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161 " Cohen told the Daily Beast reporter. “You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up … for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet … you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money. You’ll never know how to get out from underneath it.”56 These threats were reported in The Daily Beast along with details of the rape. But they did not make it "
― Sarah Kendzior , Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
162 " Trump loves to be caught and not be punished. Throughout the 2016 campaign, he recited the poem “The Snake,” a story of treachery that mocks the victims: “You knew damn well I was a snake before you let me in.” It is not enough for Trump to commit a crime. He "
163 " no one held Trump accountable—not in the 1980s, not now. That is to say, no one held Trump accountable in a meaningful way, the only way he and his criminal kind recognize: indictment and imprisonment. He remained a distant folk villain, a TV and tabloid monster, a threat outside my orbit. I could walk in and out of Trump Tower as a little girl and not feel afraid. It never crossed my mind that, thirty years later, this man would endanger my life. "
164 " Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past,” Orwell wrote in 1984. “Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.”59 We are living in the future Orwell warned about; I am living in the 1984 my "
165 " Roger Ailes created the network to ensure Watergate-style accountability would not happen again to a president he supported. "
166 " Foreigners ask me why American citizens are not out in the streets protesting around the clock, like people did in Hong Kong and South Korea. The answer is that protest is more of a financial risk than a political one, and financial risks form the backbone of modern American terror. We cannot afford to overcome. "
167 " The Art of the Deal. Cowritten with Tony Schwartz—a ghostwriter who later warned during the 2016 campaign that Trump was a sociopath who would likely bring forth the end of the world if elected—The Art of the Deal could have been subtitled How I Became a Russian Asset.36 "
168 " The election of the first anti-American president was caused neither by electoral whim nor by the good fortune of a charismatic madman. His rise was made possible by a coterie of criminals who do not want to be punished but delight in being caught. Flaunting their criminal impunity is part of the thrill. Their belief that they would never be held accountable is logical since they had never faced serious consequences despite spending decades committing illegal acts. In fact, they had reaped ample rewards. Now, finally, they had the greatest reward of all: the power to rewrite law itself. "
169 " When you listen to someone complaining, you are forced to acknowledge them as a human being instead of a category. You are forced to witness how social systems are borne out in personal experience, to recognize that hardship hurts, that solutions are not as simple as they seem. You are forced to trust, and you are forced to care. In complaint lies a path to compassion. --Originally "
― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior
170 " Pundits and politicians like to say that “No one saw it coming,” but what they mean is that they consider the people who saw it coming to be no one. "
171 " Foreigners ask me why American citizens are not out in the streets protesting around the clock, like people did in Hong Kong and South Korea. The answer is that protest is more of a financial risk than a political one, and financial risks form the backbone of modern American terror. "
172 " In 2002, Trump told New York magazine that he had known Epstein, a financier with a mysterious past, for fifteen years and thought he was a “terrific guy. "
173 " It is entertainment, and then it is autocracy, and then it is too late. "
174 " But because of Spy, my family knew all about Trump’s filthy lucre. “Sarah, what the fuck,” my mother texted me in 2016, “why is no one reporting all the shit we knew about him when you were little "
175 " worked as an adviser for Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and New York City crime families while insinuating himself into and manipulating national media.2 Before becoming Trump’s mentor, Cohn was best known for prompting lawyer Joseph Welch to utter the famous phrase “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” to McCarthy in response to Cohn’s ceaseless slander. "
176 " In the eyes of autocrats and plutocrats, the future is not a right but a commodity. "
177 " he was a chicken hawk after little boys, and yet he was the most virulently anti-gay guy you could imagine. And so, that was Donald’s mentor and constant sidekick, who represented all five of "
178 " The bedrock of autocracy is laid with the abdication of vigilance. "
179 " Free speech means not only the right to offend, but the right to defend. "
180 " In December 2016, Barrett, alarmed by Trump’s win, elaborated on Cohn’s influence: “Roy Cohn was the most satanic figure I ever met in my life. He was almost reptilian. I think he’s going to handle the swearing-in at the inauguration. They’re not going to bring a judge, they’re going to have Roy. And then Roy’s going to go back to the White House and fuck a 12-year-old. In the Oval Office.”10 "