Guest Post: Trump's shrunken stature on the world stage.

Trump looks inept to foreign leaders.

Trump alienated American allies, upset world trade, befriended an aggressor nation, pushed India toward China, and supported the insurrectionist former president of Brazil.

All that in eight months.

Jeffrey Laurenti sent me his take on President Trump's foreign policy moves and his reputation in foreign capitals. Laurenti is a college classmate, a political scientist, and a former senior analyst with a boutique foreign policy think tank. He travels internationally to places American tourists don't go. He has been active in Democratic politics. He served as a New Jersey elector in the 2012 election.

Laurenti in a Bassari village in Senegal

Guest Post by Jeffrey Laurenti

He should certainly revel in the pomp surrounding his state visit to the King of England this week, because when Donald Trump returns to New York next week for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, the evidence of his diminished status as the feckless leader of a friendless power will be impossible to conceal. 

 

The shock and awe of his muscular first months back in charge of the United States government have worn off. Trump’s blizzard of executive orders, declarations of imagined emergencies, kaleidoscopic tariffs, and bluster followed by retreat – “TACO” -- have become a running joke around the world.  

Laurenti contemplates the fall of empires outside the walls of Nineveh -- anciently Assyria, now Iraq.

In eight months, Trump’s most tangible achievements have been to alienate America’s long-time allies in Europe and Asia, impede the world’s brightest young minds from American higher education, and halt life-saving food and medical services across Africa. Events have made a mockery of his audacious claim he could end the grinding wars in Ukraine and Gaza in 24 hours.

 

Yes, the world has mocked him before. In Trump’s previous term his grandiose claims drew derisive laughter on the General Assembly floor and leaders of Western allies were caught on tape snickering at his shallowness. 

 

But the world was not then in crisis. Today, the cornerstone principle of international peace and security since 1945 is on the brink of collapse. Russia continues to wage a blatant war of aggression to seize its neighbor’s territory. Today, the postwar commitment never again to acquiesce in genocide is arguably under challenge in Gaza if not the West Bank.  

Trump himself airily decides the nation’s military is not intended just for “defense,” but for “war” – from whose “scourge” the U.N. was created to save succeeding generations. What’s in a name? It underscores that it’s the warmakers, men of iron, whom our 47^th chief executive most admires, and the peacemakers whom he disdains.  

 

Trump’s desperate courtship of Russian president Vladimir Putin spotlights the most dizzying reversal of America’s global position. For nearly three years, the United States had marshaled the overwhelming majority of the world community to condemn and oppose Putin’s war in Ukraine. In February 2025, Trump switched sides and voted at the U.N. with Russia against a European Union text deploring Russia’s “invasion.”   

 

Barack Obama had famously described Putin’s Russia as a “regional power,” infuriating the one-time KGB operative turned autocrat but accurately assessing the capabilities of a nuclear-armed state with a vast land mass but a declining population, limping economy, and shrinking life expectancy. Even its amply funded war machine has proved incapable of subduing Ukraine, thanks in part to the lifeline the West has provided. 

 

Mired in a war he started but cannot finish, Putin seemed on the ropes last December when his other international adventure, backing Syria’s loathed Assad regime to the hilt, suddenly imploded. Yet Trump has rescued the floundering Putin’s international standing, calling him frequently and even granting him a red-carpet welcome to Alaska, while perversely insisting that Ukrainians “started” the war and “don’t have the cards” to stay at the table.  

Sure, Trump has bleated that Putin’s ratcheting up attacks on civilian targets after each of their consultations is not nice. They embarrass him, who has been trying so hard to be helpful. At times the American president has gotten so upset that he has even threatened to add to the West’s array of economic sanctions on Russia – which just might prove a decisive blow to a faltering Russian war economy. But weeks and months pass; Russia sends a swarm of drones over Poland; he still quivers rather than pulls the sanctions trigger.

 

(It is not only Putin who can humiliate Trump and evince barely a whimper. Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu is for Trump another war-entangled dominatrix. The Israeli daily Haaretz holds out his attack on Qatar last week as just “the latest example of Netanyahu and his team making a mockery of the U.S. president – and not paying any price for it.")

 

In fairness, Trump did invoke the war in Ukraine in moving forcefully to use his economic weapon of choice, tariffs – not against Russia, however, but against India for buying Russian oil (on the cheap). India’s religious-right prime minister, Narendra Modi, had imagined Trump was a kindred spirit. No more.

 

Commentators have puzzled over Trump’s real reasons for punishing India rather than Russia, but no one can deny it’s been effective. It’s pushed Modi to fly to Beijing to embrace China’s Xi Jinping as well as Putin, and twenty years of painstaking U.S. diplomacy to coax India into an “Indo-Pacific” entente to insure against Chinese adventurism has gone up in smoke.

Laurenti outside Saigon's refurbished Caravelle Hotel that housed world media during the Vietnam war. 

Trump has likewise used his claimed power to unilaterally levy import taxes against another leading economy in the developing world, Brazil’s. Here he has been refreshingly frank in explaining his purposes, which are not economic but bracingly political. Trump wants to free a truly kindred spirit, former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, convicted of plotting a military coup to overturn his election defeat three years ago and inciting right-wing mobs to storm the federal capital. Trump justifiably sees Bolsonaro’s plot as just like his own desperate maneuvering to cling to power after the November 2020 election.

 

But the legitimately elected president, Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva – who himself actually did jail time for trumped-up charges that courts finally dismissed – has stood his ground. If Americans want to pay 50% more for coffee to indulge presidential paranoia about prosecutions, Brazil has a ready and reliable alternative trade partner in China.

 

Ironically, by U.N. tradition, Brazil’s president leads off the General Assembly opening debate. The next speaker is the president of the United States. This year we may anticipate dueling addresses that spotlight the world’s fault lines today. 

 

One wonders how the U.N. chief of protocol will keep the two apart in the holding room behind the Assembly rostrum. Unlike the Renaissance-era pageantry in which King Charles is protectively enveloping his guest’s fragile ego today, next week his shrunken stature will be painfully clear.

 

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Freedom of the press, 1791-2025

     "This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."
          Brendan Carr, Chair of the Federal Communication Commission

ABC caves. 

Timeline:

Sept. 10 -- Charlie Kirk assassinated.

Sept. 15 -- Jimmy Kimmel's monologue observed that Trump and the GOP were blaming Democrats for the murder. (Trump began doing so the day of the assassination, before any shooter was identified.) Kimmel's monologue was accurate and anodyne. Here is what he said:

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On September 12, the White House flew the flags at half staff which got some criticism but on a human level you can see how hard the president is taking this.

Kimmel then showed a clip of a reporter asking Trump how he was holding up after the death of his friend. Trump said:

I think very good. And by the way right there you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House which is something they’ve been trying to get as you know for about for 150 years and it’s gonna be a beauty.

Kimmel observed that it was a short moment of mourning.  

The bit was accurate and fairly edited. It was moderately humorous. In no way did it celebrate or minimize Charlie Kirk's death. The bit pointed out that Trump had "moved on" to a new interest, the ballroom addition to the White House.

Sept. 16 -- Republicans and Republican media assert that Kimmel had said was that the shooter was MAGA. He did not. Kimmel said, accurately, that the GOP was trying to assert that the shooter was not MAGA, which is exactly what it was doing. Fox News is an example of this mis-characterization of Kimmel.

Fox News website headline

Sept. 17, morning  -- FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is a guest on a podcast. After the headline statement at the top of this post he makes this threat on that podcast:

 There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say…’We’re not gonna run Kimmel anymore…because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.'

Sept. 17, afternoon -- ABC cancels the Jimmy Kimmel show. 

Sept. 17, later that afternoon -- Media reporter Brian Stelter asks the FCC chairman if he had any comment on the cancellation. Carr responded with this note of triumph.

We are at a national turning point.

My youth and young adulthood was an era of when media held government to account.  Nationally, they would call out LBJ's "credibility gap" and Nixon's abuse of power. Locally, in the early 1980s when I was a county commissioner, two newspapers and three TV stations had large newsrooms. They followed every important meeting. They interviewed and quoted my critics. 

It is a new era. Recognize Trump's effectiveness. He relentlessly criticized "fake news." He advanced "alternative facts" with bravado and shamelessness. He sells a version of the facts that is the opposite of what we observe ourselves in real time. He said he won an election that he lost. He said the rioters breaking through barricades and doors at the Capitol were peaceful patriots. He sold it. 

He is bringing the media to heel, threatening the underlying business of the media companies. He fabricates a lawsuit and uses the Federal Trade Commission threat of blocking a corporate merger to extract a payoff. Stephen Colbert called it a flat-out bribe. Trump intimidates the media into pulling editorials endorsing his opposition and into cancelling comedians who mock him. Big media is afraid of him, and for good reason. He is using the power of government to threaten their businesses, doing so openly and shamelessly. It is working for him. Every victory makes the next victory easier. We see that obeying in advance is the new normal.

Big media doesn't hold Trump to account. Trump holds big media to account. 

It is a different world, and a worse one.

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What Charlie Kirk said

See it yourself: 

Here is what Charlie Kirk really said about Black women, brain power, and affirmative action.

Vice President JD Vance said "the left" was lying about Charlie Kirk. On Monday, Vance filled in as host of Kirk's show. Vance said that an "esteemed" magazine, The Nation, ran an article that was an example of the "incredibly destructive movement of left wing extremism." Vance said the article put words in Kirk's mouth, and tried to make him look racist. Vance said that the article constituted hate speech of the kind that caused Kirk's assassination. 

There is no secret to what Kirk said and how he said it. Here is a clip -- two minutes, 18 seconds. I have a transcript below, but it is better to watch him because his inflections and manner are a part of the message. I think he is sneering and insulting, but you be the judge.

Click: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2Lwr1pB04

Here is a transcript:

Kirk: You know if we would've said three weeks ago we would've said that Joy Read and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action pics would've been called r-r-r-racist, but now they're coming out and they're saying it for us. They're coming out and they're saying 'I'm only here because of affirmative action.' We know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

[To producer]: Play cut 52 

[On screen, Sheila Jackson Lee, (D) Texas] 

I rise today as a clear recipient of affirmative action, particularly in higher education. I may have been admitted on affirmative action, both in terms of being a woman and a woman of color, but I can declare that I did not graduate on affirmative action. This is my personal story.

Kirk: I hear 'because of action affirmative.' She can't even say [laughs] We know, we know. It's very obvious to us that you were not smart enough to be able to make it on your own. [Voicing Rep. Lee]: 'I couldn't make it on my own so I needed to take opportunities from someone more deserving.' 

You know this is how arrogant Joy Read and Ketanji Brown Jackson and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee are. They are so narcissistic they think this is persuasive. They think, 'Of course that's why we need affirmative action because you have impressed us with your brilliance. Of course! Oh no! Imagine the world without Joy Reid. Imagine the world without Sheila Jackson Lee, or Michelle Obama, or Ketanji Brown Jackson.' 

They think this is persuasive. They think as they kind of reveal that I'm only here because of anti-White, anti-Asian forced discrimination policies that turned me into a bitter resentful activist that hates White people, honestly, through our policies.

Readers can make up their own mind about whether Kirk is a racist arrogant jerk, or a straight-talking truth-teller. 

Kirk was a mouthpiece for Trump. Kirk said what President Trump says in multiple contexts, that Blacks -- especially Black women -- are "low IQ," are undeserving of the positions they may hold, and that they unfairly displaced more qualified White men. 

I expect that many of my readers will be disgusted by Kirk. I dislike his sneering. But I sense that Kirk's point of view is a net-positive for Trump. He is expressing the discomfort of many Americans with the new look of America, which they think Democrats forced on the country with a loose immigration policy and a bend-over-backwards effort to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. He has peremptorily fired highly placed Black women in the civilian and military service without cause.

As I wrote yesterday, men -- especially White men -- felt disrespected and displaced by the tides of demography and social justice, encouraged as part of Democratic policy. Trump is returning America to an earlier version of itself, where men -- especially White men -- were by default and social norm the people in charge. Women, particularly Black women, would be back in their place. 

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What do Trump-supporters want? Validation.

     "Democrats are fueled by hate, anger, intolerance, and violence. Thank God for Republican sanity, civility and tolerance. Democrats will rue the day they brought assassination, lawfare, banning presidential candidates, and anti-American politics to the forefront."

            Email from a Trump-supporter this week

I learn by hearing from Trump supporters. 

My correspondent writes that Republicans are sane, civil and tolerant, in contrast to Democrats. 

In the view of Trump supporters, they are the little guys and victims in the great national political drama. The entire culture -- the "establishment" -- consisting of the global economy, the mainstream news, TV and Hollywood, the system of education top to bottom, plus the levers of government -- the whole shebang -- are part of Democratic-controlled groupthink. 

That establishment groupthink oppression is bi-partisan, which is why Trump needed to make a wholesale change in the GOP.  I attended a GOP convention in New Hampshire in October of 2023, when the GOP nomination was up for grabs. I saw all the candidates up close and listened to a broad set of GOP activists. Theoretically, candidates like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie were viable alternatives to Trump -- Trump without the warts. Not so. 

Pence is not an understudy to Trump. He was not the cleaned-up, noncriminal, non-graft, non-adulterous, non-insurrectionist, Christian version of Trump. Pence is the opposite of Trump.  

Pence, along with Reagan, both Bush presidents, Dole, McCain, and Romney, are the old establishment, the America that isn't great, the one that paid unnecessary respect to the wrong people. The old GOP leaders accepted laws and norms. That defined "conservatism." Trump is different. Trump is a rebel. He smashes those laws and norms because they were tacitly part of the oppression. The old order didn't protect and reward normal White guys and their wives, good Christians. 

Trump is stomping on the symbols and policies of the old order. Stop wind and solar projects. Erase monuments to civil rights. Fire Black leaders in government, the military, and the universities. Cancel medical research grants. Question vaccinations. Stop the slow-motion, checks-and-balances process-dominated government. The establishment respected the wrong people: foreigners and immigrants. It respected diversity, and "diversity" is just part of the groupthink that benefits everyone except people like my correspondent.

Isn't Trump a world-class provocateur, a name-calling, divisive leader? Isn't he the prime example of un-civil intolerance? In a Trump-supporter's mind, not at all. He didn't really summon people to D.C. to overturn an election and incite a violent riot. He didn't really grope women, defame women, lie to banks, pay hush money, take papers home and hide them and lie about hiding them, or conspire to replace electors with fake ones. Those things didn't happen. People say that only because he was being picked on by the establishment and its fake-media tool. Whatever he did was just self defense from the oppressors, not wrong, and therefore not real.

Republicans' sharp rejection of Mike Pence is the best "tell." Pence is a "good boy." Trump opposes the good boys. And since the good boys are oppressors, Trump is sane, civil, and tolerant when resisting them.

Are things really that terrible and oppressive for my correspondent?  Where's the beef? 

From the 1976 movie "Network": "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everyone knows things are bad. . . . I'm mad as hell and I'mnot going to take it anymore."

He does have a grievance. He is a White male from rural southern Oregon. A backwater. The world is passing these places by. They vote bright red. It isn't just Hillary Clinton who called him deplorable. Modern sensibilities about who is a legitimate, respected American are changing out from under him. The world is passing him by, too. 

[Note: I had a guest post last week from Alan DeBoer, a local businessman, former mayor and state senator, and civic philanthropist. With help from ChatGPT, he wrote describing  resentment of elites that he thought explained populist Trumpism. But, to avoid confusion or conflation of the two posts, let me note that the correspondent I quote today is not Alan DeBoer.]   

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Thoughts and Prayers at a vigil for Charlie Kirk

Nothing happened. 

That's what happened. 

Nothing happening isn't "newsworthy," but it is good to notice.

I attended a "Vigil for Charlie Kirk" at 4:00 p.m. in the plaza in front of the Jackson County, Oregon courts building. It was scheduled by the local Republican Party, and I estimate that 400 people attended.

It was a quiet, friendly event. 

There was a brief welcome by two local Republican Party spokespersons. Colleen Roberts, a Republican County county commissioner also welcomed us. This part went quickly.

The bulk of the event was a celebration of a religious martyr and advocate for traditional Christian families. People sang "God Bless America," "Amazing Grace," and a couple of more religious songs that I didn't recognize, but the audience seemed to know, including all the verses. There were prayers, one of which, by a pastor named Tim Cook, was a speech/prayer, but that was the only real speechifying. He wore a big black cowboy hat but removed it while praying. A three-year-old wandered onto the stage while his mother spoke. A large dog was quiet during the talking, but barked loudly while people were clapping. People around me chuckled at that.

It was a lovely afternoon. Sunny. Dry. Temperatures in the 70s.

Notice what did not happen. 

No one roused the crowd with anger. 

Speakers referred to the sorry state of the world, but no one denounced the murderer or the presumed political faction he represented. 

There were no signs blaming Democrats, liberals, godless communists, Biden, Obama, trans people, the media, or Tyler Robinson. In fact, there were no signs at all except one saying Kirk's voice would live on and the one with a Bible verse from Matthew, both pictured above.

         There was not one mention of Donald Trump. 

No MAGA hats. No MAGA merchandise.   

No opponent of Charlie Kirk spoke up, carried signs, or was otherwise apparent.

No fights broke out. No one called for revenge or retaliation. There was no tone of Fox News outrage.  

There was no hint of Stephen Miller's pronouncement on Thursday that "There is an ideology . . . which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved, . . . an ideology that leads, always, inevitably and willfully, to violence.” There was none of that talk. 

Americans asserted the freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion, and the freedom to assemble peaceably. All quiet. Americans were being Americans. Something did happen.

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Easy Sunday: Choosing fruit. Loading the dishwasher.

Does your partner load the dishwasher correctly?

My wife does. Apparently I don't.

We don't argue about where I put dishes and cups. She just changes whatever I do. 

I stumbled upon this 30-second video on YouTube.

Click:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dAXpwybq3fs

The husband in this video seems amused.  The wife seems happy to be choosing the fruit. As goes John Lennon's line in that dreamy, soft-focus, everything-is-OK song, "Strawberry Fields Forever," it's nothing to get hung about.

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me . . . .
And nothing to get hung about

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Trump blamed radical leftists. We won't hear an "oops."

FOX NEWS' AINSLEY EARHARDT: We have radicals on the right as well. . . . How do we fix this country?

TRUMP: I'll tell you something that's gonna get me in trouble -- but I couldn't care less. 

By now readers have heard the news. Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk, wasn't a "radical leftist" after all. 

Robinson is a clean-cut, White, native-born, Utah Republican Mormon, from a pro-Trump, pro-gun household with a father formerly in law enforcement and now a Christian pastor. Robinson was in an apprenticeship program to be an electrician. [Update: his father was apparently not a pastor; he installs cabinets.]

Robinson is not a liberal. Not a progressive. Not trans. Not studying ethnic or gender justice at some liberal sanctuary. He wasn't sending coded trans messages. He wasn't in a gang. He wasn't from Harvard, thank God.

He is one of theirs. 

For two days Americans heard Trump, Republican politicians, and MAGA citizenry complain that Democrats killed Charlie Kirk and that they will get revenge. Social media was full of threats and warnings. I received letters. One, from a MAGA lawyer who should know better, but doesn't, wrote me saying that Democrats "brought assassination," and Democrats will rue the day they aren't nice and civil and tolerant like Trump. He wasn't being droll. He was serious. I received multiple veiled death threats from a local Trump-supporter, which I have turned over to the police. The police won't think they are funny. 

On Thursday, the day after the assassination with the shooter still unknown, I posted here likening Trump's instant blame of "leftists" to Adolph Hitler's response to the Reichstag fire of 1933. The actual cause of that fire was uncertain at the time, and remains so, but that didn't matter to Hitler. He blamed the fire on an opposition party, which became justification to use war powers to suppress them. I warned that Trump was doing the same thing, scapegoating his political opposition. That is still happening.

This could be an opportunity for Trump, Fox, and other Democrat accusers to reverse course and de-escalate. Even Ainsley Earhardt tried to do it. Trump is forging ahead blaming Democrats. Fox News now asserts an improbable theory that college corrupted the shooter.  Blame Utah State, that hotbed of woke progressivism.

Robinson spent one semester at Utah State. He left. He is now in his third year in an apprentice electrician program at Dixie Technical College. Fox isn't blaming Dixie Tech. Utah State is  scrambling to make the case that it didn't infect Robinson with leftist woke elitist propaganda. He just took normal science courses, they said.

I personally feel a sense of relief. Whew. The assassin was an all-American classic. 

Robinson -- and apparently the two people who attempted to assassinate Trump and the man who invaded the Pelosi home -- were pro-Trump. But there are crazy, disturbed people on the left, too. It could have been a Democrat this time. Assassins, school shooters, and impulsive murderers of strangers are one-offs. Loners. People with confused politics.

I don't blame Whites, or Christians, or Mormons, or Trump families, or gun owners, or Dixie Technical School apprentice electricians for killing Charlie Kirk. Tyler apparently consumed right wing conspiracy nuttery, and chose to pick up and use a gun that was right there in the house. We tolerate that nuttery and we tolerate gun culture. Freedom. But I only blame one person: Tyler Robinson.

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After an assassination

     "What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?"
            Burt Bacharach "What's it all about, Alfie?" 1965

People my age know about the shock of assassinations. I was in junior high when JFK was killed. 

Grownups talked in hushed voices. The TV showed a funeral procession with people in black. A somber announcer explained the riderless horse. We knew this was special.

Erich Almasy, author of today's guest post, is my age, and a college classmate during the heady days of the late 1960s. We are in a generation that expected to change the world for the better. Blacks were equal, women were liberated, and our brains had opened the doors of perception. We were going to fix everything.

Erich strikes the right tone here in this aftermath of another assassination. The new school shooting in Colorado, within the hour of the murder of Charlie Kirk, doesn't shock us, although it should. School shootings are commonplace, alas. We live with them. But assassinations are different. They are rare enough to surprise. They reflect intention and purpose. Someone killed a political commentator. Someone interposed himself to silence a voice. Assassinations set off chain reactions of responses. Wars start from assassinations. It is reasonable to feel dread. We have seen how things can go very wrong.

Something happened. We are trying to be careful. 

Erich is retired, now living in Mexico.

Almasy

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

No sane person I know would condone the assassination of Charlie Kirk or take pleasure from it. A young man with a young family is gone, and we can only be saddened by this event. The question for me now is not “who did it?” or “why did they do it?” but “what’s next?” 

As we have seen in the Twentieth Century, assassinations tend to change world events radically. Please think of how each of these assassinations caused very negative change: Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and World War I; President Francisco Madero and the Mexican Revolution; Mahatma Gandhi and the Pakistan-India Civil War; Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and the resulting rise of the Ayatollahs; Ngô Đình Diệm and the eventual fall of South Vietnam; JFK, MLK, and RFK and the alterations to the American view of itself; Malcolm X and the rise of Black distrust; Egyptian Anwar Sadat and the Mideast Peace process.

I can see how my Boomer generation likely sowed many of the seeds of the divisiveness we see today. Previously, the United States had not been the scene of presidential impeachments, campus unrest, and violent riots. Today, complacent, old, white men from my generation still run our government and own most of our wealth. Even the younger ones act like my generation’s elders, with a Theory X management style, blatant displays of riches, and trophy wives. Gen X, Y, and Z may think they invented social media, but we helped bring gossip columnists to the world.

I look at this era’s gun violence, and I remember growing up with the Marlboro Man. No one gave much thought to the four actors who played him in ads, and that they all died of lung diseases. Instead, we saw them as rugged individualists, always portrayed as cowboys. The Reaganesque (as host of GE Theater, not as president) vision of this man and his horse permeated my childhood with the actual “white” hats faster on the draw than the bad guys. And, since everyone knew the difference between good and evil, it was perfectly all right to use a gun.

Then, we lost our sense of infallibility in Vietnam, white people felt threatened by people of color, and the American Dream dissolved before our eyes. We began to question our uniqueness, and anger that is as old as the American Civil War was resurrected. Can we stop this flow of venom before it overwhelms us? Do we have what Tom Wolfe called “The Right Stuff,” namely, the courage, confidence, and capability to do the right thing? The sane thing? The human thing?

So, I promise myself that I will hesitate before sending a comment or email and ask whether it is a knee-jerk reaction or a proactive, rational response. Am I simply adding to the cacophony and noise? Am I representing the person I want to be? Am I prepared to reap what I sow?

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The Reichstag fire

Charlie Kirk was assassinated. All Americans should grieve.

Democrats especially.

In an Oval Office speech yesterday, Trump said the "radical left" is "directly responsible" for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Trump's video comment on Kirk's death began with words about the value of open debate, civil discourse, and Charlie Kirk's work to engage citizens. But two minutes into his four-minute talk, the tone shifted. It went dark. The nation was under attack and we are at war against an enemy within.

Trump said:

It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day and year after year and in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. 

This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today. And it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organization that funded and supported, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country from the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others. Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. . . .

The amicus brief my attorney filed in the tariff case before the U.S. Court of Appeals -- and there will be a new one now that the case has gone to the Supreme Court -- argued that the case was about more than tariffs. It was about our form of government. President Trump is changing it from a constitutional democracy with broadly shared powers into a form of strong-man government. The brief argues that tariffs, which under our Constitution are to be determined by Congress, are a strong place to draw the line on Trump overreach.

The weakness in this argument is a president who would claim wartime emergency power. If a president declares that a decades-old problem is in fact a time-sensitive emergency, or a president says that a chronic problem in America -- gun violence -- is in fact an act of war against the U.S., then the rules of civil government might be lifted, especially if a compliant Supreme Court wants that particular president to have his way. In a wartime emergency, a president can ignore the usual checks and balances. A president with a taste for autocracy could silence, arrest, imprison, or kill whomever he targets.

There is history to observe here. In 1933, the German parliament building, the Reichstag, caught fire and burned under mysterious circumstances. The Nazis blamed communists. The Reichstag fire was a convenient excuse for the Nazis to suspend civil liberties and to silence and arrest opposition activists. This allowed the National Socialist Party to increase its plurality in the next election, and, from that, to take total control of the government.

An event like the Reichstag fire is an opportunity. Without knowing the real culprit, and without acknowledging their own acts of insurrection and civil discord, both Hitler and Trump instantly blamed a partisan opponent. Trump, using inflammatory and divisive speech, blamed "the radical left" for using inflammatory and divisive speech. Irony is not dead. Like the Nazis in 1933, Trump says he intends to go after the institutions of his opponents. 

The German National Socialists wanted a justification for suspending the rules. Trump argues that he already has justification: immigrants, fentanyl, gangs, unbalanced trade, a fire in Los Angeles, crime in Chicago and other cities, mail ballots, protests on university campuses, and more.

Now he has another. A visible one. A shocking one. A sad one for the Kirk family and the country. This one doesn't appear, at first look, like a murder committed by the traditional villain of school shootings, some mentally ill person with random murderous intent. This one has a different first-impression look: Charlie Kirk was assassinated with a weapon of war.

I sense this is a Reichstag fire event, an opportunity to accelerate suspending the rules of a constitutional democracy. When America is at war, a president can do anything.

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An alternative to political retribution.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden announces a $6 million grant for upgrades to the failing Gold Hill, Oregon sewer system.

Yes, Gold Hill. 

Bright red Gold Hill.

Rogue Valley Sewer Services General Manager Carl Tappert credited Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (D) for securing this money.

Thanks to the hard work of our local USDA representatives and strong support from Senator Wyden we were able to secure a USDA Rural Development grant of over $6 million. This is more than double what we were hoping for and should allow us to keep sewer rates in Gold Hill below $120 per month.

Wyden has risen to a position of power in the Senate as ranking member of the Senate's Finance Committee. The new digital Southern Oregon newspaper, the Rogue Valley Times, had a story on it.

Rogue Valley Times

I'm highlighting this special attention to Gold Hill because it is such a contrast to the message of President Donald Trump. Trump openly and proudly says that the power of the federal government under his command is directed to helping his friends and punishing his opponents. 

Trump announced that he was moving the Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama because Colorado voted blue while Alabama voted red, and because Colorado had mail-in voting, which he opposes. Trump threatened Wes Moore, the Democratic governor of Maryland, with pulling federal funding to repair the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which is essential to the port of Baltimore and collapsed last year when it was hit by a container ship. Moore said he objected to Trump's sending federal troops to Baltimore. 

Trump barred from federal courthouses law firms that represented clients and interests Trump opposed until they paid him a tribute bribe. Trump pulls research funding from universities that he thinks are aligned left. Trump threatens cities with Democratic mayors, pledging to send federalized National Guard soldiers from red states. There is a message: Please the king; Don't cross the king.

Senator Wyden projects a very different approach. The Gold Hill residents who will benefit enormously from this grant vote bright red. They voted over two to one for Trump over Kamala Harris. Wyden helps them anyway.

They voted for Wyden's Republican opponent, Jo Rey Perkins with 67 percent of the vote -- 31 percent for him -- in Wyden's 2022 re-election bid. The area gave Tina Kotek, the Democratic candidate for governor, only 22 percent of the vote in that election. 

Wyden didn't treat Gold Hill voters as enemies. He treated them as Oregonians and his constituents. He wrote me explaining his approach:

I'm not the U.S. senator representing just Portland, Oregon. I'm the U.S. senator representing all of Oregon. Which is why every year I go to all 36 counties and have town halls -- over 1,135 at this point since my time in the Senate.

Listening to people, and realizing that we have a lot more in common than apart from one another, is the Oregon Way. It's something I've always done, and I will continue to do as long as I have the honor to represent this state. It's something I encourage all senators and members of Congress to do.

I urge readers to resist the temptation to read this and think "yadda, yadda, typical political Mr. Nice Guy talk." Stop and reflect: Wyden's position and words are not typical -- not anymore. It is a statement of principle of good, representative government, in direct counterpoint to Trump's quid pro quo approach. 

Trump is normalizing the old spoils system, the idea that it is acceptable to direct federal resources disproportionately toward friends and to punish opponents by withholding resources. You represent your base. You smash your opponents. You make liberals cry. Opponents will learn from their suffering and, if nothing else, MAGA voters will love to see Rachel Maddow fume.

Wyden communicates a better, more just, understanding of American government. We are all in this together. Politicians represent the whole of the people. We each enjoy the equal protection of the law. That idea is under attack, but it isn't dead yet.

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The Trump birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein

The Trump birthday card looks real.

Trump says he didn't write it.

It may be too clever, too literary, too indirect, and too philosophical to be from Trump. That is what today's guest post suggests. I agree. 

A birthday letter that turns out to be fake would be the perfect false-flag evidence for a Trump ally to plant. Trump would use that to discredit the whole Trump-Epstein sleaze connection. 

Here is the text in a more readable format: 

"Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.
Donald: Yes there is, but I won't tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey As a mater of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday -- and may every day be another wonderful secret."

We have seen how a false document helps exonerate a guilty person. Even the Republican-led U.S. Senate concluded that Russia most certainly did assist the Trump campaign in 2016. Errors in one source of evidence -- the so-called Steele dossier -- became the basis for Trump to say that the whole investigation was fake, all part of a "Russia hoax." 

Today's guest post posits that maybe this birthday card is fake. The Wall Street Journal  -- a Rupert Murdoch-owned property -- wrote that it looked real. Here is their report. They write that Trump did do drawings of this sort, that the signature looks genuine, that he used elsewhere some of the uncommon words in the document, and that he often referred to himself in the third person, as does this birthday card. 

My own doubt comes from the "bank shot" indirectness of it. The birthday card text presumes an observed dialog, with a voice-over narrator observing two men making indirect comments about a mutual secret. I have never seen from Trump a glimmer of this card's meditative reflections on life's meaning, the aging of enigmas, or the value of friendships over having material things. Where is the bombast? The invincibility?

To my ear, it is more probable that Trump had someone else create a suggestive, enigmatic card with rich opportunities for guessing at secret crimes. It would be bait placed to trick his opponents. The Wall Street Journal may be a whistleblower doing honest reporting, or it may be participating in the ruse, helping to set up the trap. Rupert Murdoch wanted to preserve his media empire after his death as a conservative voice. Being a trap-setter, not a whistleblower, is consistent with that role. The birthday card could be the new Steele dossier. 

It is a mystery. An enigma. It might be real. It might not.

Musician, song-writer, and music producer Rick Millward is one of the many Americans who have gotten deeply into the Trump-Epstein matter. He has reserved final judgment on whether Trump could be convicted of criminal acts with young girls, but he sees lots of evidence in the public record of a very close relationship with a man who pled guilty to criminal acts with young women. He has doubts about the legitimacy of the birthday card.

Millward

Guest Post by Rick Millward

The Letter: “We Have Certain Things In Common”

Trump lied about it. He lied about it, even knowing that it would eventually be made public. Now that it has been released, I can see why. We already knew the contents: A “script” of a dialogue between Trump and Epstein, a drawing of a female, and Trump’s signature, but seeing it “in the flesh” so it were, is disturbing and gross. 

The script is somewhat inscrutable except for one thing. It says “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.” The implication is difficult to ignore. What did they have in common?

Both wealthy, very wealthy

Both known womanizers ("Grab ‘em". . . .  And "On the younger side . . . ”) 

The letter alludes to all this, but then to “a secret.” What?

Overall the image reminds me of something that might have been done in the 60s, like a poem done on a typewriter, probably an IBM Selectric judging from the serif font. Did Trump have one? The drawing and the signature appear to be done with a Sharpie, Trump’s writing implement of choice. The sketch is of an outline of a headless, armless female with the only detail being the suggestion of a bosom. It is not what we would expect in such a “bawdy" drawing. The small size raises the question of whether it depicts a young female.

But is it authentic? Frankly, the “script” displays a level of erudition that no one would expect from Trump. The veiled language, use of dialogue like a play, seems to me that it might have been created by someone else, someone smarter. Except that it is so personal, hinting at a shared experience, so maybe it was Trump. Use of the term “voice over,” shows knowledge of TV/radio vernacular, and that’s certainly the star of “The Apprentice.”

And the signature? If it’s a forgery, that means that someone created this very imaginative document and then surreptitiously placed it in the “birthday book” after the fact. The book is reportedly bound so it would be hard to do, but plausible if we accept that the signature isn’t Trump’s. If it’s not, it’s a very good forgery. Finally there is the placement, like a giggling schoolboy’s graffiti. Keep in mind that it would have been done by a 50-year-old man, if authentic.

Maxwell could verify it. Someone should ask her. The right answer would earn her a presidential pardon.

So now we have another piece of the Trump/Epstein puzzle and a number of conclusions that can be drawn from it. Foremost for me is that if it’s authentic at the very least it makes it very difficult for Trump to credibly profess ignorance of the Epstein/Maxwell/others crimes. That’s the thing about secrets; They don’t stay secret forever.

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