Veteran political insider: We have all the signs of a 'failed nation-state'

19 June

A statue protesting U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

White House Columnist Brian Karem tells Salon that President Donald Trump has reduced the U.S. to a ‘failed state’ in little over 100 days.

This goes beyond Trump paving over the lawn of Jackie Kennedy’s iconic Rose Garden and installing flagpoles big enough to spark whispers about “over-compensating” and “wishful thinking,” said Karem. This is about Trump failing so frequently on Iran that he finally confessed to reporters that he could not say if the U.S. was going to join Israel in bombing it.

“You don’t know that I’m going to even do it. I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump said, and Karem agrees he probably “said the quiet part out loud again.”

“He has no idea what he’s going to do,” Karem writes, before launching into the myriad other ways the U.S. has collapsed into failure.

“The chief executive officer is a convicted felon, 34 times over, and has been held liable in civil court for sexual abuse and defamation. He has issued executive orders that eliminate due process. He has ignored the Posse Comitatus Act and has considered invoking the Insurrection Act,” said Karem, a reporter since the 1980s. “He has deployed the military as police against American citizens. He is systematically purging from the federal government anyone perceived to be disloyal to him. He has hired clearly and provocatively unqualified people for some of the most important jobs in the administration.”

In addition to these things, Trump has “vowed recrimination against his ‘political enemies’ and calls the press ‘the enemy of the people.’ He won’t allow anyone to hold an opinion contrary to his own and lies so often that scores of fact-checkers owe their livelihood to researching his continuous, mind-bending deceptions,” Karem said. “… He and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller screamed that ‘No Kings’ protesters across the country were insurrectionists while he commuted the sentences of, or gave pardons to, 1500 people who engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6. because they supported him.”

And then came the most obvious sign of a failed state to Karem: The political assassination of two Minnesota Democratic state lawmakers and their spouses, with little empathy from Trump or his MAGA followers. Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee mocked the attack in social media posts. “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” Lee wrote.

Karem points out that Trump joined in when he “rambled incoherently about Iran and Israel” and insulted Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, before vowing not to call him because a courtesy call would be a “waste of time.”

Other signs of the nation’s failure include the “the entire Democratic party, which continues to eat its own” even in the face of the nation’s destruction.

“Meanwhile, the Fourth Estate has failed spectacularly, with reporters fired, lawsuits settled and apologies made that should never have been made. Rare is it these days that Trump is even asked a decent question,” says Karem. “…The eye rolling, interruptions and damning with faint praise the G7 leaders gave … Trump is about the only indication of how little this country is respected internationally.”

Karem left the final word of his tirade to Reagan appointee U.S. District Judge William Young of Massachusetts, who shot down Trump’s recent attempt to kill hundreds of NIH grants.

“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Judge Young said, speaking on the specific beneficiaries for the grants. “You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The Constitution will not permit that … Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

“Apparently not,” Karem Laments.

Read the full Salon report at this link.

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