Inside the reckoning Trump didn't see coming

You can almost feel the change in the air we breathe.

It’s not just that Dems are winning special elections by wide margins (and even where they’re not, they’re “overperforming” in ruby-red areas by an average of 16 points).

Nor just that Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was overwhelmingly defeated after 16 years of authoritarian rule, with almost 80 percent of eligible voters turning out. (The victor, Peter Magyar, overcame Orbán’s rigged system by focusing on Orbán’s corruption and linking it to the economic difficulties facing average Hungarians.)

Or that Trump posted an image of himself as Jesus, revealing his God complex and causing even evangelical Christians in his MAGA base to question his religiosity and mental stability.

Or that Trump and Vance were dumb enough to pick a fight with Pope Leo, who has used it to explain his (and, for Catholics, Jesus’s) objections to war and to tyrants everywhere.

Or that Trump’s major ally in Europe (and the only European leader to attend his inauguration), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Malone, described Trump’s attack on the pope as “unacceptable” (Trump responded by attacking her for “lacking courage” in refusing to join his war on Iran).

Or that Trump threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization — prompting even Tucker Carlson to call Trump’s threat “vile on every level,” Candace Owens to demand that the 25th Amendment be invoked to remove him from office, conspiracist Alex Jones to accuse Trump of threatening “genocide,” and Megyn Kelly to concede that Trump’s coalition is “completely fractured and in smithereens.”

Or that Trump’s war has been such an abominable failure that it’s demonstrated his dangerous ignorance and diminishing mental capacity.

It’s all these, together.

Add in Trump’s legal failures to prosecute his political enemies, to target universities and law firms, to impose his tariffs, and to mount defamation lawsuits — and you understand why the air around us is beginning to feel different.

I hesitate to say we’ve reached a turning point in this horrific time. But something profound seems to be changing.

America and the world’s democracies are beginning to win this overriding fight — against the forces of authoritarianism, corruption, bigotry, ignorance, lies, greed, and violence.

We are starting to win because Trump and the forces he’s unleashed are so deeply repulsive to the consciences of most Americans and much of the rest of humanity.

The more Trump and these forces reveal themselves for what they are, the more that decent people — whether they call themselves Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive, right or left, American or non-American — are recoiling from them.

We have not yet prevailed, of course. But, my friends, we are making progress. And we will prevail.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/