Trump Outrages, Holiday Edition

I’m handing over this holiday Trump Outrage Watch to Washington Post/CNN foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria, who I watch near-religiously every Sunday morning for the most illuminating commentary and interviews on all of US TV. If you don’t, try it once and you’ll be a convert, too.

In three recent columns and CNN commentaries, Zakaria has identified significant outrages of the Trump era: 1) the replacement of government by experts with government by and for plutocrats  2) the transformation of the presidency into an institution resembling royalty—or strongman authoritarianism. And 3) In his latest National Strategic Strategy document, Trump calls for an America to withdraw  from its post-World War II role of world leadership to a dominant role only in the Western Hemisphere, leaving a global power vacuum that Russia and China will fill.

Let’s take them in order:

Outrage #1

A key difference between the first Trump administration and the second, Zakaria maintains, is “a full-blown attack on the expert class.” Vice President JD Vance said that citizens should “trust your common sense over experts’ ideas.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr has replaced the medical establishment’s views on vaccines for those of fellow anti-vax ideologues. Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi forced out some 200 Justice Department officials who prized professionalism, replacing them on the basis of personal loyalty to Trump. The president has eroded civil service protections for non-partisan experts to install vetted Trumpists.

Zakaria says that Trump’s attacks on universities amounts to a new Chinese-style “cultural revolution” endangering one of America’s competitive advantages: with just 4% of the world’s population, the US hosts 72% of the world’s leading universities.

It’s true, he wrote, that the US has developed a meritocratic class, armed with Ivy League degrees and specific skills, that’s come to dominate business, government, media and culture and can morph into a group of smug technocrats that looks down on the population it’s supposed to serve.

But, he claims, the meritocracy is a signal improvement over the power group that preceded it — “an old boys’ network in which the right family name, religion, prep school and club assured your rise to the top. Meritocracy—however imperfect—opened doors. It promoted people based on their aptitude and academic excellence, bringing Catholics, Jews, Asians and Blacks into the establishment. It placed a premium on competence over lineage, on work over patrimony.”

Zakaria thinks that the problems of meritocracy can be addressed by creating wider access to high-quality education, fewer non-merit mechanisms like legacy admissions and racial quotas, more rigorous grading and a greater respect for nonprofessional work skills like collegiality. “In other words, more emphasis on genuine merit and real effort to make sure everyone has access to opportunity.”

As the populist right trashes meritocracy, Zakaria says it is replacing it with “something older, cruder and more corrosive: a naked plutocracy, rule by the very rich.” Trump hired generals in his first administration. Disappointed by their independence of mind, he’s switched this time to fellow members of the top 1%.

The US now has the richest cabinet in American history, stocked with billionaires and centimillionaires. Trump’s personal net worth is $6.3 billion (up from $4.3 billion in late 2024, according to Forbes.) The Trump organization’s income in the last half of 2024 was $51 billion. It’s now $864 billion, according to Reuters. The source of both Trump’s spike in wealth and the Trump Organization’s 1,600% growth in revenue are largely crypto-currency transactions.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Education Sec. Linda McMahon are each worth $3.3 billion; Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent and Interior Sec. Doug Bergum, $100 million; Kelly Loeffler, head of Small Business Administration, $1.3 billion.

Elon Musk, former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, the richest man in the US, is worth $414.7 billion. And Tesla just awarded him a $1 trillion 10-year compensation package.

Trump’s real estate and Crypto pal and chief peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff, is estimated at $2 billion.  Counting billionaire ambassadors, the net worth of people in the administration, excluding Musk, was estimated by Public Citizen at $43 billion.

At the same time, economists say that the concentration of the nation’s wealth at the top matches the late 1800s, early 1900s Gilded Age. And the very rich are major players in politics. Those in the top-100 income bracket made $1 billion in campaign contributions in 2024, 80% to Republicans or conservative organizations.

Zakaria maintains that rule by the very wealthy carries with it the danger of conflicts of interest. I’d call it legalized bribery. Rich business figures often get wealthy aided by federal contracts or regulations. And since crypto transactions are secret, foreign buyers can influence US foreign policy. And domestic buyers can buy influence over government.

Zakaria quotes Thomas Jefferson as saying that government should be run by “a natural aristocracy” based on “virtue and talents.” And the worst would be based on “wealth and birth.” It’s impossible to say that our current administration is filled with people of “virtue and talent.”

Outrage #2

America’s Founding Fathers, Zakaria says, would be stunned to witness the modern US government. “They designed the American political system to fragment power. They were reacting against a monarch and the ‘the accumulation of all power in the same hands’ (as Federalist 47 stated it). They purposely conceived of a decentralized and restrained executive, described in the notably brief Article 2 (of the Constitution). The presidency was an office for ‘faithfully executing the laws’ bounded by carefully constructed checks from the legislative and judicial branches.”

Congress, by contrast, was named the first branch of government and vested with the lion’s share of authority—the powers to tax, spend, declare war and regulate commerce. Even Alexander Hamilton, often thought to favor an imperial presidency, in fact believed that the president should have few monarchical powers. In Federalist 69, he contrasted the president with the British king. The former, he wrote, can serve just a four-year term and is “amenable to personal punishment and disgrace.”

By the 1960s, Zakaria wrote, “this finely tuned mechanism had seized up. Wars, economic crises and the media’s tendency to nationalize and personalize attention created a one-way ratchet for increasing, unchecked presidential power.” The Vietnam war and Watergate produced constitutional crises which Congress addressed by creating a cadre of inspectors general, responsible for exposing abuse and protected from official retaliation. It also passed laws limiting the president’s powers to wage wars and freeing the Justice Department from political control.

But that system failed after 9-11, at least when it came to reigning in the president’s war-making authority. Other restraints remained, though, including those governing the Justice Department and voluntary presidential customs of putting his financial affairs in blind trusts and releasing their tax returns.

Trump and his allied Supreme Court majority have exploded all such restraints. Both have adopted what Zakaria calls the “bizarre unitary executive theory,” holding that the president has unlimited authority over the executive branch and all independent agencies except the Federal Reserve. Trump hopes to dominate the Fed by nominating a new chairman who will lower interest rates to pump the economy.                          

Trump is seizing authority vested in Congress, including the power to create agencies, determine their operations and fund them. He has used the Justice Department to investigate opponents, eliminated whole government agencies and fired thousands of federal workers, including independent inspectors general. A Republican Congress is letting him do it.

And the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has given presidents “absolute immunity” from prosecution for any acts “within their core constitutional powers” and presumptive immunity for all other “official acts.” Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a blistering dissent, saying that a president could order Seal Team Six to murder a political rival and get away with it, provided he issued the order as an official act.

The Court so far has abandoned the concepts of original intent, respect for precedent and judicial restraint. It is now widely seen as a partisan political actor and has also lost much of its former public support. It could partially recoup if it finds that presidents cannot declare national emergencies at will to, for example, set tariff rates, constitutionally a legislative power.

As matters now stand, America has a “strongman presidency” approaching authoritarian rule and enjoying greater powers than King George III had when the Founders rebelled against him, Zakaria maintains.

Outrage #3

Trump has a penchant for personal grandiosity.  He has renamed the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts the Trump-Kennedy Center. He has renamed the US Institute of Peace after himself. He puts his image on National Park passes. Various federal benefits are now Trump benefits. He’s commissioning a whole fleet of Trump Class battleships. And he abruptly demolished the East Wing of the White House to replace it with a giant ballroom that will dwarf the rest of the mansion.

But according to Zakaria, Trump’s foreign policy doctrine is “Make America Small Again.” His new National Security Strategy document forswears “American hegemony”—its post-World War II role as the dominant maintainer of global stability and bearer of global burdens.

Instead, it says America’s fundamental interest should be its home neighborhood, the Western Hemisphere. Zakaria says “the US is the most powerful country in history… Its companies and technologies dominate the globe. It cannot limit itself to its own backyard without massive consequences both for itself and the world.”

He says the Western Hemisphere is “one of the least important areas of the world economically.” US trade with Europe in 2024, at $1.5 trillion was three times the size of that with Latin America outside Mexico. Trade with China was $2 trillion.

Zakaria writes that what the NSS proposes “is not so different from what the isolationists proposed in the 1920s and ‘30s:  Stay out of European affairs and crack down on immigration.” Trump sees illegal immigration into both the US and Europe as their “gravest threat,” portending “civilizational erasure.”

Zakaria thinks the present global situation resembles that before World War II. The US is the only power capable of maintaining international stability. “Its withdrawal from the world will create power vacuums which other, less responsible powers will fill.

“A century ago, America refused to share its burden and the international system collapsed, leading to World War I. An America that looks mainly at its own backyard leaves the world rudderless, unstable and chaotic.”

He does not spell out how global stability could collapse once again, but the NSS points to the “timeless truth” that large, powerful nations will dominate their regions. It’s what China and Russia, both adversaries of the US, seek to do today. Trump seems to think a balance of power can maintain itself. But if it doesn’t, the consequences could be profoundly worse than World War II.

Finally, a holiday thought of my own: will we ever be able to restore the principle of Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward All?