By Jessie Seigel / February 18, 2024

America’s strength is its democracy. Admittedly, the country does not always completely live up to the democratic ideal, but its history has been one of working to expand and perfect it.
In word and deed, former president Donald Trump has shown himself to be an enemy of that democracy. His role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election by itself demonstrates that fact.
In his current attempt to regain the White House, Trump is even more open about his intentions to destroy this nation’s constitutional government.
Trump talks of executing Generals who have criticized him.
He’s told Univision that, if reelected, he would use the government to go after his political opponents: “If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them’…”
And Trump has worked hand in glove with Russia’s Vladimir Putin--president of a foreign nation hostile to the U.S.--to undermine American democracy.
As early as 2021, Slate reported that “Trump was a tool in a long-running Russian campaign to weaken the United States.” According to Slate, this has been documented in Republican-led investigative reports, as updated with new evidence from the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment of the 2020 election. Slate wrote that the report, compiled and completed during Trump’s administration, exposed him “as a Russian asset.”
According to Slate, the report said that Russia’s intelligence services “repeatedly spread unsubstantiated or misleading claims about President Biden and his family’s alleged wrongdoing related to Ukraine” through “U.S. officials and prominent U.S. individuals, some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration.” Slate added, “In this way, Trump’s circle ‘laundered’ the Russian-planted stories, which were then recirculated—and promoted by Russia’s online proxies—as American news.”
Furthermore, throughout the 2016 and 2020 elections, Russia used online means, like troll farms, to undermine trust in the U.S. electoral process. Russia and Trump apparently worked in tandem—both creating fear and doubt about mail-in ballots, claiming voter fraud, and decrying legitimate election results as fraudulent.
Considering the timing of these activities, any notion that Russian action and those of the Trump campaigns were coincidental and not coordinated beggars belief.
The Latest Trump Threat to U.S. National Security
Last week, in a stump speech in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Trump launched his latest pro-Putin attack—this one on our country’s national defense.
Speaking as if he were the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) irate landlord, Trump claimed that, at a NATO meeting occurring during his past presidency, “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.’”
This from a man who refuses to pay his own bills—even to his attorneys. But then, for Trump, the alleged debt is simply the pretext he is using to manipulate his base, making them believe that the U.S. is doing all the protection for other countries that are deadbeats.
That charge is a strawman. According to Politico, there is no centralized budget that NATO countries pay into. Although there is a commitment to devote at least two percent of a country’s GDP on security, each country pays for its own defense.
Furthermore, NATO was founded for the mutual protection of the people and territories of its members, and our nation has benefited greatly from membership. NATO nations came to our aid after the Nine-Eleven attack on our home ground.
Trump is making it clear that if he again gets his hands on the presidency, he’ll do his best to weaken or destroy NATO--to Putin’s benefit.
Last week, pundits were wringing their hands over the global effects our departure from NATO would cause. They suggested that it will clear the way for Putin to swallow Ukraine and move on to other European and Eastern European nations; that China may well be emboldened to invade Taiwan; and that North Korea could invade South Korea.
While these are serious concerns, commentators should be hammering home to the American public that, without participation in NATO, the United States’ safety will be endangered.
If Putin can invade our allies with impunity, who will come to our aid if and/or when he decides to attack the United States directly? To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, if we don’t hang together with our allies, we will likely, eventually, hang separately.
On the other hand, if Donald Trump regains the White House, Putin may not need to invade the U.S. Trump has demonstrated over and over that he is in Putin’s pocket, and would make a nice little puppet to run a satellite regime. And though Trump has publicly said that, if elected, he will be “dictator for a day”—it is obvious he intends, rather, to be a dictator on day one.
Who knows? If Trump-world fully comes to fruition, maybe this nation will be treated to the kind of elections they have in Russia—where opponents are jailed or murdered, or both, as was just done to Alexei Navalny.
THE ROLE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

A “useful idiot” is defined as a person who is used for a purpose without understanding the real agenda of those using him or her—or the consequences. Neither Trump nor the craven Republican politicians who back him, defend him, or attempt to dismiss the meaning of his words and actions fall into that category. In my view, they never did. But now that Trump is openly declaring his intentions, his defenders and apologists alike should be considered to be in league with him.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R), speaking to CNN, tried to minimize the former president’s NATO threat: “Trump was talking about a story that happened in the past when he was president.” Rubio added the usual pap about Trump not talking “like a traditional politician.”
As reported by the New York Times, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton (R) parroted Trump’s twisted stance, saying: “NATO countries that don’t spend enough on defense, like Germany, are already encouraging Russian aggression and President Trump is simply ringing the warning bell.”
To the contrary, fear that Ukraine could join NATO was a factor in the Russian decision to attack Ukraine, not what Germany does or does not spend on defense.
According to The Guardian, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis (R ) blames Trump’s aides for failing to explain to Trump how NATO works. Apparently, the Tillis defense is that Trump is not traitorous, just too ignorant to understand the structure of NATO financing.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R) dismissed Trump’s NATO threat as rhetoric to be ignored, telling the Times: “Give me a break – I mean, it’s Trump.” Then, to deflect from the true thrust of Trump’s threat, Graham added, “All I can say is while Trump was president, nobody invaded anybody. I think the point here is to, in his way, to get people to pay.”
Never mind that these reactions to Trump’s NATO threats are downright anemic. The failure to loudly speak up against that threat signals to Mr. Putin that these Republican leaders, like Trump, will hold the line for the Russians, letting them do “whatever the hell they want” to this country’s NATO allies.
Indeed, since Ukraine is a bulwark against Russian aggression, Republican blocking of aid to Ukraine has already given Putin an advantage in that war.
When the Senate recently voted down a border reform package that included aid for Ukraine, many pundits assumed they did so because Trump wants to use the border as a campaign issue. But, considering Trump’s allegiance to Putin, it is not inconceivable that he also wanted it voted down so that the bill's aid to Ukraine would be killed.
And then there’s the House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson won’t even allow the matter to come to a vote.

At this point, it is inescapably clear that those in power who defend, excuse, or try to deflect from Trump’s declared goals know exactly what they are backing: a dictatorship in which they hope to retain their power.
To block these authoritarian plans and save democracy, getting President Biden reelected is an absolute necessity. But if Republicans continue to hold the House of Representatives and/or gain the Senate, Biden’s reelection will not be sufficient. Every single Republican who remains silent or follows Trump’s lead must be voted out—bag and baggage—while there’s a democracy left in which to do so.
I wish our Democrat leaders (as well as "non Trump Republicans, if there are any) would speak so eloquently to convey the message, with the specifics you have provided, that Trump is a real threat to our democracy.