Former U.S. Congresswoman, the first woman ever elected to Congress from Virginia, Leslie Byrne, said on social media this week: ‘The Molester in Chief knows what is in the Epstein files and he is using his trusty old bag of deflection tricks to try to get us to look away.”

This is true, but one cannot overlook the bigger picture of what the Trump operation is up to, as warned by Marc Elias in his Aug. 12 Democracy Docket.

Elias wrote, “Federal agencies are being gutted by teenage boys who think the destruction is funny. The rule of law is mocked by administration officials who believe they stand above it. Government lawyers target political enemies and lie to judges. Corporate titans and their attorneys bow down, offering false praise and thinly veiled bribes.

“Our democracy is unraveling. Like a fragile tapestry, the threads holding our constitutional order together are being pulled out one by one. We thought the United States was stronger than this — that our commitment to individual liberties and free, fair elections would hold us together. We are barely one-quarter of the way through Donald Trump’s second term, and already the damage seems immense and irreversible. It is unimaginable that it could get worse — far worse — from here. But it will.”

On the news that there is now no age limit (18 and up) for someone to obtain employment as an ICE agent, Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigrant-rights group America’s Voice, said details about ICE’s plans should send a chill down every American’s spine.

“Take a teenager with more testosterone than wisdom, arm them with guns and masks, fast cars and—to top it off—dangle cash incentives for indiscriminate and speedy arrests,” she said. “Mix in an ICE culture of impunity and overreach. Now, what could go wrong?” So reports Bulwark’s Huddled Masses newsletter by Adrian Carraquillo.

As for the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska Friday, many are worried about its parallels to the meetings between Hitler and British Prime Minister Chamberlain on the eve of World War II.

In that case, the two leaders, along with the French Prime Minister and Italian dictator Mussolini, met at the end of September 1938  to ostensibly avert war, but Hitler persisted in his demand to annex the Sudetenland section of Czechoslovakia.

No Czech representatives were invited to participate. Sound familiar? In that case, it was agreed that Germany would get Sudetenland and Hitler pledged to make no further territorial demands in Europe. Chamberlain returned home with his infamous “peace in our time” declaration. We saw how that turned out. 

Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia by March 1939, and invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 launching the ugliest, most horrific war in world history, eclipsing even the Great War that had preceded it by only two decades.

Putin is resolved to come away with a large chunk of Ukrainian territory. The scenario is almost spookily like Munich 1938 as Trump is even more in appeasement mode than Chamberlain was. “Russian Leader is Likely to Outsmart a U.S. President Anxious for a Deal on Ukraine,” is the headline in Wednesday’s Financial Times.

Another headline in the same newspaper reads, “Ukraine Alarmed at Sudden Russian Advance,” with the subhead, “Zelensky (the Ukrainian prime minister NOT invited to the summit discussing carving up his nation) Says Breach is Effort to Define Narrative for Trump-Putin Summit.”

It is not that there is a metaphorical parallel between Hitler and Putin, Chamberlain and Trump. They are in fact the same, players acting on behalf of the same forces, just as if no time has transpired between 1938 and 2025. The backers of Hitler and Mussolini are generically and actually the same as the backers of Putin and Trump, and think of all the weaponry they will be able to sell if there’s another war.

“Arms Factories Expand at Triple Speed as Europe Switches on to War Footing” is a third big headline in the Financial Times this Wednesday.

Notwithstanding whatever forces in 1938 opposed what unfolded then, they were not able to prevent a conflagration that wiped out some 85 million lives of the most advanced civilizations in history by 1945.