Trump is a traitor, but politicians and the media won’t say it
The media and many people in Congress will not say the obvious, but most Americans agree Trump is a traitor.
The establishment won’t say it because they are caught in the gray zone between the legal definition of a traitor and the common-sense one most people use.
Here are the two most common definitions from an AI source:
The term carries both general and specific legal meanings:
- General Definition: Anyone who violates a loyalty obligation, breaks a confidence, or acts as a double-crosser. Common synonyms include betrayer, turncoat, backstabber, or sellout.
- Legal Definition (U.S. Law): Legally, an individual is only considered a traitor after being convicted of treason. Under Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, treason is strictly defined as levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies.
Trump definitely fits the first definition, but because of the legal minutiae ad nauseam, reaching that definition is harder. Ask former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, or the inept former Attorney General Merrick Garland, what it takes to bring a legal case against a professional thief who has manipulated the legal system since he first entered business.
The gap between common sense and the legal definition of “traitor” is why most Americans have little confidence that the legal and political system can address the basic issues facing most Americans.
As the legal expert and columnist Jeffrey Toobin pointed out in an opinion piece in The New York Times on Oct. 18, 2026, even if the Democrats gain control over Congress in the upcoming November 3 election, it will not change most policies in Washington since the legal case already in force gave Trump extra powers under the Unitary Executive Theory.
In brief, this authority, masterminded by right-wing legal think tanks such as the Federalist Society and abetted by the U.S. Supreme Court, gives the president executive authority over a wide range of departments and appointments and allows him to remove anyone in government at will.
As Toobin points out, Trump used legal and legislative delaying tactics when Democrats controlled the House in his first term. Now, the Supreme Court has essentially made Trump a dictator with vast authority that even a new Democratic majority cannot beat back.
But the worst is yet to come. As Toobin notes, “the law is now more skewed toward the executive branch, thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States. Its main holding was that former presidents, including Mr. Trump, enjoy absolute criminal immunity for actions connected to their core constitutional powers and presumptive immunity for other official acts. In short, the president could not be criminally prosecuted for any “official” actions he undertook while in office.
“There is also language in Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion that suggests the president cannot even be investigated for his official actions.”
The U.S. Supreme Court aided and abetted Trump’s criminality in the past, present, and future. No average citizen enjoys this same immunity from criminal acts except Trump, who is already a convicted tax cheat and sexual predator.
It’s no wonder Americans don’t trust government.
The U.S. is an Obsolete World Leader
That’s why the U.S. reputation as “a world leader” is obsolete.
Aside from Trump openly supporting Putin and Russia’s foreign conquest goals of conquering Ukraine and interfering in U.S. elections, Trump is paying Putin back for some as-yet unspecified crimes Trump committed during his long criminal career in real estate and any other criminal deals. Thanks to former Attorney General Garland’s wimpy prosecution of Trump, only Jack Smith knows what really happened.
European leaders, however, have a better assessment of the swampy role in American foreign policy. Even better, their political systems let them express their opinions publicly. Parliamentary systems in most EU nations, Canada, and Australia allow more parties with different policy views to compete for a role in government. The U.S. has only two parties, both of which have been corrupted by Citizens United and the flood of big partisan money in politics, affecting both parties.
As the former Finance Minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland said in this interview on MSNBC, “The president of the U.S. has picked the Kremlin’s side, and this is harming the national security of the United States.
Trump is “hamstringing Ukraine” and is protecting NATO allies, she said. Freeland cuts through the Trump propaganda that Trump is a “dealmaker.” He is not and never was. If Trump is on Putin’s side, as Freeland said, this makes him a traitor in the common-sense definition of the term. Not surprisingly, MSNBC host Nicole Wallace said Trump’s open support of Putin against Ukraine was a “betrayal.’ Wallace should have said it was treason. It would have been more accurate. She also could have said that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith possibly had the goods to explain Trump’s close relationship with Putin.
Why the Media Normalizes Trump
The big question is why the media has normalized Trump during his two terms as president.
There are two reasons for this: The first is due to journalistic standards. The second is that the corporate media protects the existing political and monopoly-capitalist economic establishment.
The first is journalistic. Professionally trained reporters need a few verifiable sources to label someone with a mental condition or with any title that can result in a libel suit. This basic journalistic practice helps protect news outlets from lawsuits.
This explains why the media cannot say Trump is a narcissistic sociopath or some other psychological label unless they can find a licensed mental health professional who has actually examined Trump and is able to publicly reveal their professional medical assessment. Like everyone else, Trump is protected by HIPAA laws. (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a U.S. federal law that protects sensitive patient medical information.)
However, this does not prevent other mental health professionals from voicing their own opinions. Mary Trump, Trump’s niece and the daughter of Freddy Trump, Donald Trump’s oldest brother, has called her uncle Donald Trump a “narcissist,” “cruel,” a “moron,” and an “anti-American traitor,” who has a “lack of impulse control, pursues self-aggrandizement, which combined with his desperation, makes for a very volatile mix.”
The second reason the media normalizes Trump and many others in public roles is to protect the establishment. This includes the unregulated system of capitalism and all of its flaws, including income and wealth gaps, unequal justice, corruption, environmental destruction, and the longer list of inequities that exist today.
The media cannot say that unregulated capitalism is a flawed system and that socialism may be worth considering as a possible solution. While some individual reporters may have seen better political systems in action, the corporations that control the media will never allow discussion that goes against their self-interest.
This explains why most media moguls in newspapers, radio, TV, and movies were politically conservative yet had to be artistically liberal to stay commercially viable. This duality has proved problematic for conservative media. After all, the public, which is more socially liberal than many conservative pollsters would like, can tolerate only so many versions of the Ozzie Nelson family, “Blue Bloods,” and “My Three Sons” spinoffs.
But in print, before TV became widely available, the story was different. In the 20th Century, some of the nation’s largest newspapers were conservative. This included Colonel Robert R. McCormick (Chicago Tribune); Joseph Medill Patterson (New York Daily News); Eleanor “Cissy” Medill Patterson (Washington Times-Herald); Henry Luce (Time-Life); Rupert Murdoch (News Corporation / New York Post); and Sun-Myung Moon (News World Communications).
But in the world before TV, conservative newspapers had to mix their political beliefs with nationalism, jingoism, economic policies that benefited the wealthy, and constantly fight against social and economic programs that benefited the masses.
Devising this formula for mass communications profitability required some diabolical thinking. William Randolph Hearst worked hard to master this formula, but it was slimy, unethical, and also hugely profitable.
As the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote in The Progressive Historians (page 292), “William Randolph Hearst has pandered to depraved tastes and has been an enemy of everything that is best in the
American tradition…There is no cesspool of vice and crime that Hearst has not raked and exploited for profit. No person with intellectual honesty or moral integrity will touch him with a ten-foot pole for any purpose or to gain any end…Only cowards can be intimidated by him.” Hearst is the subject of the classic film Citizen Kane, and in the 1930s, his personal fortune was estimated at roughly $1 to $3 million (equivalent to about $2 billion to $6 billion today).
Embedded in Hearst’s “cesspool of vice and crime” sensational journalism was a subtle message about the establishment’s philosophy and policies.
No one better buttressed Hearst’s conservative propaganda in publishing than Mao Tsu Tung. “The role and power of the newspapers,” Mao said in a talk to the editorial staff of the Shanghai Suiyuan Daily on April 2, 1948, consists in their ability to bring the Party programme, the Party line, the Party’s general and specific policies, its tasks and methods of work before the masses in the quickest and most extensive way.”
Today, the right-wing media outlets continue to push the MAGA party line to the masses using Hearst’s tested formula “cesspool of vice and crime” entertainment masking as journalism to the masses. FOX News and its spinoffs can twist any rambling nonsense Trump says into something most distracted viewers will believe, while they ignore the failures of monopoly, unregulated capitalism. 
Artificial intelligence will only confuse people since the people who control AI are the established political powers.
As legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted in his earlier article, the American political system may be beyond immediate reform even if the Democrats return to power after the midterms.
Then the Democrats will have to face the ultimate question: Is the existing political system, complete with billionaires buying votes, unchecked income inequality, endless wars, and corruption, capable of being reformed? Or worse, are the Democrats, most of whom are part of the established political-economic system, capable of reforming their own system and themselves?
