During our last time going out to lunch before the pandemic, my dad (who was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust and later spent years in the Partisans fighting the Nazis) and I were walking toward a restaurant, and he expressed his dismay that Americans weren’t taking the threat to our country seriously enough. I suggested that while most Americans were concerned, they didn’t see the Trump era as being that ominous because they assumed the kinds of things that happened in his life could never happen here. My dad stopped walking, looked at me, and asked, “You think vhen I vas a kid any of us thought it could happen there?” I bring up this excerpt from my book because, like most of my dad’s concerns, his worry about America’s slide toward a corrupt authoritarianism is happening before our very eyes. It’s bad enough what this is doing at home, but it’s hard to overstate what it’s doing abroad. We’ve known about Trump’s treachery and Putin romance since Trump sided with him over America in Helsinki, and the enablers were completely cool with that. From that point, I was sure I could never again be shocked. But the GOP’s tragic Ukraine delays have shocked me to my core. American officials unwilling to take the side of democracy because of the wishes of a corrupt, Putin-wannabe 91-time indictee, one of the leading rightwing media personalities praising Russia during the same week Navalny was killed, Trump only commenting on Navalny’s murder by comparing the victim’s plight to his own legal problems and an entire political party reacting with a ho hum, performative, fake impeachment hearings based on nothing (except some testimony from a lying informant with ties to, wait for it, Russian intelligence) …This is what it looks like when it’s happening here.

+ “I’ve got a suggestion for the next Trump-G.O.P. fund-raising scheme. You know how sports memorabilia stores sometimes sell basketballs autographed by an entire N.B.A. team? Well, I was imagining that Donald Trump could sell white flags at $1,000 a pop that say, ‘We surrendered Ukraine to Russia,’ autographed by him and the House and Senate MAGA sycophants he’s assembled to deny Ukrainians the weapons they need to stave off Vladimir Putin’s onslaught. For an extra $500, you could get a white flag autographed solely by Trump and J.D. Vance and emblazoned with Vance’s immortal words, ‘I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.’ Or one signed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, big enough to sum up his worldview: I was for Ukraine aid until I was against it, but I could be for it again if Trump is not against it. This is a matter of principle for me. Either way, it’s all Biden’s fault.” Tom Friedman in the NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s G.O.P. Is a Confederacy of Fakers. “Trump’s G.O.P. has become bottomless. It now manifests an infinite willingness to engage in any form of crow eating, bootlicking, backtracking and backstabbing to stay in his good graces, no matter how crackpot, selfish or un-American his demand. Trump decides to just dump Ukraine? Bye-bye, Zelensky. Trump decides to toss aside months of bipartisan work to forge a grand bargain on immigration reform? Gone — no questions asked! I’ve never seen so many people in one party behave with so little respect for themselves or the nation’s interests at one time.”