King Donald's Bible

TOURTOUR, France — I felt the mother of all rants coming on as a real-estate huckster in a disrespectful blue suit snored through a papal funeral — just after telling Volodymyr Zelensky he must cede to Satan the territory Ukrainians have bled for years to defend.

But faithful readers know my views on Donald Trump. Before getting into fresh facts, I imagined his own reckoning with Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, facing the Ten Commandments without lawyers and truth-twisters on the public payroll.

Peter: "Let's skip adultery. I haven't got all week. How about bearing false witness?" Trump: "No, never." Peter: "Hmm, the Washington Post racked up 30,573 lies in your first term. Our lifetime tally wore out a dozen angels before they gave up in disgust."

It went downhill fast with coveting, stealing and all those graven images of himself that Trump markets at outrageous prices to his fleeced flock — even a schlocky King Donald's Bible.

There were awkward moments about Christ's teachings, like moneychangers in the temple and camels more likely to pass through the eye of a needle than uncharitable billionaires getting into Heaven.

Then Peter got to the big one, Thou shalt not kill. Trump sputtered: "But I never shot anyone on Fifth Avenue. That was just a boast to underscore my godlike status among all those suckers who worship me. Wait, let me rephrase that."

And here it gets serious — and very real.

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In America, eligible citizens vote as they please for whatever reasons, but that is no longer a personal matter. Trump's policies on climate, environment, foreign aid, migration, public health and military brinkmanship put eight billion people at risk.

Decades of flawed statecraft and public apathy have pushed Earth to its limits. Now a transactional narcissist with animal cunning is giving it a final shove.

Trump's incalculable toll started with his self-serving denial of COVID-19. For many, the crisis ended when they got tired of thinking about it. Now eyes glaze over at a rehash, and vital lessons go unlearned.

My first editor, a smart wife, tells me not to keep beating readers over the head with things they already know. But Trump won because so many busy people blot out the recent past. My aim is to equip readers with details and context to energize the open-minded.

A president denied the threat for his own selfish purposes. He politicized the pandemic, muzzled the Centers for Disease Control and crippled the World Health Organization. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, perhaps a million, died painfully and needlessly.

U.S. law calls that depraved heart murder, indifference that results in death even if not explicitly intended. People died across the world because his science denial allowed the virus to morph into new strains. Aftereffects still impact on the global economy.

But Trump's repeated lies convince many to now blame Biden for what, at the time, he called "the China virus." His own policies created what inevitably followed: lingering inflation, supply shortages and price gouging. And he infuriated the Chinese.

True, he eventually funded Operation Warp Speed. International virologists developed vaccines. But by then his drink-bleach quackery and slandering of experts like Anthony Fauci had let the pandemic spin of control. Trillions of dollars were squandered.

And in Trump's new term, within days of his inauguration, Elon Musk's abrupt scuttling of USAID brought the first of countless callous fatalities abroad. Without medical care, famine relief and the rest, the death toll could rise into the millions.

He simply reinvents history. He claims the depression-level economy he left behind was the best in history. Soon after he took office, he praised himself for the thriving stock markets he inherited. Now they have tanked. He calls that a "Biden hangover."

He touts a foreign policy of peace through strength. Yet his debacles in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Latin America amounted to conflict through weakness.

In a nation of short memory, his skein of lies enabled a convicted faithless felon to win a few key states by thin margins, helped by questionable computer flimflam and voter suppression. New technology, enhanced by AI, further endanger future elections.

Republicans who cling to his coattails, fearful of his wrath, declare that he has an overwhelming historic mandate to remake America in his own image. He half-jokes that he is a god and, deadpan, claims that he now rules the world. Hardly.

Squabbles over tariffs and trade obscure the greater danger. Jubilant authoritarians who see Trump as a useful idiot aim to stamp out fair elections, free expression and other human rights wherever democracy falters. And they will cross undefended borders.

Trump is right about trade imbalances that need adjustment. But those forced to accept his thuggish tactics, even close allies, harbor resentments. Payback is a bitch.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a Liberal, won an upset election for his strong stand. "America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country," he said. "These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us.”

French President Emmanuel Macron tried hard to sway Trump with charm and reason. But at Pope Francis's funeral, video showed him greet Zelensky with effusive warmth but brush past the U.S. president without a word, ignoring his outstretched hand.

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In earlier days, a professional White House press corps would have held an unhinged president to account. It was never without its failings. Mark Hertsgaard's 1989 book, "On Bended Knee," detailed how reporters let Ronald Reagan evade accountability.

But Associated Press wires carried impartial coverage from just about everywhere. Three U.S. networks and Ted Turner's feisty CNN beamed firsthand reportage of vital stories when there was time to react. Reagan, faults aside, respected his oath of office.

Today, handpicked faux journalists grovel at Trump's feet. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt gushed this week about a new one, a rightwing blogger. AP reports accurately to billions across the globe but is barred for calling the Gulf of Mexico by its name.

Cable networks transmit briefings live, seldom correcting preposterous distortions. Seasoned analysts face off token panelists who represent only their narrow eclectic views. Viewers are left to decide what to believe according to their own biases.

Travel budgets are cut to pay outsized salaries for stand-out stars, who often read scripts about events in places they know nothing about. Yet others are excellent at their jobs. This reflects a fatal flaw in what so many people lump together as "the media."

News organizations must be judged by consistent credibility, not isolated scoops. They need editors free of executive meddling to prioritize what matters, limiting fluff that attracts readers and viewers but also at times buries the real news.

When profit muscles aside principle, they can mislead more than inform. This is a vast subject to be dissected in future reports. Just follow one complex thread from a pleasant lunch in this hilltop Provence village to a CNN newscast I watched the other day.

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Three transatlantic couples with varied expertise were horrified at how U.S. media babble, "social media" kibitzing and venomous podcast "influencers" befuddle so many insular, inattentive Americans. Broad generalities fall apart when nuance is factored in.

One man had built a worldwide insurance empire for large commercial fleets and the just-in-time supply chain on which the world depends. Cargo backed up in ports snarls manufacturing and slows delivery of consumer essentials, a huge financial loss.

Even U.S. fleets buy their ships from China, which builds them far faster at a third the cost. The gap will widen as immigrant workers are hounded out of an economy that is already near full employment with far higher wages.

He was an expert in global fisheries, a subject I knew well after a years-long project on acidifying, overfished oceans. We settled into an exchange on how Middle East folly has wreaked havoc off Yemen, the Horn of Africa and in the Suez Canal.

I covered Somalia in the 1980s when drought devastated its crops, but its waters were thick with fish, from delicate coral-feeders to occasional bluefin tuna in the northern Indian Ocean. Since then, foreign fleets with giant nets plundered them mercilessly.

Destitute fishermen armed fast boats to go after bigger catch: cargo freighters and oil tankers. After U.S. and European warships stifled their attacks, many joined Al Shabab or other terrorist-group offshoots spawned by the 2003 Iraq War.

George W. Bush's ill-defined "war on terror" created more zealots willing to die to punish America than it suppressed. But Trump. who claims he wiped out terrorism, has swelled their ranks immeasurably. And today many more have cause to hate America.

After that lunch, I watched Audie Cornish on CNN, hired from NPR, as good as reporters get. In a half hour (20 minutes, excluding CNN's boastful house ads), she spent only seconds on a vital story in between poll analysis and trivial home news.

A $60 million U.S. fighter jet fell off an aircraft carrier when it veered sharply to evade a Houthi strike from Yemen.

Given airtime and free from conservative executives' orders to make CNN "apolitical," my guess is that Cornish would have layered in the context, making clear why Trump's moronic top-level defense and "intelligence" choices are so dangerous to global stability.

U.S. security depends on deterring foes from provoking a response. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just reversed what he called a woke Biden plan to promote women in the military. It was passed during Trump's first term by a Republican-dominated Congress.

Hegseth's use of Signal and a U.S. envoy's tappable cell phone in the Kremlin was ions more serious than inconsequential leaks for which minor aides spend years in prison. Linking in The Atlantic editor defies belief. But consider the broader picture.

Houthis gained strength during relentless Saudi bombing, with logistic support from the Obama administration. When Trump rejected the Iran nuclear deal with America, Europe, China and Russia, mullahs supplied Houthis with heavy weaponry.

These are hardened fighters in combat flipflops who thrive in some of the wildest mountain terrain on the planet. Along with ancient carbines, they have high-tech drones and sophisticated missiles.

After the massive Israeli response to the Hamas raid in 2023, Houthis joined in what might have been all-out war across the region. Trump claims Biden did nothing. In fact, he approved hundreds of carefully targeted attacks on Houthi strategic strongholds.

Cargo and oil moved cautiously through troubled waters. But Hegseth and top officials high fived over a bombed building with little tactical effect. Women and children were killed, prompting the Houthis to hit back with increased intensity.

Biden had ordered air support as Israel pounded Iranian proxies in Lebanon. U.S. air strikes also helped Syrians unite against the al-Assad dynasty. Meantime, Biden's trips to the Middle East and shuttle diplomacy calmed tensions in neighboring countries.

But domestic politics stymied him. Many Americans backed his plan for Palestinian autonomy. But Republican support for Zionist hardliners limited his sway over Netanyahu. Palestine sympathizers faulted him for not doing enough to curb Israel.

Biden relied on Antony Blinken and other skilled peacemakers. As in his first term, Trump again left dealings to a real estate mogul to whom lifelong tenants are obstacles to be evicted. Not son-in-law Jared Kushner this time but Steve Witkoff, a New Yorker.

And now, like Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Netanyahu blows off Trump and rejects lasting accords. His collective punishment cuts off all food, fuel and medical supplies, with attacks that kill innocents, even foreign aid workers, in growing numbers.

The World Food Program has no rations to distribute. People are starving. Many die of easily treated diseases or wounds. For 60 days, the UNICEF chief spokesman said this week, nothing has entered Gaza except bombs.

And the unholy land is only one sliver of the wider world Trump is fast savaging.

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America's curse is a perverted system of two parties, one a catchall of conflicting beliefs and priorities and another that marches in lockstep, ignoring legislators' responsibility to put the people they represent above partisan interests.

Mitch McConnell as an aging lame fowl now champions Ukraine and speaks out against Trump. But imagine the world today had he not refused to even hear evidence in the House's impeachment over Trump's extortion of Zelensky in 2019.

High crimes do not get much higher. Trump's withering criticism of NATO while toadying up to Putin, set Russia on a path to invade Ukraine. Congress had approved missiles to fend off an attack. Trump held them up, demanding dirt on Biden.

Trump heaped praise on himself for his love-letter exchange with Kim Jong Un. Now North Korea joins outsiders that shore up Putin's forces in Ukraine as it builds nuclear missiles capable of reaching the American heartland.

Dictators do not suffer from sanctions even if their people do. With neither elections nor public opposition, they can endure economic pain. Trump is unlikely to see a third term, but JD Vance and his clown-car coterie intend to hold power, no matter what.

The early signs flash bright red. Trump threatened to blackball top law firms that prosecuted him, a flagrant abuse of power. Still, those that knuckled under agreed to a combined $950 million in pro-bono work on causes he determines.

ABC agreed to pay $15 million to the Trump presidential library for a defensible faux pas by George Stephanopoulos. The executive producer of CBS's "60 Minutes" resigned with a stinging rebuke of top-level meddling in news decisions.

Respect for Jeff Bezos briefly rose after he blocked his Washington Post from endorsing a presidential candidate. Reports said Amazon, which he owns, would list how much tariffs added to the cost of each price. After a call from Trump, Bezos said otherwise.

In the end, Donald Trump is not likely to worry about Saint Peter or anyone's poll numbers. He and his billionaire band are gambling on long-term leases, if not permanent title, to America's halls of power.

Three branches of government are supposed to check and balance one another. Now they don't. And Fourth Estate, a free press meant as a failsafe, is crumbling fast.

Public demonstrations are building as reality sets in. They are not yet enough. Given the Electoral College system and vulnerabilities of electronic voting, citizens need to step up now or be ready to explain to their kids why they didn't.