Leaving America in January 2026 (For a Few Weeks)

Here are three serious thoughts I share with you on my departure from America for Southeast Asia.

The first is what President Trump said about our elections being “crooked.”

Really?

He said that at the newly-named “Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”

He said it before the assembled Republican members of Congress.

And not one of them raised his hand in rejection. Not one.

Is this what they believe?

That Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Trump himself were elected in “crooked” vote counts?

That their own elections to the Congress were stolen?

I wonder what the people – and leaders – of the world have made of Trump’s dismissal of our elections.

Our allies who have followed us in democracy?

Our enemies?

How will they enjoy this insult to our 250-year-old democracy?

Second, Trump’s commitment to grab Greenland from Denmark and its own people.

The Danes are the only people outside the United States who celebrate the 4^th of July and have done so for more than a century.

There’s an odd reason to expect this bit of 19th-century imperialism. It’s that President James Polk increased the size of the United States with the inclusion of California, Texas, Arizona, and Utah following the Mexican War.

Trump wants to do Jim Polk one better by seizing Greenland. Quite simply, it will create a larger footprint for future generations to behold of the United States of America.

But the consequences will also be unparalleled.

By taking this step, Trump will destroy NATO, the Atlantic force that has kept Russia at bay through all the years of the Cold War and since. NATO is what forced the then Soviets to organize the Warsaw Pact of Central and Eastern European countries, which it held as its satellites.

The third is the big lie with which Donald Trump began his second presidential term.

It is that he won not just election in 2016 and 2024 but also in 2020.

This is the lie that explains the plague of deception that covers his entire second presidential term.

It is the lie that all his appointees have been forced to share.

Trump himself rarely concludes a public event without repeating his lie about 2020.

The “concession speech” has long been one of the great elements of our democratic politics.

It is the readiness of the candidate who has just lost the election to say, usually on election night and before the TV cameras, that the verdict has gone the other way.

For the losing side, it’s our American way of knowing and accepting the result.

The loser has just told us so.

It is not in the Constitution, but it is what has given our democratic system its ready authenticity. Adlai Stevenson did it after being beaten by Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter after being taken down by Ronald Reagan, John McCain being taken down by Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton the next morning after being taken down by Donald Trump.

But not by Trump himself.

And that, starting with that, has made all the difference. And right now, as I take leave of this country to go teach in Vietnam, it still does.

Something is rotten here in America and is rotting right up at the very top.