What America’s barely-elected president is trying to do to Ukraine and the world order is a disgrace, and I want you to know that most Americans are horrified. Even as Trump/Musk/Putin conspire to force their naked oligarchy on the world, most of us have grandparents who remember how fascism works, and we don’t like strongmen.

As our hearts break for you, America, and every democracy now fighting for its life, millions of people have reached out to you in solemn solidarity. Democracy is under threat around the globe, and, though it took longer than it should have, the educated half of the U.S. is finally paying attention.

We know Putin is a KGB-trained thug who disappears his critics, and that Trump admires him for it; we also know that Trump keeps declaring national emergencies to give his criminally unqualified Secretary of Defense on-the-job training. Secretary Hegseth, a Fox News airhead with white supremacy ink all over his body, needs to learn early which military commanders will go along with Trump’s second violent coup, and which ones he needs to terminate (or worse).

We also know Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around; hundreds of millions of people around the world have seen the videos and won’t be gaslit, despite Trump’s shameless lies. Please, whatever you think of Americans, do not think we are all as stupid as Trump assumes we are.

Trump has no mandate

Also, as Trump tries to demean you with Putin’s false claim that your approval rating is at 4%, keep in mind that Trump barely won. He won 49% of the vote compared to Harris’ 48%, a difference of 1%.

America’s biggest challenge isn’t MAGA, but the plurality of 90 million qualified voters who didn’t bother to vote at all in November’s election, despite the stakes. American apathy has many root causes, that’s another thing on our to-do list, but love of an unhinged strongman isn’t one of them.

We also have a media problem, thanks largely to Trump/Musk/Putin’s relentless efforts to flood the zone with disinformation. The right-wing controlled media (Fox, OAN, Newsmax, X, and nearly 2,000 right-wing radio stations) runs pure Trump propaganda. That’s because, under our current legal system, corporate-owned media is not required to tell the truth. It’s not like in the U.K. where the law requires fairness and impartiality in reporting the news; Fox and X are more like Putin’s State TV, where corporate owners dummy down their viewers and prop up politicians for their own corporate interests. Restoring truth in the news is another thing on our to-do list.

Educated America knows we are in a coup

The problem in America, as you’ve surmised by now, is that extremely wealthy men have orchestrated a coup to further enrich themselves and their greedy families.

Back when America really was a great superpower on the rise, the wealthiest industrialists paid their fair share of taxes. The Rockefellers and Vanderbilts built the nation and shared their wealth, and the nation benefitted for decades. At the apex of our rise, wealthy Americans paid effective income tax rates as high as 94%. But Republicans changed all that starting in the 1980s and insisted that deep tax cuts for the rich would trickle down. They never did.

Today, men like Elon Musk pay an effective tax rate of 3%, and his companies, like Tesla, pay almost nothing in taxes. That is why they spend so much to get Trump and other Republicans elected: to keep their unjust tax cuts and write their own regulations. Musk is end stage Citizens United.

As the world’s wealthiest men team up to impose maximum harm on the world by embracing Nazism and partnering with Putin, one of the world’s most lethal dictators, please take heart. It’s obvious violence is coming to the U.S., but America will sort itself out. We always do the right thing, as Churchill reportedly said, after other possibilities have been exhausted.

I close here in shared weariness in knowing there really are evil men in the world who will do anything for power and wealth. Also, in sympathy and apology, heartbroken for both our countries, but not defeated.

I just want you, Ukrainians fighting for their freedom and their lives, and democratic forces around the world to know: Most Americans see Trump. And we see you.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, has no paywall.