Democracy Dies in Daylight

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.

Beyond Trump's corruption and cruelty at home, he has headed the United States into foreign entanglements of unpredictable dangers, from terrorist attacks on "soft" American targets and disrupted oil supplies to widening world war.

Bombs alone cannot defeat Iran. Israel is hardly prepared to send tanks and troops across Iraq. Iran might decide its best option is a cue from North Korea: press on to develop nuclear weapons in secret. Meantime, it can destabilize the region.

The day after America attacked, Iran's foreign minister conferred with Vladimir Putin, who battles Ukraine with help from Iranian missiles. Houthis in Yemeni strongholds harass vital shipping. China is arming fast and signing trade deals.

The president who pledged "peace through strength" with no new conflicts threatens to annihilate Tehran, the capital of an ancient, sophisticated nation of 91 million, if its hardline leaders refuse his demand for unconditional surrender. And they will.

Trump learned nothing from his abject capitulation to ragtag Afghan zealots, the surge in global terrorism after America's pointless Iraq invasion — or the 1980s when Iranian human waves faced withering Iraqi artillery and airstrikes for eight years.

Hours after the strike, before even preliminary assessment of damage, Trump heaped praise on himself for a "spectacular military success." He claimed total obliteration of Iran's bomb-making capabilities.

Any tactical victory was lost to arrogant chest-pounding by a draft-dodger president and slobbering praise from his top aides. Not a word of empathy for millions who must decide whether to flee their homes to join a refugee tide America turns away.

The irony is tragic. To hear Trump tell it, he succeeded in crippling Iran after all previous presidents failed, and he took credit for U.S. air crews' flawless mission with the world's most advanced weapons.

Barack Obama introduced those bunker-buster bombs. Hillary Clinton spent two years on the 2015 accord with China, Russia and Europeans to end sanctions in exchange for inspections to ensure Iran did not enrich weapons-grade uranium.

Trump reneged on the accord and made Iran a bitter foe. Now his support for Israel's onslaught inflames Iran's mullahs against "Zionists." Jews everywhere are at risk, including those who want peace between Israel and a separate Palestinian state.

His mercurial flipflops weaken allies struggling to protect their own democracies and free-trade economies. He condones a precedent for despots to seize neighbors' land, strategic minerals and dwindling resources.

Russia triples down on Ukraine with China's blessing. North Korea fortifies its nuclear arsenal. Africans die in droves, cut off from U.S. aid. In Sudan, famine and vicious war tears apart a vast country that could feed the entire continent.

Buoyed by new support, Benjamin Netanyahu starves Gaza and pounds it to rubble while Israeli settlers push harder into the West Bank. Europeans join most of the world in condemning American complicity.

Meantime, at home in a dis-United States, Trump and his corrupted Republicans wage uncivil war against Democrats in disarray. Others who oppose what amounts to a hypocritical rightwing theocracy are "radical Left lunatics."

This dispatch was almost ready to go before the attack. It seemed as if Trump was simply wielding a big stick while speaking loudly to put pressure on negotiations. Israeli jets already controlled the airspace.

My guess is he could not resist playing tough guy after watching troops he commanded grind up Washington streets with heavy metal that has limited value in today's unconventional wars.

After Israelis knocked out Iran defenses, those seven B-2s came and went without a hitch. Pete Hegseth managed to keep a secret. With so much uncritical praise in American news media, Trump declared himself a hero.

That heightens the immediate danger back in America. With dumbed-down schools, surface-skimming media and Instagram-short memories, far too many voters ignore historical context.

Trump whips up patriotism by evoking World War II. Epidemiologists I trust concur that his own willfully self-focused mishandling of Covid-19 killed more than the 407,000 Americans who died at the hands of Hitler and Hirohito.

The aircraft carriers he imagines will rule the waves are easy targets to more than new weaponry. During 2020, as runaway Covid torpedoed America's economy, virus that someone carried aboard immobilized the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt.

Opinion polls dipped when Trump-unleashed masked Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) goons began to snatch people off the streets, shoving them into vehicles headed for Kafkaesque dark holes.

He sent in the Marines to quell a skirmish in downtown Los Angeles, ignoring the Posse Comitatus Act. When Gov. Gavin Newsom objected to his calling out the National Guard, Tom Homan, the chief ICE-hole, implied he might arrest him.

Examples now pile up daily, but only a few find their way into news reports.

Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, was arrested at a privately run detention center. He was with Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver, who faces what could be 17 years in prison for resisting federal authorities. In court, it is their word against hers.

The complaint against McIver was signed by Alina Habba, acting U.S. Attorney in the New Jersey district but also "counselor to the President" after four years as a ranking aide to Trump and MAGA, Inc, his SuperPAC.

In New York, an ICE team in masks roughly arrested Brad Lander, the city comptroller who is running for mayor. He was accompanying a man to immigration court. Video shows him calmly declaring his rights. They claim he assaulted them.

An ugly new attitude filters down to all levels of law enforcement.

A jowly sheriff in backwoods Florida sneered at "No Kings" protesters, telling them what to expect if they lobbed anything at his deputies: "We will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at. Because we will kill you graveyard dead."

The case of Alex Padilla, who Newsom named to replace Kamala Harris in the Senate, brought America's existential crisis into stark relief.

Trump may soon slip away into abnormal psychology textbooks. The looming long-term danger is JD Vance, ramrodded into office by Peter Thiel, a behind-the-scenes billionaire. Vance is joined at the hip to Don, Jr.

As the man who presides over the Senate, he is unlikely to mistake a sitting senator's first name as José rather than Alex by accident. More than a racist slur, that defines a public servant with utter contempt for human decency.

José Padilla, also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, is a U.S. citizen convicted of aiding terrorists in a Chicago plot to use a dirty bomb in 2002.

When Trump declared a bogus national emergency in Los Angeles, Senator Padilla flew back to his constituency. Waiting in the federal building to meet with a general, he heard Kristi Noem was briefing the press just down the hall.

He asked to attend. An FBI agent and a national guardsman accompanied him to a seat. He rose to ask a question after the Homeland Security czarina sworn to protect all Americans displayed her colors.

"Republicans are going to liberate the city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this mayor and this governor have placed on this country," Noem said. Before Padilla could speak, her security detail pounced on him.

On the Senate floor, fighting back tears, Padilla said he was shoved to his knees, pushed face down onto the floor in cuffs and led away to unexplained confinement. A Republican aide, fearful of public reaction, got him released.

If Trump's administration is ready to do that to a senator for simply asking a question, Padilla concluded, "imagine what they’ll do to any American who dares to speak up.”

Congress is "the people's" voice, a vital check on an overbearing executive branch. Among Republicans, only Sen. Lisa Murkowski spoke out forcefully. "It's horrible," she said. "It is shocking at every level. It's not the America I know."

House Speaker Mike Johnson faulted Padilla. "It was wildly inappropriate," he said. "You don't charge a sitting cabinet secretary...that behavior at a minimum rises to the level of a censure." Not according to the Constitution.

The White House dismissed Padilla's speech as a “temper tantrum." Spokesman Abigail Jackson added: “Whether or not Democrats like it, the American people support President Trump’s agenda to deport illegal aliens.”

An abrupt awakening across every state, with peaceable protests, political action and personal persuasion, needs to drive a stampede to the polls in 2026. It will be an uphill fight that depends on how many people recall the plain hard facts.

Trump's strongest asset is fear and loathing after a "border crisis" of his own making.

In his first term, cruel family separations, then the use of Covid as an excuse to seal borders, created a massive backup of migrants and asylum seekers. When Biden took a more humane approach, agents and magistrates were overwhelmed.

In mid-2023, Democrats supported the Border Patrol Enhancement Act, sponsored by Sen. James Lankford, a hardline Oklahoma Republican. It was a crucial bipartisan first step to bring order and safe, decent housing to process new arrivals.

Trump controlled his perverted party while out of office, and he ordered the bill killed. He wanted to campaign on a crisis he could blame on Biden, exploiting the suffering of families desperate for jobs in an economy that badly needed immigrant labor.

Some of his high crimes and treachery demand impeachment. Others are character-defining felonies. He enables despots who wage widening war. His climate denial poisons the future.

His blocked foreign aid already kills the world's poorest people at an incalculable rate. Immigration cruelty feeds seething hatreds that swell terrorist ranks. Arbitrary trade bullying made America a global pariah, with inevitable blowback at home.

And now, with his shameful strutting that dwarfs George W. Bush's infamous "mission accomplished," what comes next is anyone's guess. Mine is that America will snap awake in time to save itself. If not, all other options are unthinkable.