America at 250: The Founders Could Not Imagine the Tragedy of Donald Trump

The danger is bigger than one president: it is a culture that prizes personal loyalty over constitutional government

There is a bitter irony in celebrating America's 250th birthday while asking a question that would have bewildered James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington: How does a nation born in rebellion against the cult of one man become so consumed by another?

The Founders feared kings. They feared demagogues. They feared mobs intoxicated by emotion rather than reason. They feared factions that would substitute loyalty to personalities for loyalty to the Constitution. Read the debates of the Constitutional Convention. Read The Federalist Papers. Read Washington's Farewell Address. Their anxiety was never merely about foreign enemies. It was about what free people might willingly do to themselves.

America was designed to produce citizens—not courtiers.

The rabbis of the Talmud understood the same danger long before Philadelphia. The Mishnah teaches, "Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for fear of it, people would swallow one another alive" (Pirkei Avot 3:2). Government is necessary because human beings are imperfect. Yet the same rabbinic tradition refuses to sanctify rulers. Government is indispensable, but rulers remain accountable to a law higher than themselves.

The Talmud repeatedly insists that no king stands above the Torah. The prophet Nathan publicly rebuked David. King David's greatness lay not in being flawless, but in accepting moral judgment. Jewish civilization does not celebrate infallible leaders; it celebrates leaders who remain subject to justice.

Perhaps no rabbinic maxim is more relevant than Hillel's timeless warning: "Do not separate yourself from the community, and do not trust yourself until the day of your death" (Pirkei Avot 2:4). Even the righteous are cautioned against believing themselves beyond error. If an individual should never place absolute trust in himself, how much less should an entire nation place absolute trust in any politician.

Donald Trump has become not merely a politician but the gravitational center of American public life. Every debate bends toward him. Every crisis is filtered through him. Every election becomes a referendum on him. Admirers often defend him reflexively, while critics frequently define themselves almost entirely in opposition to him. The individual eclipses the institution.

That inversion should alarm conservatives as much as liberals. The Constitution was written precisely because the Founders assumed no leader, however talented or popular, could safely be trusted with unbounded public devotion. Their political philosophy and the rabbinic worldview converge on one essential point: human beings require restraints because power magnifies human weakness.

The Talmud goes even further. In Sanhedrin, the sages debate the powers and limitations of kings not to glorify monarchy but to restrain it. Elsewhere, the principle "The law of the land is the law" (Dina de-Malkhuta Dina) affirms the legitimacy of civil authority while never suggesting that rulers themselves become objects of reverence. Law—not personality—is sovereign.

Moses, the greatest leader in Jewish history, was denied entry into the Promised Land. Why? Because Judaism insists that no leader is indispensable. God's covenant outlives every individual. The mission survives the man. That may be the most profound political lesson in the Hebrew Bible.

America's Founders reached a remarkably similar conclusion. George Washington's greatest act was not winning the Revolutionary War but relinquishing power. He demonstrated that the presidency belongs to the Constitution, not to the president. Washington and Moses, though separated by millennia and radically different contexts, each embodied the principle that enduring institutions matter more than personal glory.

The deeper tragedy is cultural. Politics has ceased to be primarily about preserving liberty and has too often become performance. Outrage is monetized. Humiliation substitutes for persuasion. Celebrity overshadows character. Every day demands another spectacle. The Founders envisioned public servants; modern America too often rewards public performers.

Donald Trump did not create every weakness in American civic life. He emerged from a culture already captivated by celebrity, polarization, and perpetual outrage. In that sense, he reflects broader currents as much as he shapes them. Yet the constitutional question remains unchanged: Will Americans remain loyal first to institutions and principles, or increasingly to personalities?

The rabbis taught that machloket l'shem shamayim—disagreement for the sake of Heaven—strengthens a community because truth emerges through honest argument rather than unquestioning loyalty. The debates of Hillel the Elder and Shammai became sacred precisely because neither side demanded blind allegiance. A civilization that values argument over adulation is more likely to preserve its freedom.

Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, the challenge is not whether America can produce another charismatic leader. It is whether Americans still possess the civic discipline to remember that the presidency is an office, not a throne; that patriotism belongs to the Constitution, not to a person; and that the Republic is always greater than the personality temporarily entrusted to lead it.

The Founders warned against concentrated political power. The sages warned against concentrated moral certainty. Together they teach the same enduring lesson: free societies survive not because they discover perfect leaders, but because they refuse to treat any leader as perfect.

 

REPUBLISHED *FEATURED POST*

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/america-at-250-the-founders-could-not-imagine-the-tragedy-of-donald-trump/

Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people possess the right to live freely in their ancestral homeland, to shape their future, defend their dignity, preserve their civilization and contribute their values and wisdom to humanity.

 

What Zionism Is and What It Is Not

By Ari D. Berman

In parts of America and Europe, the word “Zionism” has become little more than a slogan shouted by opposing sides at protests. It can be a term of pride or a biting shorthand for anger toward and condemnation of Israel and its supporters. This has led to a profound misunderstanding of what Zionism is and what it is not. The misuse of the word has flattened its dimensionality. It has, effectively, lost its meaning in the larger public.

Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people possess the right to live freely in their ancestral homeland, to shape their future, defend their dignity, preserve their civilization and contribute their values and wisdom to humanity. A Jewish homeland is understood as the primary vehicle for Jews to build a flourishing society, with all its residents, non-Jews and Jews alike, that manifests and broadcasts the core Torah values of human dignity, justice and compassion. The term predates the modern state of Israel by decades. And the origin story of Zionism began centuries before that.

In the Book of Genesis, we are told how God blessed Abraham and his descendants with a land from which they would be a blessing to “all the families of the earth.” That promise was held in the hearts of the Israelites during 400 years of bondage in Egypt. It inspired their return to the birthplace of their ancestors, as well as the founding of the first Jewish commonwealth, which grew, under King Solomon, to become a center of commerce, wisdom and morality.

Expulsions of the Jews from Israel, first in the Babylonian era and then in the Roman era, gave rise to a collective mourning that is expressed again and again in Jewish liturgy. To this day, Jews prevail upon God three times daily for the blessing of the land on which they can build a society. And in the blessings after meals, they thank God for giving us a “precious, good and spacious” land as a heritage.

The longing for the land translated into continued Jewish presence throughout its long history of foreign rulers, including a significant increase in Jewish communities in the 19th century. At this point, the modern Zionist vision began to take root.

In his 1896 seminal text on the idea of Jewish self-determination, “Der Judenstaat,” Theodor Herzl envisioned a Jewish state that would benefit humanity, writing, “Whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.”

In the wake of pogroms in Russia and the Dreyfus affair in France, Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement, believed that Zionism would unshackle the Jews from the constraints of physical fear as well as professional, social and generational discrimination. It would enable them to create a society that would serve as the fullest expression of themselves and to contribute most robustly to the world.

Early Zionist thinkers envisioned Jews and non-Jews living peacefully alongside each other in an inclusive country that adhered to the highest of moral callings. The mission of Zionism, as expressed by the early-20th-century journalist Ahad Ha’am (a nom de plume), was to create “a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews.”

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, espoused a similar idea, saying that Israel’s ultimate successes would be determined “not by its riches or military power nor by its technical skills but by its moral worth and human values.”

From its inception, the Jewish homeland committed itself to both Jewish self-determination and the full dignity and equal citizenship of people of all faiths and backgrounds. This commitment is enshrined in Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, after the country’s establishment by the United Nations. Like many national ideals, it has been tested by war, fear, extremism, political failure and competing national aspirations. The reality today does not always reflect the fullness of the vision of early Zionist thinkers. And yet the challenges and setbacks of any given moment do not invalidate the underlying promise of the idea itself.

Just as America’s founding democratic ideals continue to unfold imperfectly, the promise of Zionism is not one that is finished in its creation but an ideal that is refined and built upon each generation. Israel has advanced on that promise by creating a society built on freedom, opportunity and the rule of law, as well as by generating breakthroughs in science and medicine that improve and save lives around the world. A belief in the potential of Zionism is a belief in the obligation to continue to create the ideals for which it strives.

None of this means one cannot criticize the policies and practices of an Israeli administration. Anti-Zionism, however, goes much further and rejects the idea of Jewish self-determination entirely. Those who would deny the Jews the right to a Jewish state, in a world that comfortably accepts Muslim and Christian states, are discriminating against Jews. It is here that anti-Zionism crosses over to antisemitism.

Reducing Zionism to flags, slogans or epithets provides cover for those who seek Israel’s destruction and ignores all the good the Zionist project has wrought. An Israeli research hospital that is home to both Jewish and non-Jewish scientists, doctors and nurses, all working toward the same goal, is a Zionist enterprise. So, too, is Israel’s court system, composed of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze judges.

When a pro-Israel Jewish university, like mine in New York, educates psychologists who restore dignity, attorneys who protect the vulnerable, social workers who strengthen families, dentists who provide care to underserved communities or scientists who pursue groundbreaking discoveries — empowering students from every background to bring healing, dignity and opportunity into the world — that is also inspired by the Zionist mission.

While the modern state of Israel was founded on the ashes of the Holocaust and served as a safe haven for refugees, Zionism always aspired to be more than simply an answer to or refuge from antisemitism. It was a means of allowing Jews to live to their greatest potential, unfettered by the restrictive, often brutal, experiences of living in foreign lands. Zionism is thus an answer to a 3,800-year-old yearning, not only a response to a modern crisis.

Seen through the lens of its history and ultimate purpose, Zionism becomes a framework for constructive dialogue and renewed inspiration. From its biblical beginnings until today, Zionism has carried one of humanity’s most enduring ideas: that a people, rooted in its values and returned to its homeland, can build a society that honors faith, dignity, responsibility and hope.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/opinion/zionism-jewish-israel.html

Trump ‘Put On Notice’: Iran’s MAKE-OR-BREAK Warning Amid Big Tussle Over Deal | Full Detail

 Iran has hardened its stance against the United States, declaring that no final nuclear agreement will be possible until Washington fully honours what Tehran says are its commitments under the June 17 memorandum of understanding. Iranian officials also insist that trust has eroded following alleged violations of the agreement and renewed tensions over the Strait of Hormuz. As negotiations remain frozen and regional security hangs in the balance, the latest warning raises fresh questions about the future of U.S.-Iran diplomacy and stability across the Middle East.

Supreme Court Lets $5 Million Sex Abuse Verdict Against Trump Stand

 

President Trump had asked the justices to intervene after a jury found that he had sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.

In May 2023, a federal jury in New York found in President Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined a request by President Trump to review a $5 million civil judgment against him after a jury found in 2023 that he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.

The announcement by the justices did not include any reasoning, and no public dissents were noted.

A second case that arose out of Ms. Carroll’s allegations also could be headed to the Supreme Court. In January 2024, a separate jury ordered Mr. Trump to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape.

Lawyers for Mr. Trump have said they plan to ask that the justices also hear that case.

Still, Monday’s decision is a major blow to Mr. Trump, likely marking the end of his legal efforts to contest the jury verdict finding that he assaulted Ms. Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room.

It came after the court ruled in February that the president had overstepped his authority by issuing sweeping tariffs using emergency powers. That decision, which dealt a sharp blow to Mr. Trump’s economic and foreign policy strategy, drew sharp criticism from the president, who referred to the justices who voted against the tariffs as “fools and lap dogs” and a “disgrace to our nation.”

After the court’s announcement on Monday, Mr. Trump’s legal team released a statement calling Ms. Carroll’s cases a “Democrat-funded travesty” and adding that “President Trump will keep winning against liberal lawfare.”

In May 2023, a federal jury in New York found the president liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll.

The jury agreed that Ms. Carroll, a former magazine writer, had sufficiently shown that Mr. Trump sexually abused her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store when the two crossed paths in the 1990s. Further, the jury found that Mr. Trump had defamed Ms. Carroll by posting a statement on social media calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.” Throughout, Mr. Trump denied Ms. Carroll’s allegations.

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Among other evidence, the jury heard claims by two women in addition to Ms. Carroll that Mr. Trump had assaulted them, and an excerpt from the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump can be heard bragging that he had a practice of grabbing and kissing women without consent.

After the verdict, Mr. Trump appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asserting, among other things, that the trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, erred by allowing the evidence of the two women and the tape excerpt to be shown to the jury.

In December 2024, a three-judge appeals court panel upheld the jury’s verdict, finding that Mr. Trump failed to show that the evidence had harmed his rights to a fair trial.

Mr. Trump then asked the justices to weigh in and find that the trial court had erred.

In a brief to the court, lawyers for Mr. Trump described the evidence as “multiple decades-old, unverified and unrelated allegations.”

They also claimed that the appeals court had incorrectly applied the law and argued that the justices needed to step in because “if left uncorrected, these errors will recur in a host of future civil and criminal cases.”

Lawyers for Ms. Carroll asked the justices to reject the president’s petition.

In a brief to the justices, lawyers for Ms. Carroll wrote that the Supreme Court “routinely declines” to take up cases “when the questions presented are irrelevant to the outcome below.” They added, “such is the case here.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-sexual-assault.html

The Friday Night Presidency

 

US stock futures climb after halt on US strikes in Iran –- Sunday Evening Wall St. Headlines

 

The paradox is striking. A president determined to project strength may inadvertently create an expectation that every use of force is temporary, every escalation reversible, and every conflict destined to end at the negotiating table before financial markets become too uncomfortable.

There is a rhythm to the way Donald Trump now manages war. It is becoming almost as predictable as the opening bell on Wall Street.

Bombs fall after the markets close on Friday. The headlines are terrifying. Television panels speak of escalation, retaliation, and the possibility of a wider Middle East war. The weekend is consumed by images of explosions, satellite photographs, military briefings, and dramatic declarations of strength. Then, almost on cue, comes the next act before the futures markets begin trading Sunday night or before Monday’s opening bell: calls for negotiations, peace talks, ceasefires, or “historic deals.” Suddenly the language changes from shock and awe to optimism and diplomacy.

The markets breathe a sigh of relief. Stock futures rise. Investors convince themselves that the worst has passed. Until the next Friday.

This is not merely military strategy. It increasingly resembles market psychology wrapped in foreign policy. The objective appears to be producing maximum political theater while minimizing sustained financial panic. War becomes episodic. Escalation becomes temporary. Every military strike is followed by an equally dramatic promise that peace is just around the corner.

The financial markets have learned the pattern. Traders are no longer reacting solely to missiles and bombers. They are reacting to presidential messaging. A strike on Friday is no longer simply a military event; it is followed by speculation that negotiations will be announced before Asian markets open. The White House has inadvertently created its own geopolitical trading cycle.

But wars are not earnings reports.

Iran, its proxies, and America’s adversaries are not portfolio managers studying futures contracts. They are calculating military advantage, political weakness, and strategic opportunity. They understand that democracies often seek immediate calm while authoritarian regimes are perfectly willing to endure prolonged instability. If America’s military actions become predictable, predictability itself becomes a strategic liability.

History repeatedly demonstrates that military campaigns cannot be managed according to market calendars. Markets crave certainty. War produces uncertainty. Trying to synchronize the two risks satisfying neither. Investors may enjoy temporary rallies, but enemies are unlikely to adjust their operational planning because Wall Street prefers green numbers on Monday morning.

Perhaps this approach reflects Trump’s lifelong instincts as a businessman. Financial confidence has always occupied a central place in his political worldview. Rising markets are treated as a national referendum on presidential success. But the battlefield obeys different laws than the stock exchange. Markets reward confidence; military adversaries test it relentlessly.

There is another danger lurking beneath this cycle. If every military escalation is immediately followed by overtures for negotiation, America’s threats may gradually lose credibility. Allies begin asking whether every show of force is simply another prelude to talks. Adversaries begin calculating that they need only absorb the initial blow before Washington seeks another diplomatic exit.

Deterrence depends not merely on military capability but on the perceived willingness to sustain pressure when necessary.

The paradox is striking. A president determined to project strength may inadvertently create an expectation that every use of force is temporary, every escalation reversible, and every conflict destined to end at the negotiating table before financial markets become too uncomfortable.

Perhaps Wall Street applauds. History may render a different verdict.

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The best Orthodox Jewish blogs curated and ranked based on multiple factors, including content relevancy, subject expertise, posting frequency, and freshness of content. Blogs with highest credibility within the Orthodox Jewish space are ranked higher. This list is updated regularly to ensure it reflects the most active, influential, and valuable Orthodox Jewish blogs on the internet today. https://bloggers.feedspot.com/orthodox_jewish_blogs/

 

REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-friday-night-presidency/

Sam Harris on Trump's Iran Deal: A Fully Humiliating Capitulation - My Full Agreement With Sam! (Except for a Few F Bombs :-)

 Sam Harris on Trump's Iran Deal: A Fully Humiliating Capitulation https://youtu.be/koCj-Ds6KSE?si=mByqXmlzeiN-JC4p via

@YouTube

Obama Gave Us Trump. Biden Brought Him Back. Trump Gave Us Global Instability—and Mamdani & Company.

 Many Israelis initially viewed Trump's return with optimism. After all, this was the president associated with the recognition of Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords, and a generally confrontational posture toward Iran. But Jews should know better than to confuse tactical victories with strategic realities. The question is never what happens this week. The question is what happens five years from now.

 

Among the oldest mistakes in Jewish history is the belief that history moves in straight lines. It never does. The Jews left Egypt and found themselves in the wilderness. They returned from Babylon and discovered new enemies waiting at the gates. Every apparent victory carried within it the seeds of a future crisis. American politics has proven no different.

For many American Jews, the election of Barack Obama represented the triumph of a certain vision of America—cosmopolitan, educated, internationalist, and confident. Yet politics abhors a vacuum. The cultural and political backlash that accumulated during the Obama years did not disappear; it exploded. Out of that backlash emerged Donald Trump, a political force unlike anything America had seen in modern times. The irony is almost biblical. The movement that believed it was burying old forms of populism ended up awakening them with unprecedented force.

Then came Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, promising a restoration of normalcy. Yet instead of ending the Trump era, they unintentionally preserved it. Every inflationary shock, every border controversy, every cultural battle, every perception of governmental weakness became fuel for Trump's political resurrection. What was supposed to be a political funeral became a resurrection. Trump did not crawl out of the grave himself. His opponents helped dig him out.

Many Israelis initially viewed Trump's return with optimism. After all, this was the president associated with the recognition of Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords, and a generally confrontational posture toward Iran. But Jews should know better than to confuse tactical victories with strategic realities. The question is never what happens this week. The question is what happens five years from now.

Israel's greatest strategic asset has never been a single American president. It has been a stable American-led international order. For eighty years, America's alliances, deterrence, military strength, and political predictability created a world in which Israel could thrive. Once that order begins to crack, everyone feels the consequences—especially a small Jewish state surrounded by adversaries.

The tragedy is that global instability rarely announces itself dramatically at first. It appears as uncertainty. Allies become nervous. Enemies become adventurous. Deterrence becomes ambiguous. Every actor starts testing limits. Iran tests. China tests. Russia tests. Terrorist organizations test. The world becomes less about rules and more about guessing who is willing to enforce them.

The Jewish people should be particularly sensitive to this danger because Jewish history is largely the story of what happens when great powers become distracted, divided, or exhausted. Jews prosper under stability. We suffer under chaos. The twentieth century taught that lesson in blood. The twenty-first century seems determined to teach it again.

And then comes the domestic consequence. Political instability never stays confined to foreign policy. It eventually transforms the internal politics of a nation. Figures such as Zohran Mamdani and others on the progressive left do not emerge in a vacuum. They are products of a political system that has lost its center of gravity. When institutions lose credibility, ideological movements rush to fill the void. The result is a political landscape increasingly hostile to the broad pro-Israel consensus that once united Democrats and Republicans alike.

This should concern American Jews far more than the daily partisan warfare dominating cable news. Presidents come and go. Coalitions rise and fall. What matters is whether the cultural and political foundations supporting Israel remain intact. A generation ago, support for Israel was one of the few issues capable of bridging partisan divides. Today, that consensus is under pressure from both extremes.

The lesson for Jews and Israelis is therefore uncomfortable but necessary. Do not place your faith in political messiahs. Not in Obama. Not in Biden. Not in Trump. Jewish history contains a standing prohibition against the worship of golden calves, yet every generation seems determined to manufacture new ones.

Obama's era helped create the conditions for Trump. Biden's era helped bring Trump back. Trump's return may create conditions that strengthen forces his supporters never intended to empower. History is filled with such ironies.

The Jewish people have survived Pharohs, Caesars, Inquisitors, Czars, Nazis, Soviet commissars, and countless political saviors who promised to reshape the world. The enduring lesson is not to place faith in personalities but in realities. For Israel, the reality that matters most is not who occupies the White House today. It is whether the international order remains stable enough tomorrow for the Jewish state to defend itself, prosper, and endure.

That is the question Israelis should be asking. Everything else is merely the noise of the moment.

 

REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/obama-gave-us-trump-biden-brought-him-back-plus-mamdani-friends/

Donald Trump, the world’s most powerful man yet possibly the world’s smallest

 

If You Love America, Cringe for It

My father was fond of the Spanish expression “en los pequeños detalles se ve la persona” — the person is revealed in the small details. Last week, at the summit of the Group of 7 leaders in France, two details revealed two people in two starkly different lights.

The first — who else? — is Donald Trump, the world’s most powerful man yet possibly the world’s smallest. Speaking to a journalist, the president claimed that Giorgia Meloni, the right-wing prime minister of Italy, with whom he was once friendly but has since fallen out, “begged me to take a picture with her. She wanted a picture with me so badly,” before adding, “I wouldn’t have done it, but I felt sorry for her!”

Meloni’s response came swiftly. Trump’s statement, she said, was “totally invented.”

“I don’t know why the president of the United States behaves this way toward his own allies,” she said in a video posted to social media. “After all, this is not the first time it has happened. I can only say that it’s upsetting that he doesn’t have the same resolve toward the enemies of the West, toward the enemies of the United States, toward leadership to which he instead proves much more indulgent.”

“There is one thing he should remember,” she concluded. “I never beg — and neither does Italy.”

No prizes here for guessing who’s telling the truth — or who, despite their very considerable difference in physical size, is the bigger and braver person. But there’s also a lesson in this relatively trivial but telling episode that it behooves Americans to learn on the eve of our semiquincentennial: If you love America, now is the time to cringe for it.

Cringing is not simply a physical reflex stemming from embarrassment or disgust. It also involves a mix of compassion and empathy. You cringe when someone’s child flubs their lines in a school play. You cringe for a spouse trying to calm an abrasively drunk partner at a dinner party. You cringe whenever you feel implicated, if only as a human being, whenever someone humiliates those near them, even when they’re the last to know it. It’s how I felt for Jill Biden the night of her husband’s debate debacle.

To exist as a sentient American in the age of Trump is to live in a perpetual cringe — morally, aesthetically, intellectually, politically. If the administration were a play or film script, it would be neither farce nor tragedy but instead a kind of absurdist travesty, “Waiting for Godot” meets “Pulp Fiction” meets “Dumb and Dumber.”

However much we may disdain him, the president has the rest of us on the hook, as the face and voice of a country that ought to know better. Trump’s angry visage draped between the exterior columns of the Department of Justice? That’s us. His gilded, meretricious redecoration of the White House? That’s us. His repeatedly avowed admiration for Vladimir Putin? That’s us. His laughable claim about having achieved regime change in Tehran? That’s us. His Mafia-like threats against NATO allies? That’s us. His indescribably vain (and pathetically fruitless) effort to affix his name to the Kennedy Center? That’s us. His venal family profiting off his presidency in ways both transparent and tacky? That’s us.

The same goes for his insult of Meloni, which may be far from the worst of his sins but is also the most emblematic for being at once so utterly unnecessary as well as dementedly self-defeating. That’s us. The same country that freed its slaves, welcomed immigrants, invented airplanes, liberated concentration camps, landed men on the moon and challenged the Soviet Union to tear down this wall now bids to be the global equivalent of the expensively dressed man soiling his pants at a cocktail party.

For 10 years, I’ve watched my former political party work overtime not to cringe; to pretend that the Vesuvius of verbal infamies erupting daily from Trump’s mouth is either unimportant, or hilarious, or calculating and shrewd. Republicans turned their tolerance for the president’s mental goo into a shot-drinking contest — the more you drank, the manlier you were supposed to be. John McCain and Mitt Romney refused to play, to their everlasting credit; other Republicans, less admirably, did so only after Trump had ended their political futures.

But for 10 years, too, I’ve also watched the president’s opponents fail to appreciate the necessity of cringing — by understanding their role in Trump’s rise. The Democrats and their media enablers who, until June of 2024, insisted Joe Biden was fit for a second term (surely knowing, somewhere in the dim recesses of their minds, that this could only help Trump) are complicit. So are the progressives who, on one cultural issue after another, shoved the Democratic Party so far to the left that it became the very caricature of what MAGA-world said it was.

Here, then, is our American challenge: Let’s not be afraid to cringe. Ronald Reagan predicted, correctly, that the Soviet Union would end up on the ash heap of history; now it’s our turn to risk winding up on the ash heap of idiocy.

So let’s not look away from the parts we played in bringing America to this moment. Let’s remember who we once were, because it’s what we may yet be again — if only we feel the sting of our present shame.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/opinion/trump-meloni-america-cringe.html

"Developing Danger" Versus "Imminent Danger": Trump Is Forcing Israel to Wait

There is a profound difference between a developing danger and an imminent danger. Statesmen understand the distinction. Generals live by it. Nations that ignore it often pay for their mistake in blood.

Trump has a gift for taking a hard problem and making it worse by refusing to name it until it has already metastasized. That is the central danger in his posture toward Israel and Lebanon: the insistence on waiting for “imminent danger” as though national security were some courtroom standard and not a brutally simple question of whether an enemy is already preparing the next round of war. By the time danger becomes “imminent” in the bureaucratic sense, Israel has already been degraded, civilians have already been exposed, and the enemy has already been granted the one thing it most needs: time.

That distinction between developing danger and imminent danger is not semantic. It is the difference between a state that acts like a sovereign and a state that waits to be surprised. Lebanon has long been a laboratory for this confusion. Hezbollah does not begin with missiles raining down on Tel Aviv. It begins with tunnels, stockpiles, forward positions, command-and-control systems, and the patient normalization of aggression along a border that is supposed to be defended, not negotiated into meaninglessness. The threat develops first. It hardens second. And only then, once the menace is fully in place, do the same people who warned against “escalation” begin speaking solemnly about “restraint.”

Trump, of all people, should understand the political temptation to delay reality. He has built an entire personality around ignoring warning signs until they become headlines. But a prime minister or president who governs that way is not bold; he is negligent. Israel does not live in a seminar room. It lives next to an armed proxy state that has repeatedly treated calm as an intermission and deterrence as a dare. Waiting until danger is “imminent” in the narrowest possible sense is a luxury Israel cannot afford, because Lebanon’s southern frontier is not a theory. It is a launchpad.

The problem is that Washington too often talks as though war begins at the moment of visible impact. Israel knows better. War begins when an enemy is allowed to entrench under the cover of international caution, diplomatic euphemism, and the lazy belief that a threat can be managed simply because it has not yet exploded. Hezbollah’s strength is not merely in its rockets. It is in the West’s chronic refusal to treat gradual accumulation as a form of attack. By the time the danger is labeled “imminent,” it has already passed through months, sometimes years, of development that should have triggered decisive action.

That is why Trump’s instinct to force Israel into waiting is so dangerous. It converts strategy into passivity. It tells Israel to stand still while the enemy completes the job. It rewards Hezbollah’s preferred method of warfare: the slow squeeze, the incremental encirclement, the deliberate building of a crisis so dense that action becomes politically harder than surrender. This is how enemies win without formally declaring victory. They persuade their target that anticipation itself is provocative.

There is also something profoundly dishonest about the moral language used to defend this delay. We are told that action must wait until danger is “imminent,” as if the absence of visible fire means the house is safe. But in the real world of Israeli security, the question is never whether the fire has started. It is whether the match has already been struck, the fuel already laid, and the arsonist already standing at the door. Developing danger is not imaginary danger. It is danger in formation. And when that danger is tied to Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iran, and the entire axis of regional sabotage, waiting for the final stage is not prudence. It is self-deception.

Israel’s enemies thrive on this self-deception because it gives them a strategic gift: the freedom to prepare in peace while the West debates definitions. That is the catastrophe lurking inside Trump’s approach. He speaks as if Israel should endure the slow-motion construction of a future massacre, so long as the present can still be described as not quite “imminent.” But national survival does not depend on semantic thresholds. It depends on the willingness to strike danger before it matures into disaster.

Israel has paid too high a price for lessons the world refuses to learn. Every time the country is pressured to wait, to absorb, to absorb a little more, and to act only once the threat is undeniable, the same pattern repeats itself: the enemy becomes stronger, the battlefield becomes uglier, and the eventual response becomes more costly. Lebanon is not an exception to this rule. It is the proof of it.

The bitter irony is that those who talk most loudly about avoiding escalation are usually the ones who make escalation inevitable. They confuse patience with wisdom and delay with control. But there is nothing controlled about allowing an enemy to build its arsenal in broad daylight. There is nothing wise about demanding that Israel wait until the arrow is in flight before it is permitted to draw its bow.

In the end, the argument is simple. Developing danger must be confronted while it is still developing. Imminent danger is already late. For Israel in Lebanon, late can be fatal. And for a president who imagines that hesitation is statesmanship, the result will not be peace. It will be surprise, blood, and the familiar postmortem in which everyone pretends the warning signs were not visible all along.

Israel has no choice but to tell Trump:"Jews Do Not Commit Suicide".

 

REPUBLISHED

 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/developing-danger-versus-imminent-danger-trump-is-forcing-israel-to-wait/

Trump Hurt Americans More Than the Damage He's Done to Israel

 

The  question is not what Donald Trump did to Israel. The larger question is what Donald Trump did to America. 

Among many American Jews, there has been an endless debate over Donald Trump and Israel. Some view him as one of Israel's greatest friends. Others view him as reckless, unpredictable, and ultimately dangerous to the Jewish state. Supporters point to diplomatic achievements, while critics point to strategic confusion and personal volatility. Yet both sides may be asking the wrong question.

Israel, despite its many internal divisions, remains a remarkably resilient nation. Israelis live in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on earth. They have survived wars, terrorism, missile attacks, intifadas, international isolation, hostile administrations, and diplomatic betrayals. The Jewish state was born into crisis and has spent most of its existence navigating threats that would have shattered many other nations. Israel understands a hard truth that generations of Jews learned through centuries of exile: no foreign leader, however friendly, can ultimately be relied upon for Jewish survival.

America, however, entered the Trump era from a position of extraordinary strength. It possessed the world's largest economy, the world's most powerful military, and institutions that had survived civil war, world wars, economic depression, and political scandal. The United States was hardly perfect, but it remained the central pillar of the democratic world order. Its greatest strength was not military power. Its greatest strength was trust—trust in institutions, trust in elections, trust in the rule of law, and trust that fellow Americans, despite fierce disagreements, remained part of the same national family. That trust has been steadily deteriorating for years. Donald Trump did not create the disease. But he accelerated it.

Trump understood something that many politicians before him did not. He understood that fear attracts attention faster than hope. Anger mobilizes voters faster than persuasion. Outrage spreads faster than facts. The modern media environment rewarded conflict, and Trump became its greatest practitioner. Every disagreement became a war. Every criticism became an attack. Every compromise became weakness. Every institution that challenged him became suspect.

The result was not merely another rough chapter in American politics. The result was the transformation of politics into a permanent state of national emergency. Americans increasingly came to view every election as a struggle for survival. Every political opponent became an existential threat. Every policy dispute became a moral crusade. The language of democratic disagreement was replaced by the language of total warfare. This development should deeply concern anyone familiar with Jewish history.

The rabbis taught that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam—baseless hatred among Jews themselves. Whether one interprets that teaching literally or symbolically is beside the point. The lesson is timeless. Nations are rarely destroyed solely by external enemies. More often, they weaken themselves from within. The walls may remain standing, but the social fabric begins to unravel. Trust disappears. Shared assumptions vanish. Citizens stop seeing themselves as members of a common society. America today increasingly exhibits these symptoms.
  
Large numbers of Americans no longer trust the media. Large numbers no longer trust universities. Large numbers no longer trust federal agencies, courts, election officials, or public health institutions. On both the left and the right, there is a growing belief that the entire system is fundamentally illegitimate whenever it produces outcomes they dislike. Such a mindset is poisonous to constitutional government.

A republic cannot function if every defeat is interpreted as theft. It cannot function if every election is viewed as fraudulent whenever one's side loses.It cannot function if citizens are convinced that half the country consists not of misguided fellow Americans but of enemies who must be defeated at all costs.

Trump did not invent these attitudes. They existed long before he descended the escalator in 2015. But he recognized their political utility and amplified them. Instead of calming tensions, he often poured fuel on them. Instead of strengthening confidence in democratic institutions, he frequently undermined it whenever those institutions failed to serve his immediate interests.

The tragedy extends beyond politics. Trump helped normalize a culture in which performance became more important than substance. Public life increasingly resembled entertainment. The loudest voice often received the most attention. Complexity became a liability. Nuance became weakness. Expertise became suspect. The ability to generate outrage became more valuable than the ability to govern. This cultural shift may ultimately prove more damaging than any specific policy decision.

A nation can recover from a bad trade agreement. It can recover from an unsuccessful military operation. It can recover from economic mistakes. History is filled with examples of countries rebounding from poor leadership and flawed decisions. Recovering from the collapse of civic trust is far more difficult.

When citizens cease believing in the legitimacy of institutions, rebuilding confidence can take generations. Once cynicism becomes entrenched, every effort at reform is viewed with suspicion. Every leader becomes suspect. Every outcome becomes evidence of conspiracy. A society trapped in perpetual distrust eventually loses the ability to solve even its most basic problems.

Israel has many challenges ahead. It faces threats from hostile neighbors, regional instability, terrorism, and demographic tensions. But Israelis possess a hard-earned realism. They understand that survival depends ultimately on their own strength, their own sacrifices, and their own unity. America's challenge is different.

America must rediscover the civic virtues that made its institutions strong in the first place. It must relearn that disagreement is not treason. It must relearn that compromise is not surrender. It must relearn that constitutional government requires patience, restraint, and mutual legitimacy.

Donald Trump will eventually leave the political stage, just as every political figure does. The deeper question is whether the habits he encouraged will leave with him. The damage inflicted upon American civic culture may long outlast any presidency.

History may ultimately conclude that Trump's greatest impact was not on foreign policy, not on Israel, not on the Middle East, and not even on the Republican Party. His greatest impact may have been convincing millions of Americans that their fellow citizens were no longer partners in a shared national project. For any republic, that is a dangerous belief.

The Iran Memorandum of Understanding may ultimately become the most revealing example of the Trump era. After years of presenting himself as the man who would never tolerate Iranian aggression, never permit Iranian nuclear ambitions, and never negotiate from weakness, Trump suddenly found himself celebrating a vague and unfinished agreement whose central disputes remain unresolved. The agreement reportedly includes a ceasefire, discussions regarding sanctions relief, reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a sixty-day framework for future negotiations, while leaving many of the most difficult questions for later talks. Critics and supporters alike continue to debate what exactly has been achieved and what has merely been postponed.

What matters politically is not whether one supports diplomacy or opposes it. Nations negotiate with adversaries all the time. The issue is the widening gap between rhetoric and reality. Americans were told for years that Iran would be forced into unconditional concessions. Instead, they are now being asked to celebrate a memorandum of understanding—a preliminary political framework rather than a final settlement—whose advocates themselves acknowledge requires extensive future negotiations.

The deeper damage falls not upon Israel but upon the American public. Citizens are repeatedly encouraged to believe that every development is a historic triumph, every negotiation is the greatest deal ever achieved, and every criticism is evidence of disloyalty. When reality inevitably proves more complicated, public trust suffers another blow. Americans become increasingly cynical, not merely about politicians but about the very possibility of honest political discourse.

Israel, meanwhile, has learned through bitter experience that agreements on paper are only as valuable as the willingness and ability of governments to enforce them. Israelis have lived through ceasefires, understandings, road maps, disengagements, and diplomatic frameworks. They know that the Middle East has a long history of documents that look impressive at signing ceremonies and far less impressive when confronted by reality.

The irony is striking. Trump entered politics promising to restore American strength and end the era of weak deals. Yet the Iran MOU has raised questions across the political spectrum precisely because it appears to defer many of the hardest decisions while presenting itself as a historic breakthrough. Whether the agreement succeeds or fails is almost secondary. The larger issue is that Americans are once again being asked to substitute political theater for sober analysis.

And that may be the defining feature of the Trump era. The damage is not simply measured in foreign policy outcomes. It is measured in the growing inability of Americans to distinguish between a final achievement and a press conference, between a lasting solution and a temporary headline, between governing and performing. A republic cannot thrive when spectacle consistently replaces substance.

For the United States, it may prove to be the most expensive legacy of all.

 

REPUBLISHED

 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/trump-hurt-americans-more-than-the-damage-hes-done-to-israel/

Who Knew G-D Speaks To Imbeciles?

Top Shas rabbi: US-Iran deal is divine punishment for arrests of Haredi draft dodgers

 

Ex-Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, known for controversial remarks on matters of religion and state, also says ‘garbage’ attorney general to blame for Trump’s ‘turn against’ Israel

Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, during a weekly teaching at the Yazdim synagogue in Jerusalem

 

Former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who is also the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said the emerging US-Iran peace deal –which many Israelis see as a betrayal by US President Donald Trump — was a divine punishment for Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s efforts to crack down on Haredi draft evaders.

“Yeshiva students since the time of [Israel’s first prime minister David] Ben-Gurion have been exempted [from military service] and engaged in Torah study. The Torah protects us,” asserted the former chief rabbi during his weekly Saturday evening lecture. “Why did [Trump] turn against us for no reason? Because of the decrees they issue against the students of Torah; that is why he turned against us.”

“Stop the arrests,” he demanded. “This woman, this wicked woman, is garbage.”

The ultra-Orthodox community has significantly ramped up both its actions and its rhetoric against efforts to detain draft evaders in recent weeks, with mass protests shutting down major roads throughout the country on more than one occasion, and lawmakers threatening to cease cooperation with the police.

The escalation was prompted by an Israel Police decision to begin detaining draft evaders, in line with an order from the High Court of Justice.

The IDF has sent out tens of thousands of enlistment orders to ultra-Orthodox men over the past two years, after the blanket exemptions enjoyed by the community were revoked by the High Court in 2024. Most have ignored the draft notices and are thus classified as draft evaders, subject to arrest or other sanctions.

While the military has made no move to arrest all 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18-24 believed to be eligible for service, the detainment of even a small fraction has ignited anger.

Israeli security forces stand guard as ultra-Orthodox Jews gather to protest against the detention of Haredi draft evaders outside the Bet Lid military prison in Kfar Yona on June 17, 2026. (Ilia Yefimovich/AFP)

 

As an advocate for these sanctions, the attorney general has become a frequent target of ire from Haredi lawmakers and other public officials.

Earlier this month, United Torah Judaism lawmaker MK Meir Porush declared that if Baharav-Miara “does not stop persecuting Torah scholars,” there would be “no choice” but to “drive her out with sticks and stones.”

In addition to issuing threats against the attorney general, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers have, in recent weeks, threatened a tax revolt; called on police to disobey orders; demanded local authorities halt cooperation with law enforcement; and announced that they would seek to dissolve the Knesset and trigger early elections.

Their rhetoric has trickled down through the communities they represent, where demonstrators, particularly those affiliated with the extremist Jerusalem Faction, have taken to the streets in an effort to block the arrests of military-aged men.

Some of these protests have turned violent, including one outside the central Israel city of Bnei Brak last week, where police used stun grenades and batons to disperse protesters who were blocking traffic.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men block a road and clash with police during a protest against the jailing of yeshiva students who failed to comply with an army recruitment order, at Ganot Junction near Tel Aviv, June 11, 2026. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

 

Protesters have also, in recent weeks, tried to break into the home of Supreme Court Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg, forced their way into a police compound in Beit Shemesh, and broken into the home of the Military Police chief while his family was inside.

Yosef, the son of influential Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has garnered a reputation for controversial remarks on matters of religion and state.

In October 2025, he was heard in a recording calling a fellow rabbi and bereaved father of a slain soldier a “heretic” for supporting measures to enlist yeshiva students.

And in May of that year, he warned that if the government were to begin arresting yeshiva students for evading draft orders, then the ultra-Orthodox community would be forced to leave Israel.

“If they force us to go to the army, the yeshiva students, if they come to yeshivas and arrest students, [then] we have no right to exist here [and] we will all go abroad, we will not stay here,” Yosef said at the time.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-shas-rabbi-us-iran-deal-is-divine-punishment-for-arrests-of-haredi-draft-dodgers/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2026-06-21&utm_medium=email

To My Israeli Brothers: Tone Down the Public Criticism of Donald Trump

 

There is an old Jewish saying: Don't provoke a king unless you are prepared to live with the consequences. Whether Americans like it or not, whether Israelis like it or not, Donald Trump sits in the White House. He commands the most powerful military on earth, controls the diplomatic machinery of the United States, and possesses the ability to make life either easier or far more difficult for the Jewish State.

That is why I find some of the public criticism of Trump coming out of Israel strategically reckless. Not because Trump is beyond criticism. He is not. Not because his policies are always correct. They are not. But because politics is not a yeshiva debate, a university seminar, or a social media shouting match. Politics is the art of surviving in an imperfect world.

Many Israelis seem to believe that publicly humiliating Trump, mocking him, or openly challenging him carries no consequences. They are making a dangerous assumption. Trump's political career has demonstrated one consistent trait: he rarely forgets a perceived slight, and he rarely forgives one. Friends can become enemies overnight. Allies can suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of public attacks, diplomatic pressure, or political punishment.

Israel has enough enemies without creating unnecessary friction with the occupant of the Oval Office.

The uncomfortable reality is that America remains Israel's most important strategic partner. Weapons systems, intelligence cooperation, diplomatic backing, and economic ties are not abstract concepts. They are pillars of Israeli national security. A nation surrounded by hostile forces cannot afford the luxury of emotional diplomacy.

This does not mean Israel should surrender its interests. Quite the opposite. Menachem Begin stood up to presidents. David Ben-Gurion stood up to presidents. Yitzhak Shamir stood up to presidents. But they understood something many modern commentators have forgotten: when confrontation is necessary, it should be purposeful, disciplined, and tied directly to national interests—not driven by anger, social media outrage, or the desire to score political points.

There is also a deeper lesson from Jewish history. Jews have survived for thousands of years not because we were the strongest people, but because we understood power. We understood when to fight, when to negotiate, when to remain silent, and when to speak. Wisdom is not merely telling the truth. Wisdom is knowing when, where, and how to tell it.

Some Israelis seem determined to learn this lesson the hard way. They assume that because America is a democracy, criticism comes without cost. Usually that is true. But Donald Trump is not a usual politician. He is a man whose personal grievances often become public policy. Whether one admires him or despises him is beside the point. Reality does not care about our feelings.

The first responsibility of Israeli leaders is not to express their emotions. It is to protect the State of Israel.

If criticism of Trump becomes necessary, let it be measured. Let it be strategic. Let it be connected to Israel's security needs. But public grandstanding, insults, and provocations directed at a man who possesses enormous political power serve no Israeli interest whatsoever.

The Middle East is already dangerous enough. There is no need to create another front in a war that does not need to be fought.

In Jewish history, survival has often depended upon recognizing reality before others do. The reality today is simple: Donald Trump may be many things, but he is also the President of the United States. Wise nations do not pick unnecessary fights with powerful allies. They protect their interests, preserve their relationships, and keep their eyes fixed on the dangers that truly matter.

Israel would be wise to remember that.

 

REPUBLISHED

 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/to-my-israeli-brothers-tone-down-the-public-criticism-of-donald-trump/