FLAYOSC, France — Nothing I've seen or heard during 70 years of reporting terrifies me more than watching an ignorant, deranged King Midas spew grotesque horseshit in the White House, unchallenged by free-world leaders or a pathetic "press corps."

The issue is now Ukraine, but the backdrop takes in every aspect of life on a planet that is sloughing off humans sooner than most Americans let themselves realize. Meantime, the world is shifting toward authoritarian rule, blind greed and apathy.

Donald Trump is clearly losing it, and worse awaits in the wings. J.D. Vance, the plutocrats' puppet. Stephen Miller's fascist militia. Kristi Noem and her foul-mouthed terminator, Tom Homan. A trickle-up economy. And a parliament of whores.

American democracy and a sane world order depend on informed, honest reporters to hold presidents' feet to the fire. Yet Trump's jihad on truth, aided by profit-obsessed news executives and partisan propagandists, makes that impossible.

A delusional narcissist president enables billionaires and ideologues to plunder an ill-informed working class they privately mock while demanding tribute from the wider world.

His "briefings" are fact-free ramblings and rants. Clueless hard-right zealots replace actual reporters. Bloated with self-importance, they make "journalist" a dirty word. Karoline Leavitt, on the public payroll, is a shameless shill for Kool-Aid cultists.

What America now faces is hard to grasp for people raised on basic human values. But we have already seen far more than enough. Tune out media babble, find experienced world watchers you respect. Then trust your own eyes to draw conclusions.

Start with the Alaska capitulation summit. And then the aftermath in Washington, likely the most shocking display ever to disgrace the White House. America's stately executive mansion is now a brothel, tastelessly plated in fool's gold.

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DRAGUIGNAN, France — News from Israel echoes darkly here along the winding narrow rue de la Juiverie — Jewry Street — where rich medieval families built a stately synagogue, razed long ago, near what is now a fast-food joint called French Taco.

Jews in France thrived by providing financial services the New Testament scorned. They clustered in apartheid ghettos within cities, forced to wear yellow badges reading "Juif" and forbidden to venture out at night.

King Louis IX, France's devout Saint Louis, expelled Jews in 1236, partly to welch on loans so he could fund Crusades against Muslims in a land three major faiths called holy. Pogroms and persecution followed across Europe for the next eight centuries.

My father escaped Belarus as a kid. My mother's family fled Ukraine. Happily, they settled in America and not here. When I was born, Jews were being sent in boxcars to German death camps.

Today, 15 million Jews are all over the map, physically and spiritually. But their shared watchword is a prayer beginning, "Sh'ma Yisrael." Hear, O Israel. It refers to an ancient concept, not a small country run by a heartless politician desperate to avoid prison.

As a reporter named Rosenblum based in France since 1977, traveling often throughout the Islamic world, I have seen sharp shifts in antisemitism since 2017. That is when an ignorant, transactional U.S. president began wreaking havoc across the Middle East.

This is an analysis by a mostly non-practicing American Jew, a lifelong reporter committed to the elusive goal of "objectivity."

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AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France — Donald Trump defined himself in Texas early this month on the banks of the Guadalupe. Fixing a young reporter with a half-lidded mafioso glare, he said in his signature low, mean voice, "You are a very evil person."

"I don't know who you are," he added, "but..."

She is his boss, one of 174 million Americans eligible to vote. They hired him on a four-year contract subject to cancellation, and potentially prison, if he betrayed their trust by putting his own selfish interests ahead of theirs.

Trump, appallingly ignorant but not stupid, personifies the evil he projects onto others. And he does what despots have always done: shoot the messenger. In his last term, few people objected. Now he is back with ludicrous lawsuits and access bans.

Colonials nearly bled dry to escape a monarch. Heeding history back to Aristotle and Caesar, they crafted a failsafe constitution to thwart despots. It survived a Civil War, a Great Depression and Hitler's attempt to ethnically cleanse the world.

Today, it is a parchment relic in the National Archives of a nation that defends its Second Amendment — gun rights — more than its First. And without a free press that can tell citizens what a president does in their name, demagogy trumps democracy.

That reporter had asked Trump what he would say to stricken families not warned in time. An answer would have shed light on $4 trillion tax cuts and exposed Kristi Noem, the homeland security czarina preening next to him, as a cruel incompetent.

Stepping back, that defining moment is a dab on a vast ugly canvas. Much of the United States, a democratic superpower equipped to confront global crises while defending basic human values, is now deaf, blind and dumb.

Trump responded that way repeatedly during Covid-19. Pressed to explain his self-serving denial of a mysterious pathogen, he hurled vicious insults at journalists. Americans died in droves, and a runaway pandemic mutated across the world.

Now flush with contributions from fossil fuel and mining industries, he sneers at questions about looming climate collapse or devastated wilderness.

Out here in the real world, America's adversaries rejoice. Its oldest allies see a mercurial narcissistic bully them with crippling tariffs as he provokes needless war. At one point, I heard a gutsy reporter ask him why. He replied, "Because I can."

DRAGUIGNAN, France —For months now, a power-besotted buffoon who apes traits of Machiavelli, Mussolini and King Midas has been recasting the United States into his own image. Today, from the outside looking in, harsh reality is clear.

American democracy is dying in broad daylight. Millions turn out to protest Donald Trump's depredations. Yet at least a third of voters cheer him on. And a shocking number of those eligible to cast ballots neither notice nor care.

Now he has splashed kerosene onto smoldering embers in the Middle East, spiking geopolitical temperatures across a world on the boil. He had no accord from Congress as the law requires. Republicans were briefed; Democrats were not.

Among Western allies, only Britain was forewarned. As Trump said airily, it was America's show. The nation best equipped to defend human values and lead an imperiled planet toward a sustainable future is doing the opposite.

Responsible Americans turn out by the millions to wake the flock up. Yet during 60 years of reporting, I have never seen such a high percentage of free people willing to trade democracy for demagogy because of apathy or ignorance.

Trump's sudden strike on Iran during peace negotiations typifies his foreign non-policy. He jams a sharp stick into a hornet's nest, then retreats behind his massive ego, ready to blame someone else for the inevitable calamities that follow.

Reactions range from allies' seething contempt to adversaries' cork-popping glee.

My Belgian friend, Yves, who long ago gave up an executive job with Parker pens to make goat cheese in placid Provence, summed up judgment I hear from thoughtful people across what is left of the "free world." One recurrent word is monster.

Yves, once married to a woman from Ohio, knows America well. Like so many others elsewhere, he used to blame its faults and foibles on specific administrations, but he loved its spirit and sensibilities. Now he shudders at the mention of it.

"That man has affected the life of every human on Earth," he told me, with a sad shake of his head. "How can you live in a country that tolerates him?"

The answer is easy for anyone whose family found refuge in a different America and grew up knowing what it is supposed to be. This is no time to abandon it to the greedy and the gullible. Next year's elections could be the last chance to save it.

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