Our President Just Sold Out our Country

I spent this morning watching something I wish I could unsee. Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office and sold out the United States in plain sight. Not in coded language. Not in a backroom. On camera. He did it while families across the country are drowning in higher costs and uncertainty. He did it while consumer sentiment is sliding and people are fighting to pay rent. He did it with a smile.

Before Trump even got to the part where he tried to trade the dignity of this country for Saudi investments, he launched into one of the most pathetic tantrums I have ever seen from a public figure. A reporter asked him why he would not simply release the Epstein files. A normal president would have answered the question and moved on. Trump erupted.

He attacked the reporter. He attacked ABC. He even said they should lose their broadcast license for asking a question about transparency. This was not strength. This was panic. You can tell a lot about a person by how they handle simple questions. Trump squirms whenever Epstein is mentioned. He lashes out. He tries to shame the person asking. He has no answers and no composure.

Then he pretends he barely knew Epstein, despite emails, witness accounts, and reports painting a very different picture. He pivots into nonsense about Clinton and Harvard and tries to turn it into a moral lecture. It is the same recycled script he falls back on any time he is cornered. Attack. Deflect. Play victim.

This is the man who claims he will restore law and order.

After the meltdown, Trump sat down with Mohammed bin Salman. This is where it went from pathetic to dangerous.

Trump opened the meeting by praising MBS for an “incredible” human rights record. The Saudi government has carried out arbitrary detentions, tortures, killings, censorship, repression abroad, and the murder of a journalist that shocked the world. Trump knows this. His own State Department documented it.

He said it anyway. He needed to flatter MBS. He needed the photo. He needed the illusion of being respected. That alone tells you everything.

Then came the money talk.

Trump tossed out random numbers like a kid making up stats on a playground. Six hundred billion. Maybe a trillion. Who knows. He smiled. MBS smiled. None of it was real. None of it was grounded in policy or long-term agreements. It was empty theater designed to make Trump look powerful.

Real diplomacy is boring. It involves continuity between administrations, binding agreements, economic frameworks, and accountability. Trump does not care about any of that. He cares about applause. He cares about flattery. He cares about the personal benefits he thinks he can extract when he is in the room with a billionaire prince.

At one point MBS casually bumped the “investment” up to one trillion dollars. Trump barely reacted. That is how you know the whole thing was fake. It did not matter. Trump had already gotten what he wanted. He had the optics of making a deal. The substance does not exist.

Contrast this with Gavin Newsom standing in Brazil representing the United States when nobody from the Trump administration bothered to show up. You do not have to agree with Newsom to acknowledge the difference. One man is doing the work. The other is pretending to.

Even Marjorie Taylor Greene has started to turn on Trump in public. When someone like her says the word “traitor” in the same sentence as Trump, people should pay attention. She is not making a constitutional argument. She is speaking from proximity. She sees what the rest of us see. He serves himself first. He serves foreign leaders second. He serves America last.

The most telling moment of this entire event came when Trump defended the Saudi government’s killing of a journalist. He said “a lot of people did not like that guy” as if that excuses a government kidnapping, murdering, and dismembering a dissident. It was one of the most disgraceful statements I have ever heard from a president.

A leader with moral clarity does not talk like that. A leader with integrity does not look the other way when a journalist is murdered by agents of a foreign state. A leader who loves this country does not praise dictators and attack reporters.

Trump is not strong. He is not tough. He is not a fighter for America. He is a man who folds under pressure, panics under scrutiny, and bends over backwards for anyone who flatters him.

Watching him sell out the United States in real time should terrify every person in this country. I wish I could say this was new. It is not. It is who he has always been. And it is why the world is already preparing for a future without American leadership if he returns to power.

We keep pushing. We keep fighting. And we keep telling the truth.

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