Trump Has Turned America into an Evil Empire

Not that the city’s leftist government would like or appreciate it, but modern Berlin in many ways is a monument to American greatness. After WWII, it was Americans who believed that Germany could re-emerge as a free and peaceful nation and were determined to make sure it happened.

Today, the German capital is a beautiful, international, vibrant metropolis in no small measure due to American efforts.

In Berlin, with important thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush, an entire tourist industry of the Wall has emerged since German reunification. Black-and-white photographs are posted on it in the city center, on which Americans are celebrated as heroes.

One special icon is John F. Kennedy, who in June 1963 made an important visit to Berlin which still resonates in the city’s collective memory. That was the moment he delivered his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

Americans protected West Berlin and its people and they gave East Berliners hope amidst all the repression they had to endure for decades that they too will one day be free. And of course, the freedom train timeline includes the 1948 Berlin airlift and Ronald Reagan’s imaginative “Mr.Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech in June 1987.

A sharp turn under Trump

Contrast that proud record with the abysmal one under Donald Trump. Here is an American (!) President who disgraces not just his own country, but its history and its record as a beacon for freedom and democracy, by echoing Reagan’s lines in a particularly disgraceful – and yes, treasonous — manner.

During his presidential run in 2016, Donald Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

With this line, Trump was not just calling on a hostile autocracy to undermine American democracy. As we now know, he was taking “his” United States firmly over to the side of the bad guys.

Since Trump’s arrival in office, the signs that the country has turned bad multiply daily. At the G20 meeting in Osaka, Trump hobnobbed with unsavory dictators from the corrupt Mr. Putin to the blood-soaked MBS all the while criticizing Western allies.

After the meeting, he hurried to the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula, to humbly pay his respects to a bloody tyrant. That was all the more remarkable as Donald Trump basically doesn’t know what humbleness is.

Nepotism running rampant

As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, Donald Trump also loves North Korea, as well as various of the dictator-run “-stans” (like Azerbaijan), for a very particular reason.

The North Korean people currently have to endure the third of the Kims lording brutally over their country. But Trump has an innovation on the autocracy model in store.

While in those countries the rule is for the sons to succeed old presidents, Trump seems to be grooming his daughter Ivanka for a position of power.

As was in plain sight during the recent G20 summit in Osaka, Ivanka seems no less tone-deaf and clueless than various of her nepotist ilk hailing from countries with no democratic traditions.

Disgracing American traditions at home

Back home, Trump ruthlessly and unconscionably sees to it that refugees seeking safety and freedom from hunger are put into concentration camps. Border guards were caught running a hatred-filled secret Facebook page which is a precursor to organizing a death squad.

To top it all off, on this year’s “Independence Day,” Trump is holding a Red Square-style military parade on the Washington Mall.

Trump as a transformer to American badness

There are still those who hope that when Trump leaves the White House the old America will come back. But they are deluding themselves.

A venal political establishment has emerged to protect the American Duce from the fraying system of checks and balances, and a propaganda machine has been put in place to praise the wisdom of his every utterance.

That a man who proudly makes common cause with Mr. Putin is going after journalists is not disgraced at home speaks volumes about the very illiberal trends among a large swath of the American population.

A new Axis of Evil is now forming and, in what must still be a surprise to most people around the world, Washington is at its center.