Is the Trump Administration Beginning to Unravel?

Posted on January 9, 2026 by alanpzendell

ALan Zendell, January 9, 2026

One of the basic strategies of Project 2025 was to strike against Progressive programs and agencies from every direction, unpredictably. It’s the same idea as attacking your enemy with a barrage of missiles. They can’t possibly defend against all of them at the same time, and if they try, they’ll expend all their resources and have to concede defeat. They started with tariffs, projecting an isolationist philosophy (we don’t need allies) and a tough guy stance that perfectly reflects Trump’s narcissistic personality (bend the knee or I’ll break you.)

The Heritage Society convinced Trump that the strongest country in the world with the most respected military and economy should use them both as weapons of mass intimidation. Why cooperate when we can dominate the entire world? Is it any surprise that Trump bought into that? They knew exactly how to play his megalomania.

Except, the people driving Trump knew there was no way the entire world would bow to Trump; they had their own agenda. Carefully threaded among all their other policies were several that had a single objective – increasing the wealth of the people running him. Based on what we’ve seen in year one of Trump-2, the amount of money they can steal, extort, or redirect during a four-year term could reach trillions of dollars. Who cares if the next administration goes after the sycophants who have been doing Trump’s bidding and incarcerates them? Neither Trump nor his handlers at Heritage care any more about them than they do about the rest of us. As long as they manage to avoid World War 3, they’ll be secure in their lavish estates and bunkers.

Project 2025 is a plan for a slow-moving coup orchestrated by right-wing billionaires to re-write the Constitution and return to a time when a few wealthy white men ran everything. But now that all the early pre-emptive strikes have been taken, and anyone with eyes and ears can witness the truth, it’s not working out the way they planned. Take Greenland, for example. We already have free reign to take any national security related action in Greenland based on a 1951 treaty with Denmark. Trump’s lust to acquire Greenland is about its vast supply of untapped minerals, particularly those essential to an expanding AI industry. That’s critical because his threats netted us nothing of value in negotiations with China and Canada, who also possess large amounts of those minerals. And if Trump thinks the rest of the world is ready to concede control of the Western Hemisphere to him…

…Yesterday, The European Union and the trade bloc known as Mercosur agreed to a Free Trade Zone agreement, effectively thumbing their noses at Trump’s ambitions. Mercosur is comprised of four South American countries with populations that total twice ours, (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with Bolivia waiting in the wings to join,) and Canada has already determined that it’s best future requires similar economic agreements with countries other than the United States. All this reflects the rest of the world’s attitude toward Trump’s trade war: “You need us more than we need you.”

You have to wonder what they were thinking and how little Trump understands the situation. China is already South America’s largest trading partner, with a trade volume in excess of half a trillion dollars annually, and heavy investments by China in local infrastructure. With Russia already having a significant military presence in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, attempting to impose the “Donroe Doctrine” is more likely to result in dangerous military confrontations.

Trump’s plans to dominate America are also running into serious opposition. The House passed a resolution to restore cuts to federal health care premium subsidies against the direct orders of Trump. The House and Senate have both demanded the release of millions of pages of evidence about the culture of sexual abuse and pedophilia created by Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump seems desperate to keep from being made public. His immigration policy, based on the sham that millions of illegal foreign criminals are wreaking havoc in our cities, and whose real purpose is to create a federal police force that answers directly to Trump and can usurp local law enforcement, is sparking protests all over the country.

The Trump administration may have bit off more than it can chew. Their strategy of creating chaos for their enemies seems to be coming home to roost. Americans saw with their own eyes, yesterday, how dangerous ICE is, and millions of us are dealing with not being able to pay for health care. Opposition to Trump is better organized, his opponents less fearful of him. It’s hard to see this administration surviving intact for three more years.

This month, we may see another shoe drop as the Supreme Court is likely to rule on the legality of Trump’s tariffs. Everyone is waiting to see if the court gives him a free pass.

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The New Imperialism and Venezuela

Posted on January 8, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 8, 2025

I’ll leave the issue of whether using American military forces to attack Venezuelan President Maduro’s compound and spirit him away to New York under a federal indictment was legal to the courts. As important as adhering to the rule of law is, in this case it’s less important than the implications of the event.

Maduro is a really bad guy. The world will not be worse off without him, but we said the same thing about Saddam Hussein. We received a lesson in nation-building, more than twenty years ago, but we seem to have forgotten it. The cliché “break it and own it” applies here in spades. President Trump is being opaque and evasive about his plans, but he admitted to a New York Times reporter, yesterday, that the United States could be “running Venezuela” for years.

That is a terrible idea. In Iraq, we catastrophically misjudged the situation and discovered that putting the pieces back together was impossible. We either created or nurtured the rapid growth of ISIS, which has been plaguing us ever since. In Venezuela, the situation is potentially much worse. It’s a prescription for continuous anti-American guerilla action both in Venezuela and the rest of Central and South America. Well-armed revolutionary groups, some funded by our Communist adversaries, exist throughout the region, with eight major ones just in Venezuela and its neighbors, Colombia and Peru.

If nearly twenty years of unwinnable war in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t enough, we’d be bogged down in Venezuela until our next president bit the bullet and withdrew. That’s exactly what drove the final nail into the coffin of the Soviet Union when they overextended themselves in Afghanistan. And if we’re not bankrupted by guerilla warfare, we risk a more serious war encountering Russian and Chinese ships in the Caribbean. A Russian submarine was tracking yesterday’s capture of a Russia shadow fleet oil tanker leaving Venezuela.

All these practical considerations and warnings are real, but of perhaps greater long-term interest are the global implications of Trump’s plans. Republicans, ever since the Tea Party emerged, have been plotting to reverse the post-World War II world order. Two main thrusts of that were easing international borders and free trade, the theory being that powerful nations that have mutual economic interdependencies are less likely to nuke each other. The European Union showed that free trade and soft borders could work, and the economic benefits of increased trade and tourism have both been excellent outcomes for Europe.

Ideologically, in the last sixty years, the world has paid lip service to the idea that no nation has the right to destroy another’s sovereignty, a principal tenet of the United Nations charter. When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, most of the world was shocked at the total disregard of Ukraine’s sovereignty, which had been guaranteed by Russia when Ukraine relinquished its nuclear missiles after the Soviet breakup. The other NATO nations took that very seriously, and still do, despite Donald Trump’s sympathies obviously being with Russia in the conflict.

There’s been much speculation about the relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Conventional wisdom among non-MAGA people is that Putin has Trump under some kind of thrall, and that Trump worships strongmen, notwithstanding that most are brutal murderers with no shred of moral character. Everything Trump did in 2025 supports that view, and the administration’s total lack of transparency is right in character with it.

Americans have seemed puzzled by that since Trump took office, but the explanation is becoming clearer every day. Trump has long rhapsodized in public about being unfettered by federal laws and regulations, and worst of all, our Constitution. He publicly craves the kind autocratic power held by his greatest adversaries, Putin, and Xi Jinping. He’s furious that he cannot do whatever he pleases as president. He continually sucks up to Putin only to be humiliated at every turn, yet he seems unable to break his worshipful addiction to raw power.

All this brings us to the return of imperialism and the nineteenth century concept of Spheres of Influence. Nineteenth century imperialism didn’t work. It brought us two world wars and scores of minor ones. Imperialism is about greed and power-grabbing on an international scale. It respects neither sovereignty nor human rights, focusing instead on increasing the wealth and power of the leaders of the strongest countries. And it is the preferred world order of both Putin and Xi. Putin has worked hard to sell it to Trump, who has apparently bought into it without reservation. Renaming the Monroe Doctrine for himself, Trump couldn’t be clearer about his intentions.

MAGA and Trump would return us to a world order in which three major powers control everything within their spheres of influence. Putin wants Europe and Eurasia, generally leaving the rest of Asia to China. I wonder how India, Australia and New Zealand would feel about that as they watch Russia and China fight over carving up Africa. In that universe, Trump would be the Emperor of the Western Hemisphere.

It’s an insane fever dream, a world in which three powerful dictators run everything with complete disregard for the long-term health of our planet and 99% of its people. It’s a world we don’t want our grandchildren living in. We’ve already been there, and it doesn’t work.

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Hope For 2026

Posted on January 2, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 2, 2026,

The future of our democracy as our Declaration of Independence and Constitution framed it will depend on two things that will occupy most of 2026. The first half of the year belongs to the Supreme Court. The Roberts Court is expected to publish decisions on the constitutionality of several critical issues, all of which deal directly with the power of the president:

  • immigration
  • tariffs
  • birthright citizenship
  • domestic use of the army and National Guard
  • creating and staffing the Departments that comprise our federal government
  • attacking unarmed civilian boats and ships in international waters without following the rule of law or consulting Congress.

While many people have accused the Supreme Court of rubber-stamping anything Donald Trump wants, recent indications belie that. Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch all have reputations as strict constitutionalists or originalists. When serious matters that attempt to redefine the Constitution are before the Court, we are likely to see different outcomes.

The integrity of the Court matters very much to Roberts, who has been Chief Justice for twenty years. It is inconceivable that Roberts would let his legacy be the Chief Justice who tore up the Constitution. In his typically nuanced manner, without mentioning Donald Trump, Roberts concluded his 2025 year-end report by quoting Calvin Coolidge, and informing us that the rule of law is safe under his stewardship.

“Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken.” Roberts followed that with the simple statement, “True then; true now.” He concluded by thanking everyone involved in the Judiciary for “their dedication to upholding the rule of law.”

That’s enough for us to enter the new year with far more hope than we did last year, anticipating how Donald Trump would implement Project 2025. Confirming our worst fears. he spent all of 2025 attempting undermine the basic principles on which our founding documents were based, with OMB Director Russell Vought and people like Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller scrupulously following the fascist playbook that consolidated Adolf Hitler’s rule in Germany, translating it into 225 Executive Orders. The fate of the most dangerous of those now rests with the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court fails to rein in the autocratic ambitions of Trump and his MAGA base, that responsibility will fall to us, the voters, in November. It’s no exaggeration that this year’s midterm election will have a profound effect on the future of our country. Assuming Trump’s health issues enable him to finish his term, flipping the Congress away from MAGA control is the only way our democracy will survive it.

We elect the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate, this year. While the cliché that all politics is local usually prevails, this year we’ll be voting primarily either for people who support Trump’s attempts to undermine the rule of law or those who oppose it. And that will be happening amidst the most robust attempt to influence the outcome of the election we’ve ever seen. Adversarial governments, largely Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea will flood our online media with bots, lies, misdirections, and propaganda. Our adversaries believe MAGA policies will weaken us significantly. They all have more incentive than ever, especially Russia which is desperate to have American-driven sanctions removed. They will stop at nothing to keep MAGA in power.

When they cast their votes in November, voters should also be clear about Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. The Department of Justice, which has been weaponized as a political tool by Trump, released Prosecutor Jack Smith’s December 17th closed door testimony about Trump on New Years Eve, hoping no one would read it, while simultaneously issuing an order that he was prohibited from discussing it publicly.

Smith’s testimony is damning. He told Congress his team “had proof beyond reasonable doubt” that Trump was guilty of the charges in the 2020 election interference and classified documents cases.” He further said that “President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” and “when asked if Trump was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Smith said, ‘Our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it.’”

But for a Supreme Court ruling immunizing him against criminal prosecution, Trump would be standing trial for serious crimes for which any other American would be held accountable. Everyone who casts a vote for Congress this year must remember that any candidate who supports Trump effectively supports undermining the rule of law.

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A Fundamental Restructuring of our Relationship with Canada

Posted on December 29, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 29, 2025

Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sat for a year-end interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company addressing his brief tenure as PM. It’s twenty-four minutes long, and well worth listening to, especially if after watching Donald Trump’s version of 2025, you’re wondering if the entire world is losing its mind. If you can spare an additional half hour, I recommend George Conway’s analysis of the interview, and what it implies about Canada’s relationship with and attitude toward the United States.

I listened to Carney’s interview, first. The PM was straightforward and easy to understand. He is highly intelligent and well-informed about the issues facing Canada. He didn’t pull numbers out of the air, exaggerate, deflect responsibility, or seem the least bit angry or defensive, even when the tough, unrelenting interviewer pressed him on uncomfortable issues. He didn’t call her a pig, didn’t refer to his political opponents as enemies, and didn’t hurl insults at anyone. He didn’t ramble. He wasn’t incoherent. He addressed every question calmly and rationally.

When a prominent leader makes an important speech, I generally find it annoying that it’s immediately followed by network talking heads explaining what I just listened to. Conway’s analysis, however, is not like that. I found what he said nuanced and worth listening to.

Carney talked about Canada’s long term “junior partner” status and dependency relative to the United States, but he wasn’t accusatory, explaining that that’s just how the relationship between our countries evolved, without any negative agenda. Both he and Conway noted that the relationship worked well in the eighty years since World War 2, because it was in both nations’ mutual interest and both economies benefitted from it. It was based on trust and predictability, something both Americans and Canadiana believed was the normal way close allies treat each other – who has been a closer and more trusted ally than Canada?

Trump has treated Canada the same way he treated the rest of the world, accusing them of ripping us off and alternating between offensive derision and flattery as his ego perceived whether he was being addressed with sufficient respect and obeisance. His transactional approach to everything, however, undercut the basic trust that existed between our countries. Trump’s approach to Canada and every other nation except Russia has been to declare that America can dictate economic terms to everyone else, while changing those terms on mere whims whenever he feels like it. Trump considers all that a brilliant negotiating strategy, because he believes it keeps everyone else divided and on the defensive. His tough guy act, however, serves only Trump’s own narcissism.

For everyone else, it defines America as unreliable and untrustworthy, and without being at all negative, Carney made that point in several ways. He talked about Canada becoming more independent, which Conway explained in detail meant not allowing itself to remain overly dependent on America. He talked intelligently about energy independence and how that relates to climate change and Canada’s commitment reducing carbon emissions. He talked about expanding trade relationships with Asia and Europe which would make Canada stronger. Carney didn’t say it, but Conway explained that a strong, independent Canada would likely hurt America’s economy, first because some much of our automotive, steel, AI, rare earth mineral, and aerospace industries are interconnected, but more importantly, Canada intends to become a major trading partner with the rest of the world, and will not let negotiating deals with Trump dominate its future.

With no rancor toward the United States, Carney laid out his plan to make Canada stronger in the future. It’s about Canada’s survival and sovereignty. Carney knows what all of us know deep down. We all have to be self-reliant and never allow our survival to depend on someone else. Even if that someone else has been a reliable trustworthy friend for decades, nations aren’t people and diplomacy and trade agreements are not friendships. As we’ve seen this year, nations can change overnight. Your bigger, stronger neighbor upon you’ve relied for protections and economic stability, who the entire world has looked to for leadership isn’t what it was a year ago.

A personality like Donald Trump can completely upend a world order that has survived an eighty-year-old nuclear arms race. One thing Conway noted was that Canada remains part of the “coalition of the willing” who support Ukraine against Russian aggression, while Trump has removed America from it. This is a profound statement that historians will reflect on as a major inflection point, but Carney needn’t wait for the history books. He already understands its significance, and that requires Canada to effect a fundamental restructuring of its relationship with us.

I can’t lie about this. When I hear Donald Trump spew hate every time he opens his mouth and then I listen to Mark Carney, Trump seems like a monster who is out of control, and Carney sounds like the leader all of North America needs.

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The Trump Brand

Posted on December 23, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 23, 2025

Just for context, today, December 23, 2025, two days before Christmas, the two major wars Trump promised to end, eleven months ago, on day one of his administration, are still raging in Gaza and Ukraine. Completely ignoring Trump, Vladimir Putin has been destroying Ukraine’s power infrastructure leaving Ukrainians freezing in the dark as winter sets in, while Trump supports Russia. Millions of Americans are facing the loss of health care, unemployment and inflation are rising, the Trump administration is threatening ground action in Venezuela without Congressional approval, and the Supreme Court is considering cases that could re-write our Constitution. With all that going on, our president’s focus remains on memorializing and enriching himself.

If Trump can attach his brand to something, he will, with no regard for laws, regulations, or good taste. Remember Trump Airlines? In 1989 Trump bought the highly profitable Eastern Airlines shuttle connecting New York’s LaGuardia airport with Washington’s [Reagan] National. The Trump Shuttle was an economic disaster that lasted three years. Remember Trump University? It was never accredited, never offered a degree, and was described by the National Review as “a massive scam.” It ceased to operate after six years among a flurry of lawsuits and complaints of fraud.

Trump’s narcissistic need to memorialize himself also resulted in many other failed business ventures, which cost his investment partners billions in losses. The short list includes: Trump Casinos, (Atlantic City,) Trump Tower Tampa, trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Fragrances, Trump Magazine, Trump Ice, Trump Mattresses, Trump Mortgage, GoTrump.com, the New Jersey Generals football team, and Trump: The Game. From a business point of view, they were all total failures, generally not delivering what they promised.

In the eleven months of Trump’s second administration, he has focused more on enriching himself, his family, and his wealthy allies than anything else. His crypto venture is hard to track, but Reuters reported that in the twelve months since Trump won the 2024 elections, Trump’s support for crypto stocks caused a $1.2 trillion boom, that enabled his wealthy friends to reap most of those profits with well-timed stock trades, and the Trump Organization profited by more than $800 million. While all this was going on, Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal defense lawyer and now second in command at DOJ, who was required by law to divest his hundreds of thousands of dollars of crypto investments within ninety days, not only failed to do so, but ended all ongoing DOJ investigations of crypto and killed the DOJ team looking into crypto fraud.

There’s the Trump ballroom which caused the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, apparently in violation of federal regulations. Trump Gold coins can be purchased for between $13 and $19,000 at current (volatile) prices, and guess where all that money goes? Now Trump wants to build Trump-class battleships as part of a “gold fleet” with his face emblazoned on the upper decks at a price tag of around $8 billion each, money that would have to be appropriated by Congress first. Moreover, he appointed himself to be part of the Navy’s design team, because he’s “an aesthetic person” and the new ships need to look cool.

Trump is plastering his name over Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ignoring the legal responsibility to obtain Congressional approval, and the U. S. Institute for Peace is now the Donald J. Trump Institute for Peace. And let’s not forget TrumpRx, which claims it will sell prescription drugs to Americans at the lowest possible prices. Assuming TrumpRx ever gets off the ground, it will benefit Trump and his family and have an unfair advantage over other drug providers because Trump used the power of his office to force drug companies to create special price lists just for TrumpRx. That’s the way much of organized crime made its money.

Donald Trump is the first president in history who ever tried to create a monument to himself, and there is still a movement among sycophants to add his face to Mount Rushmore. His latest pitch is for a Napoleon-style Arc de Triomphe to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The arch was originally proposed to be the Independence Arch, but Trump prefers Arc de Trump.

For any normal person capable of shame, all this would be obscene. But Trump is not normal in any sense. His unquenchable thirst for adulation and recognition, especially from autocrats like Putin and Xi, dominate all his decisions. We can only hope that saner heads prevail in the end, but with people like Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi in his Cabinet, appearances don’t seem to matter at all. We can almost hear them chortling to themselves: “Who cares if our approval numbers drop to zero once we’ve gained total control of the government? Who’s going to say NO to us then?”

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Misprison of a Felony

Posted on December 21, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 21, 2025

I never saw or heard the word “misprison” until I asked Google, “Is failure to report a crime a criminal act?” It turns out that there’s a federal statute that addresses that question directly. 18 U.S. Code § 4 defines misprison as concealing a felony and not making it known to authorities. It is a felony under federal law punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both. This arcane, nine-letter word might have the power to bring down the Trump administration.

I believe in karma. Live a life devoid of morality – lying, cheating, and stealing your way through every venture – and one day, the universe will make you pay, and leaders of powerful nations are not immune. The piper always gets paid in the end, whether it’s Adolf Hitler putting a bullet in his own head or Richard Nixon ending his presidency in disgrace.

When former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, backed by the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party and extreme right-wing organizations like the Heritage Society, created the political creature known as Donald Trump, it was an act of hubris. The intent was to elevate the views of a minority of Americans who rejected the fundamental concept of equal opportunity that underpinned our Constitution. They also rejected Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the foundational federal legislation that guaranteed racial equality, social security and a safety net for elderly, disabled, or impoverished Americans that defined the America we all grew up in.

But reversing ninety years of progressive maturation required silencing the majority of Americans who believed in that version of America. In an alleged democracy, that could only be accomplished by skewing elections through extreme gerrymandering and investing billions of dollars in broadcast and social media to mislead voters and create an alternate reality in which only white, Christian males would be empowered. Like many such movements throughout history, it worked for a while, and we are in the midst of the most corrupt, power-grabbing, anti-democratic administration in our history.

We are living through a patient, relentless coup funded by right-wing billionaires who want to tear up our Constitution and replace it with an oligarchy of sociopaths like Trump. Most of the country spent 2025 despairing of the future. The MAGA wave appeared to have the inexorable inevitability of a slow-motion avalanche, made worse by fears that the Supreme Court had been compromised by the same extremist dollars that put Trump in power.

Two-thirds of Americans fear that the MAGA juggernaut can’t be stopped. but our friends at the Heritage Society misjudged the situation. Enter Jeffrey Epstein, who built an empire based on sex-trafficking and sexually abusing women, including underage girls. Either Ailes and his friends at Heritage failed to realize the extent of Trump’s involvement with Epstein, or their arrogance convinced them that once in power they were invincible. Who could blame them after the Supreme Court granted Trump immunity for every despicable crime he committed in office?

Yesterday, the Department of Justice failed to meet the requirements of the November 19, 2025 law, which was passed with every member of the House of Representatives except one voting “Aye.” It required the release of literally every file and piece of information related to Epstein and everyone associated with his prosecution and conviction. The Trump administration is now involved in a coverup of horrific crimes that make Watergate look like a schoolyard brawl. The network of powerful, wealthy people who took part in these craven acts is desperate to hide their past actions.

Nixon might have gotten away with Watergate if not for the integrity of James McCord and the eighteen minutes erased from the Whtie House surveillance recordings. America dodged a potentially fatal bullet when Nixon resigned. The question we face today is whether Trump will, too. I believe his sycophants have seriously miscalculated. They believe that if they can prevent any evidence that Trump was directly involved in Epstein’s crimes from being released, the furor will die down before the midterm elections. They’re wrong.

An essential part of Trump’s base, without whom he never would have been elected are evangelists and other Christians (and non-Christians) who are strongly rooted in basic morality. They forgave his profane, amoral character because he promised to stack the courts with judges who would end abortion. They forgave misogyny, greed, and sociopathy. They will not forgive sex trafficking or pedophilia in any form, which brings us back to the idea of misprison.

Whether or not there is evidence that Trump was directly involved with those acts, he is almost certainly guilty of misprison of Epstein’s felonies. For decades, he was someone with a loud public voice who could have blown the whistle on Epstein’s activities. Instead, he has done and is still doing everything possible to distance himself from them and pretend he was never involved. It reminds me of the way H. G. Wells ended his novel, War of the Worlds. Just when all seems lost, and it appears that the invading Martians will destroy human civilization, they are defeated by microscopic organisms that Wells was happy to have his readers interpret as being saved by God.

Trump has lied to and misled religious Americans for ten years. He’ll live to regret that.

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When Will the Madness End?

Posted on December 16, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December, 16, 2025,

It’s been easy, these last eleven months, to blame Donald Trump for all the hate and divisiveness that has torn our country apart, but we also need to open our eyes and look clearly at how Americans have changed. Trump couldn’t have gotten where he is unless average Americans supported him. Most fair-minded people decry gerrymandering, but as awful as that practice is, it only affects legislative elections stratified by local districts. It has little or no effect on presidential elections. The two elections Trump won weren’t rigged. He was elected president, twice, simply because more Americans voted for him than either of the two women he defeated.

As even most of Trump’s supporters acknowledge that he’s not a very nice guy, and they cringe at the things that come out of his mouth and his social media postings, we keep asking, how could a narcissistic sociopath who is driven solely by greed and lust for power have become president twice? How could such a basically hateful, dishonest person be chosen to govern the most powerful country on the planet? How could the most powerful person in the world be someone who has no regard for truth, morality, or the people he claims to care so much about?

One conclusion is that the apparent enlightenment we attributed to American voters who elected a black president in 2008 was an illusion, a complete misreading of voters reacting to the serious blunders of the George W. Bush administration that dragged us into an unwinnable twenty-year war against radical Islam. It turned out that America hadn’t grown up, after all. The hatemongers, white supremacists, and greed-driven billionaire elitists simply went silent. Barack Obama’s election was a wake-up call for those who hated everything about FDR’s New Deal, who feared that their wealth might be used to fund a national health care system, and who believed only white males who masquerade as Christians are qualified to lead.

A combination of immigration and racially uneven birth rates would soon turn America into a majority non-white nation. To the closet bigots and ignorant Americans who soaked up MAGA’s venomous rhetoric, to intellectually lazy Americans who defaulted to right-wing influencers and bots in their social media rather that pursue facts, to everyone who were terrified by the notion that America was readily to governed by a progressive woman, regardless of her color, this was a catastrophe that had to be nipped in the bud. It took Trump’s cobra-like charisma to bring home the truth about how decadent we’d become.

That decadence now threatens to become the undoing of our republic, and time is running out for our currently leaderless opposition to right the ship. With growing evidence that we cannot rely on the Supreme Court to preserve the fundamental principles of our Constitution, and Trump’s power grabs expanding every day, the salvation of our democracy is once again in the hands of “we, the people.” With a Cabinet filled with sycophants, and a Congress populated by individuals who care more about Trump’s power to unseat them than the oath they took to protect the Constitution, the only thing that can stop this juggernaut of hate and self-destruction is the voice of the people.

That voice is obviously turning against Trump. The polls suggest that he has completely lost touch with non-aligned voters, and even among those who voted for him twice, his approval ratings are seriously underwater. Most Americans are horrified watching ICE evolve into a Gestapo-like secret police force, by an incompetent Secretary of Defense ordering attacks on civilian boats in international waters without consideration for the rule of law. We cringe at the way immigrant families are being destroyed and look the other way as federal troops marching through our cities begins to seem normal.

Trump is desperate approaching next year’s midterm elections. He has openly made it known that if he can’t guarantee maintaining a majority in Congress by gerrymandering and intimidation, he will find a way to nullify or cancel the 2026 election. If that is allowed to happen, the nation we thought we were growing up in is doomed.

Donald Trump is a very sick man and a very dangerous one, and it has fallen to us, the 350 million Americans who own this country to take him down before he destroys it. Lately, the winds of change have been getting stronger. Republicans in Congress are beginning to realize that every day, they look more like Putin’s Duma, a legislative body filled with invisible people who do nothing but rubber-stamp everything their autocratic leader demands.

They have a chance, this week, as Trump and his DOJ fight desperately to hide the president’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking and pedophilia, to stand up for what’s right. Trump is not invincible. All it takes is courage to end this madness. If they lack what it takes, it will be up to us, democracy’s last line of defense, next November, to replace them with people who will.

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The Undoing of a Wannabe Autocrat

Posted on November 20, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 20, 2025

I recently had an opportunity to hear a couple of political historians speak about autocratic-leaning leaders and how to deal with them. After studying the rise and fall of autocrats, they found that autocrats inevitably failed, and they all committed the same basic errors that led to their undoing. One can argue that the Internet, influencer bots, and an environment that allows anyone to say anything they want to without fear of retribution might yield a different result, today, but they concluded that Donald Trump is committing every error that destroyed people like him in the past.

Chief among them is the need to be surrounded by sycophants, and its dangerous corollary, a tendency to shoot messengers who deliver bad news. A close second is treating loyalty as a one-way street: autocrats who turn on supporters and colleagues at the first hint of disloyalty, creating a black and white world of allies and enemies. In the autocrat’s eyes, no one else exists. Anyone who does not consistently deliver unquestioned loyalty is an enemy.

The idea of wannabe dictators surrounding themselves with advisors who are terrified of telling them anything they don’t want to hear has long been a component of conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t seem to prevent them from making the same error again and again. They forget that people whose loyalty depends on a reign of terror are not their friends. That Trump behaves this way without exception is one of his most predictable and unpopular attributes. Even his loyal supporters cringe at the obvious, constant lies, distortions, fantasies, and slander that issue from his mouth and keyboard.

It has been reliably reported ever since Trump took power again, that the appearance of unified, unbreakable support was an illusion held together by threats and innuendos. We hear from journalists and insiders that Trump is roundly despised and viewed as crazy and irresponsible by a significant majority of Congress and foreign leaders. A situation like that is unstable, one in which resentment, anger, and frustration fester and grow. It’s worsened by the success of Trump’s divide-and-conquer politics, and an insider network that detects every hint of disloyalty, which is defined as anything that doesn’t follow the party line of talking points verbatim. Pressure builds, with the ranks of the disgruntled ever increasing, with secret pockets of resistance waiting to pounce at the first sign of a crack the leader’s invincibility.

Another typical failure is tone-deafness. Trump is hardly a new phenomenon. All wannabe autocrats are insufferably narcissistic, which is another way of saying they are sociopaths incapable of feeling empathy. No matter how clever and charismatic they are, their failure to understand how other people feel, and their need to see every decision as binary (you’re either with us or against us, as George W. Bush told the Arab world after nine-eleven,) invariably blinds them to what ultimately takes them down.

We’re seeing that happening before our eyes, today. What looked like a solid wall of rabid followers and supporters is fracturing, because Trump is incapable of understanding what he’s doing wrong, and his advisors, who have tied their own political futures to him, won’t tell him the truth. Do you wonder, why his loyalists defend his lies, accept his support of genocide in Gaza and buy his false notion that he has any influence over Vladimir Putin when it’s obvious that Putin mocks and manipulates him? Do you wonder why they allow him to pursue his racist, misogynist policies and destroy the lives of immigrants families whether they are American citizens or illegals fleeing from oppression, but somehow the Epstein files scandal completely changed the narrative?

The explanation is simple, so obvious it’s shocking that Trump and his advisors didn’t see it until it was too late. Trump panders to everyone, which means he’s lying to most of them. One of his most effective political weapons was pandering to evangelists and other Christians with the promise to end abortion. That was so crucial to their support they were willing to overlook his lack of moral center, his disgusting behavior, and his obvious greed-driven lust for power. But once Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court reversed Rowe v. Wade, there was no longer a single unifying issue that guaranteed their support.

However we might feel about Trump’s base, a large portion of them are devout Christians. What Trump missed is that of all the despicable things he does and supports, the one thing that group will never tolerate is pedophilia. That’s what the Epstein crisis is about, and Trump made another potentially fatal error. I am not suggesting that Trump is guilty of having sex with underage girls. But Trump believes that if there’s no clear evidence of that in the Epstein files, or if there is, that Pam Bondi will find a way to redact it, and therefore, he’s in the clear, but he’s completely missing the point.

Whether Trump is guilty or  not, it’s obvious that his claim that he had no idea what Epstein was doing is a lie. Of course he knew. He knew that Epstein was responsible for a vile network of despicable sex crimes involving children and he did nothing to stop it. A man with Trump’s ego who feels as powerful as he does cannot claim impotence in such matters. He was an influencer, someone people listened to, but he chose to remain silent and God only knows what else. It’s equally obvious that his basic misogyny deafens him to the cries of the victims who demand justice.

These are things for which much of his loyal base will never forgive him once it’s clear that he had a unique opportunity to speak out or report what he knew to law enforcement. When his Christian base asks why he looked the other way, he won’t have an answer.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene

Posted on November 16, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 16, 2025

In a wide-ranging interview on CNN, this morning, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, “humbly apologized” to the American people for her role in the divisive, hateful politics that’s been a hallmark of the MAGA movement. Long one of Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters, to whom she donated, in her words, “millions of my own dollars,” she is now persona non grata with the White House. Greene criticized the president for ignoring his promises to his supporters to lower prices and focus on domestic priorities, saying she told Trump the country would be better off if he left Air Force One parked on the runway at Andrews, and focused on the needs of Americans.

But the issue that caused the split was the Epstein files. Greene believes the victims are entitled to justice and that it’s wrong to allow wealthy, powerful people to get away with sex trafficking and underage rape. She stopped short of accusing Trump of committing such acts himself, but said that given his close friendship with Epstein, the public deserves complete transparency. She suggested that it’s clear that there is a massive coverup underway, but said it’s not clear what that’s about.

Sounding like a converted sinner, she said America needs to come together and stop the hate and divisiveness. As someone who has routinely criticized Greene for her participation in all of Trump’s hate-mongering, I was happy to hear her contrition. If she’s sincere, it could be a major step toward salvaging our democracy from the fascists running Trump’s Cabinet. She said nothing like that, but I have to wonder, now that she’s the victim of Trump’s vitriol, and she believes her life is being threatened indirectly, the same way hate radicalized someone to murder Charlie Kirk, what she really thinks of Trump.

I won’t speculate on whether Greene was being truthful, other than to say she was impressive. Better to let events play out and see. She said she was setting an example for her MAGA colleagues, and since she knew speaking out would make her a target for Trump’s hatred, I believe that. One thing she did not say, however, was that speaking out against Trump, along with people like Thomas Massie (R-KY) is providing cover by setting an example of courage for her Republican House Caucus. It’s a cliché that there’s no truer believer than a convert. It’s also a cliché that unlikely heroes are always waiting in the wings until circumstances bring them to the fore. I’d love to believe that’s what I witnessed, this morning.

If we take Representative Greene at her word, this may be the moment most of us have been waiting for. By any objective measure, the only thing the Trump administration has accomplished was intimidating Congress into passing the overwhelmingly unpopular “Big, Beautiful Bill” that made the massive tax cuts for billionaires permanent while killing or greatly reducing programs that actually help Americans or protect the planet. Historians and political scientists who have studied authoritarian regimes and wannabe dictators like Trump, have understood since day one that he would likely be responsible for his own undoing. The questions were how much permanent damage the nation would suffer until then and whether his attempts to emulate Adolf Hitler had any chance of succeeding. They also understood that the monolith that MAGA seemed to have become was only as strong as its weakest links, and that once dominoes began falling, the movement would be reduced to a bunch of back bench extremists.

There are clear signs that that may be occurring. The 2025 elections, which saw sweeping victories by Democrats and the defeat of every candidate or position Trump supported, was the first indication. The Supreme Court testimony on Trump’s tariffs was another, dispelling the fear that the Court, too, would be intimidated into supporting everything Trump did. And yesterday, the Indiana legislature told Trump that they had no interest in redistricting the state as Trump demanded.

Even the dimmest of Trump’s supporters understand that his claims that foreign countries would pay his tariffs was a lie, as was his promise to end inflation as soon as he took office. And now Trump has to admit it publicly, as he did in his desperate attempt to convince the Court not to rule his tariffs were illegal. His principal defense seemed to be that the Government would have to refund about $200 billion to American companies and individuals who have been paying the tariffs throughout 2025, and that that would create a national security risk. Don’t even bother to seek the logic in that – there isn’t any.

I sense a wave of optimism in my very purple county in Maryland that I haven’t seen since the 2024 election. I feel it too. This nightmare will end with Constitution intact.

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Trump’s Fracturing Base

Posted on November 15, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 15, 2025

A year ago, the Trump-driven MAGA machine felt indomitable. The threats Trump made during the transition from Biden to his second term screamed of a President who intended to flood the zone with policies that would increase presidential power at the expense of every check and balance in our Constitution. His Cabinet would be filled with people from the Heritage Society, who wrote Project 2025, and loyal sycophants who had sworn to support every crazy thing he did.

MAGA cheered. The anarchists in Qanon, if in fact they exist, and every elected official who ever stood up to Trump or supported his impeachments would be targets of what Trump himself referred to as a revenge tour. It was frighteningly similar to the cult-like response of his followers to his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. The blind loyalty of the thousands of people who participated in or abetted the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol seemed fully intact as Trump bragged that he would be a dictator on Day 1 of his second term. It was the fervor usually found in lynch mobs, only this time they were coming after our democracy.

To the groups that comprise MAGA, it sounded wonderful. Under Trump’s leadership they would finally reap the rewards they deserved after being suppressed by radical left media, socialists, communists, and generally, everyone Trump hated, which was equivalent to anyone who dared to oppose him. The Kool Aid they drank convinced them that they were all victims, that their failures or lack of wealth, their failed marriages and dysfunctional children were all the fault of Democrats. It was time to get even.

If they couldn’t kill the bastards, at least they could bankrupt and imprison them. And all those nasty countries who, like China have been undermining our wealth and standing in the world – the U. K., Canada, France, Germany, Denmark, and half of Central and South America – would be punished with tariffs that would result in billions of dollars in MAGA supporters’ wallets. Inflation would be vanquished, wars would be ended, and the world’s most dangerous autocrats, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, would bend the knee to King Donald. The delusional in MAGA viewed it as the second coming, a righteous if totally disingenuous Christian revolution. Too bad, it turned out to be Satan eating their souls and converting them into wealth for Trump and his billionaire friends.

Trump’s base has had ten months to see how his promises turned out. The Democratic sweep in the elections, two weeks ago, showed that virtually every Independent who voted for Trump in 2024, and most of the Hispanic voters who thought Trump might improve their lives, have turned against him. Without them, Trump’s base does not command anything close to a majority.

But what about the True Blue MAGAs? They still needed to feed their families and put gas in their cars, especially since Trump has done his best to trash the electric car market (essentially handing it to China) as well as most renewable energy initiatives, like the wind farm off the coast of New England. New England virtually defines the opposition to Trump – it’s consistently blue all the way down to Virginia. His MAGA base, for all their bravado, don’t want to see their sons and daughters caught up in new wars, and even hard core haters have to be cringing at the sight of Palestinian civilians being killed and starved, and Russia, with Trump’s blessing, virtually destroying Ukraine.

MAGA supporters must wonder how far Trump will go if no one stops him from attacking Venezuelan boats and murdering civilians because they’re suspected of smuggling drugs (the same drugs his former mafia friends got rich selling to addicted Americans) without any regard for international law or due process.

Many in Trump’s base have had enough. Congress is showing signs of re-asserting its Constitutional role, and with the growing scandal around the Epstein files, and the specter of a Sodom and Gomorrah-like cesspool of immorality within their ranks, they’re starting to have buyers’ remorse. Thus, former powerful supporters who voted with Trump nearly 100% of the time signed the discharge petition that would force the release of everything the government knows about who was involved in the trafficking of prostitutes and underage girls, some reportedly as young as junior high schoolers.

People like Kentucky’s Thomas Massie and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene have made it clear that they want the perpetrators revealed and prosecuted, no matter which party they support. Greene asserted that she does not worship Donald Trump, and political observers expect the discharge petition vote, which Trump is frantically attempting to derail, to succeed by a two-to-one margin with over a hundred Republicans defecting.

With the likelihood that the Supreme Court will rule that most of Trump’s tariff decisions were illegal, necessitating the return of all monies collected to the American businesses and individuals who paid them, even Trump’s most loyal followers can see that Emperor Donald is buck naked. Once the bubble of Trump’s invincibility breaks, so will the dominance of MAGA. The threat to our republic is still serious, but the inevitable destruction of our democracy seems far less likely today than it did a few months ago.

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