We've become a failed nation-state in 150 days [View all]

We've become a failed nation-state in 150 days
From chaos and political violence to Israel and Iran, Trump's latest actions have sealed our fate

By Brian Karem
White House columnist
Published June 19, 2025 9:46AM (EDT)


(Salon) Donald Trump made his personal transformation of the White House nearly complete Wednesday morning.

He already announced his intentions to add a ballroom — “the biggest and best ever” — to the East Wing and has begun paving over the lawn of Jackie Kennedy’s iconic Rose Garden. (“It’ll be like nothing anyone has ever seen before,” he promised.) Now he’s installed two giant flagpoles, one on the North Lawn and the other on the South Lawn.

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At this point, your honors, the prosecution humbly suggests we are a failed nation-state — not because of the erection of the flagpoles, but because of everything Trump, the courts, Congress and the press have done during the last 150 days of the new Trump regime. (A reminder that we still have just over 1300 days left.)

Iran is the latest debacle. That nation-state has been a thorn in the side of the United States since 1953, when the CIA toppled a democracy to install the Shah. During the Obama era, it looked like things might finally take a turn for the better after the former president’s negotiating team worked out a deal in 2015 that promised to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Trump canceled the deal during his first term, and since his inauguration in January, he has been trying to put nearly the exact same deal back into place. He says Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon. It’s unacceptable.”

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All of this is evidence of why the U.S. is a failed nation-state. The chief executive officer is a convicted felon, 34 times over, and has been held liable in civil court for sexual abuse and defamation. He has issued executive orders that eliminate due process. He has ignored the Posse Comitatus Act and has considered invoking the Insurrection Act. He has deployed the military as police against American citizens. He is systematically purging from the federal government anyone perceived to be disloyal to him. He has hired clearly and provocatively unqualified people for some of the most important jobs in the administration. He has vowed recrimination against his “political enemies” and calls the press “the enemy of the people.” He won’t allow anyone to hold an opinion contrary to his own and lies so often that scores of fact-checkers owe their livelihood to researching his continuous, mind-bending deceptions. His foreign policy is a hot mess. He and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller screamed that “No Kings” protesters across the country were insurrectionists while he commuted the sentences of, or gave pardons to, 1500 people who engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6 because they supported him. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/19/weve-become-a-failed-nation-state-in-150-days/