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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WILD OLIVES, France —Donald Trump is leading America off a cliff, and Republicans follow in lockstep. Democrats dither in disarray. A re-United States needs a thundering groundswell that transcends partisan politics in 2026.

A two-party system works only if lawmakers respect the law and consider all their constituents' angst before deciding how to vote. Elections are now cage matches to the death.

As Democrats jostle among themselves to find coherence, the choice smacks of two TV series: Monty Python's Flying Circus or MobLand. But one party defends decency and the Constitution. The other, corrupted and cruel, is bent on authoritarian takeover.

In 2026, an R next to any name on any ballot — federal, state or local — should signal ruination. With voter suppression and electronic dirty dealings, 2028 elections may be rigged in advance, if there are any at all.

A cross-party movement can energize 90 million eligible voters who stayed home in 2024. About a quarter of them voted Democrat in 2020 yet overlooked how Joe Biden restored the economy after Covid and kept isolated conflicts from sparking global war.

Many young people unschooled in critical thinking and misled by online echo chambers ignore global threats to their future. Many old ones, set in their ways and fearful of essential change, are easy prey to xenophobic stupidities.

Trump's health is a mystery, but his delusional narcissism plainly deepens by the day. He may soon "age out." JD Vance lacks cult-leader charisma yet is soulless, amoral and smart. If voters cede power to his billionaire backers, he won't need it.

With a firm grip on Congress, hobbled courts and an outmoded Electoral College system, America could have a Dear Leader on a par with Kim Jung Un.

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FLAYOSC, France — It was Jake Tapper himself who torpedoed Joe Biden's presidency. That CNN "debate" in June, a stopwatch-timed soundbite duel, allowed Donald Trump to smirk on a shared screen while preparing facile lies to counter substantive answers.

Biden, ragged from a long trip and hard diplomacy, was over-prepared for a serious exchange on complex issues. After he blanked, it did not matter if it was a momentary lapse or something worse. More than a lame duck, he was a dead one.

Now Tapper shamelessly flogs an anonymously sourced cowritten book that sucks up airtime and print space while a dictator-in-waiting, truly off the rails, bullies Congress into crippling democracy while pushing an imperiled world farther toward the edge.

CNN calls itself "the most trusted name in news." If Biden was already unfit for the job in 2022, it might have said so. In fact, he was all over the world map, including on an 11-hour train ride to Kyiv under Russian guns, to build alliances. Trump played golf.

Andy Borowitz was closer to truth with satire: "Biden Covered Up Health Woes with Four Years of Booming Economy."

"Original Sin," evoking that Adam and Eve apple bite, is a less overblown title if you make a metaphorical leap: a crabapple tree in human form is bearing poisonous fruit, turning an erstwhile Garden of Eden into uninhabitable wasteland.

Headlines focus on one big reveal. Biden might need a wheelchair.

Franklin Roosevelt spent four terms on wheels while bringing America out of a Great Depression caused by a Republican president's overuse of tariffs, then taking the lead with allies to keep Hitler and Hirohito from conquering the world.

The book says Biden needs eight hours of sleep, as most healthy people do. Instead, we have a manic would-be monarch who taps out brain farts on his phone at 3 a.m. which devastate struggling American families and imperil millions of lives across the world.

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