President Donald Trump's erratic eruptions as Congress lay "prostrate" before him have led the United States to the "brink of catastrophe" — and it's up to voters to stop it, a furious opinion writer argued Sunday.
New York Times columnist David French issued this dire warning to American voters ahead of the midterm elections, when Democrats could feasibly reclaim the House and begin checking Trump's power.
"Our future may depend in part on American voters deciding to give Congress a spinal transplant," wrote French. "But that requires us to do something that democracies have rarely, if ever, done successfully — see the catastrophe coming and act decisively."
The catastrophe, as French sees it, is the looming threat of World War as Trump struggles to control the situation in Iran — and himself.
"Trump 'erupted' at members of his national security team over the Iran War," wrote French. "He thought he could topple a vicious, deeply embedded authoritarian regime with a few targeted airstrikes and a fantasied popular uprising."
French raised alarms about Iran's continued strikes on American bases and its partners across the region, noting they may be receiving assistance from Russia and China to improve the effectiveness of their drone attacks.
Iranians proved American planes and bases are more vulnerable than we realized, costs are beginning to mount and resources to dwindle, French argued.
"The Trump administration has put forward two contradictory messages — that there’s no shortage of missiles in the American inventory and that the shortage is Joe Biden’s fault (because he helped to arm Ukraine and launched airstrikes against the Houthis)," French wrote. "And Trump is raging."
French urged voters to sit up and pay attention rather than accept Trump assurances they can "sit back and relax."
He warned the U.S. has not been so close to world war since the end of the Cold War, and argued its leaders in the White House were unfit to navigate the nation on a course to peace.
"The American government is led by the worst rulers in the modern history of the United States," he wrote. "Congress, the only branch of government that possesses the power to intervene, has been prostrate before the president."
French concluded that if the next Congress is not prepared to challenge Trump, there is a chance " a terrible war swallows the world."