Democracy in the US is fighting for its life, and the news about its condition is not particularly encouraging. It, democracy in America, is still breathing on its own and fully conscious, but at this stage no one is clear how its struggle for life will end. Experts say there is no room for despair. But they are careful not to underestimate From the critical nature and the fateful nature of the struggle. The current shaky state of democracy in America comes at the worst possible time. It has been years since the free world needed a democratic, firm, stable, influential and leading America as it needs it today.
Russia continues the war crimes it has been committing in Ukraine for six months. Jurists in Europe have already determined that Russia is guilty of genocide, and are documenting its actions in preparation for the submission of indictments to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In addition, China’s conduct in the world arena worries the Western powers. At the UN center in New York, ambassadors are warning against what they define as “the threat and danger of Chinese takeover and expansion of presence in democratic regions of the world.”
The threat of climate change has been accepted on the world stage as tangible. But the assessment at the UN center is that only with a strong and well-perceived American leadership will it be possible to promote practical initiatives and moves on the ground. The future and fate of the nuclear agreement with Iran also depends on the US’s policy on the issue. The US is preoccupied with an internal crisis that threatens the status and functioning of institutions, organizations and entities that created, nourished and strengthened America’s global reputation as a bastion of democracy.
The phrase “the country is in an extremely dangerous situation” is a striking definition of the current crisis. But the identity of the source of this statement raises the question whether to cry or laugh. Former President Donald Trump, who is responsible for this sentence, is the man who symbolizes and characterizes in his conduct the danger to democracy in the USA. Trump is more responsible than any American for the deterioration of the country to the most dangerous situation. To hear him say these words in an interview with the Fox News channel conjures up the image of a pyroman who set fire to a house and goes out into the street and shouts “Fire”.
It is not yet known what the contents of the documents that the FBI agents discovered and confiscated in the raid they carried out at Trump’s mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. On Tuesday, the federal Department of Justice announced that it would not disclose the affidavit that allowed the FBI to search the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The ministry justified the refusal with the argument that “the disclosure of the investigation will cause irreparable damage to its management, and will prevent involved and knowledgeable parties from cooperating.”
This refusal on the part of the Department of Justice increased the mistrust of Trump’s aides and advisers when it came to his investigation. At the same time as the Ministry of Justice’s announcement, precisely on the Fox News TV channel, which was once Trump’s favorite (until it was replaced by the conspiratorial niche channel OAN), a senior reporter raised the possibility that Trump had transferred nuclear secrets to Russia or Saudi Arabia.
“The many questions continue to float,” said the reporter, who added that “it is possible that Trump sold or transferred classified intelligence secrets to Russia or Saudi Arabia. This is not a wild guess. This is a question that is based on various claims published in Russian media, according to which Moscow has already been exposed to classified materials.” .
Veteran commentators in Washington expressed doubts about the publications in the media in Russia, but noted that they cannot and should not be ignored. These publications raise suspicions and cause concern. Especially following the report published in the “Washington Post” according to which the documents seized from Trump’s estate contained top secret information in the nuclear field.
Commentators pointed out that it is not a coincidence that Saudi Arabia was involved in the reports about the revelation of the secret documents in Trump’s house. Interestingly, a niece of the former president, Mary Trump, recently spoke out and speculated that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was the one who gave the FBI the information that led to the raid. “You have to check carefully what was his interest in doing it,” she said. She mentioned that Kushner, who is known for his close relationship with Saudi officials, received a huge sum of $2 billion from Saudi Arabia after his father-in-law left the White House.
FBI agents’ raid on Trump’s vacation home. Reuters
“Destroy the FBI”
The case of the raid on the former president’s mansion and the reactions to the confiscation of the secret documents further revealed the unrestrained presence of social networks. The flourishing of the networks is indeed a sign of freedom of expression, but the freedom that the networks enjoy has become a predatory, dangerous and tangible factor that threatens the very democracy that makes this freedom possible.
The Ministry of Homeland Security sent alerts to law enforcement officials following numerous threats on internet networks and forums. The threats include calls for the assassination of judicial and law enforcement officials connected to the search of the Trump mansion in Palm Beach, including a call for the assassination of the federal judge who approved the search warrant.
A senior commentator in Washington said in the conversation that “the comparison is well known to someone who takes advantage of freedom of speech and shouts in a hall full of people, ‘There is a bomb in the hall,’ and people are run over in the riot that breaks out. Social networks have turned freedom of speech into lawlessness, and they are used as an effective tool for spreading plots, incitement and incitement. The networks have been exposed Now in the full force of the threat and danger they pose to democracy in America.”
Other factors, which according to commentators in Washington in private conversations “feel very uncomfortable in the society of democracy in America”, are senators and Republican congressmen, who were elected in democratic elections. As soon as the raid by FBI agents on Trump’s estate was announced, Republican senators and members of Congress rushed to stand behind Trump.
Some of them attacked the FBI with blunt statements as if it were a hostile organization in a communist country. “We need to stop funding the FBI,” argued Marjorie Green, a Republican representative, who called the FBI “an internal enemy.” Another Republican, Paul Gosser of the state of Arizona, tweeted, “We must destroy the FBI.” There could not be a more appropriate and effective timing for the publication of the book “Thank you very much for your submission – Donald Trump’s Washington and the price of enslavement”, which appeared in the USA these days. The author, Mark Leibovitch, a veteran American journalist, former reporter for the “New York Times” in Congress and currently a member of the editorial staff of the “Atlantic” magazine, analyzes in his book the factors that influence Republican senators and motivate them to be Trump supporters and his declared fans. This, it is important to note, is precisely the question that preoccupies many Americans.
According to the author, who has interviews with senior Republicans, three factors, more precisely temptations, motivate Republican senators and congressmen to stick with Trump during his tenure in the White House and as a former president: follow money, ambitions and opportunism. According to him, their demonstrated support for Trump is based on the fact that their declared closeness to him helps them to raise funds, promote ambitions and achieve some of their dubious goals. In this behavior, those Republicans demonstrate adaptability and a tendency to accept certain ways of behaving, even if they do not exactly represent democratic values.
And maybe, it will turn out in the end that the one responsible for most of the commotion is also the one who rented his own political grave. The “New York Times” published a long article on the front page this week that reported cracks in Republican support for Trump. According to the newspaper, as more details are revealed about the contents of the confiscated documents, especially the top-secret nuclear content and suspicions of violating espionage laws, senior Republicans have decided that they had better stop expressing sympathy and support for Trump.
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