Stephen Gottlieb

Trumps’s government efficiency staff went through Peace Corps offices recently. Trump tried to dismantle the Peace Corps in his first term. And he has already “eliminate[d] key pillars of America's soft power,” including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Voice of America and attacked the depth of knowledge and experience at the State Department. Let me draw on my Peace Corps experience to explain why I think Trump’s attack on America’s international agencies is very dangerous.

The difference between dictatorship and democracy is us! Are we willing to obey the dictator? It’s easy to pin the blame for dictatorship on a Hitler or a Trump but everything depends on our willingness to obey.

My wife spotted a note in Facebook that Trump’s tariff manipulations were making his billionaire friends much wealthier. The person posting suggested that billionaires had the money to invest when the market goes down and then sell when it goes up.

Why did Trump’s Air Force try to scrub videos and records of the excellent and celebrated Tuskegee Airmen and Navajo Code Talkers in World War II? Many pilots, sailors and troops were happy to get their support.

I’ve been talking a lot about how we get along with each other and with the world. My commentary has embraced teamwork, caring for each other, people who are black, white, brown and yellow, and foreign relations, peoples from different countries.

Teamwork made America great. Everything worthy requires a team.

Mr. Trump and his Republican allies claim his “executive power” means he can do whatever he wants. To put it simply, that’s nuts.

I hate to tell people I’ve told them something before, but I have a point to make. In my book on the Roberts Court and in various other talks and writings I have tried to warn that the disparity between rich and poor in America was going to threaten our way of life, our democracy, our liberty, even our lives by leading to anger that brushed away all rational discourse about how or who would work to deal with it.

Do you care if presidents are corrupt, take gifts, bribes or benefits for official acts? Think it’s no concern of yours? I’d like to convince you that presidential corruption can hit you very hard.

Let me begin by saying I don’t speak Yiddish or understand more than a few words. My parents did their best to prevent me from learning it – they wanted me to be 100% American. But they spoke it when they didn’t want me to understand what they were saying or with people, like some of my aunts, who’d come from the old country and were much more comfortable with Yiddish than English. About the only Yiddish phrase my parents actually taught me was the phrase for “play with me,” schpil mit mir, which I used often as a youngster.