If a Ukraine proposal was shaped to benefit a foreign power tied to Kushner’s money, that’s not diplomacy: it’s corruption… I don’t know why this wasn’t above-the-fold news all across the country over the past few days as the details of the “peace plan” Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff took to Putin this week came out. Kushner, it appears, had added in a provision that would have forced both Ukraine and Russia to take actions that would specifically benefit Saudi Arabia, a country that is paying the presidential son-in-law at least $25 million a year.

Why every era ruled by the morbidly rich ends the same way: corruption, collapse, and ordinary people paying the bill.... One of the greatest gifts Donald Trump and the thirteen billionaires he pulled into his administration have given America is the reminder, finally and once and for all, that just because somebody is rich doesn't mean they're smart. Particularly if they inherited their starting capital from daddy, like Trump and Musk both did. Wealth in this country has become so intertwined with our mythologies of genius, destiny, and merit that we've ended up elevating into near-sainthood (and electing to high office) some of the least thoughtful, least competent, and least self-aware people ever to walk a boardroom floor. It's a dangerous confusion, and one with deep roots.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938 message to Congress As Louise and I watched Trump descend that golden escalator in 2015, we felt what millions of Americans did: disbelief, followed by dismissal. Surely this reality TV showman, this serial bankrupt, this carnival barker would quickly fade. Yet as the years passed and my radio listeners increasingly reflected his worldview back to me, I confronted a haunting truth: Donald Trump didn’t happen by accident. He wasn’t, as so many have suggested (particularly Democrats) just some political anomaly or a weird, media-driven glitch in American democracy. He was, instead, the inevitable product of political structures meticulously constructed by morbidly rich ideologues and the fossil fuel industry over decades; all systems designed to concentrate power in the executive branch, weaponize the historic grievances that have haunted American politics for three centuries, and systematically dismantle the democratic guardrails that, up until now, have kept us a free nation.

And if Donald Trump approved or encouraged these actions, then impeachment and criminal referral are not optional: they're required to defend the rule of law... Shocking as this moment is, none of us should pretend we weren't warned. When Donald Trump installed Pete Hegseth — a television provocateur whose public record is soaked in belligerence, booze, and culture-war performance — as America's Defense Secretary, the world could see exactly where it was headed. Still, nothing prepared us for today's Washington Post's revelation that Hegseth personally ordered U.S. forces to "kill everybody" on a small wooden boat off the coast of Trinidad on September 2.