ALBATROSSES, RUBBER STAMPS, DESPERATION

This week starts the new Supreme Court session and they have quite a lineup of considerations ahead of them, particularly concerning President Trump and his administration. Lisa Needham writes on Daily Kos: “Here comes the Supreme Court’s faithful conservatives, riding to President Donald Trump’s rescue. They’re eager to remind us that democracy doesn’t matter, laws don’t matter, the balance of powers doesn’t matter: Only Trump Matters.” Last week we were given yet another shadow docket decision, which allowed the six sitting court conservatives to “short-circuit the actual litigation and stomp all over the lower courts,” says Needham. The League of Women Voters suit against the Department of Homeland Security succumbed, allowing Trump to barge ahead with his mish-mosh of data to search for voter fraud where there is none, as has been proven over and over.

This case arose last year when the president and DHS schemed to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, which determines benefits eligibility, to be used for voter eligibility instead. Needham says, “But wait! It gets worse.” The administration demanded that the high court countenance the ‘modified SAVE database’ which is a DHS combo of the SAVE data and Social Security data, which “somehow, in the fevered brains of the election deniers that run the country now, will magically ferret out all those noncitizen voters who keep voting for Democrats and wrecking our great land,” ostensibly removing ineligible voters. Noncitizen voting is basically non-existent, as Nevada proved for DHS, hilariously collapsing their feverish efforts — DHS howled about 15,093 ineligible voters on that state’s rolls, but weeded that number down to 185 — after which the state was able to erase the figure entirely. A goose egg on DHS’s face! Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her court dissent, pointed out that the data melding of the two databases is illegal according to the Privacy Act law.

Real world events resulting from the data mashup, of course, flags eligible voter citizens inadvertently, and whereas in a normal world it would be a grave concern, for Trumpworld it’s just the cost of doing business as they seek out non-existent ineligible voters. Federal law prohibits states from doing large-scale voter purges within 90 days before an election, requiring use of purges only on a case-by-case basis. So, while this rule may deaden the court’s shadow docket ruling, “the impact of yet another decision by the court’s conservatives that sweeps away all checks and balances in favor of giving Trump what he wants is still profoundly destabilizing,” warns Needham. Justice Jackson’s explanation in her eloquent dissent wrote, “The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.”

Needham concludes: “When it comes to the court’s conservatives, real-world harms are no match for Trump’s desires, but that’s not how democracy works, and those justices know it. They just don’t care.”

Oliver Willis on Daily Kos headlines his piece: ‘Mike Johnson Promises More Failure if GOP Wins Midterms.’ Speaker Johnson last week promised they will continue the agenda that has led millions to oppose and disapprove of the Republican Party, “putting the conditions in place for a strong America,” as he told the interviewer on CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box.’  Johnson falsely described the economy as “vibrant” and that Republicans have done “what we said we were going to do,” parroting the words of Dear Leader, both being disconnected from the reality for millions of Americans. A Fox News poll has 63% of registered voters accusing Trump of worsening Biden’s economy, with most agreeing that the economy and rising inflation are their top priorities, with trust leaning toward the Democrats. Trump and his agenda, including the ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ are unpopular, albatrosses around the necks of the MAGAs.

Johnson’s Congressional Republicans have been pivotal in the downturn of the party as a whole, with Johnson refusing to let Congress serve as a watchdog of the executive branch, deferring to President Trump almost entirely. Johnson has ignored Trump and his cronies as they enriched themselves with their grifting, leading in his efforts to rubber-stamp Trump’s actions — conspicuously in the march to war in Iran. The Speaker and his allies ignoring  Trump’s illegal tariffs has led to increased costs for consumers, stalling the jobs market as well. Let’s see how ignoring the voter blowback on failure serves Johnson and his myopic double-down, double-crossing vision.

A Mike Luckovich political cartoon illustrates an ocean liner named ‘Trumptanic‘ sitting on the sea bottom, with GOP rats on deck asking, “Is it too late to abandon ship??” As Jimmy Kimmel says, “There are gas station bathrooms on Yelp with higher approval ratings than Donald Trump.”

Jason Linkins headlines his piece in The New Republic: ‘Trump’s Illegal Campaign Ads Are an Admission of Defeat.’ He says that even as the administration “pummels the airwaves with ‘slopaganda,’ Republicans are panicking about the president’s drag on their electoral ambitions,” as the president has decided to spend taxpayer money on campaign ads misleadingly characterized as “public service announcements.” Linkins calls the corrupt move “vintage Trump” as he spends $20 million from Homeland Security in violation of the Hatch Act. Supposedly, the administration has spent only a fraction of the funds allocated to this slop, so we can expect to see many more of his fake PSAs. Linkins says, ” I want to suggest that what these ads represent is desperation — an acknowledgment that if Trump’s goose isn’t cooked yet, the pot is at least boiling…this fusillade of propaganda will likely backfire…the power he had over people a year or 15 months ago has evanesced.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is quoted as saying that he doesn’t mind Trump’s message but shouldn’t have used taxpayer dollars. Senator Mike Rounds said, “It’s not something I would have done,” and outgoing Senator Thom Tillis compared the action to that of dictator Victor Orbán, simply saying, “I hate it.” The ads aren’t the only plan Trump has in mind to “assist” candidates in their campaigns — he will spend most remaining days prior to the midterms on the road, visiting “bastions of conservatism,” which will be a significant commitment of time and resources in light of how dire the situation is for the GOP. One GOP donor told Politico, “The problem is that the fires are everywhere right now,” posing the question of whether the president’s injecting himself into the election cycle is a help or a hindrance. Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton has expressed his opinion that Trump’s appearance at the ‘midterm convention’ was of no value, with GOP numbers dropping.

Linkins sees all the efforts adding up to defeat, quoting the Cook Political Report which says the Democratic takeover of the House is a “done deal,” and that winning the Senate is “very realistic.” “The Quinnipiac generic poll of the House has Democrats opening up a 51% to 39% lead, which are bloodbath numbers. The only headwind Democrats face is that while voters seem willing to give them their vote this year, they’re not as ready to give them their affection. Still, you’d rather be the Democrats right now than the GOP, who like Vice President JD Vance have been left begging voters for a ‘second chance’ without understanding that they’ve already received that second chance — and they’ve blown it,” deduces Linkins.

Elliot Kirschner’s essay on Substack reveals his opinion on future political power: “Republicans have never been afraid to use power once they get it. Democrats need to do the same. But they need to use that power to remake our democracy so that it is stronger, fairer, and more resilient. There will be many in the press and the business and legal worlds, along with others who helped define how power in Washington was wielded under previous status quos, who will say that any rush by those newly elected to pursue decisive action, experimentation, accountability, and ambitious efforts to remake broken systems goes too far. That should be a signal that we aren’t going far enough. It is time to retire not only this regime but the tired mindsets that allowed it to worm its way into our political firmament. Winning elections is the beginning. Governing with vision, boldness, and no heed to the naysayers must be the destination.”

Kirschner references the various polls that spark dread in the ranks of the powerful, but “we’ve been burned by polls before, seeing our hopes dashed,” so, many are guardedly speaking of the reboot of democracy with bated breath. The primary focus should be what will happen on November 3, but beneath that is the other question about what will Democrats do on November 4 if they gain if they regain a semblance of power? To Kirschner, most Democratic candidates speak the language of action toward overcoming the abuses of the past and what must be accomplished to right what is wrong. He recalls Mario Cuomo’s famous line: “You campaign in poetry, and govern in prose,” but sees a lot of the poetry of pragmatism in this election season — what do we need to do now and how do we actually get it done? “The current regime has rooted itself in many of the worst currents of America’s complex identity: racism, xenophobia, misogyny, divisiveness, violence, cronyism, and greed. We need reimagination, regeneration, and renewal,” declares Kirschner.

Satirist Andy Borowitz had his say this week re one candidate: ” Millions of Americans were still in a state of shock on Wednesday after discovering that Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline was not the stupidest member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although Graham appeared barely sentient throughout Tuesday’s proceedings, she did not emit what were universally viewed as the session’s most idiotic utterances, a broad majority of Americans agreed. No one, perhaps, was more surprised at her not being the dumbest senator on display than Graham herself, who called the hearings “a big win for yours truly. I guess the bar for intelligence in the Senate was much lower than I thought,” she told reporters. “Now I can see how Chuck Grassley has managed to stick around this place for 900 years.”

When asked by Ross Douthat on CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ on Sunday if there’s a “risk” that President Trump will lash out should Republicans lose control of either, or both, houses in Congress, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina replied that a “bad night” on November 3 poses a high risk for presidential misconduct. Tillis warned that attacks are possible toward members of the GOP even as polls show that low approval ratings with voters rebelling against the economy and affordability of goods and services is palpable. “It would be another political unforced error if we do that,” Tillis commented, during a discussion about Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential vote, which resulted in the January 6, 2021 Capitol assault. “Look, this was the first time in the history of this country that we had not had a peaceful transfer of power. And that was despicable. The people that led the charge, the people that assaulted police officers, I wish they were still in prison and serving a very long sentence.”

Tillis defended his vote to acquit Trump on the charge of inciting insurrection, arguing that Democrats rushed the impeachment proceedings only for preventing the president from running for office again in 2024. He claims that by taking this kind of tack was a means-justifies-the-end rationalization, thereby cheapening the impeachment process to prevent a future candidacy. Though substantiated instances of voter fraud in recent federal elections are few, Trump for months has been warning of the possibility of widespread fraud in the midterms, as he openly sets up what many believe will be his followup action to fight unsatisfactory results. In a recently published Time magazine interview, Trump refused to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections period. “I’m not committing to anything. We’re going to see how it plays out in court,” he said, foreshadowing a long legal process to settle what voters themselves have determined in the balloting.

Writing in ‘The Warning,’ Steve Schmidt the election will “be a historic wipeout, with MAGA being crushed, never again to function as a viable national political coalition.” He predicts it will endure as a “poisonous minority movement,” remaining committed to extremism and fascism, only sustained by grievance, and “organized around the worship of one man,” possibly intensifying its fanaticism. Schmidt expects Trumps response to his defeat will be “madness: an escalating fury directed at reality itself.” As the president has already shown he will deny the results, alleging conspiracies, which will lead to his coordinated effort to obstruct the verdict, a pattern already established by the seditious actions of January 6, 2021. “The sovereign will of the American electorate will threaten his control, exposing him to scrutiny, and place obstacles before his exercise of power, leading to is use of state power to maintain political power without consent through intimidation of officials, retaliation against opponents, pressure on institutions, and attempts to make lawful election results meaningless,” predicts Schmidt.

In ‘The Warning” he sees Trump offering the country its destruction if he loses, and dictatorship if he prevails — the news media moved on after he promised to be a dictator “only on the first day” in his new term, but it should have remained central to his every move afterwards. American media reported his initial words, “then discarded them as yesterday’s content, vanishing beneath his next performance, each episode beginning as though the last never happened,” says Schmidt, “An endless reality show, with no accumulated record and no sustained accounting. The president is granted a fresh narrative every morning, while the public is deprived of the connections necessary to understand what is happening. The pattern is the story. Isolation conceals its significance.”

Schmidt charges corporate journalism of fear of retaliation, fear of losing access, fear of corporate displeasure, fear of being accused of bias for describing conduct that would have disqualified another American politician from respectable company, and resulting in a vocabulary of evasion. The public is now becoming accustomed to the dangers, lacking adequate information, when the president’s capacity to discharge his responsibilities should be of public concern — the media needs to cease disguising instability as tactical brilliance simply because his behavior has become exhausting. “Every generation of Americans that warned about the essential role of a free press in protecting liberty understood something we are watching unfold: citizens cannot defend their rights when the exercise of power is hidden from them,” writes Schmidt, “Now those omissions co-exist with a propaganda culture that glorifies the leader, portrays opponents as enemies of the nation, and treats dissent as treachery. When government power carries that message, I regard it as fascist propaganda. The language prepares its audience to accept punishment as patriotism.”

In Schmidt’s eyes, the election scenario and its aftermath are rather grim if Trump has his way. The repudiation will be unmistakable, to be followed by refusal of MAGA candidates to concede; and within a week, Trump’s lie will have found its footing, even lacking evidence to reverse voters’ wishes. Within two weeks, Trump will be fully on the offensive, his accusations dictating the questions, as his allies weigh in demanding investigations, delays and exceptions — as the country is repeatedly asked to prove what voters have already decided. Schmidt expects corporate media to be filled with stories about whether or not the new Congress should be seated, or can be seated, with the MAGA obstruction supplying the controversy, which amplifies the coverage, which will confer legitimacy to the obstruction. Are we tired yet?

Schmidt sees the Sunday news shows allowing the liars to “filibuster a fantasy into apparent reality, exploiting every interruption, every timid follow-up, and every invitation to return, exhausting the distinction between an allegation and evidence. Truth and falsehood will receive the same lighting, the same introductions, and the same respectful opportunity to make their case, with viewers being invited to choose between them as though a certified vote count and an invented conspiracy were competing preferences — by mid-December, huge swaths of America will no longer know who won.”  Their confusion will become justification for extraordinary action, with a manufactured crisis offered as grounds for withholding recognition, obstructing the new Congress and protecting presidential power from the restraints that voters demanded. Schmidt sees it as the duty of the press to confront the sequence while it unfolds, requiring evidence, explanations and scrutiny of threats. “Repetition cannot turn a falsehood into a fact, and a presidential demand cannot erase a lawful result,” he says.

Therefore, citizens must vote; officials must count, certify and enforce results; institutions must withstand intimidation — a victory that cannot take effect leaves the people dispossessed of their own decision. Dangerous days lie ahead if the press can’t find its courage — the verdict must take effect! So who’s going to stop them? Results are what we expect, consequences are what we get. VOTE!

INSTIGATORS, LAME DUCKERY, LATITUDE, AGENCY

Simon Tisdall poses questions on The Guardian,”Feeling depressed about the state of the world? Worried about the future? You’re not alone. Pessimism about politics is the new normal among the peoples of the West.” Tisdall lists the major causes for concern as the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, and the threats of right-left extremism, stagnating economies, inequality, corruption, terrorism, racism, big tech, mass extinctions, and the climate crisis as the unsettling nightmares we all share. He writes that this “tsunami of gloom” shows encouraging shifts within Russia, Israel and the USA — the instigators of the “major upheavals in the past decade.”

He sees that Putin’s position has become jeopardized by his Ukraine misadventure, and after four years the dissent among his rivals has raised his fears of assassination or a coup which has caused him to cut back on public appearances. We have all seen photos of the long conference table that puts his conferees at one end while he sits several feet away. Israel’s long-serving ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu is facing opposition parties who want to topple his ruling hard-right coalition, with a nationwide vote upcoming at October’s end. He was a prominent influencer on Trump to embark upon his disastrous Iran war, an obvious US-Israel catastrophe. World opinion weighs heavily upon the Israelis, and in light of their leader’s deadly belligerence in the region, he may not survive the balloting.

Trump, on the other hand, barely needs opponents says Tisdall, being his own worst enemy in ignoring the hardships he has fomented with his Iran fiasco. He has betrayed his MAGA base with his tariffs and trade wars, with his abuse of our allies while threatening conquests, not to mention his sucking up to dictators of nations regarded as dangerous adversaries. The dismay, the public pessimism, and feelings of hopelessness are universal as observers have seen the degradation of a once powerful and respected USA. Polls currently show that Trump and his MAGAts may lose control in the midterms, curtailing the president’s power, with impeachment a possibility. “Lame duckery looms,” says Tisdall, “Putin deposed, Netanyahu defeated, Trump defanged and distracted. If it came to pass the world would feel a very different place. Sidelining the chief riders of the storm could go a long way towards changing the zeitgeist.”

Alexander Willis writes on Raw Story, “President Donald Trump has picked up on the fact that a growing number of GOP lawmakers are racing to distance themselves from him as his approval ratings hit record lows.” Nevertheless, his toxicity, unrecognized by him, has led him to contact candidates to vent his dissatisfaction that he is being left out of their tv advertising and off their websites — his overture to voters to “pretend I am on the ballot” being cynically cast aside as poisonous. Some office holders/seekers have broken publicly with Trump, and it has leaked that “the president’s team makes sure to flag for the president examples of 2026 candidates whose campaign websites have scrubbed or minimized references to President Trump and his record.”

To calm him down, Trump’s team last week released a taxpayer-funded ad on Fox that praised him, featuring the song ‘Love Me‘ by JMSN, who said it was used without his permission. Two unnamed sources claim that Team Trump made sure the ad ran on Fox and in the Washington, DC media market, guaranteeing that the president would see it. Mehdi Hasan’s ‘Zeteo’ on Substack, reports, “For starters, Trump has a tiny amount of political support among voters in the DC area. This was yet another example of his advisers lighting many thousands of dollars on fire, just to calm him down.” A couple of weeks ago, a reporter asked Trump who would get his endorsement in a particular run-off election, his answer indicating that he was undecided. The problem being, he had already posted his choice two weeks earlier, so how powerful is an endorsement from a president who doesn’t remember who he’s selected?

Absent any taxpayer complaints, the White House launched yet another treasury-funded tv ad, the third captured by media tracker AdImpact, and shown mainly during two National Football League games on Sunday, featuring imagery of President Trump walking down a hall as the audio has him saying, “This is the final battle. We will cast out communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.” The ad mimics a 2023 Trump campaign speech, and uses footage from a 2024 campaign ad. The three ads are tellingly being shown as the campaigns heat up for the midterm elections, but the White House maintains these are public service announcements, and very clearly not campaign ads, watchdog group Common Cause suggesting otherwise, terming them to be ‘propaganda.’ Common Cause VP Carol Evans says, “I don’t think you have to be a legal scholar and wonder why the president has to use taxpayer funds to promote his image this close to an election.”

Last week in a fit of pique, Trump banned CNN, Politico, and MS NOW from the White House press pool for not kissing his ring with enough respect — and on national security grounds. As Greg Sargent writes in The New Republic, “He accidentally revealed an Achilles’ heel of sorts,” when several media companies then banded together in solidarity against the ban which then precluded the use of video recording for tv broadcasts; and, since CNN had camera duty that week, so to speak, and no other entity chose to fill in the gap — it made for a huge faux pas for Trump who relishes the spotlight, for better or for worse. Though a judge subsequently blocked the ban, it meant that few cameras were available for the grand ceremonial of China’s President Xi Jinping’s arrival in DC — a disaster for narcissist Trump.

Even after the judge’s restoration of press access to the White House, CNN was barred from joining the press pool on Air Force One traveling with the president to Knoxville, TN for a college football game between the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, a highly-rated clash between top-rated teams. Video footage shared on social media captured Trump being booed loudly by attendees when the president appeared on the Jumbotron, sitting in a box next to Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn. Trump managed a couple of weak fist pumps to the one MAGA-hatted fan he spotted sitting nearby.

A few months ago, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson delivered a jaw-dropping mea culpa for endorsing Donald Trump for president, saying, “I want to say I am sorry for misleading people,” and admitting he would be “tormented” by his backing the con man “for a long time to come.” It seemed that Carlson was embittered by the Epstein coverup and the Iran war debacle, disclosed in a podcast with his brother, Buckley Carlson, a former Trump speechwriter. The brothers agreed that they are implicated in this mess, but no matter how sincere the apology, they are forever stained, even as Buckley calls Trump an “out of control, megalomaniacal, destructive president.” Tucker’s apology comes across as shallow and insincere following his decades of racist, sexist and violent rhetoric as he carpetbagged for his former idol.

Former associates felt Tucker was just doing a bit, playing a boorish demagogue in the ratings game as he slid into Bill O’Reilly’s old slot on Fox News. Playing a bit is hardly forgivable, because knowing better and still being opportunistic at stirring violence against immigrants and Blacks doesn’t cut it. His lies about Dominion voting machines finally broke him, and damaged the Fox bottom line in the end, but he still walked away by earning millions over the years — which he should donate to a nonprofit to prove the sincerity of his apology. Social psychologist Cindy Frantz of Oberlin College, in observing the Carlson duo, feels that Tucker is “basically holding something back, continuing to go through some sort of internal disagreement, or he’s restraining himself from saying something.”

Frantz argues that there are two missing pieces that could have helped sell Carlson’s apology: 1) he didn’t mention any action for making amends for his regrets; 2) the other is an element neither he nor the general public can fix — there’s no interpersonal relationship here, since he’s a public figure before a camera, with too many barriers for people to trust what he says. Speculation is that Carlson has an ulterior motive for the apology, ranging from prioritizing his income, to running for office. The fact that he says, “I want to say I’m sorry,” rather than, “I’m sorry,” distances himself from any direct ownership of responsibility. Jimmy Kimmel commented on his show, “Did anyone know Tucker had a brother Buckley? Tucker and Buckley? That’s as white as it gets. I mean, it doesn’t get any whiter than that. Their parents were an ascot and a monocle.”

The latest Tucker Carlson interview, with NPR’s Newsmakers podcast host Steve Inskeep, has him calling for the president’s removal by his Cabinet under the 25th Amendment, and being particularly critical of the Iran war. The former Fox News host feels that Trump wasn’t the one who ultimately made the decision to join Israel in its attack on Iran — “I don’t think he had the latitude to make this decision on his own.” Carlson suggests that Section 4 of the 25th Amendment be invoked to force Trump out over his threats to “annihilate” Iran, and should also include those in power around the president. “A guy threatening to eliminate the human race and that’s not considered a crime?! It tells you how deranged our moral scale has become. So he should be removed from office for threatening a first-use nuclear strike,” fumed Carlson.

Carlson is not alone among conservatives calling for ousting Trump — prominently, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and former Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have joined a growing chorus of voices for action. Jones, on his InfoWars broadcast in April, said, “The definition of genocide is destroying an entire civilization/people! Trump literally sounds like an unhinged super villain from a Marvel Comics movie. This is not what we voted for!” Greene wrote on social media, “Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.”

In the NPR interview, Carlson recalled a chilling statement made by Trump in a private Oval Office meeting, dismissing concerns over a possible Iran action. Carlson challenged the president, saying, “This war is not about Iran’s nuclear program, which you told me and the world that you eliminated last summer in June,”  while holding Israel accountable for the push toward war. He termed Trump’s response “nihilistic” as he said, “Yes, you’re right, but in the end we all die anyway, so it doesn’t matter.” The shocked Carlson told Steve Inskeep, “That’s the last thing any leader or person should display — who lives or dies does matter. The future does matter.” One online responder wrote, “Trump gave every impression that he firmly believes, in the depth of his soul, ‘if I go, it all goes…and when I am gone, what does it all matter anyway?’ This falls into a level 10 narcissist, the least common and most dangerous type.”

Talk about chilling, Anthony Davis on MeidasTouch Network has an essay based on his interview with forensic and social psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, entitled ‘Who’s Going To Stop Him?‘ Their conversation began with President Trump’s genocidal threats in his recent United Nations speech and his increasingly volatile language directed toward Iran. The interview kept returning to “a more fundamental question: what happens when a political system becomes so accustomed to extraordinary behavior that it stops recognizing it as extraordinary?” Dr. Lee’s view is that “we are watching a psychological phenomenon unfold at the highest level of government, one in which the behavior of a powerful individual can begin to shape the thinking of the population around him.”

Davis asked her about Trump’s “increasingly aggressive rhetoric and the apparent absence of meaningful institutional resistance.” Lee believes the president’s behavior should not be seen as some elaborate strategic calculation, but as a man driven by emotion, grievance, and an inability to tolerate realities that contradict his preferred version of events. We should interpret his actions not as strategy, but as aggressive reaction to failure, humiliation or a sense of lost control. She argues that when someone becomes unable to tolerate evidence that contradicts their self-image, the consequences can become increasingly dangerous. As an example, Lee sees the slogan, ‘Trump was right about everything,’ as a declaration that reality itself must conform to that claim.

One concern discussed by Davis and Lee, is the media’s recognition of the seriousness of events, but then retreating from coverage, particularly when criticism of Trump might be interpreted as partisan. Dr. Lee revealed that she and her colleagues had attempted to raise concern about Trump’s psychological condition, but were then excluded from mainstream discussions as dangerous behavior gets converted into arguments about political allegiance — truth becomes politicized. Contrasting the USA with Europe, false political claims can be denounced as absurd in most countries, but in this country “a fragmented and highly partisan media environment can give even extraordinary claims an extended life,” says Lee.

In this erosion of democratic power, Lee argues that Americans have gradually lost their sense of what they are entitled to demand from their institutions, as well as their confidence in their ability to demand it. This process begins with advertising and psychological manipulation, as propaganda and disinformation creep in to spread emotionally driven beliefs into the community. Lee uses the belief of the stolen 2020 election as an example, which has spread from Trump into a collective phenomenon. Lee told Davis that the public has more power than it realizes, but has become dependent upon the assumption that some constitutional mechanism will step in to solve things — citizens must be convinced that they are correct in demanding functioning institutions.

Dr. Lee contends that the public has to recover its own sense of agency, which has gradually been eroded, teaching people to accept circumstances rather than challenge them, one danger being that lies, being emotionally compelling, can travel faster than truth, but truth has the advantage that propaganda lacks: it does not need to be manufactured indefinitely. Reality keeps returning — we only need to recognize it when it does! All of which still begs the question: who’s going to stop him?