To Feel Less Alone

Let's take strength in the growing recognition at home and abroad that Trump’s vindictive, over-reaching authoritarianism cannot last

Demonstrators all across America came together in the June 14 No Kings Protest. (Photo by Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)

The text came from an unnamed source, just a “senior foreign diplomat” who heard Donald Trump’s disgraceful United Nations speech. “This man is stark, raving mad,” the diplomat wrote to a Washington Post reporter. “Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?”

Yes, of course most sentient Americans do see. I mean, the Mad Hatter’s speech before the UN General Assembly included this: “I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.” How could we not be embarrassed?

I could detail the multitude of embarrassments contained within Trump’s 55-minute ranting, raging ramble. They are not just embarrassing: They are infuriating. Among them: He repeated his lie that he’s ended seven wars. He attacked renewable energy and called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He attacked and lied about London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan. And he egregiously lied about how he’s bringing down prices for American consumers. I could go on…and on.

But I suggest that this raving madness has a serious upside. Speech by speech, step by step, transgression by transgression, the world is grasping the scale of over-reach and unfettered behavior that the White House occupant is pursuing. Rather than primarily feel embarrassment, I feel a growing sense of relief that those of us who grasp the insanity are not alone.

Yes, we see the emperor has no clothes! Yes, we know it’s nuts to whine and cry and threaten arrests because an escalator at the UN stopped! Yes, we recognize that—in a sane world—there would be a family intervention or the deployment of the 25th Amendment for a president who is increasingly deranged.

Speech by speech, step by step, transgression by transgression, Trump and his sycophantic miscreants are demonstrating their utter inability to govern, let alone offer rational thoughts or solutions for real problems.

Their strategy of blaming everything they don’t like on the “radical left” or an “organization” known as Antifa may excite, incite or amuse their cult. But each of these discernible lies or exaggerations increases my confidence that this empty, unprincipled and mad approach to leadership will rage and then burn out. In a world that ultimately depends on facts to function, their grotesque game is not sustainable.

Yes, I worry deeply about the scale of damage and death they can cause before their program finally fails. A press conference in which Trump tells pregnant women over and over that they should not take Tylenol endangers lives. An expanding police state weaponized to drive migrants out of America will continue to erode the rule of law and cause terrible pain and suffering for many individuals and families.

So will Trump’s abusive efforts to prosecute his perceived enemies, with or without evidence. Just last night, we learned that Trump’s vindictive hunger to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey—who Trump has called “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to”—has led to Comey being indicted on two counts of giving false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding.

Comey’s fearless and bracing response to Trump and the indictments, which MSNBC reporter Ken Dilanian says his Department of Justice sources call “among the worst abuses in DOJ history”: “We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either…Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant—and she’s right. But I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either.”

The more Trump pushes beyond the realm of facts, evidence and human decency to seek retribution, the more it will reveal the malignant emptiness at the core of his and his regime’s enterprise. The more that becomes visible—particularly with an absence of real actions to address the country’s economic ills or the utter indifference to basic human rights—the more that it can bring Americans together in opposition. In that, we are not alone or trapped in a cesspool of embarrassment.

Permit me to revisit the Charlie Kirk memorial. I was genuinely uplifted to learn that Kirk’s widow, Erika, expressed forgiveness for her husband’s killer. That was an impressive act of charity, one that has rightly earned praise from across the spectrum of opinion. “The answer to hate is not hate,” Erika told the massive crowd. “The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love.”

But then came Trump, who exploited the event as if it was just another one of his hateful rallies. He proudly asserted, “I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them. I'm sorry, I am sorry, Erika.” Of course, his remarks garnered applause and cheers.

The day after the memorial, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly spoke to conservative podcaster Michael Knowles, a conservative podcaster who was going to headline an event that Charlie Kirk was supposed to lead. Kelly asked him whether Trump’s remarks were helpful.

First, Knowles served up the usual justification intended to excuse Trump: “It was a joke.” But when Kelly pushed back on that, he offered another justification that exemplifies the emptiness of the pro-Trump support: “I think it was an expression of humility, of a fall in human nature…[that], maybe someday I'll get there.”

In other words, excuse Trump for exhibiting the worst aspects of human nature, no matter how atrocious that behavior is, because his followers can learn from it and be better.

Step by step, transgression by transgression, this strategy is not sustainable. It may work in Arizona’s State Farm Stadium where participants were praising Jesus and at least one was dragging an enormous wooden cross, but the emptiness and underlying hatefulness is visible for anyone besides the serious cultists to see.

During the Kirk event, Trump’s lead propagandist Stephen Miller offered the most unfettered display of the regime’s heart of darkness. I think it’s worth reading to realize how far they will go to blame everyone but themselves for our divided country’s downward spiral. This is what he spewed on a day ostensibly meant as a remembrance and to provide healing:

We stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. And for those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us: What do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy! You are envy! You are hatred! You are nothing! You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity. […]

To our enemies, you have nothing to give, you have nothing to offer, you have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty, we have light, we have goodness, we have determination, we have vision, we have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now.

Seriously. As others have wryly noted, this might read better in the original Nazi-era German. This is one of the key people whose vampiric advice Trump relies upon. It’s hard to understand how, even Trump, would permit Miller to appear in the light of day.

Miller’s rhetoric might move the most troubled minds among the cult. But its ugliness is unavoidable and repellant to most humans. Rather than be outraged, I am encouraged that Miller has taken us one step closer to the end of this regime’s power.

Trump may think he’s very clever by only employing lackeys who will never tell him he’s going too far. This ensures—thanks to the Supreme Court’s supermajority granting him near-total immunity for his “presidential acts”—that he lacks guardrails to remind him there is this little thing called the Constitution and the rule of law. So Trump will keep going, until this over-reaching raging burns itself out.

And it will.

The reappearance of Jimmy Kimmel this week strengthened my belief that large numbers of Americans can be mobilized and that cowardly capitulators can be convinced to rethink their weak, anti-American impulses.

It would be a mistake to imagine that ABC/Disney suddenly rediscovered its commitment to the sacred right of free speech; clearly, the escalating financial damage of kowtowing to Trump and his Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr motivated the reconsideration, as the stock lost over $4 billion in market value in a matter of days, driven by a rising number of Disney+ and Hulu cancellations.

More importantly, Kimmel didn’t return neutered. He was defiant. And he was clear what this was all about.

“Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke,” he said in his powerfully rendered opening monologue. And, “We have to speak out against this because he’s not stopping, and it’s not just comedy. He’s coming for our journalists, too…A government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American.”

This was a moment to celebrate, not only because a late-night comedian spoke for all of us who care about the Constitution and free speech and reject a malignant White House occupant who trashes our sacred freedoms. This was a moment that brought tens of millions of Americans together, energized by the overturning of a terrible decision that was giving a wannabe dictator more reason to silence dissent and bully anyone that dared to criticize him.

The data underscores the point: His return on Tuesday attracted 6.3 million viewers, the most-watched regular episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! ever—and despite the fact that 23 percent of U.S. households could not see it because affiliate stations owned by Nexstar and Sinclair pre-empted the show. That’s not all: The defiant opening monologue has been viewed over 20 million times on YouTube so far.

Remarkably, the issue even succeeded at motivating a few Republicans to speak out on behalf of the First Amendment and against government censorship. I’m loathe to praise Sen. Ted Cruz—his concern was that denying Kimmel’s free speech could eventually lead to the denial of free speech when Democrats retake power—but we learned that this is an issue that not every Republican is willing to obey Trump’s hateful, authoritarian demands.

Here’s how Kimmel described it: “Even my old pal Ted Cruz, who, believe it or not, said something very beautiful on my behalf”—that taking him off the air “would end up bad for conservatives.” The punchline? “I don’t think I’ve ever said this: Ted Cruz is right.”

Kimmel’s return and defiance leaves me feeling a little bit less alone—and I hope it does for you, too. So does the rallying of interest, even as Trump falsely whined on his so-called Truth Social that Kimmel’s show gets “no ratings” and he still threatened other late-night comedians.

On Oct. 18, Americans who yearn for their beloved country have another opportunity to speak out at the next No Kings protest. I’m counting on the totals doubling the estimated 5 million or so that showed up for the last one this summer—or more.

This is a necessary next step in building the opposition and working toward Trump’s removal, and it’s an opportunity to demonstrate your solidarity with other Americans who love their country. But this must be followed by a growing dedication to protest the myriad ways this regime is dismantling our democratic nation.

I believe this means not only targeting other businesses that kowtow to Trump, but inevitably engaging in national strikes that let the nation’s business interests understand that America’s economy—just like its body politic—depends on the will of the people.

We are not alone. There are more of us than there are of them. And we have the chance in the months ahead to prove that our collective power can overcome this hateful regime.

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