Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
(This election post-mortem is my Sunday column in the Arizona Daily Star followed by an important update as the real Donald Trump gobsmacks a worried, wary world.)
TUCSON -- A basic fact underlies the aftermath finger-pointing and thumb-sucking. Democracies get the government they deserve. A treacherous felon seized unthinkable power in America because so many voters fell for his blatant, cruel savaging of truth.
Donald Trump intends to let billionaire backers plunder natural wealth and fleece workaday families like flocked sheep. Faux-Christian ideologues plan to surveil wombs and classrooms of constituents they swear to serve. "Rule of law" will be a laugh line.
Fires that Trump sparked off in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia already flare toward unstoppable conflicts. He favors despots and aggressors while undermining alliances that have prevented global war since the 1940s.
The "border crisis" he exploits with preposterous lies reflects a worldwide tragedy he worsened by denying climate collapse, refusing aid to desperate "shitholes," weakening international organizations and condoning tyrants who oppress their own people.
Trump, addled at 78, and a young vice president pledge to turn America's back to the world, depriving eight billion people of the largesse and leadership they badly need as Earth alternately dries up and washes away. Blowback at home would be devastating.
So far, the Constitution remains intact. If sentient citizens protect democracy at every turn, 2026 elections can take back Congress and state legislatures, then build a groundswell to rescue what is left of America in 2028. That is a very big if.
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PARIS — I'm flying back to Tucson this weekend for High Noon at the Last Chance Saloon. When the dust settles, I'm counting on a tequila sunrise, not a hemlock margarita. Can a plurality of Americans in a few key states be so greedy, cruel or easily duped?
Then, again...
Andy Borowitz is still fall-down funny, but in an upended America his biting satire is hard news. He captured the threat in a single question: Do we want a Hitler or not?
Trump's true colors have been clear since his blood libel against Muslims and Mexicans when he descended his fool's gold escalator nine years ago. Citing Nazi Germany seemed extreme then. In Madison Square Garden, he went full-blown Führer.
"Make no mistake," Tim Walz said later. "He knew exactly what he was doing." Lincoln Project ads and history books make plain it was a redux of a frightening pro-Nazi rally in 1939. Same place, similar howling haters. But with Old Glory flags, not swaztikas.
