Elect a clown, expect a circus.

The truth of this proverb was on painful display this weekend in Washington, D.C., courtesy of a deeply unwell man who spits on our history, glorifies violence and sows hatred.

He turned our White House grounds into a gross commercial venue for violent cage fights, adding fresh evidence that his malignancy knows no bottom.

It’s hard to overstate what a perverse irony it is—in this, the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding—that such a man was returned to the presidency to accelerate America’s decline while enriching himself.

But there on the South Lawn—with the White House bathed in blue in the background—cage fighters were beating each other up on a platform advertising Bud Light, online betting and Monster Energy drinks. These fighters were seen on camera doing their preparations from inside the White House, while nauseating sycophants like Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg and House Speaker Mike Johnson cheered from the audience.

This is the kind of demoralizing spectacle Donald Trump wanted for his 80th birthday—lying that it has anything to do with the 250th celebration of American independence.

We can take some solace in knowing that just 16 percent of Americans find such an event appropriate at our White House. Still, the sight of the White House in the Paramount+ streaming was enough to make me cry.

Yet I’d like to focus here not on this sickening show, but on what happened Friday night at our sacred Lincoln Memorial. The disgrace and dishonor that took place there should not be forgotten—and it should remind us why this memorial is such a meaningful part of our nation’s history.

First, what happened:

The cage fighters, part of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), descended the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with our greatest president’s marble statue in the background.

And they descended for a press conference—which included shoving and trading insults—between the two columns of the Armed Forces Full Honor Cordon. These are uniformed soldiers deployed to honor heads of state, other visiting dignitaries, top government officials or fallen military heroes.

This respected corps is not meant to honor bloody cage fighters.

But what made this display particularly vile was the choice of venue. The Lincoln Memorial was completed and dedicated in 1922 when Warren G. Harding was president, just 57 years after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and the end of the Civil War.

Those tragedies were not just distant memories. From today’s perspective, that would be equivalent to looking back to 1969. (I suspect many of older readers would say that they remember well that year when American astronauts landed on the moon.)

President Harding’s long dedication showed deep reverence for the fallen president, including this:

In every moment of peril, in every hour of discouragement, whenever the clouds gather, there is the image of Lincoln to rivet our hopes and to renew our faith. Whenever there is a glow of triumph over national achievement, there comes the reminder that but for Lincoln’s heroic and unalterable faith in the Union, these triumphs could not have been.

Harding’s words are about national unity, about hope, about faith in our democratic experiment. He also quoted from Lincoln’s first inaugural address in 1861, including its profound closing sentences, delivered at a time of rising anxiety over secession and the possibility of war:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the union, when again touched, as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature.

But Lincoln’s “appeal was in vain,” Harding noted, as Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina just five weeks later, unleashing what Harding described as “a baptism in blood.”

But this memorial was not intended to dwell on war and bloodshed, but on the greatness of a man who saved the union. Said Harding:

His faith was inspiring, his resolution commanding, his sympathy reassuring, his simplicity enlisting, his patience unfailing…His was a leadership for a great crisis, made loftier because of the inherent righteousness of his cause and the sublimity of his own faith…Not only was our nation given a new birth of freedom, but democracy was given a new sanction.

Etched on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial is the text of both the Gettysburg Address—“of the people, by the people and for the people”—and Lincoln’s second inaugural address delivered the month before the war’s end and his own death.

Despite the growing number of war dead that would eventually climb to some 700,000 Americans, despite the deep and lingering animosity between the Union and the Confederacy prepared to destroy the country to hold onto the institution of slavery—tragic echoes of which continue to haunt our lives today—Lincoln found it in his heart to seek unity and forgiveness.

His closing sentence included these rightfully famous words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.”

In hindsight, we can argue about the wisdom of encouraging “malice toward none, with charity for all,” especially as Reconstruction and the righteous believers in the Lost Cause mythology continued to perpetrate racial hatred and violence. But we cannot deny Lincoln’s hunger for compassion and unity or doubt why it represented real leadership in the wake of America’s bloodiest war.

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Friday night, the American UFC cage fighter Justin Gaethje said to the Georgian-Spanish fighter Ilia Topuria after being shoved, “Look where we're at, look at this beautiful view and you want to act like an animal?”

It was exactly the kind of demonizing remark that birthday boy Trump would enjoy hearing, especially in a place like that. And what could please him more than to dishonor and disgrace the sacred monument of the great American president who understood the meaning of higher purpose and sacrificed his life to the cause of freedom?

There may be a clown leading a circus. These may be perverse days when it’s awfully hard to celebrate the founding of America. But in 140 days, on Nov. 3, we have the opportunity to stand up to this sickness and corruption and accelerate the necessary process of curtailing this hateful regime’s power.

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The legacy media was stuffed yesterday with reports of SpaceX’s massive initial public offering and the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, becoming the world’s first trillionaire. And the accounts did so with an air of celebration: What an achievement! Musk is the first to reach that incredible status! Wow! Breathless Fox News hosts said if you stacked all of Musk’s money in a pile it could reach the sun. Maybe one day his riches will reach Mars, his preferred destination.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, we learned this week that hourly wages had fallen by 0.8 percent over the last year when adjusted for inflation, which spiked to 4.2 percent. This is largely the result of surging energy prices, up 23.5 percent from a year ago, thanks to Donald Trump’s reckless war with Iran. The New York Times quoted an economist who succinctly stated the obvious: “Low-income consumers don’t have a lot of room to maneuver at this point.”

Gabriel Zucman, a French economist who leads a research group funded by the European Union, has calculated that the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires totals $20.1 trillion. That’s nearly a fifth of the whole world’s yearly output and nearly five times more than it was 15 years ago when these astronomically rich people possessed $4.5 trillion.

How great is the divide between not just the rich and poor, but the very richest and most everyone else? Data from the Federal Reserve shows that the top 1 percent of Americans own half of all stock, a principal source of wealth. And the top 0.1 percent—some 135,000 households—own stocks totaling $13.7 trillion, nearly double the amount ($7.1 trillion) owned by the bottom 90 percent, representing some 115 million households.

A chief reason for this growing concentration of wealth and escalation in inequality? Tax laws, particularly a significant reduction in the corporate tax rate, and other tax cuts benefitting the richest among us. As The New York Times rightly notes, this shift “increases the tax burden on workers, who pay both income and payroll taxes—two types of tax that barely scratch billionaire wealth. It also reduces the public revenue available to pay for health, education, defense, infrastructure and other public benefits at a time when governments are in deep debt.”

But Elon Musk’s new singular status cuts hard for another reason. It not only means he’s richer beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, he also has increased his power in the process. And we’ve already seen how this South African-born businessman, who grew up under apartheid, abuses his power.

With all his high-minded talk about turning humans into an inter-planetary species that can build a colony on Mars, Musk is the guy who bought Twitter for about $44 billion and proceeded to turn it into a hateful cesspool of right-wing extremist propaganda, including his own frequent white supremacist postings. He’s the guy who spent more than $290 million in the 2024 campaign to help Trump and other Republicans win, then could be seen on the day of Trump’s inauguration standing behind a presidential podium thrusting a Nazi salute—not once but twice.

He’s also the drug-addled sociopath who could be seen repeatedly beside Trump in the Oval Office—where he lied about the benefits of his DOGE operation to cut waste, fraud and abuse—while his young operatives without government experience dug through sensitive files to recklessly and illegally cut thousands of federal jobs and dismantle government programs. Most appallingly, this included ending funding for the U.S. Agency for International Aid, which has saved an estimated 92 million lives from the ravages of infectious diseases and malnutrition. The careless actions of Musk—who last year stood on a stage proudly wielding a chainsaw—was estimated to have caused the deaths of over 600,000 people in the first year, two-thirds of whom are children.

We are left to wonder how this man, who built his fortune with billions in government funding, will abuse his expanded power with dramatically increased resources. By some accounts, Musk’s personal wealth of more than $1 trillion exceeds the economies and annual budgets of more than 190 countries. This ensures that he will be pursued and feared in equal measure, with the kind of power that no one man should ever have. That’s the real story—the danger of oligarchic rule— that I think will continue to haunt us in the years ahead.

What do you think of Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire? What does it say to you about the nature of our society? How concerned are you about the concentration of wealth in general and the expanded wealth of Musk in particular? Is there any reason for optimism that he could actually use some of his wealth to address societal problems to make life better?

As always, I look forward to reading your observations and the opportunity for this America, America community to learn from each other. Please do be respectful in your remarks. Trolling will not be tolerated.

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There are days when it’s hard not to feel like the New York Knicks early on in Wednesday night’s game: 29 points down, overwhelmed by a powerful opponent on a roll, struggling to envision escaping humiliating defeat.

But that night at Madison Square Garden, a stadium full of fans and over 23 million TV viewers around the country were thrilled to realize that anything is possible when a team refuses to give up and fights back with all it’s got.

Yes, the Knicks’ one-point win in the closing seconds (107-106) was only a game, not the fate of the nation. But it was the greatest comeback in the history of the NBA finals—and the on-court heroics deserve to be seen as a reminder of what’s possible when a group of humans are clear in purpose and care enough to give everything they have.

Let’s contrast that with the team that’s currently running our country, captained by a man who keeps proving how little he cares about his job and how he remains convinced he can win with—as novelist John Kennedy Toole put it—a “confederacy of dunces.”

This week Donald Trump officially nominated Todd Blanche for Attorney General for crying out loud—his personal criminal defense attorney, his second Roy Cohn, who pushed the $1.8 billion slush fund that was intended to reward violent insurrectionists who attacked police officers on Jan. 6; who has helped lead the Epstein files coverup and denied there’s any evidence implicating his boss; who arranged for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to be transferred to a cushy minimum-security prison; and who has pursued vindictive prosecutions against Trump’s perceived enemies like former FBI director James Comey.

Asked in April if he wanted the permanent AG job—after Pam Bondi was fired and he replaced her as the acting head of the Justice Department—Blanche communicated where his priorities reside: “I love working for President Trump…If he chooses to nominate me, that's an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say ‘thank you very much—I love you, sir.’”

So much for an independent DOJ. So much for justice.

Yet Blanche—an actual lawyer—almost looks like a credible appointment when contrasted with blockhead Bill Pulte, who Trump picked as acting Director of National Intelligence, even though Pulte has zero experience in intelligence. That appointment was so bad that even typically obsequious Republicans couldn’t stomach it, leading Trump to name Jay Clayton for the job instead. Clayton currently serves as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and was previously a chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But the Trump players—this band largely comprised of sycophants and miscreants—take their direction from a man who is untethered from reality, deluded into believing he’s winning when he’s losing and doubles-down on his wrong-headed ideas.

“I love the inflation,” Donald Trump said Wednesday, the same day we learned that inflation rose to 4.2 percent, its highest level in three years. This is the same guy who said last month, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” He’s the team captain who has repeatedly insisted that rising prices are really falling prices and affordability issues are just a hoax.

We can believe him when he tells us how little he cares about the economic well-being of most Americans, especially as he’s focused on building himself a billion-dollar ballroom and other vanity projects to console his fragile ego.

Even after the Knicks won Wednesday night, going up 3-1 in the best-of-seven series, its top players said they’ll be watching the game’s film to figure out what they did wrong and how they can do better for Saturday’s game.

But the Republicans’ “top player” can’t be bothered with looking at film. He has no interest in learning from his mistakes or even acknowledging that he ever makes mistakes. He behaves as if he doesn’t know or care when his team’s finals—the Nov. 3 midterms—even take place.

He’s convinced that he can keep running failing plays and get a winning outcome. He believes he can bludgeon us all into accepting his false picture, which is why he could not take it and walked out when Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker asked him for evidence that he won in 2020 and that California’s primaries last week were rigged against Republicans.

He may assume he can ignore the rules and the refs. He and his hostile team may believe they can abuse their opponents without consequence. But that only works if their opponents lack the determination to defeat them.

Yesterday after Trump threatened to bomb Iran “VERY HARD” and seize its oil and gas infrastructure on Kharg Island, he backed down. Once again, he insisted that negotiations have heated up, “brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved.”

This increases CNN’s tally of at least 38 times when he’s publicly claimed that a deal was imminent or that “Iran was desperate to cut one.” Which would be hilarious if it weren’t so dangerous. It is both absurd and painfully real.

But let’s not doubt that the Iranians can see how ridiculous Trump and his team is, indeed that they have the upper hand and can slow down this awful game and ensure victory when Trump finally gives up.

Between now and Nov. 3, we need to demand that the democratic opponents of this careless Tump team recognize that they too can emerge victorious. That means fighting back hard. That means refusing to be discouraged by the ongoing threats of a team of cheaters who reject the rules, abuse the refs and whine that the game is rigged.

(That also may mean believing, as my Six Questions guest George Conway does, that the utterly corrupt Trump must be removed from office—and that making that happen requires conviction and commitment, not accepting business as usual. You can watch the new episode here.)

Democrats should take strength from the New York Knicks who never gave up Wednesday night and now are on the verge of an extraordinary victory in the NBA championships. I urge everyone to look at the celebrations in the streets of New York after the Knicks won that night and imagine what the celebration will look like after the Republicans are soundly defeated in the midterms.

And if that’s not enough, we should all pay attention to the prediction of Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who lost his primary to the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton. Trump, Cornyn said yesterday, is “going to have the most miserable two years of his life in the last two years of his term, I think, because I think November is going to be a disaster.”

Let’s go.

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I reached out to George—a fierce and insightful Trump critic, a skilled lawyer and now a congres…

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Let me be honest: I don’t like to write about the war with Iran, especially because this unauthorized war of choice was launched without clear justification, sober assessment of the potential for global disaster or a real exit strategy. But I think it’s important to grapple not just with the choices made but the consequences that this reckless adventure has yielded.

Donald Trump has lied by declaring victory repeatedly. He has dragged us through his fantasy of Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” illustrated by the Iranians holding up white flags and “crying uncle.” As the talks with Iran have faltered, he’s underscored his disregard for the gravity of war and the matter of life and death by whining that he finds the slow, difficult negotiations with the regime to be “very boring.”

But war is never as easy as imagined by people like Trump who never served yet romanticize violence, glamorize warfare and expect victory at the snap of his fingers.

Over the weekend, Iran attacked U.S. military bases in Bahrain and Kuwait, according to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. This included seven ballistic missiles that flew over residential areas in Kuwait. Iran claimed the attack was in response to U.S. strikes on one of its tankers and radar sites in Goruk and Qeshm Island, both in the Strait of Hormuz. Then, late on Sunday, Iran further escalated the conflict by firing missiles at Israel—this following Israel’s attack against Iran-backed Hezbollah on the outskirts of Beirut.

These escalations, amid what’s supposed to be a ceasefire that began in April, further complicates the possibility of successful negotiations to end the war. As oil and gas prices continue to rise in the U.S. and the dwindling oil supply continues to disrupt supply chains and threaten the global economy, the pressure to find a solution to end the conflict should be a high priority for Trump. Instead, he’d much rather focus on repainting the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, building his billion-dollar ballroom, erecting his gaudy, over-sized arch, staging a cage fight on White House grounds and pursuing other taxpayer-funded vanity projects.

If only we had a real president

Of course, if he were a serious person—not a tragic joke—he would have grasped that there was a reason why previous U.S. presidents chose not to go to war with Iran. He would have read the intel that underscored the probability that the Iranians would choke the global economy by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.

If he were a healthy person—not a sociopath lacking the capacity to comprehend the suffering of others—he would have worried about the loss of life and the scale of injuries (on both sides) and feared triggering a regional conflict that would seriously harm Middle East allies and U.S. military bases.

If he cared about quaint qualities like honesty and responsibility—not just self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment—he would have resisted the pressure of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch the war and remembered his own campaign promises not to pursue a war with Iran or drag the U.S. into another “forever war.”

And if he had a basic understanding of the value of collaboration and mutual support—rather than acting like a bully and a malignant dictator free to operate alone—he would have reached out to American allies and members of Congress before launching a war that could eventually cost upwards of a trillion dollars and expecting to successfully strong-arm former allies to do his bidding. He would have grasped that the trust of allies depends on cooperation.

The lingering impact of war

But there’s another side to this, which is how wars affect the participants psychologically, not just during the conflict itself but often for decades to follow. Unsurprisingly, data from the National Center for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) has found that veterans are more likely than civilians to suffer from PTSD.

It’s particularly interesting to note how long the impacts of traumatic events can linger. The center found that 29 percent of the veterans of the War on Terror have experienced PTSD, including those who served in Iraq dating back to 2003, while 15 percent continued to report the disorder during the last year.

Similarly, 21 percent of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War have experienced PTSD, and 14 percent still faced the after-affects in the last year—a full 35 years later. We have every reason to assume that survivors of even more extended combat, such as in Vietnam or World War II, experienced higher levels of PTSD.

This has been on my mind in recent days amid the intensifying discussion about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine. Indeed there’s been growing discomfort and consternation about Platner’s alleged sexually explicit texting and volatile relationships with women, providing complicated new information for Maine voters to unravel as they decide who to advance in their primary election this Tuesday. (This is further complicated by the fact that one key source is a GOP operative, causing Platner to insist that her claims are politically motivated even while acknowledging that he was “a far from perfect boyfriend.”)

Maine voters are faced with a choice: Should we vote for Platner, despite the reports, because he has the best chance of beating incumbent Susan Collins and helping Democrats take back the Senate? Or should we reject Platner because of the questions these allegations raise about his integrity?

But it’s reasonable to assume that some of his volatile and questionable behavior is related to the psychological impact of war. Platner, who served three combat tours in Iraq as a Marine, defended himself by explaining to supporters at a Friday rally that he experienced a period of “darkness” after returning from Iraq as he battled untreated PTSD. This was not the first time he’s discussed his mental state resulting from combat to explain some of his bad choices.

California Rep. Ro Khanna, who backs Platner, underlined the consequences of military conflict. “We broke thousands of young men by sending them into dumb wars,” Khanna said at the same rally, adding that Platner has been working to become “a better man” in recent years.

Fifteen years after U.S. combat troops completed their initial withdrawal from Iraq, that conflict has now been revived as the contest between Platner and Collins highlights the choices each person made and the consequences that followed. “We’ve watched her for decades vote to support these stupid, pointless foreign wars like the one she voted to send me off to fight,” Platner said Friday.

This followed the comment of Collins in late May, who told reporters, “I respect anyone who steps forward to serve their country, but the fact is that was Platner’s decision to serve. He was not drafted.”

To no surprise, this remark reportedly incensed Platner. “When running against someone like me who has lived the material consequences of her bad decisions,” Platner told The Washington Post a week ago, “I don’t really think she knows what to do with that.”

He also said he think Collins has “learned no lessons” from the Iraq war. But she was one of three Republican senators who voted in April for the resolution to push Trump to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities in Iran.

Time will tell exactly what lessons Collins has learned that she can apply to the Iran conflict. But we already know that there’s no chance that the growing human cost will convince Donald Trump to accelerate the exit. (Let’s note that the combined casualties from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may reach a nearly unfathomable 2 million this year, yet Trump has obviously lost interest in doing anything to end that horror.)

After all, he’s the shameless narcissist who told Howard Stern in 1993 that having unprotected sex in the 1980s was his “personal Vietnam.” And more: “I feel like a great and very brave solider.” This from the guy who avoided the draft by claiming he had bone spurs.

To date, 13 Americans have reportedly been killed in the Iran war and over 400 have been injured, many with traumatic brain injuries. Add to this the ripple effect for their families and friends, who, even after an end to the conflict is finally negotiated, will be coping with the terrible decisions made by Trump and his enablers, possibly for decades. We should hope that the horrors triggered by Trump will motivate future leaders to act with compassion and all the seriousness that war requires.

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One More Thing: If you missed the first episode of my new weekly show, Six Questions with Steven Beschloss, I hope you’ll check out my conversation with Mary Trump in which we discussed her uncle’s accelerating cognitive decline and national trauma. This week, I’ll be talking with George Conway on the critical issue of accountability. It goes live on Wednesday at 7PM ET.

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"President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Thursday.

Seriously. This is not a fabricated quote.

This is the actual response to a request by the Daily Beast for a comment about the slumped-over man who could not keep his eyes open while his sycophantic operatives blathered on about “beautiful, clean coal” and a planned $700 million investment of our money to prop up a dirty, dying form of energy.

As if we don’t have eyes to see. As if we haven’t seen this before. As if Americans will endlessly tolerate the non-stop lying by Trump “leadership” that thinks most Americans are fools.

Are they right?

California Rep. Ted Lieu wasn’t having it. “The President fell asleep on the job again today,” he posted Thursday, adding, “The American people trust their own eyes. November is coming.”

What do you think? How much more lying will we take? Will we tolerate a man who is obviously unable to discharge the duties of his office and makes our nation a laughingstock? Will we continue to endure White House comms people lying through their teeth? Will we allow ourselves to be made fools of by both the sleeping man and his lying spokespersons?

Or will we—and by “we” I mean a strong majority of Americans—use our collective power in November to begin to put an end to this madness?

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The last days have shown signs that Donald Trump’s power is declining. The cracks in the bulwark are real: A federal judge is demanding the removal of his name from the Kennedy Center. Four House Republicans joined Democrats to demand him to withdraw U.S. troops from Iran or seek the formal approval of Congress to go to war. His $1.8 billion slush fund to pay off J6 insurrectionists and other “wrongfully treated” thugs is nearly dead.

But on Tuesday this week two events coincided that offered a harsh reminder of the continuing war for America’s future that will not soon wane. Together, they illustrate how broken our system is—how profoundly it’s lost touch with core values of a functioning democracy—and how the person accelerating the breakage is not some far-away adversary, but rather occupies our White House. His corrupt interest: fealty and personal profit at the expense of the public good.

One is Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte to serve as the acting Director of National Intelligence. This despite the fact that he has absolutely zero experience in intelligence and has abused his current role as Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to pursue fake mortgage fraud cases against Trump’s perceived political enemies.

It’s no wonder he’s been nicknamed “Little Trump.” This the kind of unprincipled henchman that Trump wants to do whatever he asks, the truth be damned. It’s hard to overstate the danger of having someone like this in a position responsible for keeping the country safe by providing unvarnished truth. Take note of Trump’s remark upon the appointment: In his new part-time position—yes, Trump didn’t even think he needs someone in the job full-time—Pulte “may find out some things about the rigged elections.”

The other is the firing of correspondent Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes, the nation’s top-rated news program, after 22 years of service there and 37 years overall with CBS News. This because he dared to question in a meeting the firing of several veteran colleagues and to criticize the intentions of his new Trump-appeasing bosses who have pushed him to—as he put it—“inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “include assertions that are unverified.”

“The waste is heartbreaking,” Pelley said in a statement after his firing. He wasn’t referring to himself. He was talking about the madness of tearing apart a successful, money-making journalistic institution that has topped the ratings every Sunday night for most of the last half century.

We’re talking about a program that painstakingly gathers facts, asks hard questions of the elite, demands answers and speaks truth to power. It has depended on journalists and leadership who believe in the duty of a free press to challenge authority and expose corruption and wrongdoing without fear or favor.

I urge you to read Pelley’s full statement after his firing if you haven’t already. He dismisses the claim that the show had become antiquated or otherwise lost sway, as opposed to the likely truth that it failed to serve the political agenda of its new owners, the right-wing Ellison family.

“For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world,” he wrote. “This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.”

Pelley also noted that the takeover by Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press who has no broadcast television experience, has included allowing politicians to choose their interviewers—and that “incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc.”

And why, oh why, is this fabled institution—this “number-one program in America for decades” that has sought to deliver stories with “integrity, quality and humanity”—being torn apart? The answer is both stupidly simple and sinister:

When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

He concludes like this: “The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well…I pray for a day when…sanity, competence, and courage return.”

He’s not the only one.

It is, as Pelley states, such a waste. But our response cannot be forlorn or passive. America’s future depends on rejecting these attacks on a strong free press and advancing leaders in the public and private sectors that are committed to democracy over autocracy and the needs of people over the billionaire class. In a sane world, this would not even need to be asserted nor be a tall order.

Kentucky’s retiring senior senator, Mitch McConnell, a man who had the opportunity to use his power to help ensure Trump’s conviction after January 6, now says the right thing about someone like Pulte. Here’s his statement:

Very few Senate-confirmable positions come with statutory eligibility requirements. There are good reasons why the Director of National Intelligence is one of them. Anyone performing this role of such immense public trust must have the extensive national security experience required by statute, and no nominee who falls short of this requirement will earn my vote.

In another era, these words would be an uplifting example of elected Republicans credibly voicing their duty to uphold the Constitution and serve the country. But these words from the former Republican majority leader mean little now. He abandoned his duty. He helped make possible Trump’s reckless and corrupt second term, the rise of sycophantic operatives like Bill Pulte and the demise of serious professionals like Scott Pelley.

The task of breaking this hostile regime’s power rests with all of us. There are 150 days until the November midterms.

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With her expected…

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I’m taking the liberty of resending this in case you didn’t have the opportunity to comment and wanted to do so. I’m excited to share this announcement for my new weekly show in partnership with Lincoln Square Media. You can check out the first episode going live at 7PM ET tonight, June 3, with Mary Trump. I hope you’ll check it out and make it a weekly habit as I question expert guests in pursuit of answers to both understand and overcome this cruel and chaotic chapter.

Steven

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Lincoln Square Media is expanding its roster with the launch of Six Questions with Steven Beschloss, a weekly streaming show and video podcast premiering Wednesday, June 3 at 7 p.m. ET. Beschloss, an award-winning journalist, author, and filmmaker who writes the America, America newsletter on Substack, will also join Lincoln Square as a regular contributor.

Each episode is built around six probing, interrelated questions designed to move past the daily news cycle and into the deeper forces shaping American democracy. Where cable news chases the “what,” Six Questions is after the “why” — examining the legal, psychological, sociological, and moral dimensions of a country navigating an extraordinary moment.

“We are living through an era of unprecedented stress and assault on our core democratic frameworks and values,” Beschloss said. “With ‘Six Questions,’ our goal is to cast aside superficial narratives to identify and assess systemic realities, while also offering our busy audience speed and focus. The daily news cycle isn’t our final destination; it’s merely the starting point for a deeper pursuit of clarity and insight in a noisy and increasingly troubling world.”

Susan J. Demas, CEO and Executive Editor of Lincoln Square Media, called the launch a natural extension of the network’s mission.

“Steven Beschloss has spent his career asking the questions that matter most — about power, democracy, and the forces that shape our national story,” Demas said. “We are proud to launch ‘Six Questions’ and have Steven join Lincoln Square Media as a regular contributor, giving him the platform and the structure to do that work at exactly the moment America needs it most.”

The premiere episode features Mary L Trump in a conversation about Donald Trump’s psychological functioning and its impact on American democracy and the national psyche. Subsequent episodes will feature George Conway on the legal landscape for holding the Trump administration accountable (June 10) and Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. on systemic racism and authoritarianism (June 17).

Six Questions with Steven Beschloss will be available on Substack, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

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Even now, as our country of 342 million is stuck with unbelievably mediocre and incompetent people controlling the White House and Congress, the United States is blessed with extraordinarily gifted musicians and artists who possess massive, global appeal. Even as Trump’s America has become a laughingstock and/or a pariah state to much of the world, deeply talented people continue to ply their craft and entertain millions and millions of excited concertgoers.

But, of course, few of those artists were sought to perform during the nation’s 250th celebration on the National Mall that should have been an opportunity to bring Americans together and showcase our creative excellence. Instead, from June 25 to July 10, the Great American State Fair planned on a lineup of musical acts popular in the 1980s and ‘90s, including Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, Morris Day and The Time, Young MC, Martina McBride, Bret Michaels and The Commodores.

But it turns out that these artists were hired by Freedom250—the so-called nonpartisan group organizing the fair—based on a lie. They were told this event would not be about politics or buffing up the Trump regime.

"Unfortunately, what was presented to us as a celebration of our country has evolved into something much more divisive than what I agreed to be a part of,” Bret Michaels said. As Martina McBride had it, "I was presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading.” In a joint statement, The Commodores said, "Our music has always been our voice and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party. We support the betterment of all Americans.”

So they all dropped out, as did Morris Day and the Time and Young MC. Vanilla Ice and Fab Morvan of the original Milli Vanilli are still in, more than willing to suck up to Trump.

This is not the most important story in the world. But here’s the thing: Trump’s response underscores everything that’s wrong with having a man like this in power, particularly at a singular moment when we should be coming together to recognize what has been and what can be accomplished. While a Freedom250 spokesperson described Trump as “the visionary behind the Great American State Fair,” the musicians’ rejection clearly bruised his fragile ego.

“Cancel it,” he posted, complaining about “overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain.”

That’s not all. He had a solution—this from the malignant narcissist who insisted years ago that he alone can fix it. Check this out:

I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate “Artists,” and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!…I don’t want so-called ‘Artists’ that get paid far too much money, who aren’t happy. I only want to be surrounded by Happy People, Smart People, Successful People, and People that know how to WIN. So, by copy of this TRUTH, I am ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally on Wednesday, Washington, D.C., same time, same location. Only Great Patriots invited — It will be a Wild and Beautiful Celebration of America.

I make a point of not amplifying the unhinged rants spewed by this unwell man who’s been handed the levers of power. But the level of rage-fueled self-delusion, the hostility toward performers who disagree with being politically exploited, the absorption with what he calls people who “know how to WIN” and his planned deployment of yet another one of his grotesque rallies as a “beautiful celebration of America” that will only be attended by “Great Patriots” (read: his supporters) encapsulates why this moment is so unhinged and so dangerous. Add to this his violence-glorifying program of a UFC cage fight on the White House grounds.

We live in a time of enormous complexity and uncertainty. Our world faces grave challenges that could lead to the demise of life as we know it. Were sanity in place, it would be obvious to the overwhelming majority of American voters that it’s critical to put the best and brightest in power.

Instead, we are being held hostage by an utter buffoon, who lacks one iota of self-awareness and responds to an obvious humiliation by lashing out against his perceived enemies (in this case, “third rate ‘Artists’”) and puffing himself up as the greatest solution to all of our problems.

Forget humility. Forget rationality and calm. Forget the most basic capacity to grasp that the 250th celebration of America is an opportunity for unity. Instead, this mentally ill guy is posting AI images of himself as Jesus, installed on Mt. Rushmore and on horseback side-by-side with George Washington.

Frankly, it turns my stomach.

But more than that, this disgraceful display is a pattern that should be convincing responsible officials to pursue his removal. As his failures mount, he lashes out in increasingly extreme and dangerous ways. It’s nearly two months now since Trump threatened Iran like this if its leaders didn’t agree to his half-cocked demands to surrender: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

I don’t know if you recall the level of dread that permeated across our country that April day, but I sure do. And as horrifying as this threat was, that same post also included his fantasizing, in which he insisted, “we have Complete and Total Regime change, where different, smarter and less radicalized minds prevail,” and “something revolutionarily wonderful can happen” resulting in “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

These were the ravings of a deeply addled mind, and they provide more than enough evidence that Donald Trump is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Nearly eight weeks later, we are still experiencing the repeated whiplash of his declarations that the negotiations are succeeding and the war is about to end, followed by new threats to bomb Iran.

His failures are mounting. His lashing out is accelerating and growing uglier (I needed a shower after scrolling through the cesspool of his Truth Social feed). His humiliations are increasingly obvious. Cancel the music, he said, “just like I canceled my involvement with the failing and unsafe to be in Kennedy Center,” after a federal judge demanded Friday to remove his name from the building.

With this man still in power, July 4, 2026 will be a perverse day, as freedom-loving, democracy-loving Americans are left to worry about the state of the nation and its future. I would suggest celebrating America’s 250th anniversary on Nov. 3, as we join a large majority of our fellow citizens in ending the chokehold of Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress. This will be our chance to prove our devotion to the promise of America.

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First, it was Attorney General Pam Bondi, now it’s acting AG Todd Blanche, serving—not we the people, but—Donald J. Trump. That lack of judicial independence has included an appalling parade of injustices, including prosecuting a growing list of Trump critics, ignoring due process to accelerate deportations, refusing to bring charges against a lawless ICE operation even when its agents commit murder and refusing to follow the law to fully release the Epstein files. This Department of Injustice has become a tool of abuse, cover-up and retribution in service to one man’s whims and disorders.

But yesterday was a notable day as three federal judges made rulings that pushed back against the regime’s efforts to enable Trump’s corruption and criminality. We have good reason to mark May 29 in our calendars as a sign that—while not definitive of just outcomes—the wheels of justice are still turning.

Let’s briefly consider these three rulings:

• In a strong symbolic act, Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ruled that Trump’s name must be removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He also blocked the plan to close the center for two years. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” the judge wrote.

• Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia stopped—at least temporarily—the DOJ from launching or operating Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund, the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund intended to reward convicted criminals and others who pursued actions to overturn the 2020 election results. The judge’s order bars Trump’s regime from transferring money to the fund, as well as considering any claims or disbursing any monies.

• U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami reopened Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, stating that she wants to investigate “grievous allegations” that Trump’s quick push to resolve the suit by launching a fund was “premised on deception.” Judge Williams’ ruling to revive the case followed a filing by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges who said Trump’s “settlement” agreement raised doubts about his “candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system.” The judge’s order also asserts that she is “empowered to investigate serious misconduct,” demanding Trump’s lawyers to inform her by June 12 as to whether the suit should be revived because “the court was the victim of a fraud” and whether the resulting agreement was an effort by Trump and the DOJ “to avoid judicial scrutiny.”

Trump’s angry response to the order to remove his name from the Kennedy Center ludicrously summarizes his overall mentality. “There has never been a President of the United States who has been treated so unfairly by the Courts as I but, that’s OK, I will continue to do, what is considered to be, a great job for the wonderful people of our Country,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

Oh, the gaslighting by a man who’s convinced that he is the nation’s greatest victim—that it is he who has been treated “so unfairly,” not he and his operatives who are treating so many others and the judicial system itself so egregiously.

Of course, yesterday’s rulings are not the end of this saga of American justice. There will be appeals aplenty. The DOJ’s unsurprising response, for example, to Judge Brinkema’s stoppage of the criminals’ slush fund: “We will not allow the policy preferences of judges to interfere with our efforts to provide restitution to victims of lawfare.”

But taken together, the actions by these three federal judges does give reason for optimism—that Trump and his regime cannot simply run roughshod over our judicial system and ignore the rule of law in the rush to appease a despot’s bottomless appetite. And maybe, just maybe, the wheels of justice will keep turning?

So what do you think? Do you believe that justice can triumph? Or has the scale of destruction and weaponization of the Justice Department to serve Trump’s hunger for retribution and unfettered corruption broken your belief? If the latter, is there an event or ruling that can change your thinking, up to and including impeachment and conviction of Donald J. Trump?

As always, I look forward to reading your observations and the opportunity for the America, America community to learn from each other. Please do be respectful in your remarks. Trolling will not be tolerated.

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I am not the guy to tell you we’re winning everyday. The ongoing destruction, the desecrations and violations, are grave. Once we have a real president again, he or she will have to devote an extraordinary amount of time to cleaning up the awful mess caused by this corrupt human who never should have been allowed anywhere near the levers of power.

Yes, some days the horrors are particularly hard to stomach, including yesterday, when news broke that Donald Trump’s Injustice Department was considering another vindictive prosecution, this time of E. Jean Carroll. She is the courageous 82-year-old writer who was raped and defamed by Trump—and won multiple convictions against him—and now faces further assault from Trump and Todd Blanche, his abusive criminal defense attorney, currently installed as the acting attorney general.

But our challenge is to both comprehend and confront these dispiriting attacks while also recognizing that this hateful regime will not last—that there are visible cracks in the bulwark, indeed encouraging signs that its days are numbered. Here are five reasons for optimism.

1. The Democrats can win the Texas senate seat

Trump got his preferred candidate this week, Ken Paxton, who won handily against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a runoff. Impeached by his own party, indicted on multiple felony counts for investment fraud, a serial cheater, Paxton is a walking, talking illustration of corruption in politics. He’s running against James Talarico, a gifted speaker, a former public school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian who leans into his faith to articulate the positive values that drive his public service. “This is a spiritual battle between selfishness and service, between greed and greatness,” Talarico said at a Houston rally Wednesday.

The contrast could not be more vivid, suggesting that the Democrats have a real shot at taking this seat if Talarico succeeds at convincing Texans to reject Paxton’s corruption and extremism. If Talarico wins it would be the first time a Democrat won a statewide election in more than three decades. And even if he fails? The Republicans will likely spend hundreds of millions of dollars to hold the seat—dollars that won’t be spent in other races.

2. Trump has added to the number of aggrieved Republicans

John Cornyn is respected and popular among his Republican peers and a reliable vote for Trump. Now he sees how little his loyalty was valued by Trump, as do other Republicans who kowtow to the malignant one, even when they know he’s wrong. It’s a damn shame that it takes defeat and the impending loss of power to convince him to speak up, but we can hope he’ll follow the lead of North Carolina’s retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, who’s been sticking it to more than a few of the reckless miscreants surrounding Trump. And let’s not forget the promising words of defeated Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie about the Epstein files: “We’ve taken out two dozen CEOs, an ambassador, a prince, a prime minister, a minister of culture and that was just six months. I’ve got seven months left in Congress.”

3. The staggering corruption may actually have limits

It’s not like the Republicans have suddenly discovered their morality and their duty to the Constitution. But Trump’s appalling $1.8 billion slush fund to award Jan. 6 convicted criminals and others deemed wrongfully treated by the Biden Justice Department has actually triggered real criticism, not just from a scattering of Republicans but reportedly dozens. It seems there actually are Republicans who don’t think it’s a good idea to award violent insurrectionists who assaulted police officers. Imagine that.

The opposition was enough to derail an immigration bill vote, causing Wisconsin’s Trump-reliable Sen. Ron Johnson to acknowledge this as a “galactic blunder” and Sen. Mitch McConnell to call it “utterly stupid, morally wrong.” Add to this the likely fact that congressional funding for Trump’s grotesque billion-dollar ballroom likely cannot garner enough votes to go ahead.

4. Disapprovals of Trump are rising—and he doesn’t care

The Economist yesterday tracked Trump’s net approval at minus-24. Voters disapprove of Trump on every key issue: inflation/prices, jobs and the economy, foreign policy, immigration and crime. Not only do three-fourths of Americans say the economy is “fair” or “poor,” two-thirds recognize that it’s getting worse. The Economist forecasts that Democrats have a nine out of ten chance of retaking the House and called control of the Senate “a toss-up.”

But the recklessly untethered Trump has said loud and clear how indifferent he is. A few weeks ago, he bluntly said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” And Wednesday at a Cabinet meeting, he said, “I don’t care about the midterms. That’s not much of a surprise to anyone paying attention, but the Republicans are panicking. Note this unfettered remark from Thom Tillis: “The stupid stuff is killing our chances!” Said one GOP pollster, “If his highest goal were to maintain control of Congress, he would not be doing what he is doing.”

Add to this the continuing mess he’s making in the Middle East in his unsupported, unauthorized war of choice with Iran, which is adding to the opposition even by Republicans who actually believed him when he pledged that “you’re not going to have a war with me.” There are no signs that he knows how to end it—his pendulum swings are exhausting—or that he cares about the economic repercussions sure to be felt well after the midterms.

5. The demand for accountability is rising and real

How many violations and violators of the law are there in this Trump regime? I don’t know that I can count that high—and as long as the GOP holds onto power, the more reason we have to doubt that justice will be served. But this week a Florida Bar complaint was filed against former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who surely has behaved like the law does not apply to her.

The ethics complaint was filed by a coalition of legal groups defending democracy and the rule of law, as well as more than 120 retired judges, law professors and attorneys, including the retired chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. They targeted her violation of professional conduct, which included her mis-handling of the Epstein files, her “misleading the public,” “reckless disregard” for the law and a “shocking lack of competence” in failing to properly redact sensitive victim information. The groups also accused Bondi of violating state bar guidelines in her role in political prosecutions and violating more than 100 court orders in immigration detention cases.

This complaint follows a previous one submitted last June, which the bar declined to pursue stating that it “does not investigate or prosecute sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office.” Well, those days are over for Ms. Bondi, so maybe the reluctant Florida Bar will discover its duty now.

This is not exactly a call for full accountability, but it is a start. And may this be just the beginning for Bondi and all her other lawless, arrogant pals who believe their duty is to the corrupt, felonious Trump and not the rule of law. It will take a Democratic Congress and ultimately a Democratic president for full accountability to proceed, but it’s a positive sign that the will is there.

We have another 157 days until the Nov. 3 midterms. It will take the Republicans’ overwhelming defeat before we can genuinely envision this hateful regime ending up in the dustbin of history. Our optimism then will be truly earned and deeply satisfying.

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In 2024, on Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, President Joe Biden reflected on his son Beau, who died of brain cancer—what the loving father believed was the result of his exposure to toxic burn pits in Iraq as a soldier.

As it is for so many of you, the pain of his loss is with me every day…But so is the pride I feel in his service, as if I can still hear him saying, 'It's my duty, Dad. It's my duty.' Duty. That was the code my son lived by and the creed all of you live by.

Duty to country. Duty to service. Duty to the defense of democracy and freedom.

This mindset, this dedication by father and son, is on my mind this Memorial Day. It’s a far cry from the epic corruption and greed that fuels Donald Trump and his sons.

You surely recall Trump dismissing fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers” back in 2018. It’s no wonder that he would carelessly send Americans into harm’s way now for a reckless adventure in Iran.

Sacrifice and duty? He didn’t get it then and he doesn’t grasp it now.

But rather than dwell here on the tragic mistake of putting such a man in power, this is a day to remember the meaning of courage and sacrifice. I am sharing with you my essay from Memorial Day last year.

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Sacrifices Made for Freedom

Every Memorial Day we are provided an opportunity to pause and reflect on the ultimate sacrifice made by Americans throughout our history. Every loss is a tragedy, and the numbers tally into the millions.

It’s impossible to fully comprehend the loss of about 420,000 Americans in World War II and at least 620,000 Americans in the Civil War. Add to that the loss of over 25,000 American soldiers who died during the Revolutionary War, which represented about one percent of the colonies’ total population (equivalent to 3.4 million in America’s current population).

I focus on these three wars because of the clarity of mission—indeed the moral clarity—that defined their sacrifice and deepened the idea of what it means to be American and uphold our democratic ideals and principles. From the the fight to liberate America from an oppressive British monarchy, to the fight to end slavery, to the fight against Nazism and fascism, we can only hope the Americans who lost their lives understood their profound role in providing us today the promise of democracy and freedom.

Over this weekend, I visited Newport, Rhode Island, once a significant commercial port until the British occupation forced trade and traders elsewhere. The city is home to the oldest Jewish synagogue in the United States, dating to 1763 and providing a place of worship for Jewish families who first came to Newport in 1658 to escape religious persecution in Spain and Portugal.

America’s newly elected first President George Washington came to Newport in 1790, not long after Rhode Island was the last of the original 13 colonies to ratify the U.S. Constitution. There’s a famous letter that he wrote to the “Hebrew Congregation” in Newport in which he articulated his dedication to freedom and the goals of a newly born nation—something that he proved again and again on the battlefield.

Washington began broadly after noting “the days of difficulty and danger which are past” and his hope for prosperity and security. “If we have the wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored,” he wrote, “we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.”

Then he addressed more directly what the notion of freedom means. This America has “given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”

And more: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people…for, happily, the Government of the United States…gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance…[and] every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

“May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths,” he concluded.

I won’t dwell on this day on our current malady and the despotism that Washington would presciently describe in his farewell address in 1796. Rather, this Memorial Day remains an opportunity to give thanks to those who believed in the cause of America and proved it with their lives.

This is a beautiful tradition, dating back at a national level to Decoration Day—the laying of flowers on the graves of soldiers, specifically those who lost their lives during the Civil War. On May 30, 1868, James A. Garfield, then an Ohio Congressman who had served as a Union major general, spoke to a crowd of more than 5,000 gathered at Arlington National Cemetery, where over 16,000 Civil War soldiers were buried.

“I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here,” Garfield began, gazing out across row after row of white wooden headboards. “We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country, they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.”

Earlier, on May 1, 1865, as many as 10,000 newly emancipated slaves and some white missionaries held a parade around a racetrack in Charleston, South Carolina. This was in the first weeks after the war’s end and followed the proper burial of 260 disease-ridden Union soldiers who had been hastily put in a mass grave.

On that day, according to news reports discovered by historian David Blight, thousands of Black schoolchildren carried flower bouquets and sang “John Brown’s Body,” the popular anthem of Union soldiers. “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave/But his soul goes marching on,” they sang. “John Brown died that the slaves might be free/His soul goes marching on.”

We cannot fully comprehend or measure the scale of sacrifice so many Americans and their families have made, including in more recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Each loss is a tragedy. But we can cherish and honor their collective memory by doing what we can now to sustain their courageous commitment to securing a world of democracy, tolerance and freedom.

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Donald Trump’s so-called Justice Department filed a motion yesterday to remove the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III along with several other Oath Keepers who took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection. You can be sure that Rhodes is one of those violent J6 operatives that Trump thinks was wrongfully treated.

“The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that the dismissal of this criminal case is in the interest of justice,” the motion stated.

“Justice.”

It’s hard to overstate how disgraceful and dangerous this action is for our country. In the days after J6, Rhodes said, “My only regret is that they didn’t bring rifles.”

Sound like the kind of “patriotic” American Trump wants to “stand by” as part of his personal militia?

It’s important to remember the fierce response of Judge Amit Mehta when he sentenced the remorseless Rhodes to 18 years in prison almost exactly three years ago in 2023. “I dare say, Mr. Rhodes—and I never have said this to anyone I have sentenced—you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta said.

The judge also made clear the gravity of the crime that Rhodes had committed. “A seditious conspiracy—when you take those two concepts and put it together—is among the most serious crimes an American can commit,” he said. “It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country.”

I am sharing below the fuller story behind the judge’s words and his commitment to serving justice. My essay, “Stewart Rhodes’ Crime Against America,” published on Memorial Day May 29, 2023, was surely influenced by my reflection on the hundreds of thousands of Americans who sacrificed their lives to fend off the Nazis and the myriad attacks against freedom and our democratic way of life.

Anti-government extremists like Stewart Rhodes are a vivid expression of the seditious peril that America was facing on J6 and in the days that followed. It’s an appalling fact that this man served less than two years in jail before Trump granted him a pardon last year.

But the despicable effort by Trump’s Justice Department now—to deny Rhodes’ traitorous criminality and free him from the contempt and condemnation that he deserves—is one more reminder that the attack on our nation on Jan. 6, 2021 is a war that has not ended.

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Stewart Rhodes’ Crime Against America

You probably saw that the founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, the longest sentence thus far for anyone connected to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. You might have heard that Judge Amit Mehta—born in India, a graduate of Georgetown University and University of Virginia Law School, appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2014—had strong words for the remorseless felon.

“I dare say, Mr. Rhodes—and I never have said this to anyone I have sentenced—you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta said.

But I think on this Memorial Day, a day when we remember Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country to defend the U.S. Constitution and our democratic system of government, it’s worth pausing on some of the detail in Judge Mehta’s remarks. They served to explain his reasoning as well as rebut the arrogant Rhodes’ self-serving rant. “I am a political prisoner,” Rhodes said, adding of his time in prison, “My goal will be to be an ‘American Solzhenitsyn’ to expose the criminality of this regime.”

“You are not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes. That is not why you are here,” Mehta said. “It is not because of your beliefs. It is not because Joe Biden is the president right now.”

The judge made clear the seriousness of the conviction of seditious conspiracy. “A seditious conspiracy—when you take those two concepts and put it together—is among the most serious crimes an American can commit. It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country,” Mehta said. “It is a series of acts in which you and others committed to use force, including potentially with weapons, against the government of the United States as it transitioned from one president to another. And what was the motive? You didn’t like the new guy.”

“What we absolutely cannot have,” he continued, “is a group of citizens who—because they did not like the outcome of an election, who did not believe the law was followed as it should be—foment revolution.”

Referring to Rhodes’ absence of remorse and his continuing attraction to violence, Mehta said, “It would be one thing, Mr. Rhodes, if after January 6 you had looked at what happened that day and said…that was not a good day for our democracy. But you celebrated it, you thought it was a good thing. Even as you have been incarcerated, you have continued to allude to violence as an acceptable means to address grievances.”

He had additional words when addressing Kelly Meggs, another (and more contrite) Oath Keeper defendant who received a lesser sentence of 12 years. “You don’t take to the streets with rifles,” he said. “You don’t hope that the president invokes the Insurrection Act so you can start a war in the streets…You don’t rush into the U.S. Capitol with the hope to stop the electoral vote count…It is astonishing to me how average Americans somehow transformed into criminals in the weeks before and on January 6.”

“Somehow transformed into criminals.” Judge Mehta did not hesitate asserting the key role of Rhodes, actions which he said amounted to domestic terrorism: “He was the one giving the orders. He was the one organizing the teams that day. He was the reason they were in fact in Washington, D.C. Oath Keepers wouldn’t have been there but for Stewart Rhodes, I don’t think anyone contends otherwise. He was the one who gave the order to go, and they went.”

These words were part of how the judge explained how so many that day in Washington, D.C. turned to violence. But they did not include discussion of the role of one Donald J. Trump in inciting that seditious conspiracy. That’s an indictment and a criminal trial that the nation has yet to see. And it raises the question: If Stewart Rhodes can be tried, convicted and sentenced for 18 years for seditious conspiracy, what about Donald Trump who continues to walk free? This question is more than rhetorical: We await the prosecutorial decision of Special Counsel Jack Smith.

One last note: Consider how many Americans have played a positive role in pushing back against dangerous extremists like Stewart Rhodes who remain convinced of the legitimacy of their violent behavior. In an eight-page letter to Judge Mehta, Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown’s law center, refuted Rhodes’ contention that he should receive a lighter sentence because of his founding work for the paramilitary Oath Keepers.

“Mr. Rhodes contends that the Oath Keepers is not an ‘extremist’ organization, but one that is quintessentially ‘American’ in its focus on mutual aid in times of crisis and upholding the United States Constitution,” McCord wrote. “This characterization ignores the many instances of illegal, dangerous, and insurrectionist activity that has been the hallmark of the Oath Keepers since its founding.

“Mr. Rhodes molded the Oath Keepers into central players in a coalition of anti-government extremists that has grown into one of the most significant threats to U.S. national security,” she continued. “Contrary to the revisionist history offered by Mr. Rhodes, under his leadership the Oath Keepers joined in several high-profile standoffs between a newly re-energized militia movement and the federal government, which were fueled by often violent conspiracy theories about the perceived tyranny of the federal government under the leadership of then-President Barack Obama.

“Following the election of former President Donald Trump, Mr. Rhodes increasingly aligned himself with the most violent and militant figures on the far-right, and began to threaten President Trump’s opponents with civil war years before the insurrection on January 6th.”

On this Memorial Day, we may pause and recall over 400,000 U.S. military deaths during World War II to fend off the Nazis and myriad attacks against freedom and the democratic way of life. It will take the continuing commitment to justice and service to country by people like Amit Mehta to ensure more seditious conspiracists receive long prison sentences—reminders of the need to hold such violent opponents of democracy accountable and to honor so many Americans who sacrificed their lives. For the good of the country, may there soon be more examples of justice served at the highest levels.

As Judge Mehta warned on Thursday, “I dare say we all now hold our collective breaths when an election is approaching. Will we have another Jan. 6 again? That remains to be seen.”

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This prompt was originally published for Memorial Day in 2023 when Joe Biden was our president. It feels like a long time ago; I suspect most of us are thinking differently now about the demands of patriotism. Faced with a corrupt White House occupant hostile to our Constitution, determined to dismantle our democratic institutions and deny the people’s will, the stakes for America’s future have rarely been higher.

There once was a simple idea about patriotism. On a holiday like Memorial Day (or Veterans Day or Independence Day), put up a flag. Respect the military. Remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Maybe attend a parade with marching soldiers and floats and a brass band. Know your country’s history and system of government. Never criticize the president. Push back vigorously if you hear someone speaking against America. Proudly state the pledge of allegiance. Stand and sing the national anthem with your hand on your heart. Did I say never criticize the president?

Of course, these simple notions have never been adequate to encompass what it means to show patriotism, especially when actions like the Vietnam War or the Iraq War revealed deep division over government policy. “Love it or leave it,” the “real” patriots would angrily insist, as if they were the ones who really knew what it meant to be an American.

Recall the words of former President Theodore Roosevelt in May 1918 during World War I, who penned an editorial for The Kansas City Star to express his views of President Woodrow Wilson’s reluctance to strengthen the American presence in Europe. He sought to rebut those who questioned his right to say so.

The president, Roosevelt wrote, “should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts…To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Of course, in recent decades it’s not been hard to convince people of the appropriateness, indeed the moral necessity, of criticizing the president, especially when you believe he’s engaged in “bad conduct.” But this practice and the assumption of patriotism took a particularly dark turn in 2021 when the former White House occupant and his vehement followers called the Americans who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 “patriots”—rendering the traditional meaning of patriotism largely null and void. Beating police officers with flagpoles is showing love of country?

This is complicated stuff, not easily explored in brief. But rather than extend my own observations here, I want to urge you to share your thoughts. What does patriotism mean to you? Are there traditional habits that you enjoy? Do they provide you sustenance and in some ways strengthen your love of country? Can patriotism still serve as a unifying force or has that time passed? Has one side hijacked the concept of patriotism, undermining your willingness to share your thoughts and feelings? Can expressions of belief in democracy and justice help strengthen patriotic fervor?

As always, I look forward to reading your observations and the opportunity for this community to learn from each other. Please do be respectful. Trolling will not be tolerated.

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I think by this point you do not need me to tell you who Donald Trump is. He proves his utter indifference to the needs of most Americans and his capacity for corruption, criminality and cruelty on a daily basis as he bottomlessly pursues self-enrichment, power and vengeance. As a writer and observer, as a citizen and advocate of democracy, I feel obliged to confront the reality of his destruction and assess the consequences, particularly for the survival of an inclusive democracy, common decency and the most vulnerable among us.

Yet this pursuit comes at a price, not just for me, but for each of us. As the violations of the rule of law mount, the scale of corruption becomes too overwhelming to tally and the assault on our neighbors and basic human decency becomes increasingly intolerable, we struggle to pay attention and respond with the requisite outrage. The ongoing threat of exhaustion intensifies as each new attack forces us to try and absorb the shock.

All this may be part of the authoritarian playbook detailed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, but it’s perversely entangled with one deranged man’s endless desire to do anything, no matter how depraved, harmful or illegal. He is not just Jesus in his mind, the Second Coming, he is God himself. Any thought that pops into his head is divine, even when it thoroughly contradicts the thought or action that precedes it. Forget the very notion of factual reality and truth because truth is whatever he deems it to be.

I have taken pains to insist that his removal is a necessity, even as our constitutional mechanisms and their dependence on responsible government officials convinces so many others of the impossibility of achieving this critical solution. That degrading sense that there’s nothing we can do about the situation exacerbates the fatigue, the cynicism and the growing difficulty of holding onto hope. Belief in accountability fades. Imagination of a better future shrinks.

If any of this resonates with you personally, I urge you to neither lose hope nor doubt our capacity to overcome this dark and grueling chapter. It may sound like a cliché to suggest that many Americans throughout our history have experienced worse, but it is true. Any student of the history of slavery, the blood-soaked battle fields of the Civil War, the terror faced by previously enslaved Blacks during Reconstruction and well into the 20th century can recite chapter and verse on the horrors of life in America. None of this makes our moment any less alarming or meaningful, especially because the terrors are being plotted and committed right from within our own White House.

Yes, the catastrophic dismantling—in service to one man’s broken ego and the extremist hunger to uplift the white race and burn liberal democracy to the ground—is mind-boggling. But we should not doubt that our foundational values of equality and justice, freedom and self-governance have not and cannot be eliminated by a sadistically reckless despot or his fascist regime bent on destroying centuries of progress. “These are times that try men’s souls,” as Thomas Paine diagnosed in his political treatise The Rights of Man published in the 1790s, but he also wrote, “From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished.” Paine went on: “The strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that, in order to be free, it is sufficient that [Man] wills it.”

It often feels like the resistance has brought a spoon to a knife fight, or worse, a small bucket of water to put out a wildfire that risks engulfing us all. It remains our duty to not overestimate the small wins nor underestimate our collective capacity to achieve the eventual demise of this certain-to-fail regime.

Rather, the daily task is to soberly acknowledge what’s happening without losing one’s sense of outrage or becoming consumed by it. So, too, the challenge is to not to forget the small sparks that ignited change throughout our history—and to recognize that they are still happening around us as determined Americans continue to courageously pursue a better, more progressive future.

It may sound naive to suggest that we are living in fortunate times. And, honestly, there are many days when such a thought said out loud sounds like the raving of a madman. But for the majority of us who still believe in Abraham Lincoln’s formation of the democratic idea—a nation of the people, for the people and by the people—this is our moment to prove that it is true. That requires defiance and a continuing sense of hope in the ideas and the ideals upon which this nation stands.

It’s exhausting to think so much must be built anew that so many others have worked so long and so hard to construct. But from the sad rubble of our cherished institutions, we will have the chance to move closer to the vision of a diverse, inclusive society where opportunity does not depend on the color of your skin or your access to wealth. That means recognizing the best of our shared inheritance dating back 250 years. That also requires finally learning from the tragic failures in our history that laid the foundation for an unfettered racist demagogue to act despotically—to feed on and be elevated by “the ruins of public liberty,” as George Washington warned—cheered on by his party and the extremist institutions and people that have abandoned the democratic project.

Every day I have wondered, as each new unjust act of destruction appeared, how much destruction would be enough for the opposition to reclaim its power to stop what we all know to be wrong, a violation of our core values. There have been many points of light in this mission, including both mass protests and individual acts of courage. This in the face of murderous masked men empowered by a hateful regime and righteous sycophants bent on fulfilling their leader’s hunger for retribution and utter indifference to the rule of law.

As much as the Republican party has served as a monolithic cheerleader and enforcer of these tragic impulses, recent days have seen cracks in that bulwark. Push back against his reckless, unauthorized, unsupported war of choice with Iran. Refusal to support a billion dollars in funding for his grotesque ballroom. Criticism of his beyond disgraceful slush fund of $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to stuff his own pockets and enrich convicted felons who violently attacked police officers on Jan. 6. Their numbers may still be small—courage and principle remain in tragically short supply—but they can be enough to sway the outcome of a senate vote and defeat some of the most appalling acts of corruption our nation has ever seen.

I found it useful to read President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first inaugural address in 1953, the deadly horrors of Nazism and fascism still fresh in the mind of this army general and Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. One of the reasons I think we are in our current predicament is that far too many Americans have forgotten or never knew what work it took over the last eight decades to build democratic alliances and systems of trade and cooperation that have made relative peace, prosperity and stability possible.

At the core, Eisenhower’s humble and hopeful remarks centered on the belief in freedom. “We are called as a people to give testimony in the sight of the world to our faith that the future shall belong to the free,” he said. He asked his listeners to “summon all of our knowledge of the past” and to “scan all signs of the future” in order to address this question:

How far have we come in man’s long pilgrimage from darkness toward the light? Are we nearing the light—a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?

Despite all of his reasons to worry about what the future holds, the newly elected president shared his faith. This included “the virtues most cherished by free people—love of truth, pride of work, devotion to country.” His faith also included his belief that “we, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.” He described the continuing struggle: “Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark.” And he forewarned against those who would lack this faith, that “any man who seeks to deny equality among all his brothers betrays the spirit of the free and invites the mockery of the tyrant.”

It’s hard to overstate how loud the tyrant’s mockery is right now in America. Such a faithless man may be convinced that his ridicule of our values and laws can break the world order, leaving us with only his whims. Like so many tyrants and their sycophants that have come before, they may believe that their rule will last. But we should have the faith that they are the aberration, indeed the abomination, and their days are numbered. It’s up to all of us—clinging to hope, holding onto faith in the democratic project—to make it so.

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It’s long been clear that the story of Donald Trump is less a political story than a crime story. Tuesday was one of those days that made that appallingly clear, even as the veneer of politics played out. Here are three snapshots.

Donald Trump may be reveling in his success at convincing his obedient extremist base in Kentucky to reject Rep. Thomas Massie in yesterday’s primary—the most expensive House primary in U.S. history totaling some $33 million. But Massie, a fierce advocate demanding the rich and powerful involved with Jeffrey Epstein be held accountable for their crimes, made clear last night that he’s not done.

In his energetic concession speech, he said:

Today is the six month anniversary of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. We’ve taken out two dozen CEOs, an ambassador, a prince, a prime minister, a minister of culture and that was just six months. I’ve got seven months left in Congress.

The Epstein case is not going away, no matter how hard Trump and his enablers pretend there’s no there there.

Speaking of trying to make crimes disappear, Trump’s criminal defense attorney—oh, yeah, Todd Blanche is also the acting U.S. Attorney General—signed his name yesterday to a one-page flashing red light intended to immunize his criminal client and his criminal children “FOREVER.” This amendment to the $1.8 billion slush fund taken from our tax dollars and without any congressional approval makes clear that these self-serving gangsters have plenty to hide from the Internal Revenue Service:

‘The United States RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES’ Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization, ‘and is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims’ that ‘have been or could have been asserted’ by the IRS.

Clearly, it’s not enough that the Supreme Court granted the epically corrupt and criminal Trump immunity for official acts. Incisive legal analyst Joyce White Vance called this likely illegal maneuver “a pardon on steroids” and “a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card.”

She also wisely noted that it suggests serious criminal activity that is beyond all that we already know. “The optics of this are so bad that it’s hard to believe Trump would expose himself to their consequences unless he really needed this deal,” Vance wrote in her Civil Discourse newsletter.

Lastly, the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment offers the clearest rebuke to Trump’s utterly corrupt slush fund, the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” intended to hand out millions to Jan. 6 insurrectionists and others that Trump decides should be compensated for their wrongful treatment by the Justice Department. (Yes, they pretend that a five-member committee appointed by the attorney general will be making those decisions, not Trump.)

Adopted in 1866, in the wake of the Civil War, the amendment notes that:

…neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States…all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.

More than five years after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, involving thousands of insurrectionists and other rioters who were subsequently prosecuted, the lead insurrectionist Trump is continuing to rewrite that history as a patriotic act and the convicted participants as victims, not criminals. But let’s not doubt that—beyond whatever portion of these taxpayer monies he plans to stuff in his own pockets—this payout is intended to secure a band of thugs ready to do his bidding again.

Rep. Jamie Raskin was one of 93 House representatives named in a new amicus brief, Trump v. IRS, that seeks to stop this fund, rejecting the legitimacy of a $10 billion lawsuit or a so-called settlement of a bogus case in which Trump was both plaintiff and defendant. Raskin called the fund “nothing but a racket,” as well as “pure fraud and highway robbery” enabling Trump to hand out taxpayer dollars to “his private militia of insurrectionists, rioter and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021.”

The crime stories continue. The need for accountability has never been more clear.

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It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the daily outrages, making it hard to look back or project into the future. The Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the aggressive speed with which numerous southern states have pushed to redraw their maps to deny the voice of Black voters are infuriating reminders of where we are in Trump’s America.

They demonstrate that America’s racist past is not dead and gone, rather it continues to provide too many people an oppressive vision for the future. But there is a thin silver lining here: The Republicans have nakedly exposed themselves as the eager heirs to Jim Crow, stripping away any last shreds of doubt about how and why Donald Trump has succeeded in securing their fealty.

A clearer picture emerges of the necessity of vanquishing white Christian nationalism and its adherents’ will to power. Think how satisfying it would be to defeat Republicans in the midterms who are convinced that their gerrymandered districts will ensure the success of their imagined righteous cause.

So the struggle currently underway is not just Trump’s latest trickery, but part and parcel of the long history of racism in America. Yes, the Civil War officially ended 161 years ago. The South lost, slavery was abolished and the 14th and 15th amendments sought to secure civil rights and voting rights for formerly enslaved African Americans.

Yet the Reconstruction era not only failed to protect a Black electorate, the reality of racial inequality and the continuing fervor to deny Black voices and whitewash our collective history remains a hateful feature of American life. This despite more than a century of efforts by determined Americans to right these wrongs.

January 6, 2021 offered an unavoidable exclamation point to this continuing sabotage of voters’ rights: One of Trump’s so-called “great patriots” paraded a Confederate flag inside our nation’s capitol for the first time ever, starkly signaling that the Civil War has never really ended for some Americans.

I’d like to share with you extended excerpts from two of my essays from the first months after that heinous day. Suffice to say, not only did the weight of Jan. 6 continued to hang heavily then, but so too did Trump’s determination to hold onto power by denying voters’ voices, a sick strategy that the Republican losers believed was their best way forward.

In the first essay, “From Insurrection to Voter Suppression,” I took the time to state first principles and remind us what sanity looks like. Here’s how I put it on March 19, just 10 weeks after the capitol attack.

In a sane world, elected Republicans would have followed up the insurrectionist horrors of January 6 by moving back toward reason and democracy. Instead, they’ve chosen to keep going.

In a sane world, GOP members of Congress would accept that the Big Lie of election fraud had taken them and their party down a dark road of political violence, threats of assassination, and the promise of more violence to come from their extremist base.

But we are not living in a sane world, not when the response is to keep alive the question of whether Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected fair and square. In this refusal to acknowledge reality, we can smell the rank odor of conspiracist Trump and the other birthers (including his wife), determined to leave the sour impression that maybe, just maybe, Barrack Obama really wasn’t born in America.

And while this all may seem familiar from America’s viciously unjust Jim Crow past, we are not living in a sane world when Republicans applaud or stand by with brutal self-interest as 43 states aggressively push some 253 bills intended to suppress the vote.

Taken together, this follow-up to the insurrection may not be violence, per se, but it is violence against our democratic system in order to hold onto power—the will of the people be damned. It’s why we should pause and recognize the danger this portends, not only for the passage of a democratic agenda but to fend off the end of democracy and the imposition of autocracy by a sociopathic minority.

Let’s restate first principles: A healthy democracy makes it easier to vote, not harder. A healthy Senate votes in lockstep to strengthen our democracy, not fight tooth and nail to sabotage it. A healthy country never forgets, in word and deed, that one person, one vote is the sacred principle men and women have spilled blood and died for as long as we’ve had a republic—and even longer.

I’d suggest that the insurrection is not over; it’s just moved onto its next phase. Seventy-two days since the deadly attack on our Capitol, Republican members of Congress who helped incite this horrific event are still roaming freely in the halls of the Capitol, as if they are not culpable for their role.

And in a staggering display of hostility to the majority of Americans, particularly people of color, state compatriots from Georgia to Arizona are relishing their power-grabbing opportunity to rewrite state laws: Purge voters from the rolls, get rid of same-day and automatic voter registration, end mail-in and absentee voting, stop early and weekend voting, among other moves.

The need for Democrats to have responded with maximum force is even more painfully clear in hindsight. Recent events have underscored the tragedy of President Joe Biden’s failure to purge our country of the poison of Trump. Here’s how I described it in “The Struggle Between Light and Dark” from May 17, 2021:

Joe Biden is betting on optimism and his positive belief in Americans. He’s sticking with this even as the Republicans are pursuing a grimly cynical course to further divide voters and diminish democracy.

The stakes couldn’t be higher in this battle between light and dark and the opposing gravitational forces. The coming years will reveal whether a positive attitude and bold agenda have the power to persuade Republicans exploited by destructive leaders employing demagoguery to feed their hostilities and fears.

Biden’s rosy words can sound anachronistic, even disconnected from reality based on the toxic selfishness and cruelty of the Trump years and the fact that over 73 million Americans were willing to continue that downward spiral for another four years. Here’s what he said on a sunny day in the Rose Garden last Thursday:

“The simple truth is this: The American people have never, ever, ever, ever let their country down. Never…There’s nothing we are unable to do when we put our minds, our hearts, and our souls into it, and we do it together.”

Biden had more to say, painting a picture that not only can seem disorienting after the darkest days of the pandemic, but also hard to fully absorb after the continuing trauma of the insurrection and the ongoing efforts to deny voting rights and the truth of that deadly attack.

“We will rebuild our economy, reclaim our lives, and get back to normal,” he said. “We’ll laugh again. We’ll know joy again. And we’ll smile again—you know, and now see one another’s smile, look at the smiles on other people’s faces. Better days are ahead, I promise you.”

Even then, it was hard not to wonder whether Biden’s optimism really would win out, given the ability of Trump and his enablers to roil the body politic. As I wrote:

In a sane world, democratically elected members of the House and Senate—from both parties—would support voting rights, express their sustained horror over a heinous attack on the Capitol, work to tamp down political violence, reject white supremacy, and thank their lucky stars they can move beyond the former White House occupant. After all, this is the man who never won the approval of even half the country, aggressively sowed conflict and hate, attacked their own colleagues and incited a violent insurrection.

But we are witnessing the Republicans’ doubling down on a Trump-fueled strategy of lying about voter fraud and the election outcome, passing legislation across the country to limit the rights and access of voters, kowtowing to the former guy who’s facing myriad criminal prosecutions, and purging its own who dare to question the wisdom or truth of this.

I concluded the essay by questioning Biden’s optimism, which may have dulled his ability to see how critical it was to put an end to the criminality of Trump and his minions:

Joe Biden is betting that an optimistic tone and a constructive agenda that moves the country beyond the virus and adds millions of jobs will convince not only Democrats and independents, but also a growing number of Republicans still capable of believing in their better angels.

Is he right? I suspect it will take the flood of criminal prosecutions and convictions of insurrectionists, a growing number of prosecutions of corrupt Republicans like Matt Gaetz, and particularly the prosecution of one Donald J. Trump on various charges, including bank, tax and election fraud. (The jury is still out on how aggressively Merrick Garland will employ the tools of his department to seek justice against the leading insurrection inciter.)

It’s not that all this will shift their narrative, convincing them that they were wrong about him all along, but it will at least ensure that he never holds public office again and expand the numbers of voters exhausted by the endless drama.

We all know that Attorney General Merrick Garland never got to the inciter-in-chief, nor many of the other leading figures who hastened that day’s despicable events. Not only did Trump end up back in power, we have witnessed both his hunger for vengeance and his lawless determination to deploy his pardon power to free and resurrect the “patriotic” insurrectionists who used violence on his behalf. His latest plot to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars, put it in a slush fund and then hand it over to some of these same people and others he deems wronged by a weaponized Justice Department is another kick in our collective teeth.

And as much as you and I can hope that Trump’s eventual exit from the stage may be a critical turn for a better America, the anti-democratic Supreme Court and the wide swath of southern legislatures working to stamp out Black voices and trample on our democracy tells me that the fight will continue long after he’s gone.

That’s why we need fighters not folders to take office. That’s why we need to ensure massive turnout in November to ensure a blue wave that overcomes the racial hostility. That’s why, this time, accountability must move to the top of the agenda and return justice and the rule of law to their rightful place.

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