more instrumental in uniting the pro-Nazi sympathizers within the United States than Roman Catholic priest, Father Charles Coughlin. The expert on American Nazism and fascism in the interwar years, a renowned expert on Coughlin, believes that Fred Trump was a follower of not only Coughlin, but of Hitler. The expert's research indicates that Coughlin, much of whose material came from early and rather obscure Hitler speeches, influenced not only Fred Trump but also his son Donald. Research into Hitler's speeches and those of Coughlin and Donald Trump show definite similarities in rhetoric and policies. For example, Donald Trump has called the press the "enemy of the American people." Hitler stated, "A press which is in principle anti-national cannot be tolerated in Germany." The Coughlin expert told WMR that Hitler and Donald Trump have one definite thing in common: "
Hitler took advantage of those who thought they were taking advantage of him," adding that Trump does the very same.
Coughlin, whose weekly radio broadcasts from Michigan reached up to 30 million listeners in the United States, were laced with rhetoric in support of Hitler, Mussolini, and Japanese Emperor Hirohito. In 1938, Coughlin voiced support for the Nazi Kristallnacht in Germany, which saw attacks on
Jews, synagogues, and Jewish-owned businesses throughout the country. Coughlin also received financial support from Nazi Germany and, along with Lindbergh, was a leading figure in the America First movement.

In the years between Fred Trump's arrest as a robed Klansmen in Queens and his surfacing as a U.S. government contractor, little is known.  Trump was busy building barracks and other buildings for the U.S. Navy troop embarkation ports in Chester, Pennsylvania and Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia. As WMR stated in our August 16, 2017 report: "
Around 1937, Fred Trump's pals in the Klan joined with the Bund and the Nazi Silver Shirts and Black Legion to form the Storm Troops. This early "United the Right" movement received heavy corporate funding. By 1937, Fred Trump was making handsome profits as a notorious Queens slum lord. Did any of those profits end up in the coffers of either the Bund or Storm Troops?" In addition, we reported that a Bund member, German immigrant Waldemar Othmer, infiltrated the U.S. military as a civilian employee and dutifully sent via microfilm information to his Abwehr handlers in Berlin on the movements of British and American military vessels, convoys, and merchant ships out of Brooklyn and Norfolk. Sinking American ships was a high priority for German naval commander Admiral Karl Donitz, who dubbed the program Operation Paukenschlag or Drumbeat."

Considering Fred Trump's Klan background and the "unite the right" agreement between the Klan and the Bund-affiliated groups in the United States, did the father of the current president have loyalties to another master, perhaps Herr Hitler? As we previously reported, 't
here is every indication that Fred Trump held his far-right views during the war. He adamantly refused to rent to African Americans, even though many of them worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other nearby military bases and were in need of housing. When the draft was imposed in 1940, Fred Trump, who was 35, was subject to conscription but was never drafted. In 1942, Trump's age and dependent children would have put him in a lower priority category for the draft. Yet, Fred Trump did not serve in any draft-exempt occupational areas such as war production or public health and safety.
"

FBI files on Fred Trump, while containing information on his violation of the Fair Housing Act in the 1960s in refusing to sell or rent to blacks and his ties to organized crime, are void of any mention of his activities in the 1930s and 40s. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is known to have downplayed the collection of intelligence on America Firsters and Nazis until the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Defenders of Fred Trump point to his friendship in the 1980s with then-Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Benjamin Netanyahu and Fred Trump's donations to Jewish causes. However, Netanyahu, whose Likud Party has joined political forces with far-right and neo-Nazi groups in Europe and tolerated similar groups in the West Bank and Israel proper, is hardly an exemplar for establishing one's anti-Nazi bona fides. Donald Trump's embrace of pro-Israel Stephen Miller as his adviser and major speechwriter is no different than his father's embrace of Netanyahu. Miller serves as a conduit for President Trump to the alt-right neo-Nazis led by Miller's friend and Duke University classmate, Richard Spencer.

As president, Donald Trump has shown loyalty to foreign autocrats but little to the U.S. Constitution. Donald Trump has called neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia "fine people" and he has extolled the "virtues" of Confederate generals, placing himself in the mold of his Klan father. Rather than call for a military march in Washington, DC, Mr. Trump might want to fess up about his father's time as a Klansman and as a possible Nazi sympathizer and war-time agent. In the case of the President of the United States, it is not the sins of the father that are as important as the political indoctrination passed down from father to son.

Monday, March 05, 2018

Trump prefers dictatorships, including one for the U.S. By The Wayne Madsen Report




Trump prefers dictatorships, including one for the U.S.

By The Wayne Madsen Report


At a Republican Party fundraising dinner and reception held at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the weekend, Donald Trump remarked that he envies Chinese President Xi Jinping [pictured, right] for having recently abolished the two-term limit for his office, thus opening the way for Xi to remain as president of China for life, well past what had been a presidential term that was due to expire in 2023. At 64 years of age, Xi could remain as president well into the 2030s and, quite possibly, beyond. 

Ignoring the fact that China is a one-party state, Trump told the enthusiastic 250 Republican donors, who paid $27,700 per couple to attend the dinner, "He’s [Xi's] now president for life . . . president for life. And he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.” Trump is limited to two terms in office as stipulated by a Constitutional amendment enacted in 1951.

On December 18, 2000, after it became clear that George W. Bush was president-elect after a dubious election that was contested in the courts, the president-elect said, after a meeting with Congressional leaders, "
I told all four that there were going to be some times where we don't agree with each other. But that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." Bush's cackling after his comment showed he thought it was funny, but members of Congress on both sides of the aisle felt the comment was inappropriate and dangerous. Bush got the message, but that did not stop him from praising other dictators, even while claiming credit for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein, who he called a ruthless dictator. Bush's dictator transgressions now seem mild compared to those of Trump.
Trump called Xi "a great gentleman," adding, "he’s the most powerful president in a hundred years." Trump appeared to have disregarded the fact that Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong ruled China with an iron fist from 1949 to 1976.
Trump's quip about becoming president-for-life was not his first dalliance with projecting fascist tendencies. On February 28, 2016, Trump tweeted a quote made notorious by Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, "It is better to live one day as a lion than a 100 years as a sheep." In defending the tweet after criticism, Trump said, "Mussolini was Mussolini . . . It's a very good quote. It's a very interesting quote." The electoral gains of Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an open admirer of Mussolini and his Italian fascist movement, will undoubtedly encourage Trump's promotion of fascism and dictators.

According to a 1990 interview she gave to Vanity Fair, Trump's ex-wife, Ivana Trump, said Trump kept a copy of Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf on a book cabinet by his bed. She said Trump would read the book "from time-to-time." Asked by Vanity Fair writer Marie Brenner about the book, Trump replied, "Who told you that? . . . I don't remember . . . Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew."

In May 2017, Trump told Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte that he was "doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem." Since being elected in June 2016, Duterte has carried out more than 6000 extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers. When Duterte decides to eliminate a political opponent, he merely charges them with drug dealing. Last month, Trump said he wished he could execute drug dealers in the United States, following the example of Singapore. Since its independence in 1965, Singapore adopted a meritocratic form of government, which dissuades active political opposition in return for a generous social welfare system. Trump has been quoted by one White House aide, according to Axios, as saying, "You know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t have a drug problem. They just kill them."

During a visit to Manila on November 17, 2017, Trump yucked it up with Duterte after the Philippines autocrat accused American journalists of being "spies." In response to American reporters' questions about Trump bringing up human rights in his conversations with Duterte, Trump cut off the questioners with Duterte chiming in, "With you around, guys, you are the spies," repeating, "You are." In 2016, Duterte justified killing journalists in the Philippines, declaring, "Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch."

In September 2017, Trump praised Turkey's autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has imprisoned opposition politicians, journalists, businessmen, military officers, and academics, giving him "high marks." It is now widely believed in Turkey and abroad that Erdogan allowed the July 15, 2016 coup to commence, knowing full well that he would be able to put it down in its infancy and justify his subsequent assumption of near-dictatorial powers. Trump congratulated Erdogan for the passage in 2017 of a referendum that gave the Turkish president virtual unlimited powers.

Trump has also offered praise for Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who came to power after he ousted the democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi in a July 2013 coup. In April 2017, Trump said he was "very much behind President al-Sisi," adding, "he's done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation." Sisi has jailed the political opposition and members of the media and permits no dissent in Egypt.

In November 2017, Trump praised a royal coup within the House of Saud as an "anti-corruption" initiative. Trump tweeted, "
I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing . . . Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years!”  Trump failed to mention how King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has been taking part in the Saudi "milking" operation. MBS, with his dementia-stricken father's blessing, arrested hundreds of Saudi princes, government ministers, businessmen, and diplomats in a sweeping purge that saw some Saudi princes, reportedly with the aid of mercenaries supplied by Blackwater founder Erik Prince's Abu Dhabi-based Reflex Responses (R2), being hung upside down by their toes during torture sessions in Riyadh. Prince's sister, Betsy De Vos, serves as Trump's Secretary of Education. Trump's reference to "harsh treatment" by MBS failed to mention that at least two Saudi princes were assassinated by forces loyal to MBS.

Trump has also avidly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is on the verge of being re-elected Russia's president and who has held the post of president or prime minister since 2000. In September 2016, Trump said of Putin, "he's been a leader, far more than our president [Barack Obama] has been a leader."

In April 2017, Trump, during a meeting with his erstwhile Argentine real estate business partner, President Mauricio Macri, called the right-wing Argentine leader "a good friend," "a great, wonderful person," and "a great leader." Macri has misused the Argentine court system and presidential powers to imprison and put on trial leaders of the political opposition, as well as attacking the opposition media and labor unions. Trump has also praised Honduran strongman President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was re-elected in a November 26, 2017 election marred by electoral fraud and violation of civil liberties.
The 1930s saw the global rise of fascist dictatorships in Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Portugal, China, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, and other nations. The world could count on an American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to hold the ground for a small group of democratic nations that were, early on, outgunned by the fascist powers. And had FDR not been president in the 1930s, with fascism-appeasers such as Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, and Wendell Willkie serving as successive U.S. presidents, the entire world would have quickly come under the yoke and jackboot of fascist rule under the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. Today, a supporter and appeaser serves as President of the United States and there is no longer an American backstop to prevent the world from falling under fascist rule.