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 —America's November midterm elections, the most crucial in human history, come down to a simple question: will enough voters step up to thwart a deranged self-obsessed president plotting a military coup de grace to solidify his creeping coup d'etat?
After six decades of covering democratic collapse around the world from apathy and ignorance, I am banging alarms as loudly as I can.
Only 73.6 percent of the electorate registered to vote for president in 2024, and 65.3 percent bothered to cast a ballot. In the 2022 midterms, turnout was 46 per cent. Look what emerged.
Donald Trump has defied Congress and the courts to demolish the White House East Wing, intent on a fool's gold Versailles topped with an airborne attack force, with an underground command center that smacks of Hitler's Führerbunker in Berlin.
My first draft of this was on folly abroad. Trump's senseless Iran war throws global order into turmoil. Slashed foreign aid is killing millions. A jihad on climate action to please fossil fuel executives who bankroll him is shortening the life span of billions.
But on Sunday America's commander-in-cheat said his 250-foot-high Arc de Trump will be a "desperately needed" fortress with drones, snipers and ammunition stores for national security purposes at the "strong request" of the U.S. military.
Since Independence, Washington has faced only two invasions: by Britain in 1812 and by Trump's own armed zealots in 2021. He pardoned convicted insurrectionists as patriots. Some now hold key positions in his administration.
Only Canada is close enough to launch a ground attack. Not likely. The sole purpose for such "defense" would be to quash citizen protests, which the Constitution allows, using the military within American borders, which the Posse Comitatus Act forbids.
On Tuesday, Trump told the U.N. General Assembly he faced a dilemma. He might continue negotiating with Iran on his terms, he said.
"Or," he added, "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness?"
Iran's population is 93.4 million, not counting visiting foreigners and diplomats. Surveys estimate up to 88 per cent oppose the hardline regime. The war has already taken about 2,000 civilian lives, nearly as many Americans as terrorists killed on 9/11.
It no longer matters whether Trump is a demented lunatic or acting like one to divert attention from his grand plan. He is going for broke to be a cruel, racist monarch who rules the world along with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. He is no match for either one.
PARIS — Back in America, that hapless adjective, incredible, sheds its beaten down cliché status to take back its original meaning: You can't freaking believe it. Spin the globe and point anywhere. Then just zero in on East Asia.
A Cloud-Cuckoo president embraces the wrong Korea, trashes crucial allies and chest-bumps China toward armed conflict. Yet he diverts America's lone aircraft carrier in Asian-Pacific waters toward a crippling war in Iran he spectacularly lost months ago.
It no longer matters whether Donald Trump is Hitler, Caligula or Bozo the Clown. He has exploited cupidity and stupidity to amass personal billions while reshaping America's 250-year-old democracy into his own despotic image.
And now he has lost his last marbles.
Robert Reich was probably America's best-ever labor secretary. Now 80, he is a gifted economist and an indefatigable educator. He just sounded an alarm that far too many Americans will ignore:
"Trump’s mind has gone. He is capable of doing almost anything, and evidently the people around him are unable to control him. (He) constitutes a clear and present danger to the United States. The 25th amendment must be invoked, or he needs to be impeached and convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors. Now."
Exactly. And both cabinet and Congress members who spurn their oaths of office must be held to account. The right to a fair vote is the only way a representative democracy can survive. Use it or lose it.
Late in 2004, Ukrainians stormed Kyiv streets and stayed three months in the bitter cold until they forced the declared winner of a corrupt election to back down. Look what they have suffered since February 2022, and they have no intention to back down.
Americans only need to stand up, inform themselves with observable hard facts from trusted sources and then herd persuadable people to the polls.
Nothing sways Trump's Kool-Aid cultists or rich people bent on increasing their fortunes while so many others suffer. They make up less than a third of the electorate. At least that many would walk barefoot over hot coals to thwart him.
Only a fraction of the remaining 40 percent would be enough to overwhelm Republican voter suppression, their gusher of money and their dirty tricks in an outmoded Electoral College. Then a new majority can begin depoliticizing the judiciary.
Congressional control by Democrats and Independents would prevent Republicans from declaring martial law before 2028 with some trumped up version of the Nazis' 1933 Reichstag fire.
Who should then run for president? I'd vote for Sarah Palin provided Tina Fey shows up to do the job. For, the focus is now on November midterms only weeks away.
