When Chief Justice John Roberts was a cub lawyer in the Reagan and H.W. Bush White Houses, he argued for the “unitary executive.” He bided his time, and in the last few decisions from the ’25-’26 SCOTUS session, he finally got his chance to act. He bolstered the idea that checks and balances are for your bank account, while the nation’s president should be immune from the laws the rest of us must observe, and that he and only he can control Congressionally created agencies that were intended to act independently.

In the 1980s, it became clear that some Republican’s far-right agenda was not shared by the majority of the American People, as expressed through Congressional action. In their minds, the only thing to do was take the power out of the people’s Congress, and bestow it on the chief executive.

The Supreme Court’s public approval is at a thirty-year low.

The 5-4 decision on birthright citizenship was closer than most expected. The 14^th Amendment is crystal clear in its language, yet the merry marauders on the far right side of the Court were more than willing to carve it up like a Christmas turkey. Anything to keep America White. This is the first time in modern history that the Court has taken away rights rather than granting them.

SCOTUS support among Republicans has fallen from 80%.

There is a movement to rein in the Court with some common sense measures like term limits and enforceable ethics standards (nervy, huh?). Some advocate an 18 year term, but I prefer 12 years. I’d also like to impose a maximum age of 75. Those particulars are up for debate, but the enforceable ethical standards are not, and neither is wrestling the “shadow docket,” which refers to the collection of Supreme Court rulings, orders, and decisions made outside of the Court’s standard, primary procedures, and out of public view. Not much to say yet about the partial vote-by-mail ruling other than to offer this:

Here’s Senator Sheldon Whitehoue (D-Common Sense) “There’s constant and building dismay about the increasingly appalling record of the court.” He recently said as he introduced a term limits bill.

A huge concern among Americans is that the Court, always above the political fray, has become another political player. Their role had previously been to call balls and strikes, but now they appear more like managers in the dugout who are strategists calling the plays.

The current Ipsos-Washington Post poll says most people believe the Court is ruling on ideology instead of law. That is not a good look for the shining city on the hill of Reagan’s description. It’s more like the dystopian second act of a Philip K. Dick novel.

There’s a faction that would rather just pack the court the next time there’s a Democrat in the Oval Office, but it’s an emotional ploy, not a tactical or logical one. Kind of like killing the filibuster, packing the court, if it’s even possible—FDR tried and failed—would likely backfire. The Rule of Unintended Consequences suggests that both killing the filibuster and packing the court are efforts that will turn on their promoters as soon as the other side has control. It would be much more effective to limit terms, impose a maximum age, expose the shadow docket, and create an airtight ethical standard.

While we’re at it, we should impose similar rules on our Congressional reps. Mitch McConnell has denied the people of Kentucky his attention and representation for months as he’s been hospitalized for what his people call “fall recovery,” but after watching him seize up a la Joe Biden on the debate stage, who really knows if there’s anybody home.

California’s Dianne Feinstein, whose cognitive decline and health issues in her final years (she died at 90 in office in 2023) drew similar scrutiny. She had no idea where she was or what she was doing for months if not years. She’s the poster girl for age and term limits.

Watching the nonagenarian, Chuck Grassley (R-Where Am I), doddering through the halls of Congress inspires nothing so much as the need to call for a wheelchair.

You have to impose term limits because other than George Washington, few give up power willingly. American painter Benjamin West was in London and had conversations with King George III. West supposedly recounted that when he told George III that Washington intended to resign and retire to Mount Vernon, the king was incredulous, saying if Washington really did that, he would be “the greatest character of his age.”

Now we have lots of characters, but few have any character at all. We are due a new crop. It is folly not to listen to our elders, but greater folly to expect them to lead us in a time of rapid technical innovation and changing demographics.

©2026 Jon Sinton

Why we are not regulating the biggest advancement in computer science since the mouse is beyond me. It’s whatever comes after irresponsible.

Anthropic, the maker of a so-called “large language model,” Claude, and the cybersecurity-defeating Mythos, is one of the big names in the artificial intelligence revolution. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, worried about real-world consequences of super-intelligence running amok, has consistently tried to get the government to regulate AI.

I’m unable to think of an industry that has ever begged the government to regulate it. Detroit fought every safety measure from seat belts and padded dashboards to airbags and shoulder restraints. Likewise, the mining industry spends millions on spinners and liars to keep profits rolling, black-lung disease be damned. The airline industry wants absolutely anyone else to pay for cockpit tech upgrades as well as much-needed upgrades to Air Traffic Control systems, many of which date back to the dawn of the jet era.

Big Oil went even farther. After much research that proved burning fossil fuels created greenhouse gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere and spur climate change, they buried the results for decades, only recently admitting, in the case of Exxon, that they’ve known all along that their product is unsafe for humans and other living things, as the saying goes.

While China, which is believed to be about six-months behind American AI, is moving forward with safeguards and open-source coding, we are stuck in policy pinball. A few months back, Anthropic disabled certain control aspects of Mythos. In a development that harkens back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mythos then surprised its creators by “breaking out” during testing. They thought they had contained Mythos in the lab, but the program that would more appropriately be called Houdini, escaped the lab and broke through the (no longer) state-of-the-art cybersecurity defenses of an unintended and undisclosed target.

Faster than can say Bob’s your uncle, Google’s Gemini, Open AI’s ChatGPT, and probably others who are less willing to share, have likewise stated that their experiments in hacking cybersecurity went farther and a lot faster than they had imagined. Those leaders are smart enough to recognize the power and unpredictability of their creations. That’s why the industry, led by Anthropic’s Amodei is waving a red flag.

He told the Pentagon, which is up to its brass in Anthropic products, that he wouldn’t allow the military to go as far as fully automated warfare. He insisted that there must be a human in the chain where life and death decisions are being made. Rather than discussing like grown-ups, the Department of Defense ordered every user under its purview to remove or stop using all Anthropic software products. Even though the DoD has deemed Anthropic a “supply-chain risk,” it is so deeply embedded in our systems that it is currently indispensable, forcing the government to talk out of both sides of its mouth.

AI is also responsible for the nearly daily stock market records. What looked like a tech bubble a la the 2000 telecom runup, now appears to be an AI bubble. The trillions of dollars that have powered its growth have also powered our economy.

We’ll soon have to reckon with the enormous amounts of power and water that AI needs to operate. Nobody wants the resource-sucking data centers in their towns, but Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) are spending with both hands, trying to put up data centers before communities know about the stresses on their power and water systems. The reliably out-of-the-box thinker Elon Musk thinks the answer is satellites in orbit using the sun’s energy and the vacuum of space to power and cool huge orbiting data centers. Yes, he’s a stinker, but don’t bet against him where innovation is concerned.

I know AI is on your radar, maybe you used it to write last year’s family Christmas letter. Maybe it’s replaced a few paralegals at your law firm, or written code that you used to hire engineers in India to do, but the most far-reaching implications remain fuzzy at best.

At the moment, we’re living the first hour of a horror movie where some can see the guy in the hockey mask, but most can’t. Anthropic’s Amodei, a guy who stands to get rich beyond the dreams of avarice, is hoping he’s not Cassandra, and that his warnings will be heeded.

Meanwhile, if when the tech falls into the wrong hands, which it will, we risk waking up one day to homes without electricity or water, and bank accounts that were mysteriously drained overnight.

It’s nearly time for football again, so here’s a metaphor for the season: Where technology is concerned, humanity has a habit of out-kicking its coverage, and it looks as though we’re on that well-worn path again.

After all, we’re still playing catch up on the social media front.

©2026 2026 Jon Sinton

In what’s been described as “a combative face-to-face confrontation on August 6th in San Diego, angry military families challenged the acting secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao, over difficult conditions aboard the USS Lincoln as its combat mission against Iran stretches onward with no clear date to return home.”

Living in the Lincoln’s home port town as we do, this comes as no surprise, and with a little history. First, the facts of this deployment: The Lincoln has a compliment of 5,000 sailors and Marines. They have been at sea for 259 days, 208 without a stop, longer than any ship in modern naval history. Originally sent to the Pacific, the Lincoln was resupplied last November in Guam, and stopped briefly in Oman after being rerouted to the Middle East. Twice extended, the deployment is now supposed to end in November, but the Navy can’t confirm that.

The Navy’s Island Club hosted more than 200 unhappy family members. They focused on health issues brought on by sheer exhaustion, and virtually no breaks in a never ending cycle. Spouses who have been able to communicate with their sailors and Marines say morale is very low. Crew members complain of moldy showers, but officially, the Navy says it’s mildew growing due to insufficient air conditioning. Better than mold if true, but still not great. They say laundry machines have been broken for weeks, and there are long stretches with no hot water.

You’d think I’m quoting from a Patrick O’Brian seafaring tale of the early Nineteenth Century when I talk about food shortages, unhealthy sanitary conditions (then it was rodent-borne diseases, now its broken toilets), or deck safety (then it was sailors falling from Crow’s Nests and rigging, now it’s the nearly constant noise of multiple aircraft, tugs, jetwash, and arresting cables). Supplies of all kinds are dwindling or gone, and the mail arrives late if at all (we sent a care package to a friend on the Lincoln months ago, but it never arrived.)

Naval Air Station North Island (NASNI) here in Coronado was the birthplace of Navy aviation, and it is no stranger to family outrage. In the Vietnam era, Sybil Stockdale led other wives from NASNI to DC, demanding the Navy publicly address the MIA/POW question. Her husband was James Stockdale, who was shot down over North Vietnam in September 1965. He became the senior-ranking U.S. POW held in the “Hanoi Hilton” and other camps, where he endured years of torture as he organized resistance among fellow prisoners. Admiral Stockdale later received the Medal of Honor, and in 1992, became Ross Perot’s vice-presidential running mate.

The wives confronted military leaders about the “Keep Quiet” policy: For years, the government’s official stance was that military wives should stay silent publicly about their husbands’ POW/MIA status. The reasoning was that public pressure might complicate diplomatic and military efforts, or provoke North Vietnam to retaliate against prisoners. Sybil and other wives were essentially told to say nothing and wait.

As the war dragged on with no accounting of prisoners and evidence mounting that North Vietnam was violating the Geneva Conventions (torture, no mail, no Red Cross access), Sybil grew convinced that silence was helping no one — it let Hanoi avoid international scrutiny. She began organizing other officers’ wives, first informally, then more systematically.

This movement grew into the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. The wives lobbied Washington directly, met with State Department and Pentagon officials, pushed the Nixon administration to make POW treatment a central, public issue in negotiations rather than a quiet diplomatic side matter, and took their case to the Paris peace talks and international media.

Their advocacy is widely credited with shifting U.S. policy by forcing the POW issue into the open, pressuring Hanoi over prisoner treatment, and keeping the issue alive through the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, when Stockdale and other POWs were released in Operation Homecoming.

If you’re interested in learning more, Mrs. Stockdale is the central figure in The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home from Vietnam, a 2019 book by Heath Hardage Lee, that also inspired film and TV adaptations.

Young girls flock to the statue that is actually a role model

It was only a few years ago that a new generation of military wives here raised consciousness and money for a dramatic statue of Sybil Stockdale and her associates in the League of Wives. It stands proudly in the island’s Star Park. Some of the organizers are among those anxious spouses demanding answers about conditions aboard the Lincoln.

Today, our sailors and Marines are dealing with deteriorating conditions on the Lincoln. I’d imagine they’re grateful that this new league is speaking out.

©2026 Jon Sinton

I’m waiting for an October surprise. Not the last minute political rabbit-from-a-hat like Henry Kissinger’s infamous “Peace is at hand” speech in 1972 (it wasn’t), or the FBI director exhuming the investigation into Hillary’s email in 2016. No, the surprise I’m waiting for is Netflix announcing that it has hired the 60 Minutes refugees to mount a challenge to the “reimagined” 60 Minutes. That might be too kind a description; time will tell. Call it Netflix Presents, or something equally unimaginative.

If you look up “venerable” in the dictionary, don’t be surprised if the definition’s accompanying picture is the 60 Minutes logo. After all, “60” has been the number one or two television program for just about all of its 58 years.

Nothing lasts forever, not even the venerable. The show’s “reimagining” under the auspices of new CBS News Editor-in-Chief, conservative opinion maven Bari Weiss, has seen its best-known journalists like Anderson Cooper, leave voluntarily, or be fired like Tanya Simon, the longtime Executive Producer, and reporters Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi, and Cecilia Vega.

If you haven’t been following the huge changes at 60, here’s a quick review. First to bolster his Skydance Media, nepo-baby David Ellison set out to buy Paramount/CBS. He benefited from his father Larry’s enormous wealth. Larry founded Oracle, and has a controlling interest in TikTok, thanks to his friend, and the beneficiary of his uber-wealth, Donald Trump, on whose campaign he lavished about $45M in “dark money.”

Trump famously hates his late night critic, Steven Colbert, so, like in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy makes an offering of the Wicked Witch’s broom, Skydance got Shari Redstone, Paramount’s previous owner, to fire Colbert and donate $16M to Trump’s proposed library, in exchange for Trump dropping a libel suit based on Alfonsi’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Needless to say, the suit was frivolous and easily defended in court, but Shari wanted to sell the business quickly, and those were the terms.

Skids greased, the acquisition sailed through the FCC, the FTC, the DOJ, and other regulatory nuisances like a hot knife through butter. All it took was the President saying the Ellisons were friends of his and very good people.

Then Paramount’s new owners, Skydance, wanted to bulk up further and buy Warner Brothers Discovery to get the TV and film studio, its library, HBO, and CNN. Last December, Trump said how despicable the current owners of CNN were, and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth said, “The sooner David Ellison takes over [CNN], the better.” All this had the unmistakably authoritarian look of government-controlled media.

Bari Weiss got under the hood, and began disassembling the team behind 60, hiring a new executive producer with no television of investigative experience. Now, she’s hired Russ Douthat away from the NY Times where he has been a conservative voice for 17 years. The signal, muted at first, is now a full-throated call for conservatives to rally around the new 60 Minutes.

Whether the broadcast will retain its ratings and credibility is currently unknowable. Time will tell. Of course the Ellisons and Weiss are free to do as they please with their businesses. 60 Minutes is not a public trust, even though it has felt that way ever since Mike Wallace chased his first three-piece-suited felon down the street with cameras rolling.

As a former broadcast programmer, I know that sometimes you have to give a thing up to make room for the next thing, but I’d play carefully with a vaunted and beloved institution like 60 Minutes.

Netflix also wanted WBD. They offered $82.7B for the Warner Bros. Studios, including HBO and CNN, but after agreeing to that number, WBD reneged in favor of the Paramount Skydance offer of $108B. Netflix famously said, “We want Warner Bros. Discovery, but not at any price.” That’s why I won’t be surprised to learn that Netflix has hired the refugees cast out by Weiss, and started their own investigative program.

Meanwhile, Netflix has indicated that because there’s not much subscriber growth left for the market-making streamer, they’ll need to find new ways to grow the company. Wall Street lives on growth, and public companies stand still at their own peril. It’s a shortsighted approach that values this quarter’s earnings over everything else.

It seems to me that by revamping 60 Minutes, what with the firings and voluntary departures based on the company’s stated desire to move the broadcast to the right, Skydance Paramount has exposed its flank to a hungry competitor.

Streaming is the future, and Netflix has nothing but money. It was left with a bad taste in its mouth after the WBD affair. Anderson, Alfonsi, Pelley, Vega, and Executive Producer Simon, make a very stable base for a Netflix run at investigative journalism.

©2026 Jon Sinton

There was an astonishing moment on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews the other day. President Trump was talking to a gaggle of reporters when he commented on the horrible quality of the air. First, he ranted about Canada’s forest mismanagement, then in a moment that must pass for near-clarity, he shot a puzzled look at aides and said, “I don’t remember it always being like this. It wasn’t like this five years ago, was it?“

He walked away before the press could continue along that line. He has spent the last 10 years denouncing the “Democrat climate hoax,” and ridiculing people who believe in the overwhelming amount of data supporting climate science. I assume the reporters would’ve asked him if he had just connected the dots between the extreme weather events plaguing the globe this summer and climate change.

It would be nice to have him tell us why he is so far behind on the issue of climate change while America and the world needs a leader, not a follower. But after promising Big Oil that for $1B in donations to his campaign, he would take care of them. They did, and he has.

It’s worth remembering that last year, Exxon was forced to admit that they had aggressively misrepresented the results of scientific inquiry into the impact greenhouse gasses have on climate. They knew—and lied about—those for decades. Hate Al Gore all you want, but his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was prescient in a way only Cassandra could appreciate. It must be terrible to know the future, but be unable to change it.

According to Gallup, 66% of us worry “a fair amount” to “a great deal” about global warming. It’s just not that hard to draw a straight line between the greenhouse gases that burning fossil fuels release, and the extreme storms, flooding, and wildfires the entire world is experiencing this summer. Like the last five, this year will be the hottest on record. To be a willful climate change denier, you really have to put on blinders while whistling past the graveyard.

A large part of our problem comes from the fact that we are led by octo- and nonagenarians. The President is 80. The average age of a U.S. Senator is 64, but leadership, a function of seniority, is in their 80s and 90s. They are not worried about what happens in 2050. (For reference, the median age in the U.S. is a worried 38.)

Of course, the defenders of the Fossil Fuel Regime, mostly, but not exclusively fossils themselves, have reduced the argument to a political one. But climate change doesn’t care if you’re blue or red. IT IS NOT POLITICAL. It is the very life or death of our planet. Even the dreadfully misanthropic Elon Musk gets that. It’s why he founded both Tesla and SpaceX. One tries to save the world, the other tries to escape it.

Because of our tardiness and reluctance still to call it what it is, climate change now has both hands around our throat. Leadership that doesn’t have one foot in the grave cares more about our world and the children in it than they do for the riches lavished upon elderly politicians by Big Oil, but they can’t be heard over the loudly voiced denialism that climate activists face.

Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025, and the man Politico calls the “Shadow President” is the director of the Office of Management and Budget. That’s an important and typically low-profile job, but since the President doesn’t do policy except as extemporaneous riffing when he “weaves” on stage, the most important decision making on the financial and economic fronts come from Vought. He leads the never-ending culture wars with his opposite number, the unapologetically racist Stephen Miller. Between them, they control a larger swath of American governance than is generally known.

Vought took great pride in announcing that “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.” Now the administration has admitted that only grants to Blue States were cancelled. These folks would politicize a Golden Retriever, but again, it is not political. Nature bats last, and it always gets a hit. It cares not what an ideologue in Washington thinks.

Sadly, Vought, Miller, and all the other administration loyalists (there are no other kind), are nothing but political. They’d rather insult and demean the Left than save the planet. They used to rail about the cost of climate remediation, but when people pointed out that even if the science turned out to be wrong, the worst that would happen is we’d get cleaner air and water, they changed their tune from the economics of remediation to the demonstrably bad character of anyone who supports it.

©2026 Jon Sinton

_{1958 Edsell}

Ford Motors Executive Chairman Bill Ford has called the industry out for its protectionism. In a clear-eyed warning to his competitors, the President, and Congress, Ford has stated the obvious: you can’t keep Chinese cars out of US markets indefinitely. There is just such a protectionist bill before Congress. Mr. Ford has news for lawmakers: “We have to go toe-to-toe with China…we can’t expect to keep them out forever, and we have to be able to beat them at their own game.”

But crybaby carmakers want to slam our doors shut rather than innovate. China has taken the opposite approach and has innovated in ways most thought impossible for them. The wrong-thinking here has been that since China has been an imitator instead of an innovator, they will continue on that path. Surprise! China, with a HUGE assist from the Trump administration, has lapped the U.S. car industry in EV innovation. They now make the most efficient, reliable, and get this, the prettiest EVs in the world.

While our president has done everything he can to stop advancement on alternative energy in every field, China has paved the way for its manufacturers of everything from solar panels to battery-electric vehicles. They are now the state-of-the-art. I know it’s unthinkable, but it’s true. Oh, of course we continue to be the state-of-the-art in internal combustion, gas-powered cars, but that is to say we own the past while they own the future.

Just as the administration has hamstrung scientific and medical research, it has also cast our automakers asunder.

An interesting aside is that the Ford Motor Company supports this protectionist piece of legislation even as its executive chairman warns Congress that you can’t stop progress. According to the China Passenger Car association, “Exports of electric vehicles and hybrids from Chinese automakers more than doubled in June to about 877,000.

Since when does American industry hide behind Congress’s skirts? Aren’t we the global innovators? Protectionism isn’t just a bad look for the U.S., it’s shortsighted and unrealistic. I’m sorry to tell the Congress and the president that time moves in only one direction. Mr. Trump’s world view is stuck in the 1950s when V-8 engines powered the world, and gas was thirty-five cents a gallon. He seems unwilling or unable to remake his map for the current era. It is also possible that he is simply motivated by greed. Remember that he promised Big Oil he’d take care of them for a billion dollar donation. They paid up, and he’s holding up his end of the deal, but he’s doing so at our mutual expense.

We are behind China and South Korea, and we’re not even trying to catch up. Our last brilliant play was to ban Volvo’s performance/luxury badge, Polestar, because it uses Chinese technology.

American manufacturers controlled 90% of the car market in the 20^th Century. They sought ways to get people to buy new cars every few years. So the Packard Motor Car Company, along with industry leader General Motors, counted on “planned obsolescence.“ They made sure your car wore out after just a few years. If you were still unconvinced that you needed a new one, they changed the styling every year to play upon your keeping up with the Jones’s instincts. When Mr. Jones had his brand new Chevy in the next-door neighbor’s driveway it made your two year-old Biscayne look ancient and you guessed it…obsolete.

Left Behind

Then, in the early 70s, Japan came to town. The paradigm shifted completely. Planned obsolescence was out, and 200,000 miles without even breathing hard was in. Honda led the insurgency.

Detroit was caught in a trap of its own making. But they’re pretty crafty up there in Michigan, so they joint-ventured with a number of Japanese carmakers. Today, Detroit’s Metro Airport signage is in English and Japanese.

To his credit, and yes, I’m choking on those words, Elon Musk created Tesla and gave America the early and short-lived lead in EVs. He touted the environmental importance of getting off of fossil fuels, and the Obama and Biden administrations instituted tax credits for buying EVs and aggressive mileage standards to push the industry along. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $7.5B for charging infrastructure in a public/private partnership akin to the 1960s moonshot that brought industry and government together. Holding to his promise to Big Oil, Trump killed the program.

I was in Mexico recently, and marveled at the sheer number of Chinese EVs. Canada and the EU will end the sale of most gas-burners by 2035. California leads a handful of states with similar goals, but the president has other ideas. You can’t stop progress, but you can delay it.

I can’t remember another time when we’ve willingly chosen to be left behind.

©2026 Jon Sinton

You’re reading a lot of highly polemic obituaries for Lindsey Graham. He was polarizing: Senator Graham was either a horrible person, or he was a great person. There are enough opinions, pro and con, to fill the national media, not to mention those in the Palmetto State. He seems a complicated and mercurial man who had a long enough record of public service for both sides to find reasons to either laud or disparage him.

But his mercurial nature is not that complicated. It is in fact, remarkably simple. As he himself put it when he shocked so many by switching allegiance from John McCain to Donald Trump, he just wanted to be “in the room where it happens”—a phrase he used often, referencing the Hamilton lyric, to describe his belief that it was more effective to have a seat at the table with presidents and policymakers to influence them rather than opposing them from the outside. To Lindsey Graham, relevance was the coin of the realm, and if a little shape-shifting was required, he was, as the popular vernacular goes, down.

Back when he was John McCain’s best friend, I loved Lindsey Graham. It was the year 2000, and Senator McCain was running against George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination. McCain, who was called a “maverick” primarily because he was his own man, and far too honest and ethical to be a denizen of political DC, was being vilified—crucified might be the more apt term—by the W opposition research machine.

W’s people started a whisper-campaign in South Carolina. They falsely and cruelly suggested that the McCains’ adopted Bangladeshi daughter, Bridget, was John’s illegitimate daughter from an affair with a Black woman. These racially charged, sleazy rumors were used to damage his reputation. We were so angry that we “maxed-out” on campaign contributions for McCain.

To his everlasting credit, Representative Graham (he was not yet senator) stood shoulder-to-shoulder with McCain, and denounced the dirtier-than-usual whisper campaign. They became close, and McCain, often referred to Graham as “my illegitimate son” in a funny reference to both the dirty trick and to the close, father-son-like mentorship that developed between them.

In 2016, Senator Graham, who like every senator, saw a future POTUS in the morning mirror, decided it was his time, so he entered the fray with numerous other hopefuls, including Donald J. Trump.

“You know how you make America great again?” Graham asked rhetorically. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell ... He’s just generally a loser as a person and a candidate. You can’t nominate a nutjob and lose, and expect it doesn’t have consequences ... What I see is a demagogue, somebody that has solutions that will never work, that is playing on people’s prejudices and the dark side of politics.”

As you may have heard, Trump beat the odds—and the evens too—and was elected. Because he demanded relevance, Graham wanted—needed—to be in the room where it happened. The only way to stay relevant was to become Donald Trump’s friend. So he did.

This, even though Graham opposed the whole America First thing. He hated the isolationism inherent in that Republican movement, and lobbied Trump to leave American troops in a rapidly disintegrating Syria. Perhaps above all else, Lindsey Graham was a hawk.

Then January 6^th happened and the senator from South Carolina needed to distance himself from the president.

“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he’s been a consequential president. “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”

With that, he seemed to have turned yet another corner, but his conversion couldn’t outlast his need for relevance, and when Trump was elected again in 2024, Graham became cheerleader-in-chief, no mean feat considering the way the Trump Cabinet debases and humiliates itself publicly to stay in the boss’s good graces.

Senator Graham had just returned from Ukraine the night he died. He had been lobbying the administration to heavily sanction Russia, and to bolster Ukraine’s depleted air defenses. He was a nonstop supporter of Ukraine, and NATO.

The way he hated Putin while Trump loved him is but another piece of the Lindsey Graham puzzle.

Regarding his sister, Darline Graham Nordone, who will serve out his term ending in January, Graham told C-SPAN, “Of all the things that have happened in my life, her turning out so well is the highlight of it by far.”

You often hear it said that you can define a person by the company they keep, but when you look at a portrait of Lindsey Graham in this context, there are just too many contradictions. The picture is more Abstract than Realist.

©2026 Jon Sinton

I have to admit, I had my doubts. I couldn’t find the spirit that usually inhabits me on the Fourth. Independence Day is my Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one. But this year, perhaps like others, I didn’t seem to be in much of a celebratory mood. But stick around, because in an irony worthy of O. Henry, I found it in a place I wasn’t even looking.

An important note about Americans throughout history—underscored for us by the Greatest Generation—we don’t make excuses. No matter the odds, we square our shoulders and jump right in. There are a million reasons that we find our current president reprehensible. A big one is the fact that he makes excuses. His fragile ego can brook no opposition, and can never be wrong.

When he decided to “fix” the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, I thought, “Finally, something he knows how to do!” He’s a builder. Little did I realize that he had awarded a no-bid contract to a donor from West Palm. Initial cost was set at $1.8M. We are now at $15M and climbing.

You know the story: the pool was drained, cleaned and repainted before being refilled. No one thought about the new “American Flag Blue” paint until the sun heated the pool beyond its normal temperature, and the algae bloomed. Then, like clockwork, the finger-pointing began. Rather than simply saying, “My bad,” and fixing the problem, our president had to fix the blame…elsewhere, of course. He landed on vandals. Told anyone who would listen, vandals used box-cutters to make a 350 foot long cut and proceeded to peel the new paint. They even arrested a two-time Olympian for defacing public property and want him to do serious jail time.

There are more cameras around the National Mall than NBC rolls out for Sunday Night Football. If there were vandals with box-cutters, we’ll know soon enough, but don’t hold your breath.

Anyway, between the childishness of the “Deflecting Pool” scandal, the 40+ times the war on Iran has ended in our favor, his shabby treatment of our longest-term allies while kowtowing to our adversaries, and the unprecedented lining of the Presidential Pockets to the tune of $2.2B in the past year, seven in ten of us have had enough.

I for one, was not feeling the old Fourth spirit.

Nonetheless, since I was asked to drive seniors in our spectacular July Fourth parade (in a super-cool, elaborately decorated golf cart, no less), I did what Americans do: I sucked it up, put on a smile I didn’t feel, and drove.

After the parade, I deposited my riders back home, and went to return the cart. I pulled up to the designated corner to await the owner’s arrival when the most unexpected thing happened. An older man I had never seen before climbed through the bunting and ribbons and sat himself down in the passenger seat. Eschewing the social niceties, he simply said, “I’m going to…” and named an address.

At first, I thought it was a joke. Then I thought he’d mistaken the golf cart for a very festive Uber. I took a beat and turned to him with what I think must have been a mystified look.

I’m an inveterate smart-alec, but I suppressed the urge to land a snappy comeback, and instead told him that I had only pulled over to meet the cart’s owner. Rather than apologizing and/or getting up, he explained to me that he had issues with his feet, and simply could not finish the walk home. At this moment the rightful owner shows up and I ask his permission to drive this fellow home. Of course he agreed.

A number of blocks down the road, the gentleman spies his wife who was clearly moving along faster than her hubby, and I pull over. She climbs in the back, and without further ado, I take them home.

Then it hit me. The spirit I had been missing filled me up. A man with sore feet had completely turned my attitude around. He closed me, as they say in sales, presumptively. He just assumed that a man idling in a golf cart would come to his aid. There were no political agendas on this once (and pre-Trump) agenda-free day. No libtards or Repugnacants. No Commies and no MAGA, and thankfully, no giant orange man sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Just a couple of older men happy to have a seat after celebrating our magnificent country’s 250^th birthday.

For one shining moment, the clouds had cleared and we were just Americans whose sole purpose that morning was to give thanks for our good fortune for having been planted here. No reds, blues, or even purples. Just people. Good old American people.

Finally, I was feeling it.

©2026 Jon Sinton

This week, as we celebrate the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, you can go anywhere to read the many hyperbolic clichés extolling our virtues as a country. I agree with them all, and love our indispensable Americanism with all my heart. It’s just that I’m terrible at the schmaltzy, overemotional stuff. It just doesn’t come easy to me. For me, it’s like tossing around manhole covers. As someone who is interested in the intersection of politics and media, I want to use this auspicious occasion to look at how the media has shaped and reflected the political culture. If that sounds highfalutin, don’t worry, read on, and you’ll see it’s not complicated.

It is well known that new media sucks the content out of the media that came before. You could go back to cave drawings supplanting verbal storytelling of the hunt, but for the sake of space and time, let’s start in the 1880’s with vaudeville. Live performers took to the stage and entertained audiences with drama, comedy and burlesque—a lot of burlesque, since sex is always the first money-maker in every media revolution from the printing press to Only Fans and Tinder.

Burlesque was a mainstay in theaters in the biggest cities, and traveling companies made their way to the hinterlands, entertaining Iowa farmers and New England fishermen.

Then came moving pictures. Said theatres reduced overhead by replacing live performers with a projector and silver screen. Then, radio took the movies’ storytelling, turning it into radio plays. Hollywood responded with more sophisticated scripts and huge Busby Berkely-type spectacle. By the 1950s, radio plays were usurped by television. So radio became a music platform. Now, television is mostly game shows and reality shows. It has lost most of its scripted-content to Netflix and the streamers that ride the internet.

Until the Digital Era, most cities had three TV stations and as many radio stations. For seventy-years, we had a common hymnal. We all Loved Lucy, and we Sang Along With Mitch. Cable TV brought with it fragmentation. You could get newsy-opinion from Fox or MSNBC, depending on your lean. This ushered in the current, “post-factual,” period.

Had Fox News been around in 1968, Alabama’s unabashedly racist governor, George Wallace, might have become president. Last week, in a speech at the Nixon Library, VP J.D. Vance asserted that today, Watergate would be a two news-cycle headline. He called it ridiculous that it brought down a president. He then enumerated Nixon’s victories like opening China and creating the EPA (which Vance’s administration is strangling—proving again that politics makes strange bedfellows). He conveniently left out the part about Nixon being a criminal, and the procession of Republican senators who came up Pennsylvania Avenue to tell Tricky Dick to resign or they would convict him in the impending impeachment trial.

But Vance was right about the Teflon news cycle. Nothing sticks. Sponsor a break-in in 1972 and be forced out of office; sponsor an insurrection in 2021 and get re-elected in ’24. The difference is the media.

The “thousand points of light” the elder Bush referred to have morphed into much less inspirational phone screens. President Reagan’s “shining city on the hill” needs a pressure wash. It has been sullied by the nonstop arguing on cable and the internet.

Partisan gerrymandering should have been outlawed long ago, but politicians and opinion-media cheer it on, promoting the through-the-looking-glass fiction that letting representatives pick their voters is better than voters picking their representatives.

The ubiquitous right-wing media machine has allowed the president to indulge in his destructive discourse. There are no longer any consequences for demeaning bullying. No president before could have gotten away with calling female reporters “piggy” or “stupid.” According to the JoJoFromJerz.com: “He has persuaded souls who spent their entire lives laundering scorn through euphemism, etiquette, and coded language, that concealment is no longer necessary, that the old social contract requiring at least the performance of decency has expired, and that the ugliest impulses they possess are not private moral failures to overcome but public virtues to celebrate.

“He teaches them they can stop whispering. That’s the mutation. Not that people hate. People have always hated. It’s that hatred has become performative. Congratulatory. Self-satisfied. It has mistaken itself for bravery, as though saying something cruel at full volume somehow transforms it into courage instead of leaving it exactly what it has always been: an old, threadbare moral failure that finally discovered it could rent a tuxedo, pin on a flag, and congratulate itself for attending the party.”

Modern media is complicit. Our founders enshrined a place of celestial importance for journalism in our cosmos. The First Amendment to our Constitution guarantees their freedom to investigate and report without fear of retribution. That ethos too has been corrupted.

©2026 Jon Sinton

Right Track/Wrong Track:

In total, 65% of Americans say we’re on the wrong track, while 26% think we’re on the right track, including 29% of Republicans and 5% of Democrats.

Donald Trump:

Trump’s approval rating in June 2026 was 39%, v. 58% who disapprove. That’s the lowest approval rating of either Trump term.

The $1.776B “Anti-Weaponization” Fund:

The Cato Institute — a libertarian-leaning think tank — published an analysis titled “Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund Is a (Another) Slush Fund.” There is broad bipartisan disapproval: 49% oppose, 24% approve.

The Trump Ballroom:

According to YouGov/The Economist polling, 58% disapprove v. 28% approve.

Using the White House as backdrop for the commercial venture of UFC fights:

The polling was notably negative — even among Trump’s own base where only 16% of U.S. adults believed it was appropriate to hold MMA fights on the White House lawn. Another 46% approved, while 38% said “neither” or were “unsure.” (That survey included 4,531 U.S. adults with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.) Even Republicans weren’t on board:

Just 35% supported the event, compared with only 5% of Democrats. The cost-of-living backdrop likely didn’t help — gas prices were flirting with $5/gallon while Americans faced rising costs across a broad range of groceries.

Should Presidents release tax returns:

Two thirds (65%) of us think they should, while just 16% think they shouldn’t have to.

Approval of Decision to End Trump Tax Audits:

It’s 53%-27% against the concession to dismiss Trump tax audits, When you drill down, only 17% “strongly” approve of allowing the President to skate on existing audits where it is estimated he owes north of $100M; 43% “strongly disapprove.” When asked if he pays taxes, half knew that he doesn’t; a quarter think he does.

Generic Congressional Vote:

If the election was held today, 39% say they’d vote for the Democrat running in their district; 32% percent would vote Republican.

Confidence in Institutions — The church or organized religion:

This may surprise you if you haven’t followed recent trends. Just twelve percent say they have “a great deal of confidence in organized religion,” while 38% express “very little” confidence.

Confidence in Institutions — Healthcare system:

Anyone who has been a patient will relate to this: just 9% express “a great deal” of confidence, while 26% say “very little.” About 40% say “some.”

Confidence in Institutions — Banks:

Strikingly similar results as medicine, with just 7% confident and 27% not confident. Again, the rest are in the middle, leaning toward votes of no confidence.

Confidence in Institutions — Organized labor:

Similarly, 7% expressed confidence in organized labor; 27% were low-confidence.

Confidence in Institutions — Newspapers:

You can see the impact of consolidation in the newspaper industry where private equity has spent the last decade stripping assets and shrinking “the news hole.” In case they thought we haven’t noticed, just 5% expressed “a great deal” of confidence, while 41% had “very little” confidence. The 54% in the middle leaned toward more confidence rather than less.

Confidence in Institutions — Television news:

A Spectrum News/Morning Consult poll did a breakout, and found 83% of Americans say local news coverage on television and radio is the most trustworthy source. CNN fell from 46% trust in 2025 to 40% in 2026, while CBS News dropped from 48% to 38%, and Fox News Channel saw a 10-point decline as well, with FNC’s “don’t trust” score rising from 40% to 48%.

Confidence in Institutions — Big business

Four percent express “a great deal” of confidence in business v. 45% who have little confidence.

Vaccine Safety

This surprised me, in that I thought it was a lot closer, based on RFK Jr’s decades-long rants against vaccines. It turns out that 71% of us think vaccines are “completely” or “somewhat” safe. Only 10% are actual skeptics. Perhaps an indication that we’re not collectively as dumb as we feared.

Climate Change:

Most, 57%, believe climate change is manmade, while 22% think man is not to blame. Interestingly, this is gender gap issue, not a political one. If you’ve always suspected women are smarter than men, this will support your thesis: By about 12 points, women believe in manmade climate change, while many men do not.

Abortion:

The numbers are steady: 90% believe some form of abortion should be legal, a number that includes abortions to save the life of the mother or child; 10% say never. Minus the lifesaving votes, 58% believe most abortions should be legal, while 32% say never.

Same Sex Marriage:

It’s 51% for v. 34% against.

Expand v. Repeal the ACA (Obamacare):

55% want to keep or expand the ACA, while 27% want it repealed. The numbers get really imbalanced in favor of expansion with all people under 35.

©2026 Jon Sinton

This was the CNN headline: “TRUMP CANCELS STRIKES, CLAIMING FOR 39TH TIME THAT A DEAL IS NEAR.” Do we finally have a deal with Iran? Apparently. Did we accomplish our goals? No. The regime is still in power, and there’s no movement on their enriched uranium. Is America or the world better off for the Iran War? Polls, spiking gas prices, and inflation say no.

The President also claims for the umpteenth time without evidence that California elections are fraudulent, it is clear that the Trump playbook for the midterms is to claim victory in Iran and discredit elections anywhere he thinks his side will lose. It’s the oldest authoritarian scam in the book. They all say that it’s impossible for them to lose a fair election.

Or, as CNN also put it, “The election denial machine revs up again.” He tried to ramp it up initially after the 2016 election—which he won—claiming that the only reason he didn’t win the popular vote (he won the Electoral College to get to the White House, not the popular vote) was that he was cheated by the state of California via state-sponsored election fraud. As has been the case 100% of the time, he was lying.

He made a big show of calling Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “stupid“ for repeatedly asking him for evidence for his unfounded accusations of voter fraud in California. The petulant man-child removed the microphone struggled to his feet, called her stupid again and stormed off the set. It was a bit unnerving to watch as he got madder than a hatter before finally, and in a fit of projection that would have raised Sigmund Freud’s eyebrows, indicted NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN as corrupt. This is what authoritarians do. They must tear down anyone and anything that impugns their power.

It will be a long time before he goes back on mainstream or legacy media. There’s good reason he confines himself to Fox News and its ilk. Welker asked for proof (he offered none); on Fox’s “The Five,” Brian Kilmeade asked where he got his shoes (Florsheim).

Even though he hasn’t overturned a legitimate election, the act of calling election integrity into question damages the entire system. It matters not that there is no evidence to support the charges of rigging.

If you recall the 2020 election, he lost 60 court cases illustrating that what they say in public is not what they’ll say under oath in a court of law. The problem is that many people who bother to read at all, only read the headlines. He’s counting on an underinformed, uninvolved, and uneducated voting public. He’s had his way with them for 10 years, but current polling indicates he’s losing the Black, Brown, Independent, and no-college White people he rallied in ’16 and ‘24.

And there’s more to this than the Iran circus or the baseless allegations of voter fraud. Insiders continue to say that while the acting AG proclaimed the $1.776B slush fund to reward cop-beaters and Capitol defecators is dead, he refuses to put that in writing. It lives on both in the President’s remarks and for the true-believers who told The Atlantic it will happen.

It gets worse. From Yahoo: only 11% of Europeans consider the United States to be an ally. Our eighty-year love affair cast asunder in a few short months by a belligerent bully that Europeans find disloyal, unfriendly, and incompetent. The Yahoo story concludes, “The findings, released ahead of G7 and NATO summits, highlight Europe’s waning confidence in Washington as a reliable security partner. Majorities in all surveyed countries expressed doubts that the U.S. would come to their defence in the event of an attack.” That’s what supporting Russia over Ukraine has wrought.

When the facts are not on your side, and railing against them with no evidence to support your claims stops working, just call the critics who want facts and evidence “stupid” or “piggy,” and repeat your talking points. We saw—and continue to see—this in action in the aftermath of his losing effort in 2020. In 2016, he told us that if he lost, it would be proof of fraud, and he’s preparing to do so again.

Like California, Iran won’t cry uncle, as he continues to cry wolf. Maybe a savvy teacher with the skills to quiet a room full of petulant 5 year-olds will emerge to calm the Toddler-in-Chief.

He has a built in Shoot-Somebody-On-Fifth-Avenue constituency of around 36%. They’ll continue to praise his rudeness, lawlessness and graft. The question in the midterms is whether more MAGAs and some Normies, will support unfounded lies about electoral fraud, or if the 38% will be alone in their support of the president who cries wolf.

©206 Jon Sinton

I never know whether to be surprised or upset when people discover that I’m not a one dimensional monolith of liberal thought. Often, we are so clad in our political armor, that once we lower the face mask, the scope of our vision is limited.

I found this to be true when I eulogized my former colleague, the conservative voice of commentary in this newspaper, the late and greatly lamented Jim Kelly. Dr. Kelly was a husband, father, scholar, teacher and navy captain. Each of us has many attributes. Defining us on a single one is usually misleading.

It is in that spirit that I offered my friend, Marty Mischel, the opportunity to rebut David Frum, a speechwriter for George W. Bush, who is now a pundit writing for major publications. In a recent Atlantic article, Frum proffered that Trump’s no Republican at all, and that MAGA has nothing to do with the Republican values of small government, strong military, and free markets.

Conversely, Marty says Donald Trump is the best president of his lifetime: “When he ran in 2016, I despised him, but his actions proved me wrong. He is not perfect, but his love of country and bravery in the face of impeachments, assassination attempts, etc., have shown that he is exactly the type of historical leader that moves mountains. I’m happy he is leading my country toward making America great again.”

I thought it would be interesting to give Marty space here to engage in a Trump v. Traditional Republican debate.

[Due to space considerations, I did not rebut Marty, plus, I have my say here every week.]

Frum on Iran: “Trump is arrogant”

Marty: Perhaps, what person in his position isn’t? Why is this disqualifying? To suggest that his only motivation for removing the threat of a nuclear Iran is his is arrogance assumes he isn’t acting on real world information or only to spite his predecessors.

Frum on style: “Trump is reckless”

Marty: Assumes Trump is just winging it without thought or purpose. The devastation to the Iranian armed forces and ballistic capability was one of the most stunning and well-planned military achievements in human history. They no longer have a navy; they no longer have a functional air force; their missile program has been set back decades and multiple layers of their terroristic leadership, including the Ayatollah himself, have been excised.

Frum on governance: “Trump hates procedure”

Marty: Trump has worked within the confines of his Presidential powers from day one, just ask SCOTUS. When he does get an unfavorable ruling such as the tariffs case, he finds another way to achieve his goals. He is under no obligation to keep entrenched, adversarial bureaucrats employed in the Executive Branch that he oversees. Every POTUS has not only the right but the duty to staff his administration with loyal people best suited to carry out the vision for America that the voters chose him for.

Frum on inconsistencies: “Trump is panicky”

Marty: He could have taken the easy route and claimed “Mission Accomplished” after devastating Iran’s military capability. Frum is incapable of understanding that what Trump says vs. what he does may not always align and for good reason - to keep his enemies off balance and uncomfortable. His unpredictability is one of his best assets. If he wanted good polls, he wouldn’t have moved on Iran in the first place and allowed them to stockpile an insurmountable ballistic missile and drone capability that would shield them and their nuclear program from any future conflict. With a protected nuclear arsenal, the Iranians would be free to close the Strait of Hormuz at will, bully their neighbors, radically increase their terror proxies & become the hegemon of the entire Middle East.

Frum on behavior: “Trump is gullible”

Marty: Frum, again without evidence, claims “he’s negotiating an exit that concedes most of Iran’s demands and leaves Iran in a more dominant position over Persian Gulf oil traffic than it occupied before the war.” He has no clue what Trump has “conceded,” no idea what Iran’s “demands” are, and emotionally projects his lack of understanding of the conflict onto Trump as if it were some universal, empirical truth.

Frum on leadership: “Trump can’t lead”

Marty: Probably the most ridiculous statement of them all. If he can’t lead, how did Trump win two Presidential elections, remake an entire political party into a dominant MAGA coalition, and become the prime-mover in bringing an end to multiple conflicts throughout the world, like no other world leader in recent memory? It is laughable to suggest the most consequential POTUS in generations “can’t lead.” While Frum was sitting in his cushy office snidely whining about him, Trump was working his ass off day and night trying to undo the catastrophic damage caused by the Joe Biden auto-pen administration.

© 2026 Jon Sinton

In the early 20th century, we were called upon to help save the world from advancing Germanic armies in World War I. In the 1930s, we were called upon again.

The world relied on us, not just for our military might, but also for defense of human rights, dignity, and our support of democracy and self-determination. We were famous for disaster relief, medical education, and financial support. Following World War II, when we could easily have retreated and pulled the drawbridge up behind us, we instead instituted the Marshall plan whereby we spent tens of billions of 1950s dollars helping Europe and Japan rebuild into democratic societies.

Now that we’ve reduced our global footprint, threatened sovereign nations, and disparaged our long term allies, things are different. A fact we’ll come back to shortly.

As a media consultant, one of my favorite clients was MTV, led by its cofounder and president, Tom Freston. His is a fascinating story. He chronicles it in his recent book, “Unplugged.” After graduate school, Tom found himself at Benton and Bowles, a tony advertising agency on NYC’s Madison Avenue, where he was assigned to the Charmin account. A few months into the gig, Freston looked up and realized that if he didn’t get out soon, he would forever be the toilet paper man.

Always interested in travel and adventure, Tom took the meager resources that a twenty-four year old possesses, and moved to Kabul, Afghanistan. Bouncing back-and-forth between there and the Indian subcontinent, he created the textile import company, Hindu Kush, and brought loads of Afghan wool sweaters, and carpets to the United States. When our politics went slightly protectionist in the late 70s, his small import company was frozen out of the market, and Tom began looking for another gig. Through a combination of luck and timing, he became a cofounder of MTV.

Freston went on to become president of MTV Networks (VH1, South Park, Beavis and Butthead, Nickelodeon, The Daily Show, etc.), and was ultimately the CEO of parent company, Viacom. In taking MTV to the world, Tom found a way spread our American values through what is known as “soft-diplomacy.” MTV exported American culture embodied by fast cars, fun, fashion, fair-play, human rights, equality, and especially music. Under Tom’s tutelage, MTV respected the diverse cultures it landed in, making Tom Freston our best cultural ambassador. He traveled the globe, hanging with everyone from Madonna to REM, and was beloved by his staff and our entire industry.

Since Viacom, Tom has worked tirelessly for the poor, sick, and hungry in Africa. U2’s leader, Bono, created [ONE], a relief organization, and talked George W. Bush into what was easily W’s greatest accomplishment: defeating AIDS in Africa. Bono also enlisted Freston, who has been the chairman of the board of [ONE] for 18 years.

Constantly on the move, Tom once took Jimmy Buffett and some other friends to “the Woodstock of sub-Saharan Africa” where they were very nearly was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda.

In doing invaluable good, Tom Freston discovered one thing that virtually all Democrats and Republicans agreed on: the United States, through its mastery of “soft-power” was a force for good in the developing world. Senators from the far end of both parties, like the left-wing Democrat, Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont, and our hard-right ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, were pulled together by the desire to do help their fellow human beings.

Threats to friends and foes alike have become a standard of the Trump administration. Many of us are distraught over the administration’s desire to pull up the drawbridge, isolate America, and turn its back on its friends.

The nearly 50 U.S. embassies and consulates that are processing visa applications will be reduced to 20 in the coming weeks. The move is part of the administration’s effort to slow issuing both immigrant and non-immigrant visas as part of its broader aim to limit immigration to the U.S.

Beyond hurting our reputation, the DOGE-driven cuts to foreign aid have had real-life consequences:

Health programs are the most acute area. Africa is home to roughly 70% of the world’s HIV-positive population, and W’s PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), administered largely through USAID, was killed by DOGE. UNAIDS warned this could lead to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths annually if not restored. TB and Malaria programs that tamp down these endemic diseases have also disappeared.

Food security is the second major impact. USAID’s Food for Peace program was one of the world’s largest bilateral food aid operations. Its suspension left the World Food Programme and other agencies scrambling to cover enormous gaps.

Too little attention has been paid to the devastation to our global reputation these cuts have wrought.

©2026 Jon Sinton

In a practical sense, there’s no difference as we confront the reality of the reality star’s money grab, feathering his nest while rewarding his foot soldiers in the insurrection of January 6th.

Those outside the Right-wing news bubble are slack-jawed at the awesomeness of the grift. Our president, who unlike his predecessors, did not put his enormous wealth into a blind trust, instead entrusting it to his sons. Of the 3,700 trades made by him or in his name so far this year, the bets he’s placed on Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, and Dell as he touts those companies in speeches is beyond the pale. Yet, I have to say, “So what’s new?” Those trades have netted as much as $750M.

It’s well documented that the gilded president has realized huge gains from the stock market bets he’s placed while advancing policy to the benefit of the companies in which he’s invested. The self-dealing would be astonishing—oh, who am I kidding—there’s nothing even a little extraordinary about watching this Commander-in-Chief line his own pockets while we deal with the inflation his actions have caused.

An unnecessary and uncalled-for trade war, followed by an unnecessary and uncalled for shooting war in Iran have left us weaker, poorer, and with more uncertainty than even the most jaundiced Trump-watchers could have anticipated.

His loyalists cheer on as they pay an average of $4.50 a gallon at the pump, unmoved by the conditions his actions alone have caused. Inflation is up to 3.8%, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, political violence in the form of hate crimes is everywhere, and they are sanguine, proclaiming him the best president in their lifetimes. Ignorance is bliss. Sadly, it’s also expensive.

As he gold-leafs DC, and slaps his name on anything that isn’t moving, they are still unable to see what the rest of us see: a megalomaniac whose insatiable ego threatens not just us and our economy, but threatens the entire world order.

After years of hoping that China, which teetered on the edge of capitalism, would turn into the United States, Trump is turning the United States into China. The recently arranged $1 billion fund for tech companies’ engaged in quantum computing isn’t your father’s public-private initiative; the government is taking an ownership position. That’s state capitalism, ala, China.

Traditional public/private investments, like the ones that got us to the moon, advanced both sides interests, and didn’t have the government taking a piece of Boeing’s or TRW’s ownership.

It’s good to be the King

Trump’s net worth climbed to $7.3 billion from $3.9 billion in 2024, according to Forbes data from September 2025 — nearly doubling in under a year. By early 2026, Forbes put his net worth at around $6.5 billion, still an increase of $1.4 billion over the previous year, with crypto and hospitality businesses as the core drivers.

While he was at it, the President tried to sue his own government for leaking his tax returns. Not for nothing, every other president has voluntarily released their returns. I believe that in the interest of transparency, it should be the law here as it is elsewhere. Predictably, the judge killed the suit because the government cannot be both the plaintiff and defendant. Thus, DOJ dropped the case. Then came the novel idea to create $1.776B slush fund whereby “victims of government persecution” would be compensated. A clearer term is “rewarded.” As in, assault the Capitol, beat police officers, get a financial reward.

And a note: stop calling it a settlement. The suit was dropped. This is a cash-grab, plain and simple.

The slush fund raises eyebrows, but what’s new there? The Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, acting more in his former role as personal attorney to Donald J. Trump, than in his official role as defender of the Constitution and the rule of law, came back for one more bite at the apple by declaring henceforth, the Trump family and their associated businesses can never be audited or in any way bothered by the IRS. That’s right, all is forgiven, now and forever. Assuming he pays no taxes on gains from those stock trades, the IRS will have no recourse under this new arrangement.

Will the spineless Republican caucus finally stand up for themselves? Political expediency is their North Star, so it logically follows that since the primaries are over and most of the people that Trump opposed lost, they and others in their party who aren’t up in November, can safely revolt. Mitch McConnell (R-Cowers): “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong—Take your pick.”

I know it’s late, but it’s never too late to do the right thing.

©2026 Jon Sinton

What do you do when your party is so unpopular that you can’t win free and fair elections? You suppress registration and turnout, you cast aspersions on competitors, you claim fraud where none exists, and you gerrymander.

Even before the recent landmark evisceration of Part 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), only 61 of 435 Congressional seats were deemed competitive. That’s a paltry 14%. Eighty-six percent are the outcome not of voters picking their candidates, but of candidates picking their voters. That is what you get with partisan gerrymandering. A couple of years ago, the Supreme Court held that political gerrymandering, no matter how partisan, was kosher.

The remaining part of the VRA outlawed racial gerrymandering, and now that protection is dead too. There is a legislative fix, but there aren’t enough lawmakers brave enough to depoliticize the apportionment process and simply allow American voters their voice.

President Trump is all about one-party rule. He says, “Vote for me now, and you’ll never have to vote again, because we’re fixing it.”

The current ruling, Louisiana v. Callais, finds the six conservative justices in agreement with the wholly ridiculous notion that racism in the South is dead, so there’s no need monitor elections there.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, claimed that because Black voters participated in the Obama (2008 and 2012) elections at similar rates as Whites, racism must be over. To say turnout is a measure of racism tortures logic in ways that would make Torquemada blush.

As predictable as Elon Musk posting racist comments on X, Southern states have rushed to redistrict. A mid-cycle effort previously unthinkable. Louisiana halted primary elections—after voting was in process—to redraw their maps. Alabama promises to do the same. Get this: after the primary, they intend to rejigger the map and hold a second primary in three formerly Black-majority districts.

It gets worse: Tennessee dismantled its only Black-majority district, carving Memphis, which is 60% African American, into five Congressional districts, guaranteeing Blacks would have no representation at all. (FWIW, I’ve lived in Tennessee and Georgia; racism is alive and well there.)

Christopher Armitage is a public policy writer and researcher:

“There’s a particular kind of tragedy in watching intelligent people apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s crises. Across America, millions of well-meaning citizens are responding to the capture of our democratic institutions by participating harder in those same institutions.

“The federal democracy you learned about in school, where votes translate to representation, where representation shapes policy, where policy reflects majority will, has been replaced by something else entirely. Not through coup or revolution, but through methodical institutional capture.

“The Supreme Court didn’t suddenly become ideological; it was purposefully stacked through stolen seats and manufactured vacancies. Congress didn’t accidentally become unrepresentative; it was gerrymandered into minority rule with surgical precision. The feedback loops that democracy requires haven’t broken down; they’ve been deliberately severed.

“In Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and Florida, election results are functionally predetermined regardless of how people vote. In these five states, the Republican party has locked in power through cartographic precision and voter suppression, essentially creating systems where electoral competition has been engineered out of existence.

“In Wisconsin, Democrats won the statewide vote in 2022 and lost seats in the legislature. They’ve won every recent statewide election for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and U.S. senator, yet Republicans hold near-supermajority control of both legislative chambers…Wisconsin requires Democrats to win 59% of the vote to achieve what Republicans get with 41%.”

Look at the structural destruction of fair practices:

•In North Carolina, the 2024 result: Democrats won 46% of votes and got 29% of seats, a 10-4 Republican delegation.

•Texas Republicans control 66% of congressional seats with 54% of the vote.

•In Ohio, Republicans won 53% of votes and took 67% of congressional seats.

•Florida went from multiple competitive races to zero.

Here’s a sampling of other thought leaders:

•Harold Jones II, Minority Leader in the Georgia House:

“Let’s sum it up for everybody. The biggest bloc of middle and working class voters are Black people. When Republicans strip Black people’s political power away, it doesn’t just strip one community of power. It strips political power from every single middle and working class person and hands it over to billionaires and big corporations. That’s what redistricting means for you.”

•Alabaman Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor: “Republicans have to gerrymander because they can’t win the hearts and minds of enough voters outright. This is the point we should be reinforcing when we talk with friends and family about this race to the bottom. None of this would be necessary if Republicans believed they could win the midterm elections on the merits. But they don’t, and they know it. That’s why we’re seeing all the gamesmanship.”

©2026 Jon Sinton

President Trump is famous for exaggerations bordering on lies, and lies based on exaggerations. He says exaggeration is his style as a real estate developer, which is kind of like saying running red lights is my style as a driver. The rules are for everyone else. Here’s a sordid sampling of his greatest hits:

•In 1973, DOJ filed a landmark civil rights lawsuit against Fred Trump, Donald Trump, and Trump Management, Inc. The government accused them of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 at 39 Trump-built and -managed buildings in the outer boroughs of NYC, by steering Black and Latino applicants away from their White properties.

The family countersued for $100M. Donald Trump turned the lawsuit into a protracted battle, complete with his now trademark angry denials, character assassinations, and charges that the government was trying to force him to rent to “welfare recipients.” The countersuit was thrown out, and in1975 the Trumps finally signed a consent decree that they predictably violated. (The rules do not apply to them, part two-million.)

•The Donald’s political origin story is racially-tinged as well. It was built on the “birther” lie that Barack Obama was foreign-born. Bad enough that the new president was Black, worse that he used a White House Correspondent’s Dinner to very humorously flay Trump, earning him the lasting enmity of a thin-skinned narcissist who can dish it out but can’t take it.

•On the campaign trail, Trump vociferously denied knowledge of Project 2025, which he implemented even before his tanning bed was moved into the White House.

•Recently, he lied about naval escorts through the Strait of Hormuz. He needed Saudi Arabia and the UAE to cooperate, but they refused because he lied about the severity of Iran’s airstrikes on their countries. DoD and the administration hid the truth about just how much damage Iranian attacks on US bases in the Gulf have done, and our allies were having none of it.

• Again given to exaggeration, he called the blockade of the Strait “the biggest in history.” He knows as much about history as he does humility.

•He’s lied constantly about his war on Iran. His estimates went from “just a few days,” to “just a couple of weeks,” to noting that it is shorter than the Vietnam War. “For the White House, the insistence that the war was over was the latest rhetorical leap in an effort to put a war that has created the greatest political crisis of Mr. Trump’s presidency in the rearview mirror,” David Sanger wrote. “But the mere proclamation does not make it true.” (NYT) Or, as Michael Wolff, the burr under Trump’s saddle, says, “Only Trump can find victory in the most flagrant of failures.”

•When faced with sexual assault accusations by E. Jean Carroll, he lied, saying “She’s not my type.” When showed an unnamed picture of her, he lit up and said, “That’s Marla,” his second wife.

•Everything is just two weeks away: Peace; Infrastructure Week; a health plan better than Obamacare.

•Last summer, the real estate mogul who says telling whoppers is part of the game, lied and said we had “obliterated” Iran’s uranium enrichment program, only to start a war with them over it months later. Their stockpile remains untouched.

•The grandaddy is of course, the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Inherent in the lies is the Blame Game. Since his ego won’t allow defeat, he has used his presidency to blame Joe Biden and “Hussein Obama” for everything bad, while taking credit for everything good.

•The Ballroom that would be paid for exclusively with private donations, has become a $1B burden on taxpayers through a process that doesn’t allow debate, ensuring it will pass without a single Democrat vote.

•”I’m at 100% approval. Did you see the CNN poll? Nobody talks about it.” That’s because it exists only in his mind. Not everyone loves the lying. CNN: “Between March 2025 and March 2026, [Jake] Tapper noted, Trump support among Republicans “has gone from 90% to 80% and strong support from 64% to 43%.”

•Gas and food prices are hard to lie about, but he does try. His numbers are collapsing because his once sorta, kinda believable lies (if you close your eyes, cover your ears, and hold your breath), are no longer sustainable because everyone buys gas and food and can see the lies for themselves.

When you lie about everything, no one listens to anything you say. It’s why people now trust the least trustworthy country in the world, Iran, over the United States. That’s what lying buys you. But when your only goal is ego satisfaction, it doesn’t matter. You just say we’re the most respected country in the world, and leave the lie at that.

©2026 Jon Sinton

The oft-quoted conservative goal of reducing, if not demolishing, the social safety net finally has traction, thanks mostly to the Supreme Court.

There are two arguments here. One argument is economical, and dates back to the 18^th Century as our country was being formed. Just as today, there was an educated v. uneducated divide (everything old is new again). It ran, and continues to run, along rural v. urban divides, and explains two senators per state regardless of population, and the Electoral College that also bestows much power on small states.

The other is that it is more racially-motivated, since it dramatically impacts more people of color than anyone else. You can add misogyny to the modern-day mix. There was no need to limit women then since they had no agency in the 18^th Century.

The administration‘s direction that the Department of Justice start denaturalization proceedings to strip 1000 Black and Brown American citizens of their citizenship, and to take the 1000 Afghans who aided us as translators, guides, etc., and send them to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa (or home to be murdered by the Taliban, whom they betrayed by working for us), is as Senator Chris Coons (D-Decency) said, “Exiling them to a country they’ve never lived in or sending them to certain death at the Taliban’s hands is a cowardly betrayal.”

It’s easy to say, but hard to prove, that this has all the outward appearances of xenophobic racism. Afghans and the other targeted people are not white. Meanwhile, we’re upping the immigration quota only for White South Africans.

New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen is the ranking democrat on the foreign relations committee. Her single word on the subject was “unconscionable.“ Separately, on social media, she rallied Congress to take a unified stand against these inhumane and un-American proposals.

For most of the last year, Republican legislators, many of whom served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and benefited from these guides and translators expertise, have held the line against Trump and his racist flying monkey, Stephen Miller, saying collectively that the American government should keep its promises if it wishes to have any credibility in the future. In recent weeks, many of them have gone quiet while the Administration has amped up its anti-Afghan rhetoric.

Some months ago, the shooting of two National Guard members by an Afghan immigrant, changed the political calculus and for some interceding moments, Republicans were willing to accept the notion that one bad apple spoils the barrel. This proposal, however, is a bridge too far even for those who generally lack the courage to stand up to Trump and Miller.

It’s politically safe for Republicans to howl as the State Department can do this without the Senate or House.

You might think the administration simply ignores the will of the people, and you might be right, but they’re not all dolts up there on Pennsylvania Avenue. They know they’re in trouble. It started in January with our cosplaying Secretary of DHS in her cowboy costumed photo shoot in front of caged deportees in El Salvador. Kristi Noem was all hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas.

Public outrage built in Minneapolis with ICE running amok with armed-to-the-teeth masked, unidentifiable gunmen breaking windows, pulling people out of cars and houses, and ultimately murdering two American citizens. That was enough for many people. But the coup d’grace is the undeclared war in Iran, and the petty foolishness unleashed at such a serious moment. Even the reprehensible Tucker Carlson is distancing himself from the megalomania. He went so far as to apologize to his viewers for misleading them, admitting that he’s “tormented” for pushing his fans to vote for Trump, “I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

The President may continue to use social media to demean and insult, but his people are playing a more serious game. One of tilting our electoral system. Trump says, pass the SAVE act and we’ll have Republican rule for 50 years.

A little like jugglers who must keep many balls in the air, the President needs to continue to distract with insults and bogus claims. The one sure winner in his arsenal is bigotry. Whether he’s calling reporters, women, and people of color “low IQ,” disparaging third-world countries, or posting pictures depicting the Obamas as apes, he knows his base rallies for the racial insult.

He has a lot to try to distract us from, be it an ill-considered war of choice, his clown car of sycophantic cabinet members, or the Epstein files, he has a sure-fire solution.

Finally, a Lighthouse Reports study concludes that minor traffic stops are perilous for people of color, but not Whites. It is SCOTUS-approved racial profiling.

We should ask, is this Justice, or Just Us?

©2026 Jon Sinton

In 1979, Malcolm Feeley wrote a book called The Process Is the Punishment. It turns out to have been prescient. Feeley’s premise was that fines and imprisonment aren’t the only prosecutorial tools in the government’s arsenal. Just ask James Comey.

All the government has to do is name you or your organization as a prosecutorial target, and in nine-out-of-ten cases, you’re forced to lawyer up and begin spending big chunks of time and money defending yourself.

That’s what’s likely on-tap for ABC/Disney since late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel has once again used legally protected speech (satire) to skewer POTUS and FLOTUS (which I admit sound like a poorly named Vaudeville act).

Kimmel once again cracked-wise, this time observing that Melania, “Had that expectant widow’s glow.” She is famously as thin-skinned as her hubby, and screamed bloody murder. Shakespeare said, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” and, “Many a truth are said in jest.” Down South, they simply say, “A hit dog screams.”

Well, scream she did, and the highly litigious First Lady, who usually threatens frivolous-yet-expensive-to-defend lawsuits only had to get the FCC involved. Now the Commission is levying an empty threat on ABC’s TV licenses. Empty because the FCC has no charter to control broadcast content, and because it would require a mid-cycle license review—next to unheard of—and years and years of litigation that will go nowhere, and in any case, wouldn’t be settled in any of their lifetimes.

You’d think they’d learn about the First Amendment, but bullies bully, including abusing our legal processes.

A prominent Substack and You Tube host of my acquaintance has received ugly threats from Melania’s law firm, demanding that she retract and apologize for using her First Amendment rights to satirize the First Lady. She will not capitulate, and their threat, which has an implicit “we’ll take your house and break you emotionally and financially” tone has fallen on deaf ears.

The truth is they’ll never actually file a legal action, not because it’s surely a loser on First Amendment grounds, but mostly because it would require Donald and Melania to be deposed under oath in discovery. It’s all just another attempt at quasi-official intimidation and retaliation.

Luckily, our courts are for the most part, holding the line against such process abuse.

Long before he was an elected official, Donald Trump abused the civil litigation process until his opponents, often small vendors he stiffed, cried Uncle, as he likes to say. But he lost the largest of these civil law battles, most notably the fight over Trump University which was revealed to be scam. Trump University ceased operations in 2010, though the full story played out over several more years.

Trump University was founded in 2005 as a for-profit education company offering real estate investment courses and seminars. Despite the name, it was never an accredited university, a fact that bothered the New York State Education Department which took it to task for operating as an unlicensed university. In response, it rebranded as the “Trump Entrepreneur Initiative,” but stopped taking new students in 2010.

Then came the lawsuits filed by former students who alleged they were defrauded — claiming they paid tens of thousands of dollars for courses that promised insider real estate secrets and access to Trump’s personal network, but delivered neither.

In 2016, shortly after the presidential election, Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle the lawsuits without admitting wrongdoing. This resolved claims from roughly 6,000 former students. It was notable because Trump had previously vowed never to settle, calling the suits politically motivated.

Then came the Trump Foundation scandal in which the President and his three eldest children were sued by the New York State Attorney General, who successfully charged them with operating a charitable entity for personal gain, because the foundation was used to pay off Trump’s personal legal debts. The foundation also misused funds to purchase personal items, including a $10,000 portrait of Trump displayed at one of his golf clubs and another portrait bought at a charity auction using foundation money. It also made an improper $25,000 donation to a political committee supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was at the time considering whether to investigate Trump University. File that under, “The tangled web we weave.”

The foundation, which had no legally-required board of directors, held no board meetings for nearly 20 years as it operated, according to investigators, as little more than a checkbook for Trump’s business and political interests.

In 2019, they agreed to dissolve the Trump Foundation and pay $2 million in damages to a group of eight legitimate charities as part of a court settlement. The President was required to admit to misusing charitable funds, and Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric were required to undergo mandatory training on nonprofit law. The foundation was formally closed.

©2026 Jon Sinton

Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had a roadmap to what he calls “illiberal democracy.” The Trump administration has followed it closely. They’ve tried to change the rules surrounding the popular vote by making it harder to vote by mail, or even register if you’re unlikely to vote their way. Orban gerrymandered, just as Trump tried to do this winter, realigning voting districts in his favor. Both have used their legislative majorities to tamp down oversight and seat friendly judges. What media their rich friends can’t buy, they try to control with the power of the state. They both talk to the press, but only to the press that curries favor with them.

JD Vance went to Hungary to campaign for Orban, who is a hero to the American far-right. Nonetheless, after 16 years of his illiberal rule, the disheartened and impoverished handed Orban a sound defeat, catching observers off-guard.

Meanwhile, our President decided to cross swords with, of all people, the Pope. It was a huge miscalculation that underscores his magical thinking about his own prowess to change and control world events. Pope Leo called it a “delusion of omnipotence.” The pontiff went on to say, “Enough of the idolatry of self and money. Enough of the display of power. Enough of war.” These spiritually-driven observations and demands were of course enough to set off the most insecure man this side of Andromeda. He compulsively decided to use his ridiculing style to denounce the leader of 1.4B Catholics worldwide, issuing silly insult after silly insult to the 53M American Catholics.

Trump derided the Pope for being a liberal. (Of course the Pope is a liberal; Jesus was the biggest liberal ever, and the Pope is his servant.) He was trying to justify an unplanned war in which American forces have killed schoolchildren, devastated hospitals and universities, and killed thousands of civilians. The Pope always has the high moral ground, and because DJT starts with absolutely no moral ground to defend, he just looks unmoored.

Take the AI illustration intended to make Trump Jesus. The entire world saw it as juvenile blasphemy, and remarkably, that took the President by surprise. He took it down, but Donald being Donald, he had to defend it the way a three-year old defends coloring on the wallpaper—childishly. It was, Trump said, supposed to be him as a doctor. In ecclesiastical robes and bathed in celestial light? No stethoscope? No white coat? Certainly no apology for his blasphemy.

At least it has spawned some funny memes:

Before he was done getting in his own way, Trump took credit for the pontiff’s rise, asserting Leo wouldn’t be pope without him. The Trump megalomania knows no bounds here on earth or in the heavens.

And yet, as always, there were people anxious to defend him and insult the pope. A Catholic convert himself, our pathetic Vice President advised the Pope to “be careful” in matters of theology. You read that right. Still, you may be assured there will be letters and comments with their own convoluted attempts to support the unsupportable.

Back to Viktor Orban. He is the hero of C-PAC (the Conservative Political Action Committee) and the American far-right. He’s been an honored guest speaker at their conventions.

In the process of consolidating power in government and media, Orban and his friends got rich beyond the dreams of Avarice. As the economy collapsed, he was kept afloat by a captured media that could only praise him. While his blatant corruption was enriching his family and friends, he was cozying up to Europe’s White supremacists, and helping Russia’s Putin by vetoing EU efforts to support Ukraine as it tries to defend itself. He leaves Hungary as the least democratic state in Europe, and, the poorest.

His competitor, Peter Magyar, won in a landslide, even though he couldn’t buy a billboard or a television ad, and was locked out of social media as well.

So Magyar wore out his shoe leather, visiting every town, village and wide spot in the road, telling the Hungarian people to believe in themselves again, and to turn their attention West toward Europe and away from Vladimir Putin‘s Russia.

Before the election, as it became clear that he was going to lose, Orban began to make Trump-like noises about how if he lost, the election could only have been rigged. And in a fit of world-class hypocrisy, he complained loudly about foreign interference in the election even as he welcomed the American VP to the stage at his final rally.

Because of the unprecedented turnout (80%) and the huge margin of victory (15%), any claims of vote-rigging would fall on deaf ears. Orban’s final act was one of contrition: he conceded defeat.

There is a lot here to unpack for those who wish to end the illiberal, self-seeking Trump reign.

©2026 Jon Sinton

Humorist Bob Garfield recently observed that, “Death is unpopular. Like Florida, or United Healthcare.” He may as well have added the United States, which for the first time in history, is a pariah. Isolationists/America Firsters rejoice as the rest of us are repelled. This is the moment they’ve dreamed of at since the New Deal, if not since the very inception of our country.

His remaining supporters seem to fall in three categories: The über-devoted “Trump-Can-Do-No-Wrong” faction; the spineless political climbers who are attached to him like so many remoras suckling a shark, and the hopelessly under-informed who have trapped themselves in the right-wing media bubble.

The leader of our country said, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” That’s he who speaks for me and thee, threatening the destruction of a 2,500 year-old culture, without so much as a tsk-tsk from his minions. His words embody the very definition of genocide, according to the United Nations, The Geneva Conventions, and anyone with even a drop of human empathy. Call it a negotiating ploy if you must, but as Representative Scott Peters (D-Decency) put it, “The damage to our international reputation from an American president threatening genocide will last a long time.”

I guess someone has watched too many gangster movies. It took 250 years, but we have arrived at the moment where we’re trading American benevolence for belligerence. After all these years as a reliable, ethical, compassionate partner, the one the world looked to for moral guidance. In one short year we’ve managed to let a virulent minority gain the levers of power, and the wholly predictable result is not pretty.

For reasons that boggle the mind, this president has decide to denounce the Pope. A pope no longer has the power of the sword, but with over 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide, and 53 million in the USA, he commands the spiritual high ground, something totally lost on the President. Noted in The Atlantic: “for Catholics the pope is not a king but a servant—the servus servorum Dei, or servant of the servants of God.” It is completely on-brand for Donald Trump to turn his nastiness on him. Pope Leo knows that love (T)rumps hate, and that Jesus wasn’t the Prince of War, no matter what SecDef Hegseth says.

Some want to play this off as Trump being Trump, but as Professor of Human Rights, Global Affairs, and Philosophy, Mathias Risse of Harvard’s Kennedy School noted, “The Geneva Conventions prohibit ‘acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to terrorize civilians.’”

Trump has threatened 90 million Iranian with genocide. Who does that? Those words were spoken by none other than the American President.

I have a friend who is a prominent psychiatrist. He posits that Trump isn’t the crazy one—we are. It’s hard to argue against that analysis. Because even after threats of civilizational destruction, that very steady 37% of the American populous, and each of the invertebrate Republicans in Congress, continue to cheerlead for our Megalomaniac-in-Chief. If that doesn’t prove the point that the fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars, it is in ourselves, I don’t know what does. It at least levels the playing field in the battle of who’s crazier, the leader or his followers.

Retribution is his, and he’ll make sure it is his alone. The other day he said, I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval.” Great. We have an amoral crime boss who guarantees criminals friendly to him won’t suffer consequences.

A sampling of his former allies is revealing. Candace Owens, the far-right extremist said, “The 25th Amendment needs to be invoked. He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness.” Tucker Carlson, the poster-boy for smarmy racism and antisemitism, in a good example of the pump calling the handbag black, said Trump is the Anti-Christ, noting that the President’s language was “vile.” Alex Jones, the grandaddy of conspiracy theorists, heretofore a reliable Trump backer, has also had enough. He asked, “How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” Our classy President took the opportunity to slam them as “stupid people” and “nut jobs.” Gee, I’ll bet Tucker never saw that coming.

Within the state department and the national security apparatus, it’s a fairly common opinion that the time to take on Iran was 1979. Sadly, Jimmy Carter whiffed with his hostage-extraction plan.

Since then, the job became too fraught. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to talk Presidents Bush, Obama, and Biden into this war, but they listened to the experts that formerly populated our national security apparatus, and declined.

Containment has been the order of the day because no one wanted to risk the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump, in typical fashion, followed his gut and got us in over our heads.

The macho MAGA crowd equates benevolence with weakness and belligerence with strength: A sea-change 250 years in the making.

©2026 Jon Sinton