The Index

Trust doesn't return with a photo op, a handshake, or deals signed under duress. It is built slowly, consistently, through a pattern of behavior. Trump broke that pattern. He salted the earth. And now he struts through the wreckage, calling it a win.

If you had told me a decade ago that a former president would waltz back into the White House, torch the global economy, slap double-digit tariffs on damn near everything, spook the markets into evaporating over three trillion dollars in a single day, and call it a "booming economy" with a straight face—I would've thought it a particularly cruel and poorly conceived joke.

But here we are.

Trump and his gang of limp, trite supremacists are creating a narrative in which he alone is the liberator from foreign theft, domestic betrayal, and historical decline.

Every time an authoritarian con-artist is held accountable, every time the mask slips in a courtroom, the spell weakens.

It takes pressure. It takes a public that doesn't flinch when the volume gets turned up. It takes faith - not in the perfection of institutions, but in their potential.

Donald Trump doesn't understand soft power. He doesn’t trust it, doesn’t believe in it, and certainly doesn't know how to wield it. To him, power only works when it bruises. If it doesn't punch, it doesn't count. As a man, as a leader, as a bully, he is too weak to see the power in speaking softly.

Which is why America under Trump has become smaller, meaner, and less effective than at any point in its global history since the Second World War.

Car prices: up Jobs: down Allies: pissed Economy: unstable Trump: still convinced tariffs are cheat codes

Pete Hegseth is unfit to serve as Secretary of Defense. He is a clown, a security risk, a buffoon and a living symbol of everything rotten in the bones of Trump's attempted administration. His recklessness and ideological zealotry have put lives at risk, insulted veterans, erased history, undermined basic principles of military integrity, and - most recently - handed classified military intelligence to a journalist.

The Democrats need to stop acting like they're in a friendly game of chess.

This is a cage match.

There's no middle ground left, no room for half-measures, no space for strategic cooperation.

It's scorched earth time.

The architecture of American power, built painstakingly over seventy-five years, has been abandoned. This will be remembered as the moment when America's Pacific century came to an end.

Every "partial ceasefire" that leaves tanks rolling and bombs falling isn't a step toward anything except prolonged suffering and cynicism. It’s just a used-car sale repackaging of diplomatic half-measures as humanitarian achievements.

Authoritarians never mention what happens after the "strong leader" consolidates power.

The corruption that inevitably follows.

The silencing of dissent.

The capture of institutions by cronies.

The erosion of rights for anyone outside the favored group.

But these are the consequences of a populace who have stopped caring enough to participate.

MAGA has nothing left to offer except more of the same: more screaming, more outrage, more rot. It's all downhill from here.

So what do we make of men like John Fetterman and Gavin Newsom, who now seem desperate to cozy up to it?