In this episode of Democracy Works from The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the team discusses democracy’s many doomsayers and how to heed their warnings for the future without falling into despair.
Podcast: On democracy's doomsayers
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Donald Trump, September 09, 2026
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Trump, Kennedy, and the Monkey’s Paw
Sep 11, 2026
The hardest deal to judge is one you helped sell.
In 2024, I served as North Carolina state director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign and co-founded We The People of North Carolina, the independent party that put him on our state’s ballot.
When Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, those of us who had worked the campaign faced a difficult choice: Who would we vote for?
My answer carried implications beyond my own choice. As the party’s vice chair, I signed the letter officially requesting Kennedy’s removal from North Carolina’s ballot, closing the door on a campaign I helped build and clearing the path for Trump. As Election Day neared, I made the case for Trump to Independents and Kennedy voters.
Our coalition was large enough to matter. In North Carolina, Kennedy was drawing an estimated 240,000 votes before leaving the race. Trump carried the state by roughly 183,000 votes. A similar pattern appeared across all the battlegrounds, where small shifts among Independent voters helped Trump sweep all seven.
After Trump won, I wrote an article stating Kennedy’s selection to lead HHS showed that our trust in Trump’s “unity administration” was “well-founded.” I said we should move forward together as a country, but also hold Trump accountable.
Trump won us over with five central promises, each meant to fix problems we laid at Biden’s feet. (Independents had been pivotal to Biden’s victory four years earlier.) Trump’s promises spoke to a broad range of Independents, from kitchen-table voters most concerned about the economy and border to medical-freedom advocates, anti-interventionists, and anti-corruption reformers drawn to Kennedy, Gabbard, and Rogan.
Each promise gets one of three verdicts: Kept, Broken, or Monkey’s Paw, meaning we got what we wished for, but not what we bargained for.
Promise 1: “Make America Affordable Again”
Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make America affordable again.” (Trump, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Aug. 17, 2024) For Independents feeling the strain of inflation, the promise of lower prices sounded like much-needed relief.
Record: The administration’s first major economic move had the perverse effect of raising the price of practically everything. In February 2025, Trump began imposing new tariffs on imports, and by April they hit nearly every U.S. trading partner. The center-right Tax Foundation called them “the largest tax increase since 1993,” as American households absorbed roughly $1,000 in tariff-related costs.
We were told the tariffs would revive U.S. manufacturing and increase jobs. Instead, manufacturing jobs fell by 108,000 in Trump’s first year.
Homeownership remains out of reach. The median existing home now sells for about $440,000, with an average mortgage rate of 6.66 percent. Affording a home requires more than $110,000 a year, while the typical household earns about $84,000.
Trump did not create the affordability crisis, but that isn’t the point. He promised to end it. Independents gave him our votes to reduce prices that had risen under Biden, but all we’ve gotten is more partisan finger-pointing. The party in power has changed, but the strain on our wallets has not. Remember those “I did that” gas pump stickers? The honest version shows both presidents pointing together: “We did that.”
This promise had the broadest appeal and the most immediate effect on daily life. As of June 2026, consumer prices were 4.3 percent higher than when Trump took office. He promised prices would fall. They rose.
Verdict: Broken.
Promise 2: “Secure the Border”
I will end the illegal immigration crisis by closing our border and finishing the wall.” (Trump, Republican National Convention, Milwaukee, July 18, 2024) Independents overwhelmingly supported securing the country, but many of us didn’t anticipate what that enforcement would look like.
Record: Strictly speaking, Trump delivered on border security. Southwest border encounters fell to fewer than 10,000 a month, and the fiscal-year total dropped to its lowest since 1970, according to Pew. While these numbers are a positive result, the deportation methods are much harder to reconcile: chained transfers, raids at school drop-offs, agents posted outside courthouses, and unaccompanied children, some as young as six, facing deportation proceedings without lawyers.
Federal courts repeatedly confronted the administration over compliance with immigration orders. In one instance, deportation flights to El Salvador continued after a judge ordered them turned around.
ICE also detained U.S. citizens and removed citizen children from the country with their deported mothers, including a four-year-old with stage 4 cancer.
Between September 2025 and February 2026, DHS officers shot at least 14 people, four fatally, including U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good. In 2025, 32 people died in ICE custody, the highest number in more than two decades. While you may argue the merits of any particular case, it is difficult to explain them all away.
Trump promised to secure the border, and he did. But Independents didn't sign up for enforcement that repeatedly ran afoul of the courts, made good law enforcement agents look like villains, spread fear through our communities, and saw dozens die, including American citizens.
Verdict: Monkey’s Paw.
Promise 3: “Drain the Swamp”
We are going to drain the swamp, and we’re going to do it once and for all.” (Trump, Mosinee, Wisconsin, Sept. 7, 2024) Few promises spoke more to Independents. We wanted an end to corporate capture, cronyism, and officials cashing in on their office.
Record: Trump promised to drain the swamp and instead let the Reflecting Pool turn into one.
For decades, presidents of both parties kept their personal finances separate from the presidency through blind trusts or divestment. Trump broke with tradition. Trump disclosed more than $1.4 billion in income from his family’s crypto ventures in 2025.
Nearly a million wallets bought the $TRUMP memecoin, which has no underlying business or revenue. Most held relatively small amounts, suggesting ordinary buyers. The value of their holdings fell by a combined $3.81 billion. The Trump family took in $636 million.
USD1, World Liberty’s stablecoin, offers Trump another path to profit. Each coin is backed by a dollar’s worth of reserves, and those reserves earn interest. By February 2026, Binance, a crypto exchange, held about $4.7 billion in USD1, potentially generating $150 million a year in interest. A Trump-family entity indirectly owns 38 percent of a World Liberty company entitled to a share of that interest.
And where did the billions earning that interest come from? In large part, Abu Dhabi.
In May 2025, Abu Dhabi’s state-backed MGX used USD1 to invest $2 billion in Binance, boosting the interest its reserves could earn. Two weeks later, Trump announced he was expanding the UAE’s access to advanced American AI technology. Five months later, he pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who had served four months in prison for failing, of all things, to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program.
No public evidence proves either decision was exchanged for the investment. The conflict is that the president's family could profit from the very actors seeking decisions only his administration could make.
The crypto deals are only one part of the swamp.
The Campaign Legal Center counts 47 former lobbyists in senior posts; more than 15 likely would have faced limits under earlier ethics restrictions. Trump imposed no such rules. His chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is a former lobbyist, and six former clients lobbied White House offices she oversees. Her former firm, Ballard Partners, became Washington’s top-grossing lobbying firm in 2025, taking in $88 million from clients hoping it had Trump’s ear.
In his 2026 State of the Union, Trump mocked Nancy Pelosi while calling for a congressional trading ban. Yet that quarter, his accounts recorded 3,642 trades, roughly 40 a day, worth between $220 million and $750 million. Trump says managers placed the trades, but that doesn’t remove the conflict or the hypocrisy.
Nothing’s been drained except our trust.
Verdict: Broken.
Promise 4: “Make America Healthy Again”
I'm going to let him go wild on health. I'm going to let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on the medicines.” (Trump, Madison Square Garden, New York City, Oct. 27, 2024) Winning over Kennedy voters and the MAHA movement was critical to Trump’s coalition. We expected him to give Kennedy real power and the freedom to use it.
Record: On April 22, 2025, Kennedy and the FDA announced the phaseout of six petroleum-based synthetic dyes that have colored America’s food for generations. Advocates had spent four decades seeking their phaseout — Kennedy did it in ten weeks.
In January 2026, Kennedy and the USDA overhauled the Dietary Guidelines, reviving the Food Pyramid, tightening limits on added sugar, and drawing a hard line against ultra-processed foods. States led by both parties followed with similar reforms. \
That same month, Kennedy overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule, cutting recommendations from 17 diseases to 11 and bringing it closer to Denmark’s. The backlash crossed party lines. Democrats condemned the move, while Republican Senate health chairman Bill Cassidy called it “based on no scientific input.” Medical groups sued, and a federal judge blocked the changes. Trump nevertheless backed Kennedy with an executive order on August 10 to formally cut the schedule.
For many Independents, these moves showed what Kennedy could accomplish when he had freedom to act. But there were limits to that freedom.
Those limits were clearest on glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and a longtime Kennedy target. Trump made boosting its production a national priority. Kennedy publicly backed the order but later admitted on Rogan he was “not particularly happy” with it. Trump’s Justice Department later backed Monsanto before the Supreme Court, which issued a ruling undercutting thousands of Roundup cancer claims.
Kennedy moved to close the “generally recognized as safe” loophole, which lets food companies declare ingredients safe without FDA review. Industry lobbying against the proposal surged, and the White House sat on it for six months. His definition of ultra-processed food, a category linked to chronic disease, met the same resistance and still awaits White House approval. Kennedy needs the federal definition before he can require companies to label their products as ultra-processed.
The MAHA promise has come closest to being kept. Kennedy moved quickly and won meaningful reforms, but the freedom Trump promised has proved conditional. His authority is real, but it narrows when those efforts threaten industry profits.
Verdict: Monkey’s Paw.
Promise 5: “End the Forever Wars”
I will end the endless wars.” (Trump, Bitcoin Conference, Nashville, Tennessee, July 27, 2024) For Independents tired of forever wars, we believed Trump would stop feeding the military-industrial complex.
Record: U.S. strikes on Iran began Feb. 28, 2026. After notifying Congress on March 2, Trump had 60 days under the War Powers Resolution to end hostilities or seek congressional authorization. He did neither. At the deadline, he declared the hostilities “terminated,” even as the blockade of Iranian ports continued and missile strikes resumed.
Joe Kent resigned as counterterrorism director, saying Iran had posed no imminent threat. Thomas Massie, one of the few Republicans to oppose the war and a Trump critic on several other fronts, lost to Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein after roughly $37 million flooded the race, making it the most expensive House primary in history.
Trump has repeatedly called the war almost over, but the U.S. and Iran were still exchanging strikes well into July. Eighteen American service members have been killed and 624 wounded. The Pentagon put the war’s cost at $37.5 billion and is seeking another $67 billion.
The war machine slouches toward profit under either party. In 2020, Trump requested $741 billion for national defense. Biden’s administration asked for $895 billion. Trump now proposes $1.5 trillion for national defense in 2027. Each administration outbids the last.
Never-ending war is the duopoly’s business model.
Verdict: Broken.
In the end, none of the five promises have been fully kept. Three were broken outright, and two came with a catch. Trump still has more than two years to make good on them, but I am not optimistic.
A partisan promise is either a straight lie or a Monkey’s Paw.
So long as each party can keep our votes by making the other seem worse, neither has to earn them by keeping its promises. I made the case to Independent voters and wrote that our trust was “well-founded.” The record says otherwise.
It's easy to blame Republicans now, just as it was easy to blame Democrats then. But we cannot keep blaming the parties while casting our ballots for them. Independents are the country's largest political group, but we don't yet act like one.
We must organize, stop fighting over the same voters, and build shared infrastructure like ballot-access operations, candidate pipelines, and donor networks. And we must stop bargaining away our votes.
The lesser of two evils is still evil, and we will never get leaders we trust by voting for parties we don’t.
Ryan Rabah is an attorney and founder of Independent Campaign Strategies, a political consulting firm serving Independent candidates and organizations. He served as North Carolina state director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign, co-founded We The People of North Carolina and Our House PAC, and will speak at the Independent National Convention in Washington, D.C., this September.
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Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump dances off stage at the end of a campaign rally at the Grappone Convention Center on Friday, Jan. 19, 2024, in Concord, New Hampshire.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/TNS)
‘Trumpapalooza’ is a sad, unnecessary spectacle that achieves nothing
Sep 11, 2026
Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters says the GOP midterm election “convention” will be a “Trumpapalooza.” It’d be better if everyone called it that.
American political conventions are one of the best examples — among way too many — of American institutional decay.
In the 19th century and much of the 20th century, the quadrennial party conventions were indispensable pieces of political technology. I mean that literally. Traditionally, conventions were where party stakeholders — elected officials, party bosses, etc. — chose the nominee. Factions representing regions, interests, even ideas (how quaint!) would debate and horse-trade with each other, sometimes over days of voting, to name someone the party could get behind.
That system started to atrophy in the 1930s, as Michael Barone, the great political analyst, has argued, because of the telephone. The kind of negotiating required for a nominee to win support was impossible to do by letter. It took too long, and besides, putting things in writing risked exposing deals and other favor-trading for which savvy politicians would never want a paper trail. You had to do it face-to-face.
“The conventions were thus communication devices,” Barone writes, “in which campaign managers assessed candidates’ strength — and responded. Votes would be held back, so as to show momentum on later ballots. Favorite-son candidacies would be launched, in the hopes that they could be withdrawn later for reward or parlayed into a dark-horse nomination. No one had an accurate idea of how many delegates candidates had.”
The telephone changed that. In 1936, President Roosevelt used the new technology of long-distance calling to organize support well in advance of the convention.
Polling, and then television, further sapped away the function of conventions. Who needs party bosses to tell you the mood of the rank and file, when polling can deliver a much richer picture? Why put floor fights and other fodder for opponents on TV? Better to offer a picture of solidarity and excitement.
But the real death knell came in 1972 with the “reforms” promulgated by Democrat George McGovern, which were quickly adopted by the GOP. These reforms — which I think were deformations of our democratic system — took the power to nominate a candidate away from the stakeholders and gave it to rank-and-file voters. We thus became the first and one of the only advanced democracies where parties can no longer choose their own candidates.
I think that was a disaster, but that’s a column for another time. One of the consequences of that disaster was that party conventions essentially became infomercials ratifying a fait accompli. The brokered convention — even the prospect for one — is gone now, replaced by a coronation.
But at least the coronation still serves a purpose. It’s still a necessary function of our electoral system. A boring, intelligence-insulting, performative function, but a function all the same.
This midterm “convention” isn’t even that. No one will be formally nominated. It’s just an opportunity for President Trump to put on a show — about himself.
Defenders might say there’s precedent for this, but their argument proves my point about decay. Democrats in 1974, 1978 and 1982 had midterm conventions. But those conventions involved various committee meetings in which party rules and resolutions were proposed and debated.
In 1978, President Carter defended the midterm convention.
“I believe it is very important for me, as a president, and also as head of the Democratic Party, to have my success and failures assessed objectively and openly by Democrats representing the grassroots of our party around the nation,” Carter said. “I think that was done in a very forthcoming way.”
The Washington Post reported that John C. White, the Democratic Party chairman, was worried that delegate disputes could “turn the convention into a public relations failure.”
“Of course we have a broad range of opinions on some issues within our party,” White said. “But if we get foolish, if we go beyond proper political division and look quarrelsome, these are things that could hurt the Democratic Party and the Democratic president.”
If you think the Dallas Trumpalooza is going to include an open and objective discussion of Trump’s failures, or feature even the slightest political division, I want to congratulate you for having just emerged from a decade-long coma.
This is a commercial with a live studio audience and nothing more. Indeed, the rot of our political institutions on display is not confined to the GOP. One of the featured keynote speakers is Attorney General Todd Blanche. Whether the already ethically compromised AG’s appearance at an expressly partisan event is a violation of the Hatch Act is something for the lawyers to debate. But the spirit of it is grotesque, and a sign that our parties aren’t the only institutions that have lost their way.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a meeting with Australia's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Richard Marles at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 2, 2026.
(Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images/TCA)
Fire Pete Hegseth to help GOP in midterms
Sep 05, 2026
“Muscles, dudes in dresses, testosterone.”
That’s how one European defense official described the priorities of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to a bombshell new report from CNN on the growing concern inside the U.S. military over Hegseth’s leadership.
Hegseth might not disagree with the characterization. He’s made it his mission to focus his attention on the culture wars, wokeism, DEI, and what soldiers look like, and it’s creating “turbulence” inside the military he oversees.
Recent high-profile resignations and firings by Hegseth have also brought increased scrutiny at the Pentagon, with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll abruptly announcing he was leaving this week.
“You’re taking away three of the most seasoned combat leaders of a generation who are in a unique position to articulate battlefield requirements,” a former Army official said of Hegseth’s “forced exits” of Army Chief of Staff Randy George, former head of U.S. Army Europe and Africa Gen. Christopher Donahue, and former commander of U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command Gen. David Hodne.
This all comes against the backdrop of what is perceived as an increasingly unwinnable and also unendable Iran war, which is losing support by the day.
In March, opposition to the war was at 47.3%, and now, six months later, it’s at 55.7%.
None of this is helpful for Republicans who are campaigning in tight and uphill contests all over the country. They are already having to defend President Trump’s tariffs and burgeoning trade war with Canada, his impolitic comments about affordability “hoaxes,” and the sense that his priorities — building ballrooms and hosting UFC fights — are out of whack with voters.
The never-ending war in Iran is the last thing they want to be talking about.
Hopes that Trump can effectively wind the war down before the midterms have been whittled down to a nub — prediction markets don’t have peace talks occurring until 2027.
But he could make a move that improves the politics of this quagmire for him and Republicans in time for elections: fire Hegseth.
Hegseth’s net approval is at a miserable -22 — well below other Trump cabinet officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr.
His own commanders are publicly voicing their concerns about his leadership. Reports of critical shortages of missiles and other materials are bringing into question our military’s readiness. And stories of hellish conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, including attempts by multiple sailors to jump overboard, are dogging Hegseth’s tenure. Not to mention earlier scandals over legally questionable drug boat strikes and improper use of Signal chats.
A change in leadership would have the practical effect of restoring order to the Defense Department, and the political effect of changing the narrative for Trump and Republicans at a crucial time, just two months before midterm elections.
Hegseth doesn’t want to do this job anyway, it appears. Despite being busy prosecuting a war that’s disrupted the global economy, killed and injured hundreds of U.S. troops, and made the region far more dangerous for our allies, he’s been seen on the campaign trail, stumping for candidates in Iowa and Kentucky — explicitly partisan, political moves that other Pentagon leaders have always avoided.
“We’re restoring the warrior ethos inside our department because that matters. We need guys like this man right here having our back in Congress,” he said of Rep. Zach Nunn in August.
As long as I’ve known him, Pete has wanted to run for president, and he’s reportedly said as much to friends and colleagues.
So Trump should do him, Republicans, and all Americans a favor, and cut him loose so he can go back to Fox News and focus on the things that matter to him: muscles, dudes in dresses, and testosterone.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.