Extra: Dawn of Day One
TUCSON — Forget any remaining doubts. Donald Trump intends a scorched earth blitzkrieg to corrupt the nation he'll swear on a bible to serve during a pay-for-play Inauguration extravaganza. It is a tossup whether Americans can stop him.
Democracies survive only if voters deliver a plurality at the polls. America blew it. Skilled reporters laid out the threat in irrefutable detail. Inept coverage, guesswork "influencers" and propaganda drowned them out. There may not be a second chance.
Joe Biden's swan song address echoed Dwight Eisenhower's. In the 1950s, America was headed for control by a military-industrial complex. Today, Biden said, it faces a tech-industrial takeover: oligarchic and plutocratic rule by the mega-rich.
It is worse than that. That hoary telltale canary in a mine is a dry Southern California in the Santa Ana winds. An unhinged president could quite literally steer Earth toward Armageddon. As Biden said, only ordinary workaday Americans can stop him.
Republican ramrodding will likely confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, with the failsafe responsibility to ensure a hair-trigger president does not activate the nuclear football always in his reach. That is only the extreme of unthinkable potentialities.
As a reporter since 1961, I can't recall a more shameful moment in America: self-serving spinelessness by elected lawmakers, a failure of news media executives to react and widespread apathy among so many voters whose own progeny will suffer as a result.
P. J. O'Rourke wrote a book in 2003 meant for laughs. "Parliament of Whores." When a president punishes legislators who do not fall in line despite their private opposition to his dictates, that is no longer funny.
This may change as reality bites hard, and Americans step up to the challenge. Or not.
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On Wednesday, there was a flash of hope that Trump might suppress his deranged ego to think of eight billion other people who share an imperiled planet. It did not last long.
The Qatari prime minister announced a captive exchange, the first step toward peace in the unholy land. Biden worked out the plan in May, but it has stalled since then. Hamas agreed to free 33 hostages in exchange for many more Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Biden was caught in the middle. Since the monstrous Oct. 7 incursion into Israel, he had to curb Benjamin Netanyahu's inhuman overkill in Gaza while mollifying a large segment of American Jews and Christian evangelicals who back Israel, right or wrong.
A death toll nearing 50,000 in a sealed-off, suffering enclave of two million deserves just about any term the outside world applies. Kamala Harris lost in part because so many voters blamed the administration for not doing more to stop it.
In private, Biden was brutal with Netanyahu, demanding that he temper the onslaught, let in relief convoys and open escape corridors. He rallied Saudi Arabia and Arab neighbors to condition relations with Israel on a path toward Palestinian autonomy.
In public, he explained why Israel needed military aid to neutralize Iran and repel terrorist proxies that threatened its survival. If hostilities stopped, a Jewish homeland could return to what it is supposed to be: a democratic anchor in a tough neighborhood.
Today, Iran is badly weakened. Lebanon might soon be free of Hezbollah. Syria has shaken off al-Assad tyranny. In 2023, Biden told a summit meeting he envisioned a trade corridor from India through the Middle East to Europe. That may be possible.
Now a Trump administration must manage the risks. "I told my team to coordinate closely with the new team to make sure we're all speaking with the same voice," Biden told a White House press briefing, "because that's what American presidents do."
At the end, a young reporter shouted, "Mr. President, who gets credit, you or Trump?" Biden paused a moment and smiled. "Is that a joke?"
Not really. Trump paused from a golf game to claim total credit. He invited freed hostage families as guests to show off at the Inauguration. And many Americans who react to the present with scant recall of the immediate past, will lionize him.
Throughout the war, Trump supported Netanyahu, his old cohort, who also faces potential prison for corruption and abuse of power if not protected by incumbent immunity.
Those much-touted Abraham Accords relegated Palestinians to what amounts to apartheid in a West Bank settled by Jews. Jared Kushner, who negotiated them, later talked of tourist resorts in Gaza once its inhabitants were resettled elsewhere.
But after his election, Trump was motivated to force a settlement so he can flaunt his deal-making brilliance and focus on his Day One putsch in America.
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This has been Trump's pattern from the start. When something goes wrong, it is someone else's fault. If there is something to cheer, he takes credit, even if it is a reversal of a catastrophe for which he is all but entirely responsible.
Take Afghanistan. Three years after it fell, Trump and his Republicans still hound Biden. Much of the media mainstream and many Democrats now reflexively blame the debacle on the wrong man. Of course, the exit was not perfect. War is hell.
My past dispatches have dealt with this ad nauseum. But it has resurfaced again with a flourish at the heart of Trump's Big Lie successes.
By now, no one can have missed a draft-dodger president's scorn for "suckers" and "losers" who face death or mutilation for no personal gain. Remember John McCain? Trump prefers heroes who aren't captured.
Yet Hegseth praises Trump's masterful skills as a commander-in-chief who inspires troops (he now includes women after a recent forced flipflop) to serve proudly. He gave the Senate Armed Service committee a preposterous account of the Afghanistan finale.
In fact, Trump abjectly capitulated to the Taliban after doing nothing during his term to scale back, much less stop, the war. He refused visas to Afghans at risk who might have resettled in America. He had no evacuation plan.
Biden took over with only 2,500 U.S. troops hunkered down in bases. The Taliban raced past a dispirited Afghan army toward Kabul faster than any Western intelligence foresaw. The president, who had vowed to stay for a handover, fled overnight.
After initial inevitable chaos, a U.S. airlift flew about 125,000 people to safety with Taliban cooperation over 10 days. Hegseth called it a crushing humiliation, among the worst in history. Senior allied officers with long experience called it a stunning feat.
Multiple reports by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction outline in disheartening detail the corruption and impossible circumstances of a 20-year war Biden opposed from the start and tried to stop as vice president.
Browse the SIGAR website link below. It makes blindingly clear why what Trump claims he would have done, as opposed to what he did, would have meant decades more of senseless war.
Hegseth described with moist eyes the 13 U.S. servicemen who died in an ISIS-K suicide attack at Kabul airport. He said nothing of the 2,500 others killed under previous presidents, nor uncounted Afghan troops and civilians who number well above 100,000.
In December, Republicans needed to be working hard with Democrats for a smooth transition. Rep. Michael McCaul from Texas held yet another hearing is his three-year obsession to punish Biden. It squandered far more than taxpayer money.
Antony Blinken testified for hours, with 20,000 pages of documents, delaying his 13th Middle East trip. Biden aides have wasted weeks since 2021 to face hostile, absurd questions. Ill-prepared reporters cover hearings without context or factchecking.
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Global stability depends on a competent U.S. Secretary of Defense. Robert McNamara led America into the Vietnam quagmire. Donald Rumsfeld did the same in Iraq. Long combat experience is not essential, but it helps a lot.
Jim Mattis, Trump's choice in 2017, was a military scholar with a library of 7,000 books and too many medals to fit on his chest. He joined the Marines in 1968 and retired as a four-star general. His damning statements after June 2020 protests are attached below.
Like countless other top military leaders, he warned Trump might unleash the military on U.S. territory in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, to strip citizens of their constitutional guarantees.
Mattis told Bob Woodward he was so worried Trump would nuke North Korea that he slept in gym clothes in case of a midnight crisis and prayed for peace in the National Cathedral.
Hegseth wants the Department of Defense to be a Ministry of War. His new breed, he says, should crush the enemy without niceties. Citing a "warrior ethic," he scorns the old guard. As he put it: "It's time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.”
The record shows he started out in the National Guard based in America. He went to Guantanamo where, Sen. Elizabeth Warren says, he approved of torture, including waterboarding. Later, he served a stint in Iraq and trained troops in Afghanistan.
Hegseth told the committee he wants to trash international accords that have separated civilized nations from cruel tyrannies since World War II.
Sen. Angus King, an Independent from Maine, explained reality. That would allow all foes to execute prisoners, refuse access to captives, torture and attack civilians at will. "Unconventional" wars today make the effect of this far worse.
Terrorist ranks soared after George W. Bush's blind "war on terror." Before 9/11, Al Qaeda was a small group that scored a lucky hit. ISIS is a direct result of U.S. troops' prisoner abuse in the needless Iraq war Bush started after veering from Afghanistan.
Trump claims he defeated terrorism. In fact, ISIS fighters fled south through Libya into West Africa. Offshoots and home-grown groups bedevil much of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Indonesia.
Without any evidence, Trump said the lone New Orleans terrorist had sneaked in from abroad. He was born in Texas, an ex-army sergeant who was radicalized as so many fragilized individuals are in a violent, divided society.
Beyond evidence of sexual abuse, drunkenness and mismanaging veterans' groups that went deep into the red, Hegseth is essentially clueless. He had never heard of ASEAN, a vastly important political and economic bloc of 10 Southeast Asian nations.
At his hearing, Hegseth said his Christian faith absolved prior sins. He defended his Jerusalem Cross tattoo, which evokes Crusades against Muslim infidels, now a popular extreme-right icon. The Pentagon employs 3.4 million Americans of diverse beliefs.
His pro-Trump zeal reflects another Afghanistan parallel. Eager to make a deal, Trump agreed to release 5,000 Taliban fighters, hardened and embittered in prisons. Now he pledges to release "patriots" and "hostages" jailed after violence assaults on Jan. 6.
What could go wrong?
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Hegseth is one of many incompetent characters Trump wants in his inner circle. Tulsi Gabbard, at the least guilty of spectacularly bad judgment, has been a Russian useful idiot — or tool — who defended Bashir al-Assad in Syria. What else don't we know?
Pam Bondi, named to be attorney general, is a seasoned prosecutor with the long blond hair and makeup so popular on Fox News. She said all the right things until pushed on Trump. Biden is president, she said. She declined to say the election was not stolen.
Foxes will guard the henhouse across the board: health, education, the economy, natural resources. Basic rights are at risk. A loose-cannon muskrat already conducts foreign policy for his own fun and profit. He promises to "primary" anyone out of line.
But Hegseth's hearing showed how Trump has perverted the Senate's vital bipartisan role of "advise and consent." Each senator had only seven minutes for questions. Contrary to precedent, there will be no follow-up rounds.
Republicans thanked him for pre-hearing visits. Democrats said he refused to see them. He explained his schedule was too crowded. Democrats were not provided with FBI background checks and other crucial documents.
Hegseth, at times dismissive and condescending, eluded yes or no questions. Unrelated self praise ran out the clock. He replied repeatedly, "anonymous smears," to charges by named coworkers and others, including his own mother, about his personal behavior.
There will be much more to say after Day One, an homage splurge to an undeserving demagogue for which America's tech lords contributed a million dollars each. A divided country hangs in the balance, and Biden has done what he can.
"Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence," he said in his farewell address. He concluded, " Now it’s your turn to stand guard."
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Biden's Farewell Address
SIGAR Afghanistan Reports
NPR: The Full Statement From Jim Mattis
The Atlantic: James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution