Democracy Is Eroding Faster Than Experts Predicted: A Trump Insider’s Resignation Helps Explain Why

What he saw from inside the system, and why his departure signals that the guardrails are collapsing faster than anyone on the outside fully understands…

Trump is dismantling our American democracy with alarming speed and the resignation of the Trump-appointed Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, is a symptom of it.

Kent, a hardcore MAGA Republican who ran two failed, Trump-endorsed campaigns for Congress before Trump put him in charge of counterterrorism, was adjacent to the very highest levels of our national security apparatus, had all the inside information, and not only resigned but salted the earth on his way out, writing:

“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

As I’ve noted in previous articles, Saudi Arabia and the UAE wanted America to strike Iran and had collectively given billions to Kushner and Trump. Netanyahu desperately needed a war with Iran to insure his re-election this year to keep him out of prison. And Putin wanted the Strait of Hormuz closed so the price of oil would go up and rescue his floundering economy.

The Iranians were negotiating, according to both the Omani Foreign Minister and the UK’s National Security Advisor — who were both in the room — in good faith. They thought they’d reached an agreement that would have been even better for the US and the world than was Obama’s JCPOA: it would have ended the Iranian nuclear program, brought back in the UN’s inspectors, and prevented Iran from building missiles that could reach North America.

All the Iranians had to do was take the offer back to their leadership, who gathered together to evaluate it, providing Netanyahu with the perfect opportunity to bomb the entire bunch of them into oblivion. To think Kushner wasn’t in on this apparent betrayal of diplomatic protocol, destruction of America’s credibility, and clear war crime — as the war’s Arab advocates were shoveling millions of dollars a day to him — is akin to believing in the Easter Bunny.

And now, to prevent any possibility of good-faith negotiations with what’s left of the Iranian government, Netanyahu just assassinated the one guy who The New York Times claimed could have pulled such a deal off:

“Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, had a reputation for being able to bridge the country’s hard-line military elements and more moderate political factions. His killing in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday could open the way for Iran’s military to tighten its grip over the ruling system, analysts said.”

But as bad as our being manipulated and lied into another pointless war is, it’s really just one more data point in a much larger picture of how Trump, Vance, Miller and their lickspittles are systematically deconstructing the democracy here that was put together with 250 years of American blood, sweat, and tears.

The V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden tracks democracy around the world, and documents how, they write:

“The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator John Thune, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, as the heads of the Article I and III branches of government, are arguably Trump’s peers, his co-equals in wielding the tripartite power of the federal government.

But all three appear to have forgotten that, along with the history — reaching all the way back to Montesquieu’s arguments adopted by the Founders — of checks on presidential power and a balance of power between branches to keep democracy functional.

Legislative constraints on American presidential power, the V-Dem Institute documents, have ended up “losing one-third of its value in 2025 and reaching its lowest point in over 100 years.” They add, “Decline on the Judicial Constraints is smaller … but it is also the lowest level since 1900.”

As a result, they note, in America:

“Civil Rights & Equality before the Law, and Freedom of Expression and Media [freedom] are now at their lowest levels in 60 years. …

“The extensive damage already done to American democracy under the second Trump presidency — in just one year — stands out on the world map. Typically, autocratizing countries of the ‘third wave’ have taken about a decade to make such a deep dive, and the speed of decline is comparable to some coups d´états.”

In other words, these are all one thing:
— The US/Israeli war against Iran without congressional approval;
— the destruction of American soft power with USAID and the Voice of America;
— the gutting of the social safety net with a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, dialing back food stamps, and the end of ACA subsidies;
— the creation of a masked secret police force and construction of hundreds of concentration camps nationwide;
— the state-by-state destruction of voting rights now poised to go national;
— the rewriting of America’s history and de-funding of our schools;
— the capture of much of America’s media by rightwing fascist-aligned billionaires;
— the threats from the FCC against the remaining “free” media;
— the flagrant violation of thousands of court orders;
— the illegal impoundment of congressionally-authorized funds;
— the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion;
— the naked appeals to white Christian nationalism and insistence that the US was created as a Christian nation;
— the stripping of women’s and racial, religious, and gender minority rights;
— the massive tax cuts for the morbidly rich and the tax/tariff increases on working class people, further infuriating the middle class;
— the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal employees, including thousands working in Social Security and Medicare;
— ending pollution controls and allowing more poisons in our air, water, and food;
— spreading health disinformation that destroys people’s faith in science and government;
— war-making against foreign governments without congressional authorization or public debate;
— and kneecapping green initiatives that could have made us free of fossil fuel dependence.

And that “one thing” — flipping a democracy into fascism — is the same fascist project that Vladimir Putin followed recently in Russia, Viktor Orbán did in Hungary ,and was historically executed by Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, Franco in Spain, Pinochet in Chile, Marcos in the Philippines, etc., etc.

The difference here, the V-Day Institute notes, is that Trump has accomplished in the US in a mere 14 months something that took each of the above-listed autocrats multiple years to accomplish.

A large part of his speed and efficiency at dismantling our democracy came from the rightwing billionaires who funded Project 2025, the explicit plan to convert America into a strongman autocracy that’s more than half accomplished in fewer than 15 months.

It’s also been aided by Trump’s utter lack of shame and ignorance of American history, making him immune to pro-democracy pressure from even those in his own party (Liz Cheney, Adam Kinsinger, Judge J. Michael Luttig, Mitt Romney, Steve Schmidt, Joe Walsh, etc.) who still believe in the system of government our Founders created.

As numerous experts on fascism and my friend and colleague Dean Obeidallah have pointed out, “[F]ascism is not an ideology, it’s simply a process for taking and holding power.” Add to that the other autocratic dynamic, “One of the classic traits of a fascist movement is absolute loyalty to the leader,” and you have the perfect storm that’s currently tearing our nation apart.

Trump saw an opportunity to cash in on his presidency and bring his kids and a lot of his morbidly rich friends along, but first he’d have to cripple the checks-and-balances of Congress and the judiciary and be able to ignore the law with impunity.

Putting Pam Bondi — who he’d years ago bribed with $25,000 to drop Florida’s investigation into his scam university — in charge of the Justice Department was also a stroke of genius. She’d also spent 8 years as Florida Attorney General while Trump and Epstein were allegedly raping underage girls in her state and never even investigated any of it.

The pathetically supine Mike Johnson rolled over early, and John Roberts handed Trump the ultimate “get out of jail card” with his presidential immunity ruling. Meanwhile, friends close to movers-and-shakers within the administration — from Kristi Noem’s buddies to Friends of Ka$h Patel and Whiskey Pete — and members of Trump’s and Witkoff’s families and their kids are walking off with literally billions in bribes, contracts, and other forms of ill-gotten graft.

Which leaves it to us, average Americans like you and me, to reclaim American democracy and encourage our allied politicians to grow a damn spine and begin to seriously take on Trump’s and Heritage’s neofascism project before it’s gone too far to stop.

See you in the streets on March 28th.

Louise’s Daily Song: “Faster Than We Thought”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, Who Killed the American Dream?: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told is now available for presale from bookstores nationwide.
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