America in free fall
PLUS: Join Fighting Democrat Rep. Adelita Grijalva and me TODAY at 12 pm ET
Donald Trump didn’t invent American decline, but he has accelerated it with a fury and recklessness that will echo across the century.
There have been many presidents in American history who made mistakes. There have been weak presidents. There have been corrupt presidents. There have been presidents overwhelmed by events.
But there has never been an American president who has waged such sustained warfare against the sources of American strength itself.
Donald Trump is the author of American self-harm.
He’s the vandal of American power.
While America convulses in madness, instability, corruption and grievance, the leadership of Communist China waits with patience and discipline as the balance of power tilts eastward.
The Chinese understand something that too many Americans refuse to see: empires rarely collapse because they’re conquered from abroad.
They collapse because they rot from within.
That’s what is happening to the United States of America.
The 21st century began with America standing alone atop the world.
The United States possessed the world’s strongest economy, military, universities, reserve currency, scientific institutions, technological ecosystem, alliance network and cultural influence.
No rival came close.
The United States accounted for nearly a third of global economic output after the Cold War. American universities dominated scientific research. Silicon Valley defined the digital age. NATO represented the greatest military alliance in human history. The dollar ruled global commerce. America’s word mattered.
Today, all of that is under strain — not because China became strong, but because America became stupid.
China didn’t force America to attack its own democratic institutions.
China didn’t force America to normalize corruption.
China didn’t force America to abandon competence.
China didn’t force America to elevate conspiracy theorists, television clowns, grifters and fanatics into positions of national leadership.
Donald Trump did that.
The Chinese Communist Party could never have dreamed of an adversary more willing to destroy his own country from within.
Look at the evidence.
China has become the world’s manufacturing superpower. It dominates shipbuilding, rare earth processing, battery production, solar technology and critical industrial supply chains. China has surpassed the United States in total scientific publication output, and now produces enormous quantities of advanced engineering and AI research.
China now leads the world in annual AI patent filings.
China’s economy, while burdened by profound internal problems, continues to expand its global reach through industrial policy, infrastructure financing and strategic influence. China already surpassed the United States in purchasing-power GDP more than a decade ago, while remaining second in nominal GDP.
Meanwhile, what has America been doing?
Fighting over whether vaccines work.
Banning books.
Attacking universities.
Defunding science.
Threatening judges.
Assaulting journalists.
The Chinese leadership watches this spectacle with astonishment because they understand power.
They understand seriousness.
They understand strategic patience.
They also understand that the greatest advantage China possesses over the United States isn’t industrial capacity or population size.
It’s that China’s leadership believes in China.
Donald Trump doesn’t believe in America.
He believes in himself.
He has shredded America’s reputation across the globe.
The United States is now seen by much of the world as unstable, erratic and unreliable. According to an Alliance of Democracies Foundation survey released last week, global perceptions of the United States have fallen below perceptions of Russia, and behind China in many parts of the world.
Think about that.
The nation that liberated Europe.
The nation that rebuilt Japan.
The nation that defeated fascism and communism.
The nation that landed on the moon.
We are now viewed by millions as less trustworthy than Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
That collapse didn’t happen accidentally.
Donald Trump attacked NATO.
He attacked democratic allies.
He imposed reckless tariffs that damaged American consumers and fractured alliances.
He turned the presidency into a global humiliation machine.
He made American government look primitive, impulsive and unserious.
Allies no longer trust American commitments because Trump has taught the world that America can reverse itself every four years depending on the emotional state of one man.
The greatest strategic asset the United States ever possessed was not merely military strength.
It was trust, and Trump destroyed it.
America’s alliances are now strained because allies understand something fundamental: a country governed by chaos can’t lead the world.
The Chinese know this.
Xi Jinping presents China as disciplined, stable and inevitable, while Trump turns America into a carnival of corruption and dysfunction.
Every authoritarian in the world benefits when Donald Trump speaks.
Every democratic movement is weakened.
Every American institution loses prestige.
Every ally recalculates.
Every adversary advances.
History will record that the decline of American prestige accelerated, not because the Chinese became invincible, but because Americans lost confidence in themselves and elevated a man utterly unworthy of the office he holds.
Donald Trump has committed thousands of acts of national self-harm.
He attacks the FBI.
He attacks the intelligence services.
He attacks scientists.
He attacks elections.
He attacks the Constitution.
He attacks military leadership.
He attacks higher education.
He attacks expertise itself.
What nation in history has ever remained dominant while waging war against knowledge, competence and truth?
None.
The Chinese leadership graduates engineers.
America produces influencers.
China builds infrastructure.
America livestreams political insanity.
China studies quantum computing, advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
America debates whether textbooks are too “woke.”
One nation is preparing for the future.
The other is arguing with ghosts.
There is still immense American strength. The United States remains the world’s largest economy in nominal terms. It still possesses unmatched military reach, extraordinary innovative capacity, exceptional universities and the world’s reserve currency.
However, decline is no longer theoretical.
It’s visible.
It’s measurable.
It’s also accelerating.
The central question of this century is no longer whether China will rise.
China has already risen.
The question is whether the United States still possesses the civic seriousness, discipline, moral confidence and democratic vitality necessary to remain the leading power in the world.
Donald Trump’s answer is no.
His movement is rooted in grievance, resentment, spectacle and ignorance.
It worships corruption.
It despises expertise.
It elevates cruelty.
It attacks democratic legitimacy.
It celebrates national humiliation, while pretending patriotism consists of flag worship and slogan chanting.
Patriotism isn’t performance art.
Patriotism is sacrifice.
It’s discipline.
It’s duty.
It’s service to something larger than yourself.
There is nothing in Donald Trump’s life that suggests he has ever served anything other than his own appetites.
China waits — patiently, coldly, strategically.
It watches America tear itself apart.
It watches Americans lose faith in democratic institutions.
It watches allies lose confidence.
It watches dysfunction replace competence.
It also understands the oldest lesson in geopolitics: the superpower that destroys itself saves its rivals the trouble.
Today’s SAM Live: Rep. Adelita Grijalva
Fighting Democrat Rep. Adelita Grijalva (AZ-7) has been inside ICE detention centers. She'll share with us the horrors she's seen. Today at 12pm ET, she’ll join me to talk about children locked up at Dilley, a Florence staging facility built for 72-hour holds, where people are sleeping on floors for weeks, and the private prisons getting rich from running it all. Don't miss it.
Watching Trump cavort around the world like a big swingin’ dick when in fact he is a mushroom endowed semi-eunuch in a big ol’ diaper is excruciating. Who knows what concessions he’ll make in China? He listens to no one,takes his only counsel from his ample gut, and betrays the country that he was elected to serve.
The Supreme Court will soon be deciding upon the usage of a medication that has been used by women for 25 years now.
Imagine having Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas deciding upon your medications?
Then again, a majority of female voters in Tennessee re-elected Senator Marsha Blackburn after she opposed equal pay and domestic violence laws.