It’s almost as though Vlad is whispering into Donnie’s ear: “This is how it’s done.”

The major similarities are obvious: the obsession with war-mongering and expansionism, the greed and corruption, the paranoia and narcissism, the flagrant disregard for international laws and human rights.

But there are the smaller, creeping signs as well.

Yesterday I posted about the arrest in Russia of a freelance journalist, Aleksandr Andreyev, who has been charged with treason because of his anti-war views, making him — in Putin’s world — a “foreign agent” under onerous new laws passed since the start of the “special military operation” against Ukraine.

Bemoaning Russia’s return under Putin to a dictatorial state, I wrote:

“Since . . . independent news media have been designated as ‘foreign agents’ under newly-augmented Russian law, it has become a convenient excuse for the prosecution of journalists and broadcasters who speak out against the Putin regime, and especially against the war in Ukraine.

“If convicted of treason, Andreyev would face a maximum sentence of life in prison.”

And later that evening I read that Donald Trump — the man who claims to be making America great again — had ranted against “Fox News Sunday” TV host Shannon Bream for failing to push back on Democratic Representative Jake Auchincloss who had, in Trump’s words, spread “Democrat propaganda and lies” on her show. [Kimberley Richards, Huffpost, April 12, 2026.]

Next he took on a second female, Fox’s token Democrat Jessica Tarlov, a visiting host on Fox’s “The Five.” Writing on his ironically-named Truth Social site, he said:

“For Fox executives only, take Jessica Tarlov off the air. She is, from her voice, to her lies, and everything else about her, one of the worst ‘personalities’ on television, a real loser!” [Id.]

(Ed. Note: One might be forgiven for wondering whether Trump is more frightened of Tarlov’s self-confidence and refusal to give in to his attempts at intimidation, or her store of knowledge and her credentials, which include degrees from Bryn Mawr College and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Just a thought.)

Yes, he was telling an independent network to remove a panelist who had committed, in his mind, the unspeakable offense of reporting and commenting on accurate polling results showing that his numbers are in the dumpster.

Now, for those who may be thinking that this is small potatoes compared to the wars in Iran and Ukraine, the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, or the price of gas, you may have a point. But it is one more building block on a growing tower of crimes and Constitutional violations being committed daily by this administration. And eventually, a block will be added to the tower that will cause its inevitable fall.

What will that final block be? Who’s to say it won’t be the enactment of a U.S. law duplicative of Putin’s “foreign agent” act, mandating lengthy prison sentences for individuals convicted of speaking or writing against “national security interests”?

We already have an administration that unilaterally dictates the standards for everything from the definition of citizenship, to what constitutes good taste in art and architecture, to what God thinks about war.

Interfering with the First Amendment rights of citizens — and specifically of the press — is no small matter. Don’t let it get buried with the Epstein Files in the trash heap of America’s history.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/13/26