Even though American democracy continues to face challenges from within and is on the decline, according to various studies, national leaders are continuing their efforts to support democracy abroad.
Within the past week, officials took steps to support the governments of Taiwan and Ukraine despite pressure from China and Russia to stay out of their respective neighborhoods. These actions, which garnered bipartisan support, stand in stark contrast to the polarizing battles over election administration, voting rights and investigations of the former president.
Tensions between Taiwan, China and the United States ratcheted up after Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island on Aug. 3, becoming the highest ranked U.S. official to visit Taiwan in 25 years.
China claims Taiwan is a part of its territory while other countries, including the United States, believe it to be independent. The Taiwanese people have their own democratic government and a capitalist economy, a sharp juxtaposition from China’s communist system.
Pelosi’s visit has been labeled by some as “ reckless and provocative ” by some, although she defended the trip as a symbol of U.S. solidarity with, and support for, Taiwan, arguing that her “visit should be seen as an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom.”
China has threatened to unify Taiwan with the mainland using its military authority many times in the past several decades. The threat has taken on a whole new meaning following China’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019. In the few years that have passed, more people have taken China’s warning to heart, especially Taiwanese people and the United States.
Pelosi’s visit came at a time where China’s authoritarian tactics have become increase, with the government censoring journalists, limiting free speech, spreading misinformation, and seemingly committing human rights violations in Hong Kong and through the Uyghur genocide.
China has retaliated against the speaker’s visit by firing several missiles into the waters surrounding Taiwan and launching large-scale military drills around the island on Thursday. In their attempts to further deepen the divide between the mainland and the US, Beijing officials announced that they were ending cooperation with the United States on topics including climate change and military issues.
However, the conflict has created some unity among Democrats and Republicans. Several lawmakers from both parties urged Pelosi to carry out her plan to visit Taiwan in the face of China’s threats. The chairman of the Senate GOP’s campaign committee, Rick Scott of Florida, said: “I think it’s important that we go over there and tell Taiwan that they are an important democratic ally. We ought to be clear there is no ambiguity that we will support them if they get invaded by communist China.”
Several Democrats echoed this sentiment. “Nobody should not go someplace because the Chinese government — which is guilty of genocide — is speaking in threatening terms,” said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts.
Pelosi also claimed that China’s Communist Party is a threat to democracy and drew parallels between the Taiwan-China conflict and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, writing: “I conveyed to President Volodymyr Zelensky that we admired his people’s defense of democracy for Ukraine and for democracy worldwide.”
And on Monday, the Pentagon announced it would be sending another $1 billion worth of military equipment to Ukraine, to further its defense against the ongoing Russian invasion. That brings the total financial support for Ukraine, since the invasion began, to approximately $9 billion. And in general, both parties have been supportive of U.S. efforts to help Ukraine push back against authoritarian Russia.
However, here at home, democracy has seen better days. According to the most recent Freedom House report, countries under democratic rule have been declining over the past 16 years; with authoritarianism on the rise. And the United States continues to drop in the rankings. More broadly, 38 percent of the world’s countries are considered to be “not free” or under some sort of undemocratic government compared to only 20 percent of the countries that are considered “free.”
Continued aggression from China and Russia will determine the future of democracy in Taiwan and Ukraine.
According to Freedom House, “democratic governments need to strengthen domestic laws and institutions while taking bold, coordinated action to support the struggle for democracy around the world.”
While the United States has made conscious efforts to show political support for Taiwan by rallying behind the island, it has not made substantial changes in actual foreign policies that uphold democracy abroad. The Biden administration has continually aided authoritarian militaries — like Saudi Arabia — despite publicly denouncing their decision to send airstrikes that killed civilians in March 2022.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.