MAGA's intentional destruction of American soft power

A NYT opinion discusses a topic that gets little attention. The opinion is by Michael Posner a lawyer and human rights advocate. He was assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 2009-2013. The State Department’s Bureau Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is the heart of America’s soft power influence in the world. MAGA has intentionally destroyed it. Posner writes (not paywalled):

Trump Is Destroying a Core American Value. 

The World Will Notice.

In the late 1980s, Joseph Nye, the Harvard political scientist who died this month, developed the concept of “soft power.” His central premise, that the United States enhances its global influence by promoting values like human rights and democracy, has guided U.S. foreign policy for decades across both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Donald Trump has made clear that he fundamentally rejects this vision. As president, he has ordered a sweeping overhaul of the State Department that will cripple its capacity to promote American values abroad. At the center of this effort are drastic cuts to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor — the State Department’s core institution for advancing soft power, which I led under President Barack Obama. Unless Congress intervenes, the debasement of the bureau’s role will impair America’s ability to challenge authoritarianism, support democratic movements and provide independent analysis to inform U.S. foreign policy. The long-term result will be a United States that is weaker, less principled and increasingly sidelined as authoritarian powers like Russia and China offer their own transactional models of global engagement.

Its purpose was always practical: to ensure U.S. foreign aid and trade decisions were informed by credible assessments of human rights conditions around the world. That’s why every year, the bureau prepares congressionally mandated human rights reports.

In its early years, it struggled to defend its existence. Foreign governments resented being called out in its annual reports and attacked its legitimacy. Many State Department traditionalists viewed its focus on human rights as an unhelpful distraction from the realpolitik topics they were much more comfortable addressing.

Under the guise of what Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls streamlining, the administration plans to eliminate two offices, one that oversees grants, the other focused on promoting internet freedom in closed societies and on championing human rights in corporate conduct and international bodies like the United Nations. As part of a departmentwide downsizing, the bureau’s overall staff will also be cut by at least 15 percent.

Inevitability, the effect of this shift will be to relegate human rights to the sidelines of U.S. foreign policy.

This is more evidence of the ruthless authoritarian intent of MAGA’s morally rotted wealth and power politics. Why give up soft power if MAGA elites say they put America first? They would not. Instead, the truth is that they put themselves first, hate democracy everywhere and want to make war on democracy to forever make the world safe for kleptocratic tyranny.

That’s the core goal of American MAGA politics. It is not just the civil liberties that protect the American people from tyranny and state-sanctioned theft that MAGA wants to kill. MAGA wants the entire world to be dominated by corrupt tyrannies.

Q1: Posner asserts that the world will notice the death of American soft power, which is probably true, but will most Americans notice?

Q2: Is it evidence-based and plausible or lies-based nonsense to argue that MAGA elites hate democracy and civil liberties in the US and abroad? If it is nonsense, how can one explain what MAGA elites are doing to democracy and civil liberties in the US and everywhere else? Why do American MAGA elites adore and want to emulate corrupt dictators like Hungary’s Viktor Orban? 

Bits: djt has TDS; Democracy pulse check - the gray zone

In his childish, seething rage and hate, djt once again shows he is mentally deranged. He has TDS, is off his meds and way off his rocker. 

The Daily Beast reports that he posted an unhinged threat to release ‘terrorists’ near the homes of some USSC judges. djt’s reaction included a  Lies Antisocial (‘Truth Social’) rant claiming the Supreme Court was preventing the removal of criminals from the US. His childish rage at the USSC for temporarily blocking his illegal use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expedite illegal migrant deportations. It was a 7-2 decision. djt singled out the Chevy Chase Country Club as a terrorist release point. That is a Maryland establishment for rich and powerful elites. Chief justice John Roberts and justice Brett ‘Beer Boofer’ Kavanaugh. He praised the authoritarian MAGA extremists Alito and Thomas for stupidly arguing in favor of illegal deportations.

Since he claims that terrorists kill people, djt obviously wants to to release terrorists so they can murder the idiot MAGA thug Roberts and the moron Beer Boofer. 

Remember when people protesting near USSC judge’s homes was called domestic terrorism by MAGA elites, e.g., Faux News? I do. Hm, does that make djt a domestic terrorist according to MAGA elites? Nah, they’re shameless hypocrites.

Q: At this point, is there anything that any of the six USSC judges, including Roberts and Beer Boofer, can do to redeem themselves from (1) their ghastly authoritarian decisions, including pro-kleptocracy decisions, and (2) all of the needless human and social harm their political extremism and sheer blind stupidity has caused, e.g., forced birth laws forcing women to have babies they did not want?

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Since 2017, elite MAGA thugs have inflicted massive damage on the federal government, democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and actual reality, i.e., inconvenient truth. Truly massive. Since Jan. 2025, MAGA has attacked and moderately to grievously damaged pro-democracy or pro-public interest functions and institutions including the NLRB, CFPB, FEC, FCC[1], FBI, DoJ, EPA, Dept of Labor, OSHA, Office of Labor-Management Standards, EEOC, FTC, BLM, CDC, DHHS, FDA, OMB, OPM, DoD, USTR, Dept. of Education, State Dept., Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (the core of America’s soft power), Dept. of Energy, Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Archives, federal judges, congress, Medicare, Medicaid, Social security, Food stamps, Obamacare, the Democratic Party, pro-democracy conservatives in the GOP, the mainstream media, and major law firms. 

It is hard to convey just how much damage we have suffered under MAGA’s incompetent, bigoted, cruel kleptocratic authoritarianism. And MAGA extremists are not close to done yet. Vast amounts of power has already flowed from pro-democracy and pro-public interest institutions and functions. That power has flowed to political, commercial and religious elites, in a vast upward gush to the few elites. Most people don’t see or feel it yet, but the day of awakening will come to more people as each day passes and the bite of tyranny, incompetence and profound corruption hit home. 

So, where are we in terms of what is left of democracy? Experts say that within the last year, the US went from a democracy to an anocracy, as I discussed in a post here a few weeks ago. Anocracy is a mixed democracy-dictatorship. Current expert analysis now puts the US closer to dictatorship than democracy.  

Q: Where do you think we are we in the gray zone between the black of pure authoritarianism (zone 0) and the white of pure democracy (zone 10)?

My estimate is that we’re on the right side of zone 2 and headed at a brisk clip toward zone 1. The final MAGA destination for now is probably far left of z2 or the right side of z1. In z1, elections will be a sham and the Dem Party will be permanently out of power in the federal government, assuming that isn’t already the case. 

Footnote:

1. Regarding just the FCC alone, Chairman and corrupt MAGA thug Brendan Carr has neutered and weaponized that agency. That has led to (1) the FCC threatening CBS’s broadcast license over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, invoking the archaic “news distortion doctrine” (there was no news distortion), and (2) the FCC threatening to block the Paramount-Skydance merger unless editorial boards adopt “balanced coverage” guidelines favoring Trump. So now the FCC demands MAGA demagoguery, lies, slanders and crackpottery get the same exposure as actual, real news or the parent corporations, their owners and their cash piles will face the wrath of djt and MAGA elites. Both djt and MAGA elites have proven themselves vicious and enthusiastic warriors of vengeance for real and imagined wrongs, mostly imagined, mostly minor if not imagined.

MAGA bits: MAGA-rotted federal agents and judges; DoJ plans to shame innocents

The Intercept reports in an article, ICE Duped a Federal Judge Into Allowing Raid on Columbia Student Dorms, about how weak the US Constitution and rule of law can be under a Trump judge. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) submitted an affidavit to the judge that misstated basic facts and the applicable federal law according to The Intercept article. Despite being blatantly illegal and flawed, the Trump judge nonetheless signed off, authorizing ICE to search two students’ dorm rooms based on the assertion that Columbia might be “harboring” them in violation of federal law. 

Now that it has been MAGAfied and weaponized, ICE probably lied in the affidavit. But, being MAGAfied, ICE have been grossly incompetent and ignorant of the law. The affidavit falsely claimed that Columbia University was “harboring” students by refusing ICE access to nonpublic campus areas without judicial warrants. ICE simply ignored the fact that only immigration judges, not ICE or the State Department, could determine lawful status. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1324, harboring requires proof of intentional concealment or shielding of noncitizens from detection, a standard not met by the university’s refusal to grant warrantless entry. The judge’s failure to demand clarity on these distinctions shows either ghastly ignorance of immigration law, or MAGA-style contempt for it.

It’s a Trump judge!: The judge who authorized the defective ICE search warrant targeting Columbia University student dorm rooms was Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Lehrburger, appointed to his position on October 30, 2017, was nominated under the Trump administration and has been a federal magistrate judge. This is more evidence of djt MAGA weaponizing ICE, the federal judiciary and immigration enforcement against dissent. The affidavit was a fig leaf for ICE and the judge to justify planned unconstitutional searches and arrests.

Magistrate judges are appointed by federal district court judges to eight-year terms. One of their primary jobs is to rule on search warrants and preliminary proceedings, as in this case. They are there to protect the 4th Amendment prohibition against illegal searches and seizures. Given the blatant illegality of the ICE search warrant affidavit, it is reasonable to believe that Lehrburger is a corrupt, authoritarian MAGA judge who holds the rule of law in contempt, just as djt does. 

Lehrburger should be impeached and removed from the bench. But given how MAGA operates, djt will probably nominate him for a permanent federal judge position. One can consider what is a gigantic boo-boo to be Lehrburger’s formal application for a federal judge position under djt.

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NBC News reports about a DoJ plan to publicly shame people who it wants to criminally prosecute but can't find evidence for an indictment: DOJ 'weaponization' group will shame individuals it can't charge with crimes, new head says. djt appointed elite MAGA thug Ed Martin to head the DoJ’s “Weaponization Working Group.” This group was established by Attorney General and criminal MAGA thug Pam Bondi in response to a djt EO. The MRS (MAGA revenge squad) will investigate prosecutors who previously launched investigations into Trump and his allies. The MRS knows it will almost always find little to no evidence of illegality. But the DoJ has been ordered by djt to do something! 

Hence thug Martin’s brilliant idea of shaming people who broke no laws but instead tried to vindicate laws as part of their jobs. Martin said at a press conference that the MRS will “name and shame” people it believes did “bad things to the American people” but cannot be charged with any crime. What bad things? Investigating and prosecuting crimes by djt, the traitors in djt’s 1/6 coup attempt and other MAGA elites.

In a gigantic blast of insulting cynical mendacity, Martin said that transparency is the MRS’s top priority. He hypocritically argues that exposing what happened is necessary to avoid the appearance of politically motivated prosecutions, which he accused the Biden administration of conducting in secret. What a lying, morally rotted, scumbag & hypocrite.

The Convenient Scapegoating of Joe Biden: A Critique of Jake Tapper's new book & the Democratic establishment’s rewrite of history

 

PD, May 15, 2025

 

Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign was built on a promise: to be a “bridge” to normalcy, implying a one-term president who would defeat Donald Trump, restore stability, and keep the “existential threat” of Trumpism at bay. Yet, by 2024, Biden’s refusal to step aside despite clear cognitive decline led to a catastrophic failure of that promise, handing Trump a second term. Now, Democratic insiders and media elites are admitting this failure—but they’re also rewriting history to absolve themselves, blaming Biden and a small circle of loyalists while ignoring their own complicity. This narrative doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and its implications for how we understand the 2024 election—and the future of the Democratic Party—are profound.

 

The Establishment’s Admission: Biden’s Run Cost Democrats the Election

 

Democratic insiders, including David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign, and media figures like CNN’s Jake Tapper, have acknowledged that Biden’s decision to run for reelection doomed the Democrats. In Tapper’s new book Original Sin, co-authored with Alex Thompson, insiders lament that Biden’s decline—supposedly evident since 2015, according to the authors, following the death of his son Beau—was hidden by a small group of family and aides, leading to a disastrous 2024 campaign.[^1] Plouffe, quoted in a May 13, 2025, New Yorker article, is blunt: “And it’s all Biden. By deciding to run for reëlection and then waiting more than three weeks after the debate to bow out, Plouffe added, ‘He totally fucked us.’ As a result, Democrats stumbled into the fall of 2024 with an untested nominee and growing public mistrust of a White House that had been gaslighting the American people.”[^2]

 

Tapper’s own words in the New Yorker drive the point home: “Biden had framed his entire Presidency as a pitched battle to prevent Trump from returning to the Oval Office. By not relinquishing power and refusing to be honest with himself and the country about his decline, he guaranteed it.”[^3] This admission is stark: Biden’s number one promise—to be a bridge away from Trump and MAGA—was a spectacular failure. But the establishment’s narrative pins the blame on Biden’s “narcissistic and egotistical” personality and a tight-knit circle of loyalists, including his family and aides like Anita Dunn and Ron Klain.

 

A Narrative That Doesn’t Withstand Scrutiny

 

This thesis—that Biden and a small insular group single-handedly orchestrated a cover-up of his decline—cannot withstand empirical scrutiny. The record shows a systemic failure involving the Democratic Party, Congress, and major media outlets, all of whom either ignored or actively downplayed Biden’s struggles during his presidency, when he was widely embraced as fit to lead.

 

As early as late 2022, Biden’s cognitive decline was glaring. He held fewer press conferences than any modern president—only 11 solo ones by the end of 2023, compared to Trump’s 22 in a similar period.[^4] By 2023, Biden had largely stopped speaking impromptu, relying on teleprompters or softball interviews with allies like MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, which were often cringeworthy. A June 2024 Time Magazine interview revealed Biden arriving with a dozen aides, who frequently interjected to “guide” the conversation, with Biden struggling to complete sentences and mixing up basic details like the timeline of his vice presidency.[^5] Livestream footage—such as Biden freezing for nearly a minute at a Juneteenth event on June 10, 2024—showed him lost on stages or motionless while others danced around him.[^6] These clips, often circulated by right-wing sources, were dismissed by outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post as “cheap fakes,” a term used to discredit unedited footage.[^7]

 

Media outlets with access to insider accounts, like The Wall Street Journal’s June 2024 exposé on Biden’s cognitive lapses, were attacked for their reporting. The Journal detailed Biden’s confusion in meetings—forgetting names, needing aides to finish his thoughts, and freezing mid-sentence—based on interviews with over 45 sources across party lines.[^8] Yet, Poynter labeled the piece “foul,” citing reliance on anonymous and partisan sources like Kevin McCarthy, while ignoring its substance.[^9] CNN’s Jake Tapper, now a critic of Biden in Original Sin, was among the loudest defenders at the time, dismissing the Journal’s report as a “hit piece” in June 2024 and attacking Rep. Dean Phillips for raising Biden’s age during a February 2024 interview.[^10] Tapper’s on-air defense of Biden continued into Spring 2024, with clips compiled by Glenn Greenwald showing him calling concerns about Biden’s health “misinformation.”[^11]

 

The Democratic Party itself was complicit, and party leaders outside Biden’s inner circle continue to stonewall on their role, directly contradicting the book’s narrative of a small-scale cover-up. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, when pressed by CNN’s Kasie Hunt on May 14, 2025, about whether he knew Biden was unfit for a second term, repeatedly said, “We’re looking forward,” refusing to engage.[^12] MSNBC’s Katy Tur asked Schumer about a specific anecdote in Original Sin—a June 2024 fundraiser where Biden failed to recognize George Clooney, the same month Schumer claimed on X that Biden was “in command and impressive” in meetings—but he gave the same non-answer.[^13] House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Amy Klobuchar echoed this deflection, with Jeffries saying, “We’re not looking backward,” and Klobuchar telling NBC’s Kristen Welker, “We’re not on the History Channel right now.”[^14] These leaders are not part of Biden’s inner circle, yet their stonewalling suggests they were complicit in the cover-up, not deceived by a White House operation as the book claims. If the deception was truly “all Biden” and limited to a small group gaslighting the public, why are senior Democrats outside that circle still refusing to admit what they knew, even after the election? This contradiction, highlighted by Tapper’s own reporting, undermines the book’s attempt to isolate blame to Biden and his loyalists, pointing instead to a broader systemic failure within the party leadership.

 

Media figures who enabled this narrative are now playing “gotcha” with these insiders. Kasie Hunt, who covered Congress for MSNBC during Biden’s presidency and rarely challenged his fitness, pressed Schumer hard in her CNN interview. MSNBC’s Katy Tur, who interviewed Biden sympathetically in 2023, now grills Democrats on their past defenses. This shift highlights their own complicity—they had the platform to raise concerns earlier but chose not to, likely to preserve access and avoid backlash.

Even influential allies like George Clooney failed to act on clear warning signs. At the June 2024 fundraiser, Biden’s failure to recognize Clooney was a “terrifying” moment, yet Clooney continued to lead the charge as part of Biden’s fundraiser elite, hosting events to bolster his campaign.[^15] It wasn’t until after Biden’s disastrous June 27, 2024, debate that Clooney spoke out, publishing a July 10, 2024, op-ed in The New York Times calling for Biden to step aside.[^16] Now hailed as a moral voice for helping push Biden out, Clooney’s earlier silence enabled the very outcome he later decried, undermining the narrative of his courage.

 

Rank-and-File Democrats: Avoiding a Reckoning

 

While the establishment admits Biden’s failure, many rank-and-file Democrats reject the need for a reckoning, framing critics like Tapper as the real betrayers who handed Trump the election. A search for “Jake Tapper” on X reveals pages of comments under his May 14, 2025, post, expressing animosity—not for his hypocrisy in defending Biden on air until 2024, which would be warranted, but for daring to question Biden’s fitness at all. These Democrats argue that Biden was capable of serving another term and that, had he won, he would now be a functioning president in good shape, keeping Trump out of office. This mindset is epitomized by accounts like

@What46HasDone

, whose handle—“You Should’ve Said Nicer Things About Joe Biden”—and 60,000 followers reflect the belief that more positive coverage could have sustained Biden’s campaign, a view echoed by prominent voices like influential X user, Brooklyn Dad Defiant, with his million-strong following. This fantasy—that Biden was fit for the job and could have continued fooling the public with the party and media’s support—ignores the reality of his public struggles, from his limited press conferences to his visible freezes in livestream footage. By clinging to this denial, these Democrats avoid accountability for the party’s broader failures, perpetuating the same mindset that enabled Biden’s run and led to the Democratic collapse in 2024

 

Why This Matters: The Danger of a Sanitized History

 

This scapegoating of Biden and his inner circle matters because it erases the broader accountability of the Democratic establishment and media elites. If this narrative becomes the orthodox history in left-of-center scholarship and journalism, the lessons of this hubris and top-down cover-up will be lost. The cowardice of those who knew but stayed silent—except in rare, on-background whispers—will be forgotten. The attack-dog behavior of figures like Tapper, who dismissed legitimate concerns while defending Biden on air, will be buried. The complicity of allies like Clooney, who saw Biden’s decline firsthand but continued to fundraise until it was politically safe to speak out, will be whitewashed. The constant party and media denials of livestream footage—evidence that citizens could see with their own eyes—will be swallowed by an implausible conspiracy story about one man and his entourage. Biden and his insiders played a significant role, no doubt, but the idea that this cover-up could have been carried out without widespread buy-in from the party, Congress, and media is an insult to citizens who deserve to know how we got here.

The 2024 election wasn’t just a failure of Biden—it was a failure of the Democratic ecosystem that propped him up. Insiders like Plouffe, Schumer, and media figures like Tapper, who now profit from books like Original Sin while evading their own roles, must be held accountable. The New Yorker article captures their self-victimization, but it ignores the systemic denial that enabled Biden’s run. The contradiction between the book’s claim of a small-scale cover-up and the stonewalling of party leaders like Schumer—who were not part of Biden’s inner circle but still refuse to admit what they knew—reveals the depth of this systemic failure. We must reject this sanitized history and demand a full reckoning—from the party leaders who stonewalled, the media who dismissed the truth, and the grassroots who refused to see the warning signs. Only then can the Democratic Party learn from its mistakes and rebuild trust with the American people.

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Endnotes

 

[^1]: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, Penguin Press, May 20, 2025.

[^2]: The New Yorker, “The Democrats’ Reckoning,” May 13, 2025.

[^4]: American Presidency Project, “Presidential News Conferences,” accessed May 15, 2025.

[^5]: Time Magazine, “Biden’s Final Test,” June 2024.

[^6]: Newsweek, “Biden’s Awkward Moment at Juneteenth Event Sparks Debate,” June 12, 2024.

[^7]: The New York Times, “The ‘Cheap Fake’ Campaign Against Biden,” June 2024.

[^8]: The Wall Street Journal, “Behind Closed Doors: Biden’s Struggles with Clarity,” June 4, 2024.

[^9]: Poynter, “The Wall Street Journal’s Story on Biden’s Mental Fitness: Fair or Foul?,” June 7, 2024.

[^10]: CNN, The Lead with Jake Tapper, June 2024; CNN, Interview with Dean Phillips, February 2024.

[^11]: Glenn Greenwald, System Update, May 2025.

[^12]: Fox News, “Schumer, Democrats Dodge Questions About Brutal Biden Revelations with ‘Looking Forward’ Talking Point,” May 14, 2025.

[^15]: Axios, “Biden Didn't Recognize George Clooney at Fundraiser: New Book,” May 13, 2025.

[^16]: George Clooney, “I Love Joe Biden, But We Need a New Nominee,” The New York Times, July 10, 2024.