Trump Intent on Transforming U.S. into Pariah State

I’ve long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of wanna-be dictator Donald Trump and the seizure of our government by Elon Musk’s junta if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, so I’ve taken to writing a weekly news roundup in the historical style of such over-the-top dispatches. Here, for those of you new readers, is the first installment of this series, from early February, as well as last week’s installment.

This week, our fearless fictional correspondent William Boot watched yesterday’s confrontation with Ukraine’s hero leader in horror and offers this report from the embattled capital of Washington:

Trump Intent on Transforming U.S. into Pariah State
March 1, 2025
By William Boot 

Someday, perhaps someday soon, when the U.S. — long the cornerstone of an alliance of global democracies that have kept the peace and delivered unparalleled economic prosperity to the world for 80 years — stands alone as a pariah kleptocratic state led by an authoritarian white nationalist regime, historians will point to Friday, February 28, 2025, as the day the U.S. turned its back on the world and its historic legacy of fighting for freedom.

Or, at least, the historians who remain in the free world beyond America’s shores will write that. 

In a series of shocking moves that culminated in an Oval Office shouting match with a purported ally at war with America’s primary historical adversary, the mad-king President Trump and boy-regent Elon Musk accelerated this week the transformation of the United States from global pillar of stability, self-declared leader of the free world, and beacon of democracy toward a global outcast on par with the world’s worst regimes. 

Trump, the elected president who shares power in his month-old regime with South African oligarch Musk, in office has consistently turned his back on the 249-year-old country’s traditions of supporting democracy, freedom, and human rights — long seen as the nation’s North Star — and instead ever-more-firmly embraced an authoritarian government structure united primarily by transactional kleptocracy and white nationalism.

Recent weeks have seen the U.S. embark on what must surely be the greatest voluntary and intentional squandering of global goodwill and friendship in recorded history.

To allies around the world and supporters of the country’s previous democratically-elected presidential administrations, the barroom brawl Friday in the president’s oval-shaped office between Trump, his vice president, and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared simultaneously shocking but not altogether surprising, given the president’s life-long career of transactional opportunism, corruption, and affinity for authoritarian strongmen. And yet at the same time, it was a moment so jolting to the nation’s foundational principles and historical traditions that it seemed certain to signal a permanent reassessment of whether the U.S. should ever be counted on as an ally to the free world again. 

“I think we are in danger not just of losing the NATO alliance [...] but practically every alliance around the world as our friends and allies look at this performance and wonder if there's anybody in this administration who understands what's at stake here,” former UN ambassador John Bolton, an infamous right-wing hawk himself, told the BBC afterward.

Even as leaders the world over moved to condemn Trump’s actions, Trump, though, forced his administration lackeys to roll out their best “Baghdad Bob” impression, yielding a wave of groveling idolatry posts from his Cabinet members celebrating the brilliance and courage of the emperor-who-has-no-clothes.

The events Friday, though, were consistent with a week that had already raised eyebrows in capitals the world over: At the United Nations this week — an institution that the US helped found and where it still hosts the world headquarters — the US switched voting blocs, from the democracy-focused one it has largely allied with for 80 years to join the small collection of authoritarian states headed by Russia that includes global pariahs like North Korea and Belarus.

The global realignment by Trump was further indication of the strange split of authorities and odd power sharing structure developing between Musk and Trump, whereby Trump seems keen to focus on the country’s global portfolio, forcing a stream of world leaders to pass through the capital to pay tribute, while Musk and his technical junta, known as DOGE, focus their control on the nation’s domestic policy, governmental structures.

While Musk remains in control of the national treasury and Trump appears day-to-day to be primarily a ceremonial head of state, the military and state security services appear to remain loyal to him, and the justice, interior, and defense ministers all pushed back against an effort by Musk to force them to document the work their departments did.

The odd dichotomy, never-before-imagined, and seemingly unconstitutional arrangement was on full display during a Wednesday Cabinet meeting, where Musk — who the Trump government has recently and repeatedly argued in courtrooms holds no official position of power — held court over the first half of the meeting of the president’s top ministers and advisors.

The country — which in its founding constitution had enshrined the rights to freedom of speech and a free press — also saw this week the White House focus on unwinding its historic tradition of a free and open press, seizing control of the press corps that covers the president, barring independent media from presidential events and packing them instead with friendly right-wing ideologues. Notably, the White House even allowed the Russian state news service TASS to cover Friday’s Ukraine showdown, before it backtracked. The defense minister’s propaganda officer also chided reporters for not cheering on President Trump and said it would end the longstanding tradition of having reporters travel with and cover the head of the nation’s military. 

At the military’s five-sided headquarters, known as the Pentagon, the military — which is led by a Christian white nationalist hostile to women soldiers — continued its weeks-long effort to rid the force of non-white men in the upper ranks, removing a three-star Black woman who headed the military’s health branch just days after it completed the purge of non-white men from the top ranks of the military.

Capricious, illegal, and far-ranging firings and cuts to the long-admired administrative state continued as well across government, all apparently overseen and directed by Musk’s DOGE junta — who are particularly focused on purging the government of lawyers, regulators, corruption investigators, and others who might stand in the way of the regime’s attempts to embrace transactional kleptocracy and make the country safe for pillaging by its oligarch class. Trump himself said this week he would open up US citizenship to global oligarchs willing to pay $5 million for a “gold card” guaranteeing entry to the country, and one of the nation’s wealthiest oligarchs announced he would cede his independent media outlet to back Trump’s agenda.

Even beyond the increasingly irreversible damage to the country’s standing in the world, the instability Trump and Musk have inserted into the United States in just a matter of weeks appear to be plunging the nation from a sustained period of economic prosperity into a looming economic recession. One of the country’s main economic forecasters downgraded its prediction of Q1 growth from a positive 2.3 percent to a negative 1.5 percent contraction, a switch likely to only increase political unrest in the streets here.

It was hard to look anywhere this week and not see the Trump-Musk regime betraying the country’s most firmly held traditions: The U.S., which for decades has fought to free political dissidents and freedom fighters, found this week an unexpected set of new prisoners to champion: President Trump — a convicted felon who himself was found liable by a jury of sexual assault and whose administration has repeatedly placed officials similarly accused of sexual assault in high-ranking positions from the Supreme Court to the Pentagon — successfully pressured Romania into releasing the far-right extremist and misogynist Andrew Tate and his brother, who have been credibly charged with rape and sex trafficking.