Part of the GOP brand, is now murder

The Trump administration's DOGE vs. USAID = killing fields

TAT readers,

Phew, it’s Monday already. I hope that all of you experienced a weekend filled with more joy and happiness than you’d wished for. These days, we all need laughter, togetherness and investment in our own resilience that we can get. We finished last week with a, How to guide," resisting the Republican coup. Today, we will add to that guide by discussing what must become a key component of the anti-fascist movements around the country. In other words, we must focus on a narrative strategy that includes, rebranding the MAGA Republican Party with the truth, not their Project 2025 talking points. Part of that rebranding will be addressed today, by discussing the murder of hundreds of thousands of people cast aside by thoughtless, brutal power-mongers called Republicans, via their DOGE cuts.

And before the Republicans start whining dishonestly that I am partisan, it is no secret that I have blasted the DNC often regarding their seemingly inability to campaign, connect with voters and most of all, defeat the evil conspiracy theory narratives of the GOP, by foreign and domestic influencers. I will continue to tell the truth to readers about the DNC until they slam the door on their feckless arrogance and do their job. But today, it’s the Republican turn and this is the most heinous thing that they have done… yet!

Part of building a narrative strategy to defeat the ongoing extreme-right-wing Republican narratives, depends on not only “branding” the GOP, but also to portray the narratives of honest Americans, deeply ashamed of this administration, and resisting. In other words, to “brand” the resistance. What most people don’t realize is that there are many narratives at play in a successful campaign. In my professional opinion, there is not only an absence of a narrative strategy for the resistance, but that the primary player within the opposition, the DNC, is virtually incapable of branding themselves or the opposition, and of creating a narrative strategy.

Let’s be frank, no matter what all of the big-shot pollsters and existing “experts” assisting the DNC say, not one has a clue about influence. As a longtime influence operator in support of national security, I would assert that it is preposterous to call campaigning anything but an influence operation. All influence revolves around Narrative Warfare, not just messaging. The DNC is unarmed on this battlefield, as is the US national security community. Our adversaries, the GOP with Russian influence operations input, are not great at NW but consistently “win” only because they are unopposed at NW.

The Finer Points of Narrative … - The Lincoln Project - Apple Podcasts

Narrative Warfare/ NW  

Narrative Warfare is the employment of influence campaigns, revolving around connecting to audience's identities, better than your opposition. In short, a war of influence for the control of the identities of all relevant audiences. It is our identities that control the meaning of all that we experience, whether true or not. 

Today's GOP has had their identity conditioned over 30 + years by right-wing media, especially FOX News. That identity is no longer patriotic by traditional standards, but has been converted into a reality that only allows them to believe in the fake-patriotism of their narrators, such as Trump, elected representatives and all right-wing media. This is precisely why that Republican voters are completely dethatched from our truth and reality. To them, whatever their narrators say, is reality. 

- Cobaugh - July, 2025

Now, with this admittedly oversimplified explanation of NW behind us, let’s talk about the brand of this version of the Republican Party. If we cannot brand them satisfactorily and narrate this in a sustained manner based on reality, we will never stop the juggernaut of GOP propaganda machines. Again, our leaderless opposition is feeling their way along, therefore diminishing any prospect of success. It is up to us. At the moment, we should have a pretty good idea what the MAGA GOP “brand” is, but this must be honed and repeated in narrative form until it takes hold.

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The GOP brand

In the past couple of years, I have been slowly introducing elements of the GOP brand, such as fake-patriotism, Christian Nationalism, Oligarchy, Political Violence and above all, anti-American values. This is what I have called, The four horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse: Autocracy, Oligarchy, Christian Nationalism and Political Violence. Today, we add another very disturbing element: murder or at least, manslaughter. Admittedly, I am no lawyer, but the US Code, is pretty clear about what these charges mean. Unlike our current SCOTUS, I adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s concept of our laws. In other words, I do not attempt to twist the law to mean whatever suits my purpose.

So now we’ll look at why that we must include some form of taking the lives of hundreds of thousands, to be millions by 2029 in the most expert projections… just from defunding USAID. This is an exceptionally painful addition for me as that I spent a year in Baghdad in 2004 working with USAID to improve the lives of the city’s six and half million residents. During this year, I managed $325 million in projects, much of it invested in USAID, and just prior to returning home, assisted in programming another half billion dollars worth. The entire effort during 2004 revolved around helping the people of Baghdad, while protecting them from insurgents and terrorists. Tragically, 2004 would also become the second most dangerous year of a twenty year war.

The point of this little story about Baghdad, is that USAID has long gone where others would not and in service to humanity. The USAID’s devotion to less than fortunate human beings, has kept people safe and alive, since their creation by President Kennedy, in 1961. During the Cold War, USAID was a key, Soft Power asset to keep the aggression of the Soviet Union, at bay. They were that important to US and global security, until along came Trump, Musk, the Republican Party and their voters.

Now, the thoughtless, cruel and uninformed cuts by DOGE, have already killed over 300,000 human beings with roughly a third of that number being children, just so an immoral party and their leadership could say that they cut the budget. This was and still is, a very overt lie. They didn’t cut waste, fraud and abuse, but just programs that kept people alive. They knew what would happen when those cuts went into effect, and made them anyway. To me, this affords some credibility to the charge of murder over manslaughter, which requires a level of premeditation.

To support my claims, I now refer you to a relatively new program devised by Brooke Nichols, an Associate Professor of Global Health at Boston University. Her program, is a new digital tracking initiative, that helps “calculate the expected impact of several other diseases that USAID targets.” and includes the program’s Impact-Counter, “a real-time digital tracking website that Nichols utilizes to quantify the real-world human impact, of the recent US policy changes on humanitarian aid.” Source: Tracking Anticipated Deaths from USAID Funding Cuts | SPH

The graphic below was current back on March 21st and the numbers now are far higher.

Tracking Anticipated Deaths from USAID Funding Cuts | SPH

The Boston University experts have also been working on the impact to Americans on Medicaid as well, and project that an American will die every 18 minutes due to the recently passed Big Ugly Bill. For the record, all of this data and the methodology of the scientists, is peer-reviewed, not the made up lies and conspiracy theories of the Republican Party.

Please see below, the current data about the USAID cuts, up until June 26th. For other data, please follow this link to the impact tracker by disease.

Today’s Republican party, terrified of Trump and his oligarchical backers, will not stand up for what is right, decent, legal or moral. Whether it is the thugs like Kristi Noem or Tom Holman or any other Republican in office, their legacy will be more like some of the world’s worst and most immoral leaders and parties. I’m talking about Hitler and his Nazi Party, Mao, and his Cultural Revolution and so on. The current version of the Republican party is not conservative and their descent into fascism, have already secured their heinous legacy but my biggest fear is just how much worse it can get. If you live in a red congressional district, your congressperson is responsible for the suffering. Your Republican voting family, friends and work colleagues, the same.

There are far more decent American voters, regardless of party, than there are Republican voters. It is up to all of us to ensure that they understand the deep peril of the fascists in office and get their true patriotic friends to vote, not for a party but for our actual constitutional values, not the made-up version spewed from the pulpits of the Republican Party. This is one of the reasons that I continue to write about our perilous political landscape. It is in my opinion, the most dangerous threat to our republic, since our Civil War.

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Summary

This essay covered a lot of territory and different subjects that are all related. It is still difficult sometimes to create a narrative, that as many as possible can understand. There are plenty of experts in each field, but at the moment, it is imperative that Americans see as much as the whole picture as possible. This is what in my world, we call a complex threat.

The sooner that we all get onto the same or similar page regarding this complex threat, create a narrative strategy to fight back with, including branding the GOP accurately. The sooner that we begin chalking up more wins against the Republican regime, the safer we are and in fact, the world. Today’s essay was mostly about adding the word murderer to the GOP MAGA brand. The data and the narratives support this as a fair statement and I will continue to use the word.

The last thing that I will say, also applies to branding. All too often, I only see a focus on Trump, but that doesn’t help win our battles to reclaim our republic. It is essential that we always add both “the Republican Party” and the “Republican voters,” to the brand. They are all complicit at this point and must be branded so. Sure, Trump is the evil-doer that they all worship, but it is also counterproductive to counter only him. Trump voting neighbors, family, friends or otherwise must feel the shame of destroying the republic and murdering hundreds of thousands due to their policies. If we all broaden our understanding of just who all of the adversaries are, it will in fact help in branding the whole party as evil. A brand easily justified!

Don’t forget, the movement that started this Trump/ MAGA nonsense began in the late 1970s, led by Newt Gingrich and his fellow right wing extremists ironically calling themselves, “the moral majority.” A quick antidote about the moral majority line, is that the best political bumper sticker I have ever seen read, “the moral majority is neither.” The bottom line is that even if we ditch Trump, the party is deeply set in their ways. The party and their voters, currently under the spell of narrative warfare, will not much change with Trump gone. Step one, defeat the party. Step two, stop putting up with conspiracy theories as truth and finally, educate all Americans with our true history and values. If we do all of this successfully, there will be little room for conspiracy theories from extremist groups, GOP or otherwise.

Onward,

Paul