EXTRA: Going Beyond Words

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.

European leaders hurried across an ocean to support Ukraine's gutsy stand against Vladimir Putin's imperial designs, a threat to their own continent and parts beyond. They know only an enforced ceasefire, severe sanctions and more arms can stop him.

But they had seen those presidential jets side by side at a U.S. base. A stone-cold war criminal barred from Europe strode down a red carpet laid out by American troops. Trump fawned over him while Russians rained hellfire from Kyiv to Kramatorsk.

During a brief tête-a-tête ride in the Beast, a name that defines its habitual occupant as well as its armored heft, Trump sold out Ukraine.

He dropped his demand for a ceasefire and sanctions. Once again, he blames the war on Ukraine, which he says must cede land Russia has yet to occupy, forget joining NATO and accept an empty promise of "NATO-like" support if Putin presses on.

Europeans must pay usurious rates to buy U.S. arms for Ukraine, which is forced to hand over profits from its strategic resources as grossly inflated repayment for weapons the Biden administration supplied as grants, not loans.

Meanwhile, Putin pushes hard to occupy more ground. Terror airstrikes on civilian centers and infrastructure rise to unprecedented levels, aimed at demoralizing a crippled nation that already mourns scores of thousands.

Plainly, Trump doesn't care. He got what he wanted, a transparent lie from Putin that there would have been no invasion had he, not Biden, been president. Putin also denied meddling in U.S. elections, which the Mueller Report laid bare in scrupulous detail.

Global statesmen know the drill: heap flattery and gifts on Trump, avoid any public criticism in hopes of to swaying him during private talks. But that seldom works. He takes adulation and concession as his due. Then he wants more.

When a camera focused on French President Emmanuel Macron, stone-faced, I could imagine his urge to refuse Trump's demand that Europeans who have suffered world war at firsthand grovel at his feet to pay effusive homage.

But heads of state with integrity have nations to protect. Crossing a vindicative deviant risks retribution that cause their own populations to suffer.

I watched the Alaska capitulation from France on CNN, live on my computer and switched among six different all-news French and British channels on a TV screen.

CNN deployed its stars. In its studios, the usual panelists opined on complex subjects most knew nothing about. As Jake Tapper effused over a great historic event, I saw only parked planes, closed doors and evasive "media" encounters.

The network that calls itself the world's leading source of news ignored demonstrations in nearby Anchorage. European channels focused at length on large crowds, peaceful but noisy, furious that Volodymyr Zelensky was excluded from the summit.

At the end, Putin flattered the U.S. president he jerked around like a puppeteer. Trump praised his Russian buddy and, mostly, himself. Then both walked away, ignoring a mobbed hall of howling reporters. Dictators don't answer to anyone.

Reporting on the real world to a largely indifferent America has always been a challenge. Today, the stakes have never been higher. Yet an endless avalanche of words and images confuses more than it informs.

That is Trump's approach: flood the zone with shit. Outrages and atrocities pile up so quickly that each is soon forgotten, reduced to brief generality. He has undermined faith in all news organizations. Truth is now alternative.

Even much of the mainstream depicts that March assault on Zelensky by Trump and Vance as only a "shouting match." It was the most vile, undeserved public display I can recall at a head-of-state level anywhere, an indelible stain on the Oval Office.

This time, Brian Glenn, the bonehead right-wing stooge from "Real America's Voice" who had berated Zelensky for not wearing a suit, acted as if he were among the principles at the summit. His only real credential: Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend.

Another bogus journalist veered off topic, clearly coached by the president's media flacks. He asked about mail-in ballots. Trump feigned surprise, then floated a trial balloon. He said he would ban mailed voting by executive order.

That would enable Republicans to rig elections, but it caused little stir. Pundits and politicos said such a decree exceeded his power. Yet in a corrupt, dysfunctional America, he can do most anything if the people he is sworn to serve do not stop him.

Hardly shy about his despotic intentions, Trump mentioned he got the idea from a master: his pal, Putin.

In Washington, Trump's presented himself as the obvious Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He seems determined to force a one-sided Ukraine settlement to claim a crowning victory. If the Norwegian committee rebuffs him, he can claim he was robbed.

He boasted repeatedly that in six months he resolved six world-rattling wars, some more than three decades old. No president had been able to stop any of them, he said, but he swiftly ended each one in only a few days.

The French satirical weekly, Le Canard Enchainé, caught the irony I hear across Europe. Peace translates to paix. Trump qualifies only if the prize is for a different word pronounced the same: paie, as in pay up.

He said only Ukraine had eluded him so far, the challenge he thought would be easiest. He claimed Middle East peace among his successes but did not mention Gaza. He skipped 120 conflicts tallied by the International Red Cross and other intractable crises.

European leaders withheld comment. And the handpicked "reporters" allowed to ask questions clearly had no clue. I'd be stunned if any could locate on a map more than a couple of the trouble spots he cited.

Trump's list includes a Thai-Cambodian border skirmish. Malaysia ended it, but he brought the two prime ministers to Washington for a photo op. Then he posted on his untruthful Truth Social: "I am proud to be the President of PEACE!”

A close look at the other five, along with folly in his first term and his record so far in the second, suggests he would be a shoo-in for an Ignoble Prize for unmaking peace.

India and Pakistan needed no persuasion to avert a nuclear showdown in Kashmir. But Trump's self-serving cant toward smaller, unstable Pakistan created the most volatile danger point anywhere on the map.

Biden courted India, long the closer U.S. ally, despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's harsh rule. India, now more populous than China on its border, is vital to global security. Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff because it continues to buy Russian oil.

Yes, that conflicts with his sympathy for Putin. It's Trump. Pakistan lobbied hard from the outset, offering a base for his family's cryptocurrency interests. Its government joined the chorus to nominate him for a Nobel.

India's lively press excoriated the U.S. president. And Modi flew to Beijing to solidify ties to Xi Jinping.

Egypt and Ethiopia have quarreled over the Nile for decades, diplomatically not militarily. Egyptians need irrigation as drought worsens. Ethiopia reviles Trump's aid cuts and his incendiary remark that Egypt might blow up its huge new dam.

Trump left out Sudan in between the two. Government and rebel forces have waged vicious war since early 2023, causing the world's worst humanitarian calamity with no end in sight. U.N. officials estimate the death toll just among children at half a million.

Tension between Serbia and Kosovo dates back centuries. I covered NATO's bombing and troop deployments during the 1990s, and I've watched developments since. A few easily broken promises are unlikely to to change a very long enmity.

A photo of Azeri and Armenian leaders shaking hands with Trump's sharkish smile in the middle seems laughable but isn't. The ex-Soviet republics are seeking some common ground while Putin is busy elsewhere.

In 1991, I took a helicopter ride with Armenian troops who captured a corner of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan to rescue an enclave of Armenians. It was the first bit of the Soviet Union to break free. Then it was recaptured, and bad blood remains.

Armenia is no match against larger Azerbaijan, rich in oil and coveted by Trump's family real estate developers. Its prime minister, eager to win favor, joined others who champion his Nobel.

The biggest sham is Trump's pretense to have made peace between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the DRC, which is unfathomably rich in copper, diamonds and vital minerals that make an AI world run.

Ignorant about Africa, he referred in Washington to the Republic of Congo, the DRC's small neighbor across the river, an ex-French colony. His aides may know better, but rather than correct him, they punished the wrong country for harsh visa restrictions.

Qatar worked out a plan to end serial mayhem in the eastern Congo near Rwanda. I covered the first of it in the 1960s. In 1997, I returned as Rwandan-backed rebels knifed their way to Kinshasa to replace Mobutu Sese Seko's plunder with their own.

Neither government holds sway over countless disparate groups that murder, rape and pillage. Warlords who claim magical powers and tribal chieftains fight one another and among themselves. None of them ceased fire.

Mostly, the crisis is over M23 guerrillas. Paul Kagame, Rwanda's Tutsi dictator, arms them to fight remnants of Hutu militias that fled after months of genocide in 1994 killed 800,000 Tutsis.

The conflict is too complicated to synthesize, but Trump made it simple with the same explanation that defines most of his acts as president. America, he said, is acquiring "a lot of the mineral rights." And he finds ways to take his cut.

Three months into Trump's second term, Michael Hirsch outlined for Politico what is clear today: "Trump has already set in motion...potentially the fastest and most dangerous acceleration of nuclear arms proliferation around the world since the early Cold War."

He made Kim Jong-un a world-class player, who then tripled down on long-range nukes. He undercut NATO and tried to extort Zelensky for dirt on Biden. That set Russia on a course to invade Ukraine.

He put America squarely behind Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline coalition. His son-in-law's Abraham Accords signaled Hamas and West Bank militants that Palestinians would be relegated to a subservient status without a fight.

Trump's folly abroad is killing the first of what will be many millions by 2028. His callous disregard for refugees and migrants forced to flee their homes causes unimaginable human suffering. Global climate collapse is near its tipping point.

Added to irreparable damage that Trump and his rogue elephants have already done in America, what more need be said?

For us wire animals — old news agency correspondents — a sharp line should separate reporting and factual analysis from advocacy. Seasoned pros on the desk corrected our stupid mistakes. Principled bosses paid living wages and travel expenses.

The luckiest of us to be still around after covering decolonizing "winds of change" in Africa and learning firsthand the folly of Vietnam, are in our 80s. Most of us have enough squirreled away to sit back and lament over today's world from the sidelines.

But we can't, and neither can any sentient American with family and friends they care about. Young people need to take over from us old ones. But, whatever our fields of expertise, we need to pass along lessons learned the hard way.

Precious few months remain to build a groundswell of dissent. For now, this is not about political parties. Democrats are all over the place. Most Republicans are in lock step, clinging to Trump's juggernaut and heedless of its damage.

Watch this space for ideas about sources and specific action. Let me know your own thoughts. Mort Reports are free, meant to be shared widely. Contributions to the cause — for reporting expenses and the rest— will be put to good use.

America has far more than enough open-minded citizens to restore the once-United States we are losing fast. Yet up to now, a collective "we the people" has paid only scattershot attention to devils in the details. And what we don't know is killing us.