The external weakness is hard to argue with. But I'd push it one step further: the external and the internal aren't two stories. They're one mechanism with two faces.
A state that selects for loyalty over competence - Pulte at intelligence, Hegseth at a department he's renamed for war - doesn't merely punish enemies. It hollows out the capacity that made the country credible in the first place. The same decision that produces a brittle executive at home produces an unreliable partner abroad. Israel and Iran aren't only reading American military fatigue; they're reading that no one inside the system can be trusted to mean tomorrow what they say today.
And in a man like Hegseth it is worse than careerist servility. He administers the use of force in a register of restoration - "maximum lethality, not tepid legality." A state whose weapons are run by men who believe they are executing a divine restoration is not a stronger state. It is a less correctable one, because faith doesn't respond to disconfirmation the way interest does.
Which is why the real loss isn't in the Middle East. It's trust - the one asset the US cannot rebuild on its own timeline. It accrued over eighty years and was squandered in months, because Trump didn't break a rule; he revealed the rules were never binding. That is irreversible information for an ally. You can survive a bad president. You cannot price in a system that permits one and has no mechanism to prevent the next.
Recovery, then, isn't a matter of waiting Trump out. It would take structural proof that it cannot recur - and the American constitution makes that kind of proof very nearly impossible to furnish.
When the Ever Given sat across the Suez for six days, the world spent half a year clearing up after it. But the ship could be dug free, and the freight returned on a known curve. The Iran war is neither short nor mechanical. There is no single wreck to remove, no known way back - and what has to be reversed isn't a queue of containers but the world's estimate of what an American word is worth.
Which is why any "recovery" is a long way off. Other states would be crazy to trust the USA again, even if there is a better president after this (and there might not be).
And - Dane to American - there's not much warmth left here for Trump or his circle. But we know the difference between a government and a people. That difference is worth holding onto, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The problem however is that a great many of "the people" admire Trump while most of the rest tolerate him. It's nice that a Dane still likes Americans in general, but a lot of Americans themselves (on both sides) don't think so highly of their fellow citizens anymore. The rest of the world may not be far behind.
"Recovery, then, isn't a matter of waiting Trump out. It would take structural proof that it cannot recur - and the American constitution makes that kind of proof very nearly impossible to furnish."
Absolutely. When you also have the arbiter of the American Constitution, the Supreme Court - with its current majority, that near impossibility becomes vanishingly miniscule..
Yes. What has frightened me from the start was never Trump himself - he is a symptom.
What frightens me is that no one stops him. Not the Court, as you say; but also no one in Congress, and none of the institutions with real leverage, the banks and tech firms with their armies of lobbyists, willing to spend a cent of that influence to say you are wrong. And the chilling part isn't fear. It's that they've done the math: compliance pays better than resistance. Worse - they seem eager to join the dance around the golden calf, as if proximity to it were its own reward. A constitution survives bad actors. It cannot survive every actor with the power to check one deciding it isn't worth their while.
A R Congressman, whom no one has seen or heard from for months and about whom there have been numerous articles, just won his primary after Trump endorsed him. The remarkable thing is indeed the failure of Rs to stand up to Trump. Although now that Trump is deteriorating, there should be more, probably small push back from elected Rs. Not from SCOTUS or Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, etc. They will speed up, become more aggressive.
That primary is the whole story in miniature, isn't it - the man himself barely exists, and it didn't matter. The endorsement was the candidate. That's what unsettles me more than any single official: not that a flawed figure wins, but that the seal of approval now outweighs the person wearing it entirely. I'd like to share your hope about pushback as he weakens, but I'd want to see it cost someone something first. So far the pattern runs the other way - the ordinary voter watching an open dismantling of the system and, at the ballot box, ratifying it anyway. Apathy and approval start to look the same from the outside.
By small push back, I meant possible R senator votes against Trump: McConnell, Paul, Murkowski, Collins, Cassidy, Tillis, Cornyn. Depending on the issue, there will be different groupings.
Example: Mitch McConnell issued a pointed statement noting that the DNI role has statutory eligibility requirements and that any nominee who doesn’t meet them will not get his vote.
The MAGA base, smth like max 15-20% of the US electorate will have the power of a small party i Denmark between to almost 50% groupings. They will have extreme power because without their votes noone can get majority (in Denmark) or be voted into Congress/Senate (in the US).
And since MAGA does what Trump demands, every R politician is dependent on him.
You're right about the leverage - a small, disciplined bloc holds outsized power when no majority can form without it. But the parallel breaks on one point, and it's the decisive one. A multi-party system can push an extreme bloc out; a two-party system can only be captured from within.
In Denmark, the other parties have somewhere else to go. They can reach across the middle and isolate a fringe - which is exactly what's happened. Dansk Folkeparti has wielded real influence over the years, but it's been kept at arm's length; the other parties cooperate with it when the numbers demand and route around it when they don't. The closest things we have to a MAGA-style movement stay genuine minorities precisely because the system can do that - tolerate them at the edge without ever letting them take a major party hostage from within. The arithmetic you describe exists here too, but it can be answered, because there are more than two doors.
In a two-party system there's no routing around. If you're a Republican who wants to be re-elected, the road runs through a primary the bloc controls, and there's no other road. That's not a coalition partner you can decline - it's a takeover of one of the only two vehicles that can carry you. So the example proves the thing I keep coming back to: a multi-party system can still correct itself. A captured two-party one has nowhere left to correct from.
Indeed most of the tech companies are sucking up to Trump big time to hopefully gain some advantage, with tariffs or regulations. They’re now part of the problem.
All of this has been an stress-test of the Constitution, and frankly, it has failed. Time to move the US to a parliamentary system akin to the one described by Maxwell Sterns in “Parliamentary America.” He describes three constitutional amendments; 1 - double the size of the US House, and give voters 2 votes in house elections, one for a district rep and one for a party rep chosen statewide and distributed proportionally by vote tally. This would break the Dem/GOP death grip on US politics and make the House much more democratic in that it would reflect a wider array of actual political thought. 2 - President and VP chosen by the US House. 3 - Give the US House the option for a no-confidence vote against a president with a 60% vote for removal ending a term. Impeachment stays but this would end this mad dominance of the executive branch and negate the regal authority the Roberts/Federalist Society’s Supreme Court has bestowed on the office of the presidency. Time to get back to democracy, this plan is a step in that direction.
While the Constitution has a few potentially fatal (but potentially fixable!) flaws, I'm more inclined to feel the MAGA Christian Nationalists failed the Constitution (because they despise it) - making Congress more democratic probably won't reduce THAT problem significantly. If the herculean task of amending it is to be undertaken (and it should), may I suggest 3 much simpler and more easily understood, time-worn amendments? 1) Abolish the Electoral College. 2) Eliminate the possibility of another Citizens United. 3) Eliminate the possibility of another Unitary/Imperial Presidency. The last of these would be a complexity 'heavy lift' - but it's absolutely necessary for our country to ever be trusted again by our *former* allies - and the rest of the world, frankly..
It will take a generation to root out and rectify the corruption and seek retribution, another to rebuild state capacity.
All the while, the system isn't able to fix itself, because Republicans are committed to facism, authoritarianism, and the arbitrary and capricious use of power
I'd resist the word, not because it's too harsh but because it's too flattering. Fascism is a conviction. What I've described is a calculation - every actor with the power to check this one deciding it pays better not to. That's not an ideology marching; it's an absence of resistance being priced in. In some ways that's the more frightening diagnosis, because conviction can burn out, and a price can always be met.
Am I right in surmising your point is "the perceived motivation of the actors doesn't seem to be based on conviction, so it can't be facism"?
With respect, I'm not sure that's a good take. For something to be facist doesn't rely on the conviction of the actors involved. Facism is an approach to governing. There's no element of subjective intention - its able to be identified and described based on the action of government. And the actions I see - massive expansion of ICE, increasingly violence from them, sacking people responsible for accountability, targetting minorities. That's all classic facism.
But to include some element of perceived intent is effectively concluding that this isn't facism because Trump is grafting too hard, stealing too much to be a facist, which surely can't be your point.
Edit: that said, I agree facism has an ideological element. I'm just not convinced that isn't present here - what with ghouls like Stephen Millar around and stories of Trump keeping Mein Kampf by his bedside.
I think we were talking past each other - on the regime we may not disagree, and I won't argue about Miller. My objection was to the first line: "Republicans are committed to fascism." That single word flattens three very different people into one.
There's the ideologue, who genuinely believes - and conviction, at least, has the decency to be mortal. It can be discredited, it can burn out, it can lose its moment. There's the opportunist, who believes nothing and folds because folding pays - and that one has no expiry date, because a price can always be met. And there's the ordinary voter who went populist less from belief than from being left on the platform, watching the train pull away - moved by grievance and not always by knowledge.
If you want the genuinely chilling figure, it isn't the fascist. It's the second one - the deliberate collaborator who knows better and complies anyway. Jonathan Littell built nearly a thousand pages on exactly that man in The Kindly Ones: not a monster with a creed, but a cultured functionary who did the unspeakable because it was where the structure led, and felt mostly inconvenienced by it. That's why I resist the blanket word. Calling them all fascists mistakes the disease - and a disease misdiagnosed is one you can't cure.
I'd like to agree, and you're right that despair isn't a strategy. But look closer at your own example. Ukrainian hope isn't optimism; it's hope welded to sacrifice and institutional will. Consider what they've just done: in the middle of an existential war, under intense American pressure to sign a peace deal, their anti-corruption agencies raided the home of Zelensky's own chief of staff - his right hand, his lead negotiator - and he was gone within the day. That is a country whose institutions still go after the top. It's the hardest possible test of whether the guardrails work, and they held. That is exactly what I cannot find in Washington right now.
Recovery doesn't require hope, it requires political will, and that is very hard to see at the moment. It will take more than words. A new president can undo the lot unless there are reforms deep enough to end the self-dealing both parties have run for years - donor capture, re-election placed above the office - the monkey business Trump didn't invent but put on steroids. Until that reckoning happens, the outside world has no reason to revise its estimate. Hope deserves better than words. It deserves to be made warranted.
If we can't find that will in Washington DC, maybe we can find it in the 50 state capitals. States run nearly everything in the US anyway. If they march on Washington, they can force the removal of the insurrectionist and his lackeys.
The US would have to start by arresting and executing the fake supreme court judges (the bribe takers) and the insurrectionist usurper, and then rewriting the Constitution.
The US state had already constructed a globe-spanning torture network beofore Trump. It was already surveiling everyone before Trump. It had already destroyed much of West Asia before Trump. The idea that a good President can come along and fix any of this rather assumes there have been some already and there simply haven't been any - certainly not for the last half century.
As you say, the US should just get out of the Middle East. We have both been making this point for a long time. And it is now Trump's best option. Pull out armed forces, scrap the Abraham Accords and the Board of Peace, say "we tried with Israel, Iran and the rest, but they've crasy and we'fe going to leave them to settle their own problems from now on". MAGA would cheer, and the Dems couldn't really object
Please mention the fact that the US is producing the most amount of oil in its history: somewhere in the range of 13-14 Million Barrels per day while consuming 20+ Million Barrels per day: the same level as 1979 when the Iranian Revolution occured! And BTW the US economy is now three times as large! The future of oil is in the Atlantic Basin: offshore Guyana, Suriname, and Brazil specifically. EV's will continue to take market share away from cars fueled by gasoline and diesel. Fighting wars for oil in the Middle East is so LAST CENTURY!
Yes, the appropriate attitude toward Israel/Arabs is "a plague on both your houses," work it out yourselves. US support for Israel has won us nothing and has worked only to reinforce the worst people on both sides. More generally, I once read a remark that the great University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins made ca. 1946, about the US intervening to support democracy and prosperity around the world. He opposed it, not because he didn't think the world needed helping, but because he knew Americans are congenitally so ignorant of foreign matters that they would inevitably screw things up everywhere.
It seems to work out OK when the US politely says that they won't be able to provide foreign aid if the country's dictator steals the next election. (This worked in Taiwan and South Korea.)
But usually the US is actually backing the dictator and opposing free elecitons.
Operationally, most of the bases are currently non-operational. Just bring the troops home, close the bases down, and stop sending money. Let other people worry about the oil, democracy, Israel/Palestine etc. It’s not as if the US has achieved anything in these respects for a long time.
As regards outcomes. like Indochina/SE Asai and lots of other places where the US once thought it vital to maintain bases and control events. Some bits would be better than (or not as bad as) they are now, some worse.
Another scorcher from you Phillips, thanks. My (shameful) schadenfreude is now giving way to a kind of morbid scarcely believable and gruesome fascination. I’m reduced to political rubber necking. Can he really succeed ? Against the wishes of a hefty majority of Americans? Surely even Hollywood would reject the script….wouldn’t they?
The problem is that Republicans are mindless authoritarian followers; and most Democrats in Congress and other positions of power are too hidebound to think outside the box, being obsessed with "the way we've always done things".
A minority of Democrats in power are thinking outside the box and doing the right thing, but not enough to have an organized majority to remove the insurrectionist usurper -- yet.
The one good thing about the latest quagmire is, unless the elections are not free and fair it will probably drag down the Republicans at the polls badly, especially if it continues for months from now.
In my view it is the sclerotic centrist leadership of Schumer and Jeffries acting like an anchor. The party is not a popular brand, Sanders wanted to try to reorient it to a grand vision aimed at the working and middle classes but was defeated.
I want to make it clear where I come from when I say that Schumer is a deluded fossil from another era -- I supported Schumer back in 1998 when he ran against D'Amato.
This isn't 1998, and following the politics of 1998 now, which is what Schumer is doing, is like doing pre-World-War-I 1914 politics in 1942 -- completely deluded behavior. Schumer has proven incapable of learning.
And that's the rub isn't it. The Voters Rights Act, state-wide gerrymandering, voter roll purges, dark money election campaign funding... The evidence seems to be right infront of us that it won't be.
And that's just the 'quasi legal grey area' stuff. Deeper down that hole is stuff that seemed to happen in 2024 - electronic voting machine manipulation, bomb threats on polling places.
And then there's the straight up conspiratorial: 'finding' ballots, hacking vote talley databases. Exactly the sort of thing you'd encounter if, I dont know, you fired all the people in an Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
All signs suggest it is unlikely to be either free or fair
We have to include in the analysis the psychological dimension. It is possible, or likely that Trump, in addition to a lust for political power, enjoys inflicting pain and humiliation on others. It’s possible that he somehow feeds on the destruction of the world’s economies via the Hormuz closure. What I’m arguing is, don’t discount the possibility that he has qualities of a sadistic psychopath. A rational intellectual like Phillips O’Brien is educated to view events as rationally motivated. But when we project rationailty to Trump, it may be that something far darker may be at work here.
In 1984, tRUMP sold five condos in tRUMP Tower to David Bogatin, a well known russian mobster in New York City, who paid tRUMP $6 million in cash in a briefcase, to purchase 5 condos in tRUMP Tower. Turned out investing dirty money in New York city real estate was a good way to "clean it" for the russian mob. Since then, tRUMP has received billions of dollars from the sale of tRUMP real estate to russian mobsters and oligarchs while the russian government provide other "favors", including an invitation to visit Moscow in 1987 for the first time, to discuss building a tRUMP Tower there. Craig Unger is an investigative journalist who has documented tRUMP's relationship with russia in two books. Bottom line: tRUMP sees russians as friends and a means to enrich himself, not as an enemy and he knows he must repay those "favors": https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/03/05/craig-unger-trump-wont-betray-putin-after-40-years-of-russian-money/
Right on target Mary Ann. Wasn’t it Pulte’s father who was involved in that Florida real estate deal where a property was sold to a Russian oligarch at a ridiculous price and Trump made quite a lot of money? Hmmm
Don't know about Pulte's father but tRUMP sold a Palm Beach Estate he bought at $41 million in 2005 to a russian oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, for $95 million in 2008. There was a Senate hearing into whether or not the sale involving money laundering but nothing came of it:
I don't want to speculate about something that heinous but instead, let's focus on the facts, which is what Craig Unger has done in publishing his research on tRUMP's 40 year relationship with russians and russia.
I'd also like to remind everyone of another brilliant piece Phillips wrote about tRUMP in 2025: Is the President of the United States Acting as an "Agent of Influence" for Putin? Phillips writes: "An agent of influence might not even consciously know that they are serving a foreign state, but they have come to identify themselves so thoroughly with another country, ideology or leadership that they use their position to make their own country act or think in a way that serves the interests of that foreign state." Agent of influence or asset, its the alignment of interests between two parties and that we can plainly see:
I think that the speed with which this happening is the most alarming, as you say the mid terms are going to be an indication of where along the road to an authoritarian state Trump is at.
Trump and his cadre of handlers & minions are doing their 1984 bit; too many of my fellow citizens are pursuing their own Brave New World. I don't need everyone's hair on fair, just more of us to pay attention and to resolve neither plot serves our needs
It's much too weak to be fascist. Trump is trying to implement fascism, but the federal government has barely any control over the country (almost everything is done by the states anyway), and so the result looks a lot more like the history of the Holy Roman Empire, IMO.
Trump, the "Scorched Earth GOP and Executive Branch" and the 'Imperial Presidency' Supreme Court are pathological symptoms of a proudly ignorant citizenry rabid with hatred and rage.
Which begs the question: "How do you protect a democracy from its own voters?"
And the Straight of Hormuz stays closed. With only weeks until until some oil refineries start closing because of no oil supplies we are staring a human disaster in the face and it appears we are going over the cliff. Incredible. Thank you Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
Clearly, the US is getting weaker. As clearly is that Russia too is getting weaker. China, on the contrary… methinks an opportunity is there for Europe to gain
Agree. I separated China’s rise from European possibility to use the part vacuum offered by Russia and US’s decline. Sorry for not writing more clearly
The trouble with that raven is it only knows the one word, so everyone hears their own meaning. Phillips hopes it means the chaos ends. I meant the bleaker one: once squandered, strength doesn't come back. Same caw, opposite forecast. The bird declines to clarify.
There is no surprise here. This was always Trump's way, even as a private businessman. There were plenty of warnings...for years...about who he was and what he represented. America ignored the warnings, elected him once for a disastrous four-year term culminating in an attempt to overthrow the Republic, and then re-elected him with the support of the Supreme Court, which allowed him to run after Jan.6 and gave him a "free pass" with absolute immunity. What he represents is the deep-seated corruption in the political, economic, and legislative elements of American society. Getting rid of Trump, if that's even possible, short of death, is only the beginning of the "long road back". To re-establish a believable "rule of law" will require significant changes to the Constitution to prevent a recurrence. Much of this will require action through the amendment process...and we know that will never happen. Using the existing court system to prosecute the guilty will take years. The US, as a country, will be perceived as "damaged goods" by the rest of the world for a long time to come. Trust, once it's lost, is very hard to regain.
Remember, the Constitution was unconstitutional. It did not follow the amendment procedure set down by the Articles of Confederation.
We can do it again. If enough of the states endorse a new Constitution, the new Constitution goes into effect and the old one is unceremoniously scrapped, just like the Articles of Confederation were.
Another fine piece on both the military and political dimensions faced by DC.
On Trump's scorched earth politics, I would flag another unexpected outcome. He belated threw an endorsement to Rep. Feenstra in the Iowa GOP primary for governor. Feenstra, a very weak candidate and not the most consistent supporter of Trump, lost to Zach Lahn, who's getting undesirable press for investing in cockrings, and running against a strong Dem who can beat him...
A few Republicans could end this war at any moment they choose by impeaching Trump.
But Trump is the Republican party's Judas Goat for taking over the US government. The fight over DHS funding is telling; congressional Republicans are unwilling to trade reforms of a rogue scofflaw federal agency in exchange for funding it's arguably more important parent agency. That rogue agency is wildly over-funded for its supposed immigration law-enforcenent role (a bigger budget than the FBI).
Rather, it is funded to build out a Gestapo and Gulag system. A system aimed at immigrants right now, but come November, against any wannabe color revolutionaries after the Republican party miraculously beats back an economically-driven blue wave to retain full control of Congress (aka an unmistakably rigged election).
The U.S was a superpower and leader of the free world from WWII until Trump illegally returned to power thanks to the intervention of Supreme Court justice John Roberts. Now, it is a superpower no more, but how far it will fall is still unknown.
The white supremacist fascists will never rule over New York or California. Trying to do so is overreach. They tried once, during the Civil War, and that was overreach, and they lost. They are even less popular and even less powerful now.
The blue state governors could call up a sufficiently large popular militia to wipe out ICE overnight, if they were ready to do so. It may come to that.
Josh Marshall says all power is unitary. So, if that's right, the more he loses power in the Middle East, the more he'll lose control in the US. I guess we'll find out if he's right. It'll be either an Orban scenario, where he loses control and crashes or an Iranian one where despite all unpopularity, it won't matter.
It will be more like Orban. Iran has institutions. Trump is just one person with a personality cult.
While the institution of white supremacy (the Confederacy) still exists in the US, particularly in states like Alabama and Louisiana, it's never going to be able to control California, New York, or Illinois, and it's losing its grip on Texas. Most of Trump's personality cult goes away with him. The white supremacists will still be around, but there aren't enough of them to stay in power nationally (unlike the IRGC in Iran).
Michael - It's often said in the US that presidents frequently pivot to international affairs when they face declining poll numbers or stalling legislative agendas on the domestic front. Trump has always relied on bluff & bluster. He campaigned on the fantasy that he would be so strong a president, and would make the US so feared, that no nation would defy him. Now he's shown that Iran & Israel do as they please. Even his golfing buddy sheiks are less compliant & more wary of him. This galls him but he also begins to worry that everyone sees his flaccidity. It's worse to be seen as a loser than it is to lose. This is why he is said to TACO, and then characterize backing down as some sort of win. He can still sell the fantasy image (to himself and his true followers) as long as he bails out before the complete collapse of whatever scheme he was running.
I think the 1.776 billions were just a distraction for the tax immunity. Even Trump knows how crazy that fund is, and that the Republicans are only reacting to taxpayer money spent, and even think the taxes Trump has cheated on (continuing) are immoral.
Trump, his handlers & hangers on, have so many schemes in process. They know that not every one will be successful, but the more they attempt, the more will bring some payoff. If the slush fund plan is scuttled and the tax crime amnesty can't be accomplished that way, we'll see it pop up in a different op soon enough. As you suggest, he points to his offenses with each new demand for legal exemptions
The external weakness is hard to argue with. But I'd push it one step further: the external and the internal aren't two stories. They're one mechanism with two faces.
A state that selects for loyalty over competence - Pulte at intelligence, Hegseth at a department he's renamed for war - doesn't merely punish enemies. It hollows out the capacity that made the country credible in the first place. The same decision that produces a brittle executive at home produces an unreliable partner abroad. Israel and Iran aren't only reading American military fatigue; they're reading that no one inside the system can be trusted to mean tomorrow what they say today.
And in a man like Hegseth it is worse than careerist servility. He administers the use of force in a register of restoration - "maximum lethality, not tepid legality." A state whose weapons are run by men who believe they are executing a divine restoration is not a stronger state. It is a less correctable one, because faith doesn't respond to disconfirmation the way interest does.
Which is why the real loss isn't in the Middle East. It's trust - the one asset the US cannot rebuild on its own timeline. It accrued over eighty years and was squandered in months, because Trump didn't break a rule; he revealed the rules were never binding. That is irreversible information for an ally. You can survive a bad president. You cannot price in a system that permits one and has no mechanism to prevent the next.
Recovery, then, isn't a matter of waiting Trump out. It would take structural proof that it cannot recur - and the American constitution makes that kind of proof very nearly impossible to furnish.
When the Ever Given sat across the Suez for six days, the world spent half a year clearing up after it. But the ship could be dug free, and the freight returned on a known curve. The Iran war is neither short nor mechanical. There is no single wreck to remove, no known way back - and what has to be reversed isn't a queue of containers but the world's estimate of what an American word is worth.
Which is why any "recovery" is a long way off. Other states would be crazy to trust the USA again, even if there is a better president after this (and there might not be).
And - Dane to American - there's not much warmth left here for Trump or his circle. But we know the difference between a government and a people. That difference is worth holding onto, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Of course--but ultimately relations are conducted by states and not peoples--and without trust....
The problem however is that a great many of "the people" admire Trump while most of the rest tolerate him. It's nice that a Dane still likes Americans in general, but a lot of Americans themselves (on both sides) don't think so highly of their fellow citizens anymore. The rest of the world may not be far behind.
Ugh
I wonder if will we get a chance to recover.
Good question
I think if the US dissolves, California will come roaring back within a year. Same with New York. The US is holding them back.
"Recovery, then, isn't a matter of waiting Trump out. It would take structural proof that it cannot recur - and the American constitution makes that kind of proof very nearly impossible to furnish."
Absolutely. When you also have the arbiter of the American Constitution, the Supreme Court - with its current majority, that near impossibility becomes vanishingly miniscule..
Yes. What has frightened me from the start was never Trump himself - he is a symptom.
What frightens me is that no one stops him. Not the Court, as you say; but also no one in Congress, and none of the institutions with real leverage, the banks and tech firms with their armies of lobbyists, willing to spend a cent of that influence to say you are wrong. And the chilling part isn't fear. It's that they've done the math: compliance pays better than resistance. Worse - they seem eager to join the dance around the golden calf, as if proximity to it were its own reward. A constitution survives bad actors. It cannot survive every actor with the power to check one deciding it isn't worth their while.
A R Congressman, whom no one has seen or heard from for months and about whom there have been numerous articles, just won his primary after Trump endorsed him. The remarkable thing is indeed the failure of Rs to stand up to Trump. Although now that Trump is deteriorating, there should be more, probably small push back from elected Rs. Not from SCOTUS or Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, etc. They will speed up, become more aggressive.
That primary is the whole story in miniature, isn't it - the man himself barely exists, and it didn't matter. The endorsement was the candidate. That's what unsettles me more than any single official: not that a flawed figure wins, but that the seal of approval now outweighs the person wearing it entirely. I'd like to share your hope about pushback as he weakens, but I'd want to see it cost someone something first. So far the pattern runs the other way - the ordinary voter watching an open dismantling of the system and, at the ballot box, ratifying it anyway. Apathy and approval start to look the same from the outside.
By small push back, I meant possible R senator votes against Trump: McConnell, Paul, Murkowski, Collins, Cassidy, Tillis, Cornyn. Depending on the issue, there will be different groupings.
Example: Mitch McConnell issued a pointed statement noting that the DNI role has statutory eligibility requirements and that any nominee who doesn’t meet them will not get his vote.
The MAGA base, smth like max 15-20% of the US electorate will have the power of a small party i Denmark between to almost 50% groupings. They will have extreme power because without their votes noone can get majority (in Denmark) or be voted into Congress/Senate (in the US).
And since MAGA does what Trump demands, every R politician is dependent on him.
You're right about the leverage - a small, disciplined bloc holds outsized power when no majority can form without it. But the parallel breaks on one point, and it's the decisive one. A multi-party system can push an extreme bloc out; a two-party system can only be captured from within.
In Denmark, the other parties have somewhere else to go. They can reach across the middle and isolate a fringe - which is exactly what's happened. Dansk Folkeparti has wielded real influence over the years, but it's been kept at arm's length; the other parties cooperate with it when the numbers demand and route around it when they don't. The closest things we have to a MAGA-style movement stay genuine minorities precisely because the system can do that - tolerate them at the edge without ever letting them take a major party hostage from within. The arithmetic you describe exists here too, but it can be answered, because there are more than two doors.
In a two-party system there's no routing around. If you're a Republican who wants to be re-elected, the road runs through a primary the bloc controls, and there's no other road. That's not a coalition partner you can decline - it's a takeover of one of the only two vehicles that can carry you. So the example proves the thing I keep coming back to: a multi-party system can still correct itself. A captured two-party one has nowhere left to correct from.
Indeed most of the tech companies are sucking up to Trump big time to hopefully gain some advantage, with tariffs or regulations. They’re now part of the problem.
All of this has been an stress-test of the Constitution, and frankly, it has failed. Time to move the US to a parliamentary system akin to the one described by Maxwell Sterns in “Parliamentary America.” He describes three constitutional amendments; 1 - double the size of the US House, and give voters 2 votes in house elections, one for a district rep and one for a party rep chosen statewide and distributed proportionally by vote tally. This would break the Dem/GOP death grip on US politics and make the House much more democratic in that it would reflect a wider array of actual political thought. 2 - President and VP chosen by the US House. 3 - Give the US House the option for a no-confidence vote against a president with a 60% vote for removal ending a term. Impeachment stays but this would end this mad dominance of the executive branch and negate the regal authority the Roberts/Federalist Society’s Supreme Court has bestowed on the office of the presidency. Time to get back to democracy, this plan is a step in that direction.
While the Constitution has a few potentially fatal (but potentially fixable!) flaws, I'm more inclined to feel the MAGA Christian Nationalists failed the Constitution (because they despise it) - making Congress more democratic probably won't reduce THAT problem significantly. If the herculean task of amending it is to be undertaken (and it should), may I suggest 3 much simpler and more easily understood, time-worn amendments? 1) Abolish the Electoral College. 2) Eliminate the possibility of another Citizens United. 3) Eliminate the possibility of another Unitary/Imperial Presidency. The last of these would be a complexity 'heavy lift' - but it's absolutely necessary for our country to ever be trusted again by our *former* allies - and the rest of the world, frankly..
It will take a generation to root out and rectify the corruption and seek retribution, another to rebuild state capacity.
All the while, the system isn't able to fix itself, because Republicans are committed to facism, authoritarianism, and the arbitrary and capricious use of power
I'd resist the word, not because it's too harsh but because it's too flattering. Fascism is a conviction. What I've described is a calculation - every actor with the power to check this one deciding it pays better not to. That's not an ideology marching; it's an absence of resistance being priced in. In some ways that's the more frightening diagnosis, because conviction can burn out, and a price can always be met.
Am I right in surmising your point is "the perceived motivation of the actors doesn't seem to be based on conviction, so it can't be facism"?
With respect, I'm not sure that's a good take. For something to be facist doesn't rely on the conviction of the actors involved. Facism is an approach to governing. There's no element of subjective intention - its able to be identified and described based on the action of government. And the actions I see - massive expansion of ICE, increasingly violence from them, sacking people responsible for accountability, targetting minorities. That's all classic facism.
But to include some element of perceived intent is effectively concluding that this isn't facism because Trump is grafting too hard, stealing too much to be a facist, which surely can't be your point.
Edit: that said, I agree facism has an ideological element. I'm just not convinced that isn't present here - what with ghouls like Stephen Millar around and stories of Trump keeping Mein Kampf by his bedside.
I think we were talking past each other - on the regime we may not disagree, and I won't argue about Miller. My objection was to the first line: "Republicans are committed to fascism." That single word flattens three very different people into one.
There's the ideologue, who genuinely believes - and conviction, at least, has the decency to be mortal. It can be discredited, it can burn out, it can lose its moment. There's the opportunist, who believes nothing and folds because folding pays - and that one has no expiry date, because a price can always be met. And there's the ordinary voter who went populist less from belief than from being left on the platform, watching the train pull away - moved by grievance and not always by knowledge.
If you want the genuinely chilling figure, it isn't the fascist. It's the second one - the deliberate collaborator who knows better and complies anyway. Jonathan Littell built nearly a thousand pages on exactly that man in The Kindly Ones: not a monster with a creed, but a cultured functionary who did the unspeakable because it was where the structure led, and felt mostly inconvenienced by it. That's why I resist the blanket word. Calling them all fascists mistakes the disease - and a disease misdiagnosed is one you can't cure.
And they won’t want to see it reversed.
Brilliant, beautifully written and sobering commentary. Thank you.
Slava Ukraini!
Thank you, Mary Ann - that means a lot. Slava Ukraini.
Recovery is possible, there is always a way out, always a chance to win. Let’s be as optimistic as the Ukrainians and stay hopeful
I'd like to agree, and you're right that despair isn't a strategy. But look closer at your own example. Ukrainian hope isn't optimism; it's hope welded to sacrifice and institutional will. Consider what they've just done: in the middle of an existential war, under intense American pressure to sign a peace deal, their anti-corruption agencies raided the home of Zelensky's own chief of staff - his right hand, his lead negotiator - and he was gone within the day. That is a country whose institutions still go after the top. It's the hardest possible test of whether the guardrails work, and they held. That is exactly what I cannot find in Washington right now.
Recovery doesn't require hope, it requires political will, and that is very hard to see at the moment. It will take more than words. A new president can undo the lot unless there are reforms deep enough to end the self-dealing both parties have run for years - donor capture, re-election placed above the office - the monkey business Trump didn't invent but put on steroids. Until that reckoning happens, the outside world has no reason to revise its estimate. Hope deserves better than words. It deserves to be made warranted.
If we can't find that will in Washington DC, maybe we can find it in the 50 state capitals. States run nearly everything in the US anyway. If they march on Washington, they can force the removal of the insurrectionist and his lackeys.
On the plus side, there’s tremendous popular opposition, including among conservatives who are completely fed up with Trump.
The US would have to start by arresting and executing the fake supreme court judges (the bribe takers) and the insurrectionist usurper, and then rewriting the Constitution.
The US state had already constructed a globe-spanning torture network beofore Trump. It was already surveiling everyone before Trump. It had already destroyed much of West Asia before Trump. The idea that a good President can come along and fix any of this rather assumes there have been some already and there simply haven't been any - certainly not for the last half century.
As you say, the US should just get out of the Middle East. We have both been making this point for a long time. And it is now Trump's best option. Pull out armed forces, scrap the Abraham Accords and the Board of Peace, say "we tried with Israel, Iran and the rest, but they've crasy and we'fe going to leave them to settle their own problems from now on". MAGA would cheer, and the Dems couldn't really object
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-falsity-us-interests-the-mideast-7595
I think I will write the start of the midweek update about this next week. The last few months have simply strengthened the case in many ways.
Please mention the fact that the US is producing the most amount of oil in its history: somewhere in the range of 13-14 Million Barrels per day while consuming 20+ Million Barrels per day: the same level as 1979 when the Iranian Revolution occured! And BTW the US economy is now three times as large! The future of oil is in the Atlantic Basin: offshore Guyana, Suriname, and Brazil specifically. EV's will continue to take market share away from cars fueled by gasoline and diesel. Fighting wars for oil in the Middle East is so LAST CENTURY!
Yes, the appropriate attitude toward Israel/Arabs is "a plague on both your houses," work it out yourselves. US support for Israel has won us nothing and has worked only to reinforce the worst people on both sides. More generally, I once read a remark that the great University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins made ca. 1946, about the US intervening to support democracy and prosperity around the world. He opposed it, not because he didn't think the world needed helping, but because he knew Americans are congenitally so ignorant of foreign matters that they would inevitably screw things up everywhere.
It seems to work out OK when the US politely says that they won't be able to provide foreign aid if the country's dictator steals the next election. (This worked in Taiwan and South Korea.)
But usually the US is actually backing the dictator and opposing free elecitons.
He needs to keep control else he’ll go to prison. The Epstein files expose a lot of his criminality.
Not sure he’s keen on losing donors money from pro-Israel and tech
I hadn’t seen this from Trump when I posted this comment. It seems as if he might be on the way to this conclusion. https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/trump-netanyahu-israel-lebanon-call
I’m good with getting out of the Middle East, but what would that look like practically?
Operationally, most of the bases are currently non-operational. Just bring the troops home, close the bases down, and stop sending money. Let other people worry about the oil, democracy, Israel/Palestine etc. It’s not as if the US has achieved anything in these respects for a long time.
As regards outcomes. like Indochina/SE Asai and lots of other places where the US once thought it vital to maintain bases and control events. Some bits would be better than (or not as bad as) they are now, some worse.
Trump: I am willing to destroy my country to save myself.
Zelenskiy: I am willing to destroy myself to save my country.
Trump delights in weakening America and enriching himself.
Another scorcher from you Phillips, thanks. My (shameful) schadenfreude is now giving way to a kind of morbid scarcely believable and gruesome fascination. I’m reduced to political rubber necking. Can he really succeed ? Against the wishes of a hefty majority of Americans? Surely even Hollywood would reject the script….wouldn’t they?
The problem is that Republicans are mindless authoritarian followers; and most Democrats in Congress and other positions of power are too hidebound to think outside the box, being obsessed with "the way we've always done things".
A minority of Democrats in power are thinking outside the box and doing the right thing, but not enough to have an organized majority to remove the insurrectionist usurper -- yet.
Both of which are fine with Putin.
The one good thing about the latest quagmire is, unless the elections are not free and fair it will probably drag down the Republicans at the polls badly, especially if it continues for months from now.
If oil prices continue to rise, the GOP should be cooked...however I would like the Democrats to be doing better in the polls than they are now.
In my view it is the sclerotic centrist leadership of Schumer and Jeffries acting like an anchor. The party is not a popular brand, Sanders wanted to try to reorient it to a grand vision aimed at the working and middle classes but was defeated.
Yep, Schumer is a deluded fossil from another era and Jeffries is an unprincipled poseur, and they both need to be kicked to the curb.
hopefully aoc will deseat schumer
I want to make it clear where I come from when I say that Schumer is a deluded fossil from another era -- I supported Schumer back in 1998 when he ran against D'Amato.
This isn't 1998, and following the politics of 1998 now, which is what Schumer is doing, is like doing pre-World-War-I 1914 politics in 1942 -- completely deluded behavior. Schumer has proven incapable of learning.
She's future president material if ever I've seen it though probably not until the mid 2030s.
"unless the elections are not free and fair"
And that's the rub isn't it. The Voters Rights Act, state-wide gerrymandering, voter roll purges, dark money election campaign funding... The evidence seems to be right infront of us that it won't be.
And that's just the 'quasi legal grey area' stuff. Deeper down that hole is stuff that seemed to happen in 2024 - electronic voting machine manipulation, bomb threats on polling places.
And then there's the straight up conspiratorial: 'finding' ballots, hacking vote talley databases. Exactly the sort of thing you'd encounter if, I dont know, you fired all the people in an Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
All signs suggest it is unlikely to be either free or fair
We have to include in the analysis the psychological dimension. It is possible, or likely that Trump, in addition to a lust for political power, enjoys inflicting pain and humiliation on others. It’s possible that he somehow feeds on the destruction of the world’s economies via the Hormuz closure. What I’m arguing is, don’t discount the possibility that he has qualities of a sadistic psychopath. A rational intellectual like Phillips O’Brien is educated to view events as rationally motivated. But when we project rationailty to Trump, it may be that something far darker may be at work here.
Except for Putin of course--Trump always tries to get Putin's approval.
Because he would like to be as sadistic and murderous as Putin is?
Your guess is as good as mine.
In 1984, tRUMP sold five condos in tRUMP Tower to David Bogatin, a well known russian mobster in New York City, who paid tRUMP $6 million in cash in a briefcase, to purchase 5 condos in tRUMP Tower. Turned out investing dirty money in New York city real estate was a good way to "clean it" for the russian mob. Since then, tRUMP has received billions of dollars from the sale of tRUMP real estate to russian mobsters and oligarchs while the russian government provide other "favors", including an invitation to visit Moscow in 1987 for the first time, to discuss building a tRUMP Tower there. Craig Unger is an investigative journalist who has documented tRUMP's relationship with russia in two books. Bottom line: tRUMP sees russians as friends and a means to enrich himself, not as an enemy and he knows he must repay those "favors": https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/03/05/craig-unger-trump-wont-betray-putin-after-40-years-of-russian-money/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book
Slava Ukraini!
Right on target Mary Ann. Wasn’t it Pulte’s father who was involved in that Florida real estate deal where a property was sold to a Russian oligarch at a ridiculous price and Trump made quite a lot of money? Hmmm
Don't know about Pulte's father but tRUMP sold a Palm Beach Estate he bought at $41 million in 2005 to a russian oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, for $95 million in 2008. There was a Senate hearing into whether or not the sale involving money laundering but nothing came of it:
https://abcnews.com/Politics/follow-money-senator-probes-trumps-95-million-palm/story?id=52970095
Slava Ukraini!
That’s the one. It’s possibly in the Epstein files.
My guess is the Russians have proof that Trump raped a teenager.
My guess is the FBI also does, it’s just redacted right now.
I don't want to speculate about something that heinous but instead, let's focus on the facts, which is what Craig Unger has done in publishing his research on tRUMP's 40 year relationship with russians and russia.
I'd also like to remind everyone of another brilliant piece Phillips wrote about tRUMP in 2025: Is the President of the United States Acting as an "Agent of Influence" for Putin? Phillips writes: "An agent of influence might not even consciously know that they are serving a foreign state, but they have come to identify themselves so thoroughly with another country, ideology or leadership that they use their position to make their own country act or think in a way that serves the interests of that foreign state." Agent of influence or asset, its the alignment of interests between two parties and that we can plainly see:
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/is-the-president-of-the-usa-acting?r=1lbnim&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Slava Ukraini!
Is America now a fascist state, it increasingly has many of the characteristics
I would say Trump is putting in place elements of an authoritarian state.
I think that the speed with which this happening is the most alarming, as you say the mid terms are going to be an indication of where along the road to an authoritarian state Trump is at.
The midterms will be the greatest test so far of the US system.
Trump and his cadre of handlers & minions are doing their 1984 bit; too many of my fellow citizens are pursuing their own Brave New World. I don't need everyone's hair on fair, just more of us to pay attention and to resolve neither plot serves our needs
How much further does he have to go for it to be a facist state?
We probably will be able to confirm whether or not fascist after the midterms. If they go fair and free, I would say not yet.
It's much too weak to be fascist. Trump is trying to implement fascism, but the federal government has barely any control over the country (almost everything is done by the states anyway), and so the result looks a lot more like the history of the Holy Roman Empire, IMO.
Many thanks!!
Trump, the "Scorched Earth GOP and Executive Branch" and the 'Imperial Presidency' Supreme Court are pathological symptoms of a proudly ignorant citizenry rabid with hatred and rage.
Which begs the question: "How do you protect a democracy from its own voters?"
We will certainly find out if its possible.
Voters make mistakes. Bad ones. Think Adolph Hitler 1933
..and think of the price *all* the Germans paid to be rid of him...
the us has done so twice in recent times
And the Straight of Hormuz stays closed. With only weeks until until some oil refineries start closing because of no oil supplies we are staring a human disaster in the face and it appears we are going over the cliff. Incredible. Thank you Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
Yep, Iran is not relenting on the Strait
Clearly, the US is getting weaker. As clearly is that Russia too is getting weaker. China, on the contrary… methinks an opportunity is there for Europe to gain
Not sure a super strong China is great for Europe--Europeans need to just concentrate on looking after themselves (but I get what you are saying).
Agree. I separated China’s rise from European possibility to use the part vacuum offered by Russia and US’s decline. Sorry for not writing more clearly
Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'
Hope the raven is right
The trouble with that raven is it only knows the one word, so everyone hears their own meaning. Phillips hopes it means the chaos ends. I meant the bleaker one: once squandered, strength doesn't come back. Same caw, opposite forecast. The bird declines to clarify.
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting……….just above my chamber door…..
There is no surprise here. This was always Trump's way, even as a private businessman. There were plenty of warnings...for years...about who he was and what he represented. America ignored the warnings, elected him once for a disastrous four-year term culminating in an attempt to overthrow the Republic, and then re-elected him with the support of the Supreme Court, which allowed him to run after Jan.6 and gave him a "free pass" with absolute immunity. What he represents is the deep-seated corruption in the political, economic, and legislative elements of American society. Getting rid of Trump, if that's even possible, short of death, is only the beginning of the "long road back". To re-establish a believable "rule of law" will require significant changes to the Constitution to prevent a recurrence. Much of this will require action through the amendment process...and we know that will never happen. Using the existing court system to prosecute the guilty will take years. The US, as a country, will be perceived as "damaged goods" by the rest of the world for a long time to come. Trust, once it's lost, is very hard to regain.
Remember, the Constitution was unconstitutional. It did not follow the amendment procedure set down by the Articles of Confederation.
We can do it again. If enough of the states endorse a new Constitution, the new Constitution goes into effect and the old one is unceremoniously scrapped, just like the Articles of Confederation were.
Another fine piece on both the military and political dimensions faced by DC.
On Trump's scorched earth politics, I would flag another unexpected outcome. He belated threw an endorsement to Rep. Feenstra in the Iowa GOP primary for governor. Feenstra, a very weak candidate and not the most consistent supporter of Trump, lost to Zach Lahn, who's getting undesirable press for investing in cockrings, and running against a strong Dem who can beat him...
The more trump endorsed candidates that lose, the better.
Yes, except when primary-winning Trump candidates lose in the general election.
I think the USA still subsidizes Israel. Why not cut that subsidy out and see what happens?
It's worked before. President George Bush (the elder) threatened to cut off aid to Israel if if didn't engage in the 1990s peace process.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/george-h-w-bush-last-president-to-get-tough-with-israel_n_5c06ac48e4b07aec5753418a
A few Republicans could end this war at any moment they choose by impeaching Trump.
But Trump is the Republican party's Judas Goat for taking over the US government. The fight over DHS funding is telling; congressional Republicans are unwilling to trade reforms of a rogue scofflaw federal agency in exchange for funding it's arguably more important parent agency. That rogue agency is wildly over-funded for its supposed immigration law-enforcenent role (a bigger budget than the FBI).
Rather, it is funded to build out a Gestapo and Gulag system. A system aimed at immigrants right now, but come November, against any wannabe color revolutionaries after the Republican party miraculously beats back an economically-driven blue wave to retain full control of Congress (aka an unmistakably rigged election).
The U.S was a superpower and leader of the free world from WWII until Trump illegally returned to power thanks to the intervention of Supreme Court justice John Roberts. Now, it is a superpower no more, but how far it will fall is still unknown.
The white supremacist fascists will never rule over New York or California. Trying to do so is overreach. They tried once, during the Civil War, and that was overreach, and they lost. They are even less popular and even less powerful now.
The blue state governors could call up a sufficiently large popular militia to wipe out ICE overnight, if they were ready to do so. It may come to that.
Josh Marshall says all power is unitary. So, if that's right, the more he loses power in the Middle East, the more he'll lose control in the US. I guess we'll find out if he's right. It'll be either an Orban scenario, where he loses control and crashes or an Iranian one where despite all unpopularity, it won't matter.
It will be more like Orban. Iran has institutions. Trump is just one person with a personality cult.
While the institution of white supremacy (the Confederacy) still exists in the US, particularly in states like Alabama and Louisiana, it's never going to be able to control California, New York, or Illinois, and it's losing its grip on Texas. Most of Trump's personality cult goes away with him. The white supremacists will still be around, but there aren't enough of them to stay in power nationally (unlike the IRGC in Iran).
Michael - It's often said in the US that presidents frequently pivot to international affairs when they face declining poll numbers or stalling legislative agendas on the domestic front. Trump has always relied on bluff & bluster. He campaigned on the fantasy that he would be so strong a president, and would make the US so feared, that no nation would defy him. Now he's shown that Iran & Israel do as they please. Even his golfing buddy sheiks are less compliant & more wary of him. This galls him but he also begins to worry that everyone sees his flaccidity. It's worse to be seen as a loser than it is to lose. This is why he is said to TACO, and then characterize backing down as some sort of win. He can still sell the fantasy image (to himself and his true followers) as long as he bails out before the complete collapse of whatever scheme he was running.
I think the 1.776 billions were just a distraction for the tax immunity. Even Trump knows how crazy that fund is, and that the Republicans are only reacting to taxpayer money spent, and even think the taxes Trump has cheated on (continuing) are immoral.
Trump, his handlers & hangers on, have so many schemes in process. They know that not every one will be successful, but the more they attempt, the more will bring some payoff. If the slush fund plan is scuttled and the tax crime amnesty can't be accomplished that way, we'll see it pop up in a different op soon enough. As you suggest, he points to his offenses with each new demand for legal exemptions