John Rachal's Blog

The adulation Donald Trump holds for known murderer and dictator Vladimir Putin, and the contempt he holds for Churchill-esque defender of his country President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, is now all but official. Trump has now called Zelensky a “dictator,” said that Ukraine started the war, and claims that Zelensky’s approval rating is 4%, whereas in fact it is 57% according to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology earlier this month, a number Trump can only fantasize about. Trump plans to meet with Putin—Europe and Ukraine itself are not invited—to surrender gritty little Ukraine to his Russian friend. Aside from Trump’s jaw-dropping lies–Zelensky is the dictator? Ukraine started the war? –has America fallen so low that it now abandons a democratic ally and exchanges smiles and handshakes with the former KGB officer who is the first to invade a European neighbor since Adolph Hitler?*

In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously appeased Hitler by surrendering a region of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland to Hitler for a promise of “peace for our time” at Munich. “Munich” is now considered the most shameful act of appeasement—one country debasing itself to another in the hope of some reward—in modern history. (Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor; you chose dishonor, and you will have war.”) The ignominy of Munich and the ignominy of Trump’s plans to dismember and surrender Ukraine to Putin are certainly not perfect analogues, but in one way Trump’s plan, or concept of a plan, is worse. Chamberlain chose dishonor, but he surely knew Hitler was no friend; Trump will choose dishonor by abandoning a friend in need to a despot he admires.

* I must do my homework a little better. After thinking about it more carefully, I remembered the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, looked it up, and was also reminded of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Mea culpa.

Thomas Paine saw “The American Crisis” of his day and warned of “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot [who] will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country.” Perhaps he glimpsed the Republican summer soldiers and sunshine patriots in the crisis of our day, who have shrunk indeed. They have confirmed Russell Vought, one of the architects of the Project 2025 blueprint for dismantling American democracy, for director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Vought, Trump’s first term budget director and overseer of the Republican platform committee during the recent campaign observed, “what we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them” (Shapiro and Vegh, 2024). Those pockets of independence include the FBI, the CIA, and Inspectors General, the last charged with investigating fraud, ethics violations, and conflicts of interest in the federal government. Trump has already fired seventeen IGs. In goose-step with Elon Musk, Vought will oversee the purging of any federal government employee determined by them to be disloyal—not to the country, not to the Constitution, but to the person of Donald Trump.

Trump claimed during the campaign to know nothing of Project 2025, a 900 page document largely based on Viktor Orban’s takeover of Hungary. He lied, of course. It is unclear whether Trump, Musk, and Vought’s vision for America is merely the pseudo-democracy in Hungary or, in their fondest dream, Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia. Meanwhile the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots of the GOP bow and scrape.

J. Shapiro and Z. Vegh. “The Orbanisation of America: Hungary’s Lessons for Donald Trump,” European Council on Foreign Relations, October 9, 2024. https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-orbanisation-of-america-hungarys-lessons-for-donald-trump/

We have entrusted the nation to a geriatric Nero who grins as the institutions he has set alight burn. I cannot think of a single area of the political, economic, military, national security, religious, educational, judicial, journalistic, or social landscape of American life that will be improved after another Trump term. I believe that every single major aspect of the America we have known, despite its many failures to achieve a more perfect union, will suffer under the presidency of a man who is a cruel, brutish demagogue focused on retribution against his perceived enemies, achieving near dictatorial power, basking in the adoration of his admirers, and enhancing his own personal wealth.

Healthcare? Medicare and Medicaid will be attacked and probably trimmed or even turned over to private entities, while RFK—totally unqualified—will undermine vaccines and medical research and spread his ignorance; meanwhile Trump has already withdrawn from the World Health Organization, calling it a “rip off.”

Education? Higher education is already being threatened as too “woke,” while k-12 will see further right-wing Christian-izing, taxpayer funds will increasingly flow to private schools, and curricula seen as “woke” (learning about slavery, e.g.) will be shunted to the sidelines and book-banning will increase. Research grants will be increasingly subject to Trump’s political correctness while others, including medical research, dry up altogether. Trump has also promised to eliminate an entire cabinet department: Education.

The economy? No. Income inequality will be greater; second-term Trump tax cuts will benefit primarily the wealthy and corporations. Tariffs will provoke counter-tariffs, destabilizing international trade (as they did with the catastrophic Smoot-Hawley bill in 1930). With his 25% tariffs on our friends Canada and Mexico and 10% on China, coupled with planned deportations of immigrants who pick our crops, build our homes, and clean our hotels, the average American family will see inflation rise and higher prices, potentially hitting $2000 per year. Another four trillion will be added to the national debt, approaching $40 trillion—this from the man who promised in 2016 to eliminate the debt after two terms.

Race, ethnicity, and gender issues? Obviously not. Trump’s recent anti-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) moves, even including blaming a recent collision of a military helicopter and commercial jet resulting in 67 deaths, on DEI, and his press secretary’s defense of that as “common sense” and her allusion to people of a different skin color in that defense make clear the White House view. As for gender-related matters, Trump, Vance, and Musk have all made their misogyny clear (Musk: “A Republic of high status males is best for decision-making”).

The military? With Hesgeth confirmed as Secretary of Defense, and even three Republican senators (Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell) voting against him requiring VP Vance to break a senate 50-50 tie, the military will be weakened while China outpaces the U.S. technologically. Besides Hesgeth’s alcoholic and sexual escapades, he has no managerial experience. His only qualification is being a Trump toady. Trump’s threats to NATO could be effective in pushing all NATO countries to pay at least 2% of their GDP for national defense, but he could endanger NATO itself, and be perfectly willing to abandon a threatened NATO member he doesn’t like. The country will become more authoritarian, and a complacent Republican congress will let it happen. Seeing Trump’s isolationism and his affection for other authoritarians, China will be sorely tempted to take Taiwan, knowing that Trump will do nothing about it. American arms will cease to flow to Ukraine, and Putin, not satisfied to gobble up the 20% of Ukraine he already has, will continue his war until Ukraine is devoured.

International relations? America’s standing in the democratic world will inevitably suffer, as American democracy itself, even the Constitution, will increasingly come under internal attack, as birthright citizenship in the 14^th amendment already has. American isolationism will further erode democracy worldwide and tempt China, Russia, and possibly others to further crack down internally and rattle their sabers externally. Trump’s world view that international agreements are a winners and losers game rather than a mutually beneficial outcome will alienate allies and make America less secure, as David Frum has pointed out. Meanwhile the government’s hard turn to authoritarianism will follow the Project 2025 playbook, with Victor Orban’s Hungary as a model.

Law enforcement? A less prosperous economy will increase street crime while white collar crime among the political class will be given free rein. Trump is already purging the FBI of agents, potentially thousands, who had anything to do with investigations of him as well as those who raided Mar-a-Lago in search of documents including top secret ones that he had stolen. The Trump rule will echo that attributed to Peruvian strongman Oscar Benavides: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.” If Kash Patel becomes FBI director, whatever is left of the FBI will become the American equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition.

Corruption at the highest levels? No doubt at all—the man who claimed to drain the swamp will bring corruption to levels not seen since the Gilded Age of the 19^th century, with his own corruption worse than any previous president. Trump has already illegally fired in his first week seventeen Inspectors General, who investigate government ethics violations, mismanagement, fraud, and corruption in his undisguised plan to eliminate any independent investigation into his business and actions. Elon Musk’s businesses will invite major conflict-of-interest situations, another area IGs investigate. Federal judges such as Aileen Cannon will lean away from the law and toward Trump and his agenda. The corruption will not just be of the rewarding-friends-and-punishing-enemies type. The presidency itself, as it did in Trump’s first term, will become Trump’s personal money-making and power-grabbing machine.

Religion? Fissures in Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state will widen; Christian nationalism will prosper and insert itself further into government, while divorcing itself completely from the central teachings of Jesus; attacks on Muslims and Jews will increase. A majority of evangelicals and Trump himself will continue to pretend to adhere to Christian values, despite calling Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde—who  implored him at the inaugural prayer service to show compassion and mercy to fearful marginalized groups including gays and immigrants—a “so-called bishop” and demanding her apology for her “inappropriate comments,” as if saying what Jesus would have said was inappropriate and offensive.

Political division? Much worse. We will continue to be, as we already are, a house divided. But finding middle ground will become even more difficult. Republicans cannot even agree whether Russia is friend or foe; likely Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who will be in charge of all American intelligence matters, has defended Putin and coddled former Syrian President and mass murderer Bashar al-Assad. Collegiality in congress, especially the House, will further evaporate, and more votes will strictly follow the party line. Friends and families will continue to divide along lines of those who support the Trumpian strongman vision and those who recognize it for the counterfeit of American values that it is. The nation will move closer and closer to oligarchy and plutocracy.

Truth itself? Trump’s daily lies will continue, and we will be numb to them; Fox News will continue to spew its far right propaganda and ignore news unflattering to Trump, even when it knows what it says is untrue as it did about the outcome of the 2020 election, and knowing that feeding rage feeds its coffers; mainstream, unbiased journalism will be under constant assault and will assume a permanent defensive stance and frequently self-censor regarding Trump; trust in institutions will flatline, while belief in absurdities will soar; demagoguery will flourish while truth-speaking Republican politicians will be vilified and disappear; Facebook has already eliminated fact checkers in submission to Trump and his far right supporters bemoaning how they are being censored, while free speech criticizing Trump will increasingly be professionally and even physically dangerous; right wing social media “influencers” will multiply and spread disinformation on a scale previously unseen; artificial intelligence and deepfakes will metastasize to the point that facts and truth will be buried under a mountain of lies, deception, and “conspiracies”; for those not quite consumed by all of this untruth—what Steve Bannon called “flood[ing] the zone with shit”—they will lose faith that anything is true or be overwhelmed in trying to combat it.

The three main components of a democratic society, as identified by Anne Applebaum, are fair elections, a free press, and a fair, politically unbiased judiciary. All will suffer erosion over the next four years. Of course Trump is not the apocalypse, and some good things will happen. Some waste may be avoided, NATO countries will probably increase their defense spending, some Republicans may balk at the worst of Trump’s offenses, Democrats may flip the House in 2026, and some small percentage of Trump voters may come to see Trump and Trumpism for the vengeful and anti-democratic threats they are. But the trend will be downward, perhaps precipitously. The grand scope of American life will be less free and more coarse, harsh, divisive, and expensive for a majority of Americans. We may, just barely, be fortunate enough to emerge in January 2029 still having some of the building blocks of a Republic. The question, as Franklin warned two and a half centuries ago, is whether over the coming four years we can keep it.

So Biden has given a full and total pardon to his son Hunter, both for his actual crimes and for any possible federal crimes (the President cannot pardon for state crimes) he may have committed. There is a firestorm about the pardon’s wrongfulness, even within the Democratic party. And the critics do have a huge point, namely that Trump can now pardon anyone he wants, including the January 6^th “warriors” and “hostages,” and all Republicans will have to do to justify those pardons and any others is to simply say, Well look what Biden did, after all those claims that he wouldn’t pardon his son. So much for the high ground.

Never mind that Trump has already promised those pardons on “Day One,” never mind that Hunter Biden’s sleazy behavior has been a target of congressional Republicans only as a means to smear his father, and especially never mind that Trump himself has threatened to go after the “Biden crime family” and has promised to punish his enemies with hammer and tong as “retribution” for all the attempts to hold him accountable for his actual crimes and for the crime of criticizing him. Presumably he is the only presidential candidate who has overtly made “retribution” against “the enemies within”–i.e., his critics–a central campaign promise. And, for the morally blind, never mind that there is a monumental difference between pardoning hundreds of still dangerous violent and treasonous insurrectionists attempting a coup and a guy who lied on a gun application and who pled guilty to significant tax evasion. There’s no moral equivalence here, irrelevant of what Republicans will claim. (See my “The Necessity of Making Moral Distinctions.”) One might add not only Trump’s own years of consequence-free tax evasion but also that he had previously pardoned his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father who was doing time for the same crime, a punishment that was not the result of a self-satisfying political vendetta.

So yes, once you drop the “never minds,” Joe has cost Democrats the moral high ground, at least on this issue, and his legacy is stained. I concede the point, not being quite willing to argue that the high ground is for chumps—though tempted to do so in this case, given what we know about Trump. If either Romney or McCain were the incoming president, I would even argue that Joe unequivocally did the wrong thing on both the personal and the practical-politics levels. But there is an element of sadism in Trump’s quest for revenge, and Joe Biden was certainly not oblivious to that.

Who, then, among Joe’s critics is willing to sacrifice his own son? You? Me? Sure, only to prison time,* not to death, but for once I’m not inclined to cast stones. For that ultimate sacrifice, if you’re a Jew, only Abraham was willing. If you’re a Christian, only Abraham and God. And God doesn’t exactly get off scot-free here either. It may have been noble of God to sacrifice his son, but it wasn’t at all noble for God, Trump-like, to put Abraham through the exquisite torture of almost having to kill his son, with the knife at Isaac’s neck, just so that God could bask in the self-mortifying submission he has demanded of, and received from, his poor servant.

*Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on a federal gun application, lying to a gun seller, and possessing a firearm as a drug user, with a possible sentence of twenty-five years, according to January 15, 2025 USA Today; he was also convicted of not paying millions in taxes over several years, which could have resulted in a maximum seventeen years. While no jail time at all was a possibility, had he received the maximum sentences to be served consecutively, he would have likely served the rest of his life in prison for non-violent crimes. It should be noted that Trump’s likely tax evasion over multiple years did not even result in a criminal charge, much less a trial and conviction.

(The addressee’s name has been changed and the text slightly revised)

Dear, dear Vicki, 

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful and compassionate words—the very qualities that I have always found to define you. And sure, there is a feeling of disappointment here. But it is not a mere political disappointment like it was for Bush’s Electoral College victory and re-election or as it would have been for a McCain or Romney victory—all three honorable men who did not in any way threaten the very pillars upon which the nation stands. I do not wish to re-litigate any of this with you, and of course my wish is that any reply from you will not do so either; but against all my better judgment, I reluctantly enter the arena with you one last time and will then be silent. 

It is true that I am more politically engaged than I was in my young adulthood or even fifteen years ago. And it is certainly true that a draft-dodger Commander-in-Chief having the temerity to call my father a “sucker” for choosing a career military life in the United States Marine Corps is hardly endearing to me. Nor is calling men of high integrity like John McCain and all service men and women who died in the line of duty “losers” any more so. President-elect Trump’s little caper at Arlington National Cemetery this year, just a month or two after I took my son, daughter, and grandson to visit my father’s grave there and see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, was beyond repugnant. 

But please do not infer that my fierce opposition to this man is merely personal. I will not offer a long bill of particulars, but since I am this far in, I will offer a brief few. First I would note that many of his first term’s inner circle including Milley, Mattis, Kelley (all four star generals), McMaster (three-star), Bolton, Barr, Tillerson, Esper, and even Pence have publicly warned of some variation of Trump’s unfitness for office. I know of no precedent for this almost unified opposition from a president’s former high-level staffers, and their warnings should be heeded. He has made clear that he would abandon a democratic ally to fend for itself in its fight for survival against a man he admires, Vladimir Putin. Notably during his debate with Harris, Trump would not answer the direct question from David Muir of whether he even wanted Ukraine to win its war with the same country (though then called the USSR) that the Republican Party once rightly regarded as our philosophical if not wartime enemy—what Ronald Reagan called an “evil empire.” In fact, he lamented the deaths of Russian soldiers, but did not mention the deaths of Ukrainian civilians. 

Character was once a foundational principle for the GOP, and for that reason among others many conservatives could not support the Republican candidate this year. Some, like Liz Cheney and former Republican presidential speechwriters David Frum and Peter Wehner, consider Trump an enemy of conservatism itself. McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt called Trump “the most dangerous American who has ever lived.” Even his vice-president-elect J. D. Vance, in the days before he sold his soul, called him “cultural heroin.” In response to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, The Southern Baptist Convention in 1998 issued a “Resolution on the Moral Character of Public Officials” in which it “urge[d] all Americans to embrace and act on the conviction that character does count in public office, and to elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.” Certainly Southern Baptists do not reflect the views of all conservatives, and today’s SBC apparently would not reflect, or at least not state publicly, such a view now. But I hope that even liberals could embrace the SBC’s 1998 sentiment. And if the Resolution were true then, it is even more so now given what we know about Trump. I borrow the quote from Wehner, who wrote a fascinating article which portrayed Trump as an enemy not of liberalism (though presumably that too) but of conservatism. For him, Trumpism is antithetical to conservatism, an abandonment of—indeed an attack on—its fundamental principles. I do wish Fox News could have aired conservatives like him who could make a case against Trump from the conservative side.

Finally I must state clearly that my vote was not just against Trump and Trumpism. It was an enthusiastic vote for a woman who I think is strong, ethical, patriotic, honest, competent, and absolutely supportive of traditional American values. For me not to affirm that would be to suggest that I think that she is merely the lesser of two evils. Not at all. In fact I believe she would have been a very good president, though I might have disagreed with her on this or that policy. But I absolutely know, in the approximate words of conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg speaking of Nikki Haley as compared to Trump, “at least I would still be able to recognize my country at the end of her term.” 

Again, it was not my better judgment to re-litigate any of this with you. A “Thank you, Vicki” should have been my reply. But the devil gets ahold of me every now and then and this is the result. The election is done, over, and you (and Bill) and I (and Val) will no doubt agree to disagree and move on. And again, your thoughtfulness in offering a word of consolation to the losing team is appreciated and wonderfully characteristic of Vicki Smith. 

John

The current dead heat—at least within the margin of error—between Trump and Harris three weeks before election day continues to amaze me: how half of America wants this man to be president—again—is simply shocking. I totally agree with a statement I have seen only once but deserves far wider attention. Roughly, it goes like this: “If you’ve ever wondered what beliefs you might have had or stance you might have taken as a German citizen during Hitler’s rise in Germany in the 30s, just ask yourself what beliefs about American politics you have now, and what political stance you have taken, and that will be your answer.” No doubt that comparison offends Trump supporters—well, at least all those except the neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and all their ilk. But I think the statement is true, a valid comparison. Trump is fascistic, a would-be dictator, an unambiguous threat to democracy even by his own words. But still half the country wants him back. For some he is the Messiah; for others (mainly Republican politicians) he is the popular wave they ride either because they adore him or because they fear his bullying and the possible end of their political careers; for still others he is the plutocrat who will ensure further tax breaks, especially for the top ten percent; and for the masses he is the deified strongman who will install one-party, one-religion rule, eliminate their grievances and fears, and destroy all the conjured enemies within, namely the entire Democratic party along with most of those who are not what those ‘30s-era Germans called “Aryan.”

These Faustian bargains, like all Faustian bargains, have a cost, usually promising some grand and rarefied gift in exchange for one’s morality, character, or soul. In exchange for a Trump victory, the articles of the contract required of the Trump voter include:

An embrace of obvious, continuous, and egregious lying as a new norm, as a poisoned way of life in American politics

An acceptance of a level of public vulgarity never previously seen by a presidential candidate

A willingness to turn the country over to a narcissistic would-be dictator willing to “suspend” the Constitution whenever it advantages him to do so

An acceptance of Vladimir Putin’s view of the world, including the killing of domestic opponents

Acquiescence to a foreign dictator invading a neighboring democratic country in Europe and claiming it as his own, coupled with disinterest in the resulting suffering and deaths of tens of thousands of innocent victims

Satisfaction with the U. S. military hunting American citizens who Trump considers enemies

Satisfaction with the U. S. military being used to shoot peacefully protesting American citizens “in the legs”

A willingness to have internment camps set up in the U. S. for American citizens Trump considers “enemies of the people” (a Stalin phrase)

Satisfaction with Trump’s desire to revoke the licenses of media outlets such as CBS and ABC for running stories offensive to him, directly opposing the first amendment

An embrace of a con man who, while running for president, is peddling golden shoes, a Trump $100,000 watch, and, shamelessly, Trump Bibles

An endorsement of Trump’s dangling the possibility of having members of the military he doesn’t like hanged for treason

A willingness to pay a family average of $2600 per year in the form of increased prices on foreign imports due to putting high tariffs on those foreign imports—imports which constitute the vast majority of, for example, non-food Wal-Mart products

A willingness to add another 7.5 trillion dollars or possibly even 15.5 trillion to the national debt through 2035—after having watched Trump increase the debt from 20 trillion to 28 trillion in his four-year term despite claiming in his first run for office that he would eliminate the debt over eight years

An embrace of a man so ignorant of basic science that he recommended injecting bleach to fight covid

Comfort with U. S. military personnel being referred to as “suckers” and “losers”—the latter term including those who died in the line of duty

An embrace of the use of violence to steal elections (as long as those doing the stealing are on your side)

Being comfortable with denigrating all immigrants, including legal immigrants, as criminals, typically calling them rapists and murderers, despite the fact that two of his wives have been immigrants

Acceptance of a president with no discernible religious or moral values calling himself and called by others as God’s “chosen one”

Acceptance of a president who exploits the religious values of his base for his own political ends

For Christians, a willingness to put Trump and his nihilism above everything we know about the values of Jesus

Being comfortable with having the first convicted criminal as president, a man determined by one jury to have committed sexual assault and another to have committed 34 felonies to hide a sexual encounter

Being comfortable with a president charged with having stolen various national security documents and with a Supreme Court effectively delaying his trial—and if he wins re-election, being satisfied with allowing the charges and two separate trials to disappear

Satisfaction with a president who has been called “dangerous” and “unfit for office” (and worse) by at least half a dozen of his own former high-ranking inner circle, at least two of whom have called him a fascist

Acceptance of a president who has used the Bible and Arlington National Cemetery as political props

Comfort with a president so crude, dishonest, ignorant, and conceited that if you worked with such a person at your place of employment you would despise him and possibly report him to security

Satisfaction with a mercurial president, one seemingly incapable of rising above his emotions and so lacking in rational thought and judgment having the nuclear codes at his fingertips

Being OK with the Oval Office’s only known draft dodger (by paying a doctor to say he had bone spurs) again being president and Commander-in-Chief

Satisfaction with a professed skeptic of the world’s greatest military alliance and defender of democracy, NATO, being Commander-in-Chief

Being comfortable with a president who could only name authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary as a European leader who liked or respected him

Being comfortable with a president who instigated an attempted violent coup against the United States after losing the last election

Agreement with a president claiming that anytime or anything he loses—election or trial—is by definition “rigged,” thus turning the nation into a non-democratic banana republic

Being comfortable with a president so profoundly thin-skinned that anyone who criticizes him is an “enemy of the people” or “the enemy within”

Being OK with a man who stiffed many of his workers and contractors before he became president—then challenging them to sue him—becoming the leader of the country again

Satisfaction with a candidate whose two primary goals as president are “retribution” and dismissing pending trials that could send him to prison

Being just fine with a president who considers himself entitled to grope women because he is famous

Being fiercely critical of Biden’s mental decline and calling him unfit, but not being disturbed at all by the gibberish and frequent incoherence of the man who would become the oldest in history to occupy the Oval Office

These are just some of the things, Trump supporters, you are OK with concerning the possible next occupant of the White House. Of course you will blithely claim there are some minor peccadilloes of Trump you are not comfortable with; but ultimately, when you fill in the Trump-Vance bubble on election day, apparently you really are.

It has become a political cliché to state that any particular election is critical to the history of the country, and it’s true, they all are. But this one really is unique. This is not merely a choice between two contending political persuasions, two visions of America’s future, two individuals of differing ideology but both within the elastic bounds of political competence. Trump, unlike any of his Republican predecessors running for president, is an amoral self-seeker of fundamentally despotic temperament, a crude misogynist, a liar exceeding anything we have seen in decades, a demagogue oblivious to and dismissive of inconvenient facts, a purveyor of conspiratorial innuendo, and a mercurial bully far too uninformed and narcissistic to wield the power of the presidency. I have compared him to Kim Jong-Un, ruler of North Korea, except that as president Trump would have a Constitution, a congress, and a free press to at least partially clip his wings. And so, to the “undecideds,” you cannot congratulate yourselves for your high principles by sitting this one out. If you have to hold your nose while voting for Kamala, fine, do it. And then—but only if you vote for her—if she does something you don’t like, complain at will.

(This was the final paragraph of “A Pox on Both Your Houses? No” posted on August 14, 2016, when Hillary Clinton was running against Trump. I have changed only two things: Bernie-or-busters is now to the undecideds, and Hillary is now Kamala.)

Last night was the first and probably only debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Harris virtually demolished Trump; her margin of victory among those polled on the question of who won was 26%. So what was the most alarming thing Trump said or refused to say in the debate? That Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating the pet dogs and cats of people in that community? That “everybody” wanted to see Roe v. Wade overturned? That he refused to answer whether or not he would sign a bill implementing a nationwide ban on abortion? That he refused to answer the question of whether he wanted to see Ukraine win its war with Russia? (Close, very close, but not quite the most alarming.) That he lamented the deaths of Russian soldiers but did not specifically lament innocent Ukrainian citizens’ deaths? (Again, very close). On those last two, and on his claim that if elected he would end the war before his inauguration, he all but stated what we have long known: He would abandon Ukraine. The man he admires, Vladimir Putin, would be given an American imprimatur in Putin’s invasion of a free country.

Trump’s entire campaign is premised on scaring us into voting for him. Crime is “down all over the world” but has reached astronomical levels here due to Harris and Biden. (Another lie of course; moderator David Muir corrected him by noting that the FBI reports violent crime is down.) If “she” gets elected, “this country doesn’t have a chance of success”; he even at one point said World War III will follow. The classic demagogue, Trump campaigns on fear—fear that hell itself will ensue if he is not elected. But he does say things that really are scary though he doesn’t mean them to be.

A case can be made that the most alarming thing he said was to praise Viktor Orban because the autocrat—some have said dictator—of Hungary has visited Trump twice this year and praised him. Trump is easily suckered by flattery, but in this case the flattery appears genuine. Orban does like Trump. When Harris said that European leaders laughed at him, Trump’s response was to say how much Orban thought of him, claiming that Orban said that “the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump,” and that China, North Korea, and Russia were afraid of Trump, which Orban admired.

So did Trump refer to any mutual respect, much less chumminess, he might have with leaders of actual western democracies? No, he did not. Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland did not come up. Certainly not Zelensky of Ukraine in eastern Europe. Nor did Japan or South Korea. Trump chose Viktor Orban as his soul mate, apparently the only European leader who does like Trump. Here is the man Trump is so proud to be aligned with according to journalist and Pulitzer-prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag, A History; Twilight of Democracy; and Autocracy, Inc.:

“First, Orbán’s control of the media raises obvious concerns, since it is difficult to hear the voice of opposition leaders in a country that systematically favors the ruling party. [One interviewee Applebaum cites estimates that 90% of Hungarian media is controlled by Orban’s regime.] Second, under Orbán, parliamentary districts were redrawn. The districts are superficially plausible, unlike the geometrically absurd dimensions of many districts in the US, but the upshot of the redrawing is clear: liberal-leaning districts in cities contain more people than conservative rural districts, which gives conservatives more voting power. The effect is obvious: in both 2014 and 2018, the Fidesz party received less than 50 percent of the vote, but retained a two-thirds majority in Parliament after both elections. Finally, Orbán and his party have reshaped the judiciary. They expanded the number of seats on the constitutional court, and also forced justices over 62 to retire. By 2015, 11 of the 15 justices on the court, which decides if laws are constitutional, were nominated by Orbán and confirmed by his Parliament. It is not so difficult to retain power when one enjoys broad control over the press, election procedures, and the judiciary.”  

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is designed with Viktor Orban’s model in Hungary very much in mind. Though Trump falsely claims to have no knowledge of Project 2025, the Orban tactics of creeping authoritarianism and permanent power (Orban has been prime minister for fourteen years) are precisely the tactics Trump hopes to implement in America if re-elected. The Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin Roberts has cited Orban’s policies as the model for “institutionalizing Trumpism.” This is why Trump so admires Orban. He has done in Hungary exactly what Trump hopes to do here.

There are a few fundamental laws that govern the life of Donald Trump. The first and most fundamental, the one from which all the others directly or indirectly flow, is that self-interest is the North Star of all his actions. National interest, public interest, even family interest are all secondary, even tertiary, to the one consuming goal of his life: the pursuit of what is good for him. Money is good, fame is good, ostentatious self-glorification is good, adulation from others is good, subservience and loyalty from others are good. Anyone who disagrees with him is both wrong and bad. Private sector work is good (despite six bankruptcies); public sector work is, if not quite bad, not really work (Kamala Harris has never had a job, he says). Military service is particularly bad—filled with “suckers” and “losers” as Jeffrey Goldberg first reported. Goldberg cites two other quotes acquired from anonymous sources close to Trump: With Marine General John Kelly at Kelly’s son’s grave in Arlington, a son who died in Afghanistan, Trump asked “his” general: “I don’t get it. What’s in it for them?” The fact that he doesn’t get it is precisely the problem—he simply does not have a psychological make-up capable of understanding national service; for him it’s a waste of your life, a strange acknowledgment that self-interest and your own safety might not be paramount. This same obliviousness was evident when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford gave a presentation and Trump asked an aide, “That guy’s smart. Why did he join the military?”

A second Trump law is to never, ever admit that you were wrong. Admitting error is weakness, and a projection of pretended strength is critical to the man who, at some subconscious, reptilian level, knows he is weak. In this same vein, he can never apologize, for the very reason that to do so is to admit error and thus weakness. When charged with something for which he should apologize, he must never retreat; he must double down on the original claim. The most egregious example is his January 6^th coup attempt. The election, he must continue to claim (and in total self-delusion may actually believe), was rigged, and the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol are now “patriots,” all deserving pardons. Offense is always better than defense; not only should you never apologize, you should accuse your enemy of the very thing you are guilty of. I-did-nothing-wrong-Trump of course never attempted a coup, but Biden and Harris actually committed one—Trump actually uses the word coup—when Biden stepped down and passed the baton to Harris.

For Trump, and for dictators and despots the world over, lying has no moral opprobrium at all but instead is a legitimate means of self-service. All lies—unless they issue from former opponents such as “lying Ted” Cruz or current ones like Kamala Harris—are, for Trump, natural statecraft, as natural as breathing, akin to a trick play in football. One is a fool not to lie: they are useful in that they hide unpleasant truths, glorify oneself by taking unjustified credit, smear enemies, or divert blame to others: thus he never had a sexual relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels or Playboy model Karen McDougal; he never sexually assaulted Jean Carroll; his inaugural crowd was the largest ever. The lies can be easily disproved or fact checked by a vigilant press such as The Washington Post’s documenting over 30,000 lies and untruths just in the four years of his administration, or by a knowledgeable insider: Trump claims he never called U.S. military service members suckers and losers, while a trusted general like John Kelly says he most certainly did. So you never retreat and just double down on the lie—No, I never said that—and move on. You never trouble yourself that a lie might have a moral dimension, even if you do possess a moral imagination. Whether the lie claims something good or denies something bad, it is always for self-advancement, and that is good. Hence lying itself is good. In Trump’s inverted moral universe–to the extent he has one at all–lying is a virtue.

When things go south, the Trump Way is always, always blame others. Externalize all blame since taking responsibility for your bad actions or statements is for suckers. He couldn’t, for example, go to the World War I graveyard in France because (he claimed) the Secret Service said it was unsafe to helicopter there because it was raining, when the real reasons were that he did not want to go because the cemetery was filled with “losers” for getting killed and he didn’t want to muss his hair in the rain. While the rule is to blame others for the bad, the corollary is that you claim credit—and the devotion it entails—for anything good, even if you in fact worked against that very good. Trump claims that he was and will be the best president for black people since Abraham Lincoln. From his demand for the death penalty for the eventually DNA-exonerated Central Park Five, to his dinner at Mar-a-Lago with avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes, to the recent “black jobs” comment, to his support for voter suppression laws, his racism is undisguised.

The fact that forty-seven percent of Americans will vote for this ignorant, dishonest, and dangerous narcissist—after all we have seen with our own lying eyes—continues to amaze me. He accuses Harris of being a flip-flopper. This from a man who once said Hillary would make a great president and whose views on abortion have shifted with the wind literally overnight. His own flip-flopping is never the result of a reflective and conscientious change of mind, or even the result of necessity in the process of political compromise. Rather it results from his attempt to ingratiate himself with whichever voting bloc he is addressing at the moment. Every statement, every act, no matter how feigned, is designed for personal and political applause.

In his pretense of religiosity he has used the Bible as a political prop, and in his pretense of respect for military service he used Arlington National Cemetery as a political prop. The photo of a grinning, thumbs-up Trump standing by the graves at Arlington of those he believes to be “losers” with some family members who support him is a desecration nothing short of nauseating. This political stunt had nothing to do with actual respect or reverence for thirteen deaths in an American war, nothing at all. It was all for perceived political gain, namely to blame Biden and by extension Harris for those deaths in the evacuation of Kabul, an evacuation Trump himself had set in motion as president. The fact that federal law prohibits the use of Arlington for political purposes is one more law to be ignored and broken for his personal gain.

If Trump is re-elected, it will be, to use one of Trump’s favorite accusations, a disgrace. If he is re-elected, shame, shame on us—our greatest national shame since slavery.