More voices about Donald J. Trump
18 March 2025
Journalist Dan Rather writes about how Trump destroyed the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an agency that counters pro-dictatorship propaganda:
USAGM’s programming can be read, seen, or heard in dictatorships such as Cuba, China, Russia, and Afghanistan, though not always easily. In North Korea in 2020, a fisherman was executed for secretly listening to Radio Free Asia while at sea.
By Monday, 1,000 journalists were placed on indefinite leave for not being MAGA cheerleaders. Others were locked out of their Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The mission of USAGM is threefold: to disseminate news to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access; to aid American diplomacy by extolling the tenets of democracy; and to model independent journalism.
Grant Turner, the former chief financial officer of USAGM, called the shutdown “Bloody Saturday.” “USAGM networks share important news, information and American values around the world. It took decades to build this goodwill and an audience of hundreds of millions every week. Seeing arsonists just set fire to it all is awful,” he told NPR.
Steve Capus, the president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said in a statement, “The Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years. Handing our adversaries a win would make them stronger and America weaker.”
You need no more evidence of this than Andy Boreham’s reaction to the news. He is a reporter for an English-language newspaper in China controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. “EXCELLENT NEWS,” Boreham wrote on X. Radio Free Asia is “one of the U.S.’s most insidious anti-China propaganda outlets.”
Marcie Bianco writes that Trump is not a king, as much as he would like to be one, and that it is our responsibility to make sure he knows that:
From using the White House’s South Lawn to shill cars for his biggest campaign donor to demanding taxpayer-funded ads that claim he victoriously closed the southern border, President Donald Trump is demonstrating that, as he stated in his first term, he has “the right to do whatever I want.” That’s his twisted interpretation of Article 2 of the Constitution, which describes the power of the president.
Yet the president of the United States is not a king. He’s not a monarch ordained by a god. As former President Barack Obama said in a “60 Minutes” interview in November 2020, the “president is a public servant.” The person elected to that office should represent and serve the public’s best interest — not his own.
As mass protests against the Trump administration take place across the nation, let us remember the historical role and responsibility of the president and what others who’ve held the office have had to say about the responsibility that comes with the position. “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants,” former President Teddy Roosevelt wrote in a May 1918 editorial in The Kansas City Star. In 1954, former President Harry Truman said, “I would much rather be an honorable public servant and known as such than to be the richest man in the world.” Entire article.
Robert Reich writes about how to respond to Trump’s use of fear and intimidation:
1. If at all possible, do not give in to it. Thus, do not muzzle yourself, as some of Trump’s critics have done.
2. Join with others who are similarly situated to sue the regime and speak out.
3. The rest of us must support these efforts.
I suggest spending one hour a week on political activities to fight the Trump / Musk dictatorship or advance some other societal policy. By doing something on a regular basis, you may feel, like I do, part of something bigger than ourselves and are less likely to be overcome by despair.
The index to my prior essays (mostly post 5 November 2024) is here.
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