Republished with permission from Steve Schmidt

“Have fun.”

That was Chris Licht’s reported encouragement to Donald Trump before CNN’s May 2023 town hall. The words deserve a place in the account of how this happened. A man seeking power over the lives of hundreds of millions of people was about to take the stage. The head of a major news organization offered the blessing of a television producer sending out the evening’s entertainment.

Have fun.

Everyone had so much fun, didn’t they?

Now the consequences are mounting. They accumulate in household budgets, in the lives of young people struggling to establish themselves, in the calculations of foreign governments, and in institutions whose capacity to tell the truth is being steadily weakened. The election bearing down on us must become an accounting.

The derangements of this moment took years to build. They are deepening fast.

A political culture learned to reward lying. Cruelty became evidence of authenticity. Expertise became suspect. Restraint became weakness. An audience applauded, and too many people responsible for distinguishing spectacle from public duty decided that applause was sufficient.

Eventually those habits entered government. There they acquired budgets, appointment powers, intelligence agencies, and weapons.

The consequences became everyone’s business.

I believe the third world war has begun. The argument rests on the convergence of conflicts, the participation of powers across theaters, and the growing capacity of one battlefield to shape another. North Korean troops have fought Ukrainian forces in Europe. An Asian nuclear power has already supplied combat forces to a European war.

We do not need a historian’s permission to recognize the danger.

Taiwan is the linchpin. A war there could bring the United States and China into direct, sustained combat while other conflicts consume weapons, attention, and political endurance. It could expose assumptions about American strength that should have been examined long before a crisis forced the examination.

Hormuz demands that scrutiny now.

Ships have been attacked and sunk despite American military power. The ability to destroy targets has not delivered dependable security for commercial passage. That distinction should trouble anyone offering easy assurances about keeping an island supplied during a war with China.

An adversary seeking disruption needs opportunities. A country promising protection needs sustained reliability.

Naval strength matters enormously. So do geography, ammunition, repair capacity, allies, and the willingness of civilian crews to sail. A presidential boast cannot replace any of them.

Neither can a joke.

When Donald Trump treats an ally’s distress as material for entertainment, the consequences extend beyond the room. Allies assess reliability. Adversaries assess opportunity. Every public demonstration of contempt adds uncertainty to relationships that exist partly to prevent catastrophe.

The Joker comparison comes to mind because the amusement depends on watching something important break.

The restraints against disaster require maintenance: credible commitments, honest communication, functioning institutions, and leaders who understand that their words carry obligations. Erode those restraints long enough and a crisis can reveal how little remains.

At home, the question is brutally simple.

Are you better off?

Can your children find work? Can they afford to leave home? Can they imagine buying a house without an inheritance? Does the paycheck purchase greater security, or merely another month of holding on?

These questions deserve answers grounded in ordinary life.

The New York Fed’s latest figures put unemployment among recent college graduates at approximately 5.6 percent and underemployment at 42 percent. Underemployment means work that typically does not require their degree. Education has become an expensive promise whose delivery is uncertain.

The thirty-year mortgage rate stands at 7.4 percent. A $400,000 mortgage at that rate costs roughly $2,770 monthly in principal and interest, before taxes, insurance, or maintenance.

Consider what that means for someone beginning adult life.

Find the job. Pay the debt. Accumulate the down payment. Carry the mortgage. Save for retirement. Start the family. Absorb the emergency.

Then listen to another wealthy man explain that everything is wonderful.

The old misery index added inflation and unemployment. It never captured the full distance between having employment and having a viable future. A young person can be counted as employed while the milestones of independence keep retreating.

An economy must be judged partly by whether effort offers a credible route forward.

When family money becomes the indispensable bridge, opportunity hardens into inheritance.

Then there is corruption.

Jared Kushner’s foreign financial relationships are documented matters of public concern. Congressional investigators have demanded answers about his fundraising from Middle Eastern governments while participating in American diplomacy. Those overlapping roles require disclosure, scrutiny, and enforceable boundaries.

The public should never have to wonder whether a diplomatic decision improves the position of an investment fund.

My child is not going to fight for Jared’s investment portfolio.

No American family owes its children to the financial ambitions of a president’s relatives. Anyone asking for sacrifice must establish the national purpose, the necessity, the achievable objective, and the integrity of the decision.

Patriotism makes that obligation greater.

What I call MAGA socialism is the promise of public reward for personal submission. Bend the knee. Praise the leader. Purchase access. Expect the government to remember your devotion when benefits are distributed.

That is patronage with a television audience.

Public office becomes a private asset. The citizen becomes a customer seeking favor. People outside the circle are told to celebrate their own exclusion as freedom.

The same betrayal reaches our common inheritance.

A proposed transfer of Yosemite land to a private developer should provoke a question about the officials entertaining it: what do they believe they have been entrusted to protect? Proposals weakening protections against killing healthy wild horses raise the same question.

A national park belongs to generations. Wilderness cannot be replenished by a public relations campaign. A destroyed habitat does not return because an administration issues a statement.

Stewardship means understanding the difference between holding authority and owning what authority governs.

That understanding belongs in every appointment.

The official responsible for an emergency must possess competence. The person administering justice must possess independence. The adviser delivering unwelcome intelligence must be able to speak honestly without calculating whether the truth will end a career.

When obedience becomes the central qualification, mistakes become harder to correct. Warnings disappear. Failures are concealed. The next decision rests on a dishonest account of the last.

The lies compound the damage.

So does propaganda that turns killing into a promotional product. The Caribbean boat strikes demand independent investigation and accountability. A United Nations expert has identified reasonable grounds to believe the campaign may constitute crimes against humanity.

The government cannot establish the legality of a killing simply by attaching a label to the dead.

Evidence matters. Orders matter. Responsibility travels through the chain of command. The flag cannot absolve conduct committed beneath it.

This election must impose consequences.

Every congressional candidate seeking another term should answer for the power they have enabled. What did they investigate? What records did they demand? What appropriation did they challenge? What boundary did they enforce?

A member of Congress possesses constitutional duties even when the president belongs to the same party.

Voters should demand representatives prepared to exercise them.

The opposition has obligations, too. Anger will not administer an agency, restore an ethics rule, or produce an affordable home. Democrats seeking power must arrive with a program serious enough for the condition of the country.

They must defend work, enforce public integrity, rebuild competent government, protect our inheritance, and restore credibility with allies.

Oversight must produce records and findings. Wrongdoing must meet lawful consequences. Recovery must be measured in lives made more secure.

The majority capable of demanding this has to be organized. It includes people who disagree about much and can still agree that public money belongs to the public, that elections confer temporary authority, and that children deserve a future beyond debt and war.

The danger is that exhaustion becomes acquiescence. People stop expecting honesty because deception is constant. They stop demanding competence because failure is familiar. That surrender would give this politics its durable victory. Standards survive when people insist on them, particularly when insisting feels futile. The ballot is one instrument of that insistence, and this approaching election makes its use urgent.

There is work between now and Election Day: persuade, organize, register eligible voters, help people reach the polls, and make candidates answer concrete questions.

No election repairs everything. An election can place enforceable limits on power and open the way to repair.

That is an obligation proportionate to this moment.

The people bearing the costs have earned the right to demand an honest accounting. They need representatives who will examine decisions, protect evidence, enforce the law, and refuse to confuse the president’s interests with the country’s.

A republic survives through citizens willing to assume responsibility for it.

We have spent enough time watching the performance. We know that the consequences continue after the cameras leave. We know who has to live with them.

On Election Day, let the country deliver its answer.

The show has gone on long enough. The work of recovery must begin.