Items

Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy on the disaster that is Trump.

Item 1: he’s made the US look like a pack of liars.

As he did throughout his litigious and bankruptcy-prone business career, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that his threats are mostly empty bluster and his pledges mean nothing. He tore up the successful nuclear deal with Iran (didn’t that work out well?), and he now condemns the same trade agreement that he negotiated with Canada and Mexico during his first term (and that he said was the best deal ever). His on-again, off-again approach to tariffs, repeated threats to withdraw support from key allies, and unexplained reversal of his offer to let Ukraine build Patriot interceptors make it abundantly clear that his word means nothing. 

Item 2: Smashing up the military.

Despite spending unprecedented sums, boasting of the United States’ “lethality,” and making sure male troops have enough testosterone, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have made the country’s military forces weaker and undermined the U.S. ability to deter attacks on its partners.

How? By starting a foolish war with Iran, depleting stockpiles of critical weaponry, and keeping ships, squadrons, and service personnel on station for months on end, reportedly leading to a wave of suicide attempts. These actions have burned through valuable military capacity to no good purpose, shown potential adversaries where the country’s vulnerabilities are, and eroded service members’ morale in potentially tragic ways…

To make matters worse, Trump and Hegseth are trying to politicize the uniformed services and make them a loyal part of the MAGA movement. Hegseth has actively sought to purge officers he regards as “woke,” fired or denied promotion to a disproportionate number of women and people of color—despite their stellar records and recommendations from the senior officers who know them best—and tried to impose ideological conformity on the entire military establishment, including the service academies.

They would impose ideological conformity on every single one of us if they could.

Item 3: Dismantling diplomatic capacity.

Under Rubio’s leadership at the State Department, the United States has unilaterally withdrawn from more than 60 international organizations, even as China keeps expanding its involvement in them. He has closed consulates and offices abroad and left dozens of ambassadorships empty. A comprehensive survey conducted by the American Foreign Service Association found that 98 percent of respondents reported low morale and 86 percent said these actions were impairing their ability to do their jobs. The title of the report says it all: The country’s diplomatic institutions are “at the breaking point.”

That might not be a big problem if the special envoys that Trump prefers to rely upon were highly competent and effective, but the performance of amateur diplomats Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner or Vice President J.D. Vance shows that this not the case.

How very unsurprising.

Item 4: Smashing up science.

Leadership in science and technology has long been one of the foundations of the United States’ global power. As China clearly understands, scientific prowess will be even more important in the future. What has Trump done in response to this challenge? He has cut federal support for a wide range of scientific research, attacked universities on spurious grounds, appointed ignorant and unqualified science skeptics (such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) to key positions, amplified their false claims through his own statements and social media blasts, appointed a nonscientist as his scientific advisor, and actively encouraged the belief that ignorance is preferable to knowledge and expertise.

I wonder if that last item has any connection at all to the fact that he has zero knowledge and expertise in any field other than real estate.

Item 5: missing the boat on global warming.

A related blunder stems from Trump’s long-standing climate change denialism, his opposition to renewable energy, and his steadfast commitment to burning more fossil fuels. This is lunacy, as anyone who has read the literature on this subject or paid attention to long-term climate trends knows. Not only will this lead to more serious climate problems, more climate-related deaths, and much human suffering, but Trump’s policies have ensured that China will dominate the green technologies of the future (solar, wind, batteries, etc.) while the U.S. dominates the smokestack technologies of the 19th century.

Item 6: pissing on the rule of law.

Trump’s contempt for laws and rules is well-documented, and he has gone to great lengths to insulate himself from any sort of legal constraint while using the legal system to conduct vendettas against individuals who have had the misfortune to have incurred his ire.

Wull kings used to be able to do that so why shouldn’t he?

Item 9: Unmitigated endless brazen rudeness and trashiness.

More than anyone else, Trump is responsible for the coarsening and vulgarity of U.S. political discourse. It’s partly his willingness and ability to lie shamelessly—a trait that has infected most of the Republican Party—but it is also his reliance on vulgar insults; violent rhetoric; rambling rants portraying opponents as criminals, traitors, or worse; and his all-too-evident contempt for half of the citizens of the country.

In a way that’s what I hate about him the most – the endless relentless trashy vulgar disgustingness of him.