Trump’s decline is a threat to the world

This morning, at approximately 11:00 a.m., the President of the United States entered the East Room with a noticeable rash peeking out from the right side of his collar. His orange makeup appeared patchy, as if he had been told at the last minute he had an event to attend. As he stood at the podium for the next 40 minutes during what was supposed to be a Medal of Honor ceremony, he struggled to read his teleprompter and once again spoke incoherent gibberish while the world watched. “Finally, we honor one more American soldier, a fallen werria of whorl. Of wars. And really, of really terra,” Trump said, when introducing a Medal of Honor recipient. It was just the latest reminder of how much danger we are in with him as the President. This is the man who just started a war that has now engulfed an entire region in chaos.

And that was just the beginning. When the ceremony began with a prayer, nearly everyone in the room had their heads bowed, except Trump, who looked around aimlessly, uncomfortable, and unsure of what to do. Throughout his entire speech, we were reminded over and over again just how far we’ve fallen. Especially with the things he thought were worth bringing up. Because even when speaking about our brave military members who died serving this country, he couldn’t stay focused on them or their loss.

And it became unmistakably clear when he said this:

“Please join me in thanking every American service member who bravely is standing in harm’s way. They really are incredible. And I just want to thank you. We have a lot of them right here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you everybody. We have a lot of great service members here with us too in this beautiful building, isn’t it beautiful? We’re adding on to the building a little bit. We’re improving the building. See that nice drape when that comes down, right now, you see a very, very deep hole, but in about a year and a half from now, you’re going to see a very, very beautiful building. And there’s your entrance to it right there. In fact, it looks so nice. I don’t think I’ll even -- I think I’ll save money on the doors because it can’t get more beautiful than that. I picked those drapes in my first term. I always like gold. But I think we can save a lot of money. I just saved -- I just saved curtains. But, uh, and it will be -- it’ll be spectacular, be the most beautiful ballroom. I believe it’s because I built many a ballroom. I believe it’s going to be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world. And when you hear all that hammering out there, you know why the First Lady is not thrilled exactly. She said will the pile drivers ever stop? You know they go from six in the morning till 1130 in the evening. Can you imagine? Hear? You know what, to me that’s a beautiful sound, she doesn’t like it. I love it. You know what to me other than here because we’re donating it not a penny to the taxpayer. It’ll be under budget, ahead of schedule. It’ll be $400 million or less. Most people say $400 million or more. No, it’ll be less. But, uh, when I hear that sound, that beautiful sound behind me, it means money so I like it, but my wife isn’t thrilled. She said this is getting crazy. I said, don’t worry about it. We’ll be all finished up in a few months.”

Then, as if suddenly remembering why he was there, he said: “But now for the reason that we’re gathered this morning to recognize the unsurpassed courage of three really incredible American heroes, one living and two no longer with us.”

This was an event to celebrate the bravest among us, members of the military who sacrificed themselves to save others. It was inexcusable. And every single day that the President of the United States represents this country in his deteriorating condition is another day we fall deeper into uncharted territory on the world stage.

I want to note that I’m not sharing any of this because it’s fun, or because I take pleasure in pointing out someone who is clearly in distress, especially an older person. Because if we are lucky, we will all get the opportunity to age, and challenges often come with aging. The reality is, I share this because I want a safe future for my daughters. I want a safe future for all of the world’s children. And this man is destabilizing the world. The fact that he’s being allowed to make decisions that are costing American lives, and frankly, anyone’s lives, in his current condition is unconscionable. I don’t want to be writing this. But there needs to be a record of what is happening in our country. We need future generations to be able to look back and see the signs that have brought us to what I fear is a breaking point for our country and the world. Because whatever’s coming, we’re seeing the warnings right now. And the only thing we can do in this moment is tell the truth, and make sure as many people as possible know what is actually happening.

Because he also did something else during the speech that wasn’t just all his own doing. It was too planned, too perfectly placed for Trump to have orchestrated it alone. He told the story of Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds. A story that deserved to be told with gravity and reverence, and one that I always hold in my heart as the ultimate act of bravery.

In 1945, inside a German POW camp, a Nazi Commandant ordered all Jewish American soldiers to report to roll call the following morning. Everyone knew what that meant. Certain death. Edmonds, the highest-ranking American in the camp, told all 1,200 men to stand together. And the next morning, when the Nazi commandant demanded that all the Jewish soldiers step forward, every soldier stepped forward, not just the Jewish ones. And when the commandant pressed a pistol between Edmonds’ eyes and, according to the Yad Vashem center, screamed, “They cannot all be Jews,” Edmonds looked back and said, “We are all Jews here.” The Nazi officer lowered his weapon, and over 200 lives were saved.

Master Sergeant Edmonds’ son was presented his father’s medal. It was a touching moment that most in that room felt deeply. But not Trump. Try as he might, he kept the same monotone voice and quickly pushed through that sacred moment before moving on.

Edmonds deserved that medal. It was long overdue. But the whole ceremony was for theater and show. Trump does not care about any of these men. And the irony of staging this ceremony while six Americans lie dead from a war he just started is beyond offensive. But his enablers did it because it’s what all Authoritarians do. It’s the pattern they all follow. Scholars call it moral laundering. It’s when authoritarian leaders associate themselves with universally admired values like courage and solidarity to build moral credibility that provides cover for actions that contradict those very values. Putin invokes the sacrifice of World War II to justify invading Ukraine, calling it “denazification.” And Kim Jong Un’s state media is filled with narratives about the Kim family weeping over the suffering of ordinary citizens while operating prison camps.

Authoritarian leaders don’t just lie. They create an alternative moral universe where they are always the hero of the story, always on the side of justice, regardless of what they are actually doing. That is exactly what we watched today.

And while Trump pretended to be on the right side of history, he was accelerating the systematic destabilization of the entire world. Today, France announced it is increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal. President Macron said the increase was “indispensable.” He pointed directly to Russia’s war against Ukraine, the proliferation of global threats, and changing U.S. defense priorities as the reasons. It is infuriating and heartbreaking that a longstanding and trusted NATO ally just told the world that they need to take greater control of their own destiny because the United States can no longer be counted on as a stable partner.

This is the part that I’ve been thinking about all day. The entire post-World War II security architecture was built on a simple understanding: the United States would be the stable anchor. Our allies didn’t need to develop massive nuclear arsenals because they knew we had theirs. In return, they provided intelligence, bases, surveillance, and ground troops. When we needed them, they showed up. After September 11th, the United States invoked NATO Article 5 for the first and only time in its history. Our allies didn’t hesitate. They sent their soldiers. They stood beside ours. They fought and died alongside Americans. It was never a one-sided arrangement. Those nations are the buffer. They are the early warning system. They are the partners who keep threats from reaching our shores. And Trump is dismantling all of it and abandoning our allies, leaving them vulnerable and exposed.

Over the weekend, another one of my biggest concerns happened again. We lost another truth speaker to pressure from the Trump regime. Last Friday, Producer Mary Walsh left CBS News after 46 years, multiple major journalism awards, and decades of ensuring the public received accurate reporting rather than propaganda-laden coverage of the biggest global threats we face. She was a national security producer who worked on CBS Evening News, CBS Sunday Morning, and 60 Minutes. And in her farewell memo to her colleagues, she wrote: “We’ve been reading a lot of goodbyes lately, and here I am, headed out the door. It’s too soon, even after 46 years. But maybe it’s for the best. We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that.”

That’s a journalist with nearly half a century of experience yet again telling us, in plain language, that corporate media is being directed to serve a political agenda. And with her gone, that means more stories that challenge this administration cut before they air. The individual reporters and journalists at many of these networks are still doing brave, honest work. The coverage of this war, in particular, has been better than what we were seeing a few months ago. But the corporate structures above them are a constant weight they carry. They’re being told what to cover and how to cover it. And I don’t know how long that courage from the people on the ground will hold when the pressure from the top keeps getting worse.

I don’t know where Mary will end up, or if she will continue the work she started nearly 50 years ago. But if she chooses to continue, we must support her. She walked away instead of breaking her journalistic principles, and that matters more today than ever. This is also another reminder that I feel like I have had to say with more frequency than I like. Independent media will be the lifeline for democracy over authoritarianism. The truth is increasingly living outside the walls of corporate newsrooms. It lives with the independent voices who can’t be bought, redirected, or told to aim their reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. And those voices only survive if we support them.

Many like myself are dedicated to keeping our work free from paywalls so all can access the stories that matter most. And that is only possible because of the generosity of those who support it through paid memberships. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. If you’ve been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber, now is the time. Please think of all of your favorite voices doing the important work 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and support them in the ways you are able. Subscribe to them. Share their posts. We are watching corporate media get gutted, and the only thing standing between this regime and total control of the narrative is people refusing to be silent.

There is so much happening right now, so fast, that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. That’s by design. The chaos is the strategy. When everything is on fire, it’s hard to know where to look. But I want to bring it back to the central truth of this moment: the President of the United States is not fit for office. He is physically declining. He is mentally diminished. He was struggling to stay awake during a ceremony for fallen heroes. He spent more time talking about curtains and construction costs than about the Americans who died because of his decisions. He is surrounded by people who are using his decline to consolidate their own power, and they are destabilizing the entire world in the process.

But we also saw an outlier who might normally be lumped into the elite rich, trying to take over the world, but instead put humanity over profit and power. Anthropic, the company behind the AI assistant Claude, just hit number one on Apple’s App Store. And here’s why that matters. The Trump administration ordered agencies to stop using Anthropic technology after Anthropic refused to drop safeguards on mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using it. In retaliation, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of the Department of War, designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk. And the American public responded by downloading their app in record numbers. Free users went up over 60 percent. Signups quadrupled. It went from outside the top 100 to number one.

That’s Americans voting with their wallets. That’s people choosing, deliberately, to move away from companies aligned with the regime and toward ones that are standing up. And it shows something that I think a lot of people on both sides underestimate: the people who use these tools, the very people we assume are aligned with MAGA, are not. They are making the same kinds of economic choices that so many of us are making. And when you see that kind of movement, when you see a company punished by the government and rewarded by the people, that is resistance working in real time.

That’s what this moment is asking of us. Not to be fearless. But to stand together anyway. And we are doing it in a way that Trump and his enablers understand. With our dollars. That’s why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: I spent most of today watching the Clintons’ depositions, Trump’s Medal of Honor ceremony, Hegseth’s press conference, and the latest out of Iran. We usually take an hour-long walk to break up the constant stream of heavy news, but today got away from me. Still, even a quick 30-minute hike was enough to shake off the doom and get back to it.