https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/donald-trump-independence-day-little-rocket-man?fbclid=IwAR2_8H3_L4JYstroJPiMGuWUrIAu6pu6sIo7ayzIxHNSLZN1qmKC3GWx2EE
"The increased military display on Independence Day is hardly the most significant piece in the miserable jigsaw that is the Trump Administration. In recent weeks, we have seen so many pieces: A credible charge of rape. The imminent collapse of Iran’s nuclear restraint, thanks to the President’s foolish abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal. Trump’s airy dismissal of the climate emergency at the recent G-20 meetings in Osaka. (“We have the cleanest water we’ve ever had. . . .”) Perhaps the most significant event at the G-20 session came when Vladimir Putin used the occasion to declare, in a run-up interview with the Financial Times, that “the liberal idea has become obsolete.” Sounding much like Trump at his fearmongering worst, Putin said, “The liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done. The migrants can kill, plunder, and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants must be protected.” Leaders including Emmanuel Macron of France and Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, stood up to Putin and the idea that Russian-style authoritarianism was the wave of the future. By contrast, Trump voiced not a word of objection. Why would he? He is in total agreement with Putin. And, in Osaka, he stood with the Russian President and mocked both the idea of a free press and the notion that Russia had ever interfered in the 2016 elections on his behalf. And so, on the Fourth, we will watch Trump, who evaded military service by pleading phantom bone spurs, spend millions of dollars of public funds in order to enact a fantasy of martial leadership."
