Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
PARIS — It's not complicated. Suppose you've laid out a family Thanksgiving table and come in from aperitifs to find raccoons headed for the turkey. Either you run them off fast or find some open diner and then return to a raided poop-fouled pantry.
All creatures follow their instincts, humans included, and we can't appeal to the better nature of those who have none. Racoons are bad enough. Rampaging elephants that trample everything in their path are a whole lot worse.
The world already suffers immeasurably from Donald Trump's high crimes at home and belligerence abroad. Only weeks remain for Americans to grasp the enormity in detail and to get everyone they can to the polls on Nov. 3.
This second Report on finding reliable news sources focuses on the wider world. Most American media reduce coverage to briefs, then "breaking news" when it is too late to react. Bear with me, please. This one is long but never has so much been at stake.
Democrats, principled Republicans and uncommitted independents can empower Congress along with crucial statehouses to hold faithless Republicans to account. If Trump's rogue Republicans keep a majority, expect the unthinkable.
Whatever the results, Trump won't go away. He wages war in plain sight on democracy and decency, aided by billionaires, ideologues, trigger-happy lawmen and an old maxim: there is none so blind as he who will not see.
He flips off the courts, ignoring constitutional safeguards by framers who did not imagine mass-deception tools in the hands of a deranged malignant narcissist. Too many legislators feed off the public trough, ignoring the citizens they represent.
Documented reporting exposes blatant war profiteering and secret deals that return billions to Trump's family and inner circles. Money buys residence permits, Mar-a-Lago access and, for $100,000 a month, advance notice of stocks about to soar.
Desperate, Trump promises to spend a trillion-plus dollars paying $5,000 to every adult "if and when" Republicans win the midterms. At one rally, he called those who opposed his partisans "dumb son of a bitches."
On Saturday, he harangued a crowd at an Ohio high school stadium. If they turn out to vote, he said, "We’re going to win, and we’re going to win big, and we’re gonna shove it up their ass.” That is America's face to the world.
After covering failed democracies since the 1960s, I have not seen one, large or small, collapse from sheer indifference. If midterms go wrong, the world risks a fate beyond what T.S. Elliot evoked in "The Hollow Men": dying with both a bang and a whimper.
ES ARCS, France — Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, a mad monarch with a parental problem, poked out his own eyes. Donald Trump, a power-obsessed wannabe, is trying to blind everyone else. And he is getting way too much help.
One despotic or despicable act follows another so rapidly that no one can possibly keep track. Far too many Americans simply tune out, which is his plan. But now he has made things dead clear.
A tax-funded "public service announcement" about to blanket airwaves shows him walking up a dark hallway. "This is the final battle," he says. “We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all."
By villains, he means Democrats, independents and all left-wing "communists" not in step with his own insanity. His over-armed zealots are ready to "fight like hell."
More than a dog whistle, that is a blaring siren no one with a heart, brain or family to protect can ignore. Yet on a CNN newscast last night, it was mentioned briefly after 35 minutes of small-bore stories and two four-minute commercial breaks.
Nothing is more urgent for Americans than sustained support for national reporters and foreign correspondents who are committed to hard facts. Without them, voters are not only blind but also deaf and dumb in a smoldering world.
Trump's drumbeat mantra of "FAKE NEWS!" undercuts faith in even trustworthy news organizations. Eligible voters turn to social media opinionators, clueless "influencers" and blatant propaganda. Reality is blurred beyond all recognition.
Democrats are likely to dominate the Nov. 3 midterms as Trump's Iran folly hits hard. But Republicans keep the White House, with billionaire donors bent on mangling truth and defying the courts.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat who had past high-level jobs at the CIA and the Defense Department, recently warned a Republican majority could rig the 2028 presidential elections or even create an excuse to suspend them.
Stopping him depends on the remnants of an American press corps that used to be the world's standard. News organizations are uniting to defend the First Amendment. But he is doubling down with help from faux journalists who echo his lunacies.
Averting what looms ahead — climate collapse, AI, authoritarian rule, widening conflicts, rising migrant tides, runaway pathogens — demands intrepid young reporters at home and abroad along with old ones to pass on vital skills learned the hard way.
A month remains before the Nov. 3 midterms, which may be the last free and fair elections in the United States. As always, the apathetic and ignorant won't bother to vote. Given what is at stake, no election in history has mattered more.
