The President of the United States has made $4.05 billion from the office he holds. Not before he held it. From it. Through cryptocurrency schemes that his own pre-presidential self called “a scam.” Through stablecoin ventures seeded by the United Arab Emirates, while they sought approval for sensitive American AI technology. Through a pardon of a convicted money launderer, whose platform subsequently boosted the president’s family business. Through Saudi real estate deals announced the day before welcoming a crown prince who ordered the dismemberment of a journalist, a crown prince whom the president defended while berating an American reporter for asking about the murder. Through a constellation of shell companies, meme coins and governance tokens so labyrinthine that even crypto critics describe them as “mind-boggling conflicts of interest.”

And when asked why he abandoned even the pretense of propriety, Trump offered a confession more damning than any indictment: “I found out that nobody cared.”

He is right. And this essay is addressed to the “nobody” who didn’t care.

Not to the Make America Great Again (MAGA) base. They were promised something: border security, cheaper groceries, no wars, restored greatness. They voted for it in good faith. That most of those promises have been broken is Trump’s betrayal of them, not theirs of the country. The base is not the subject of this letter.

This letter is addressed to the people who knew. The CEOs who sat in the front row at the inauguration and who possess the education, resources, institutional power and platforms to have said no. Mark Zuckerberg. Sundar Pichai. Tim Cook. Jeff Bezos. Satya Nadella. The billionaire donors who wrote checks after January 6, after the indictments, after the conviction, after the “very fine people on both sides.” Stephen Schwarzman. Ken Griffin. Nelson Peltz. Larry Ellison. The venture capitalists who built media empires to launder authoritarian governance as “disruption.” David Sacks. Chamath Palihapitiya. Marc Andreessen. The finance titans who called Trump’s tariffs “economic nuclear war” in private and applauded his “business-friendly agenda” in public. The senators who voted just a few weeks ago to let a president wage war without their consent because party loyalty outweighed their oath to the Constitution.

You are the “nobody” who didn’t care.

And as of three weeks ago, the consequences of your cowardice are measured in body bags.

The Iran test

On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched a joint military campaign against Iran, code-named “Operation Epic Fury,” that killed the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and targeted Iranian military infrastructure across the country. The strikes were ordered by a president who campaigned on a promise of “no more forever wars.” They were executed by a Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was a Fox News host six months before his confirmation. They were launched without congressional authorization, without a UN mandate, without a clearly articulated strategic objective, without a plan for the day after and without basic contingency planning for the blindingly obvious consequences.

This is the part that should terrify every American: Nobody in this administration appears to have war-gamed what would happen next.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty percent of the world’s oil supply was disrupted overnight. Brent crude surged past $80 a barrel within days, with Goldman Sachs warning it could reach triple digits if the closure persists. Gulf state airspace shut down. Emirates, Qatar Airways and thousands of commercial flights were grounded. Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest hubs, went dark. European natural gas prices spiked 38% after attacks on Qatari facilities, threatening energy security across the continent and driving up fertilizer costs that will ripple through global food supply chains for months.

The contagion spread faster than the war itself. South Korea’s Composite Stock Price Index plummeted 12% in a single day, the worst crash in its history, worse than September 11, triggering a circuit breaker that halted trading. The next day, it fell another 7%, cementing the worst two-day streak in decades. Samsung, SK Hynix, LG: the pillars of a major allied economy, gutted. Thailand imposed its own trading curb after an 8% decline. Bloomberg reported that emerging markets became “one of the worst places to be for global investors,” with Korean stocks down 18% in a single week. South Korea imports 98% of its fossil fuels. It did not start this war. It did not consent to it. It is paying for it.

The destabilization extends far beyond markets. The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict now risks merging with the Iran-Israel proxy war. Central Asian nations, landlocked and dependent on Iranian ports for trade routes to the Indian Ocean, face severed commerce. India, which depends heavily on Gulf oil imports, is bracing for inflation shocks that will hit its poorest citizens hardest. Pakistan and Afghanistan have warned that the conflict could spill over their own borders. Djibouti’s president has denounced the risk of the war cascading into Northeast Africa’s existing conflicts in Somalia, Sudan and Chad. The Houthis have threatened to attack any US or Saudi military facilities in Yemen. The very allies this administration claims to be protecting are now scrambling to contain the chaos it created.

Six American service members are dead. Hegseth told reporters the operation is “just getting started” and that the US could “sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.” Trump told the New York Times the strikes could last “four to five weeks.” Representative Hakeem Jeffries pointed out what should be obvious: “This notion of regime change has never been successful, as most recently indicated by its failure in Iraq, its failure in Libya and its failure in Afghanistan.”

The Senate voted on March 4, 2026, on a war powers resolution to require congressional authorization for further military action in Iran. It failed, 47-53, almost entirely along party lines. Rand Paul was the only Republican who voted yes. John Fetterman was the only Democrat who voted no. Speaker Mike Johnson called the resolution “siding with the enemy.” Senator Tim Kaine responded: “If you don’t have the guts to vote yes or no on a war vote, how dare you send our sons and daughters into war where they risk their lives?”

A CBS News poll found that most Americans disapprove of the war with Iran. About half believe the conflict could last months or years. The American people see what the enablers refuse to acknowledge: This war has no endgame, no authorization and no limiting principle.

This is the test. And every enabler in America is failing it.

The broken promises

Before I walk through the full ledger of what the enablers sanctioned with their silence, I want to address the people they claim to represent. The voters. The consumers. The workers. The families who were promised something tangible and received something very different.

Trump promised to “end inflation and make America affordable again, starting on day one.” Inflation remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target throughout 2025, with the personal consumption expenditures deflator ending the year at 2.9%. The Fed’s own research attributed as much as half a percentage point of that inflation directly to tariff policy. Grocery prices rose 2.9% in the year, the sharpest increase since March 2024. Beef prices are up over 16%. Coffee is up 20%. Electricity bills rose by 6.7% in 2025, more than double the overall inflation rate, costing the average American household an additional $116 per year. The promise to cut energy costs in half was, in Bloomberg’s precise words, missed “by a lot.”

Trump promised that “jobs and factories will come roaring back.” The US labor market added roughly 181,000 jobs in all of 2025, a fraction of the 1.5 million created in 2024. Manufacturing, the sector Trump vowed to resurrect, lost 77,000 jobs between April and December after the trade war escalated. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that “fewer Americans work in manufacturing than at any point since the pandemic ended.” January 2026 brought the worst month of job cuts since the Great Recession: 108,435 layoffs, three times the December figure.

Trump promised, “no more forever wars.” He has now bombed or conducted military operations against eight countries in a single year, including an unauthorized war against Iran that his own defense secretary says is “just getting started.” The man who mocked the “endless wars” of his predecessors has launched an open-ended conflict without congressional approval, without a strategic endgame and without the consent of the American people.

Trump promised free markets. He delivered Trump markets. Companies are told what to build, where to build it and whom to hire. Those who comply receive tariff exemptions and regulatory favor. Those who dissent receive investigations and public threats. The Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 that Trump exceeded his authority by unilaterally imposing broad tariffs, a violation of congressional power over trade. The administration promised to replace them using other legal tools. American consumers are shouldering up to 55% of the tariff costs, according to Goldman Sachs, a burden projected to rise to 70%.

Trump promised to restore global respect. American soft power is in freefall. Allied markets are crashing from a war they were never consulted about. The UN, NATO, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have been gutted or abandoned. The global order that — whatever its imperfections (and there are many) — maintained a predictable framework for security and commerce is being dismantled by the country that built it. Even Republican voters are souring: A WSJ poll found that “by 15 percentage points, more voters rate the economy as weak rather than strong,” the worst showing of Trump’s second term.

These are not partisan talking points. They are data. They are Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, Federal Reserve reports, consumer price index measurements and trade deficit figures. The GoFundMe CEO reported that the economy is so challenged that people are raising money to buy food. Deloitte’s holiday spending survey recorded the least optimistic consumer outlook since 1997.

The people who voted for Trump are not stupid. They are being robbed. And the enablers who financed, promoted and legitimized the administration that is robbing them will face no consequences. They never do.

The ledger: what you enabled

Let me walk through what the “reasonable” men — the CEOs, the donors, the senators and the editorial boards — enabled with their silence, their checks and their front-row seats.

You enabled the dismantling of constitutional governance. This president has governed almost exclusively through executive orders, 147 in his first 100 days, because he has almost no legislative accomplishments. He imposed tariffs without congressional approval. He attempted to freeze funds that Congress had already appropriated. He tried to end birthright citizenship by executive fiat, in direct violation of the 14th Amendment. He fired members of independent agencies to install loyalists. He attempted to remove a Federal Reserve board member. He reclassified tens of thousands of career civil servants as political appointees to enable mass firings. He did not govern the republic. He ruled it by decree. And you said nothing.

You enabled the construction of a domestic surveillance and deportation apparatus. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are detaining and, in documented cases, killing American citizens. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 has been invoked to justify mass deportations. Asylum seekers are systematically jailed. Families are separated. Palantir’s databases track and target communities with algorithmic precision. The “remain in Mexico” policy forces asylum seekers into conditions the UN has described as inhumane. And you, the same people who profess to believe in “freedom” and “individual liberty,” have said nothing, donated millions and attended galas.

You enabled the demolition of global institutions. In one year, this administration has gutted or undermined the UN, NATO, the ICC, the ICJ, UNHCR, the World Bank and USAID. Decades of American soft power have been systematically destroyed. Allied nations are realigning away from the US. Adversaries are emboldened. The global institutions that constrain war, protect refugees and adjudicate disputes between nations have been weakened to the point of irrelevance. You calculated that deregulation and tax cuts were worth more than the international order that protects your supply chains, your markets and your employees’ children from conscription.

You enabled economic destruction in the name of “free markets.” The man you funded has replaced free markets with a command economy run by tweet. He rewards allies and punishes critics through tariffs, procurement and regulatory favor. His own supporter, Bill Ackman, called the tariffs “economic nuclear war” before going quiet again. Small businesses are being crushed. Consumer prices are rising. The manufacturing boom he promised is a manufacturing contraction. And the billionaires who funded this, whose portfolios are buffered by diversification and offshore holdings, will be fine. The people who voted for cheaper groceries will not.

You enabled the weaponization of justice. Over 1,500 January 6 participants have been pardoned or had their sentences commuted, including people who assaulted police officers, broke into the Capitol and called for the murder of elected officials. The president has directed investigations into former officials who criticized him. He has threatened the press credentials of outlets that publish unfavorable coverage. He has filed a $5 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, a bank regulated by his administration, alleging “political bias” for closing his accounts after an insurrection he incited. The rule of law is not being bent. It is being broken.

You enabled complicity in genocide. This president has provided unconditional support to an Israeli government whose leadership is under investigation by the ICC. He has sold advanced fighter jets and approved AI chip exports to Saudi Arabia, the same week he welcomed its crown prince. He has deployed American military technology, including the platforms built by Google, Amazon and Palantir under contracts their own employees protested, in operations that have killed thousands of civilians.

And now you have enabled an unauthorized war. Not a “limited strike.” Not a “targeted operation.” A war. With American casualties. With a defense secretary who says it’s “just getting started.” With no congressional authorization, no strategic endgame, no exit plan and no contingency for the economic devastation already rippling across the planet. With South Korea’s market in its worst crash since 9/11. With the Strait of Hormuz closed. With oil heading toward triple digits. With the conditions for a wider regional conflagration already in motion.

This is what you enabled. This is what “nobody cared” produced.

The double standard

I need to say something that will make some readers uncomfortable. I say it not to score political points but because it is the structural diagnosis without which nothing else in this essay makes sense.

If Barack Obama had profiteered $4 billion from the presidency, the impeachment proceedings would have begun before the ink was dry. If Obama had pardoned a convicted money launderer whose platform subsequently enriched his family’s cryptocurrency business, Fox News would have run the chyron for a year. If Obama had launched an unauthorized war against a sovereign nation, killing its head of state without congressional approval, while his defense secretary, a former television commentator with no military command experience, told reporters he was “just getting started,” the same senators who voted today to let Trump continue would have drafted articles of impeachment by sundown. And let me be clear: I am no Obama fanboy. I voted for him with historical emotions in 2008; I not only abstained but also became a vocal critic thereafter.

If Obama had told the New York Times “nobody cared” about his profiteering, the word “corruption” would have been on every front page. When Trump says it, it lands on page six.

The silence is not neutral. It is the sound of every institutional constraint — congressional oversight, media independence, corporate accountability, civil society pressure, staff resignation — collapsing simultaneously. Previous presidents were not necessarily better men. They were more constrained men. And the people who provided those constraints have chosen, for the first time in modern American history, to abandon them entirely.

These men, and they are mostly men, mostly white, though not exclusively, did not suddenly discover that presidential profiteering is acceptable. They did not suddenly decide that unauthorized wars are constitutional. They did not suddenly conclude that dismantling independent agencies and firing civil servants is good governance. They decided that this president, who flatters their portfolios, guts their regulatory constraints, appoints their allies to the bench and provides the political cover for a vision of governance they always wanted but couldn’t say aloud, is worth the cost.

The cost is being paid by others. By the six dead service members in Iran. By the asylum seekers in detention. By the small business owners bankrupted by tariffs. By the 108,435 workers laid off in January alone. By the 77,000 manufacturing jobs that vanished after “Liberation Day.” By the farmers watching their markets collapse. By the federal workers fired for the crime of competence. By the journalists investigated for the crime of reporting. By the citizens of allied nations whose markets crashed this week because an American president chose war without a plan or authorization.

The enablers will be fine. They are always fine. That is the definition of the word.

The cowards’ gallery

I will not dwell on the true believers. Elon Musk, who contributed $288 million to elect this president and now operates a parallel executive branch, is not a coward. He is an ideologue pursuing a vision of governance by technological aristocracy. David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, who use their podcast to gaslight millions into treating constitutional erosion as “liberal hysteria,” are not cowards. They are propagandists with conviction. Alex Karp, who mocked Google’s refusal to build military AI and now builds surveillance systems for governments, is not a coward. He is a man who found that power tastes better than principle.

The cowards are the converts. The people who knew better and chose anyway.

Mark Zuckerberg built a platform on “connecting the world” and “giving people the power to build community.” He spent years cultivating a reputation as a defender of democratic discourse. Then he called Trump’s response to an assassination attempt “badass,” dismantled Meta’s fact-checking apparatus, adjusted his algorithms to amplify MAGA-aligned content and eliminated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, all before anyone asked him to. This was not capitulation under pressure. This was pre-emptive obedience. Zuckerberg calculated that the cost of Meta’s regulatory exposure exceeded the cost of his credibility. He was right about the calculation. He was wrong about what it made him.

Jeff Bezos spiked his own newspaper’s presidential endorsement. The Washington Post, the paper that published the Pentagon Papers, that broke Watergate, that employs the colleagues of Jamal Khashoggi, was prevented from endorsing a candidate because its owner wanted to protect Blue Origin’s government contracts. Bezos did not need to say a word. The suppression was the statement. It told every journalist at the Post that their independence is conditional on their owner’s business interests. It told every reader that the paper’s editorial judgment is for sale. And it told every authoritarian on earth that the American free press can be silenced without a single law being changed. All you need is a billionaire with a portfolio.

Tim Cook attends inaugurations, maintains “friendships” and secures tariff exemptions while Apple’s supply chain depends on forced labor and its App Store extracts feudal rents from developers worldwide. Cook has perfected the art of apolitical complicity: the posture of the executive who “doesn’t do politics,” while every political calculation is embedded in every product decision, every market entry, every regulatory negotiation. His silence is not neutrality. It is the sound of a man who has decided that human rights are a marketing problem.

The Wall Street converts are perhaps the most revealing. Stephen Schwarzman distanced himself from Trump after January 6, then returned, citing “economic and immigration policy.” Nelson Peltz said he “regretted” voting for Trump in 2020, then endorsed him in 2024 for the tax cuts. Ken Griffin contributed $108 million to Republican causes. These are men who, in their private lives and professional environments, would never tolerate the behavior they fund in public life. They would not hire a CEO who had been convicted of fraud. They would not invest in a company whose founder pardoned criminals for personal financial benefit. They would not sit on the board of a firm that launched unauthorized operations costing lives without a strategic plan. But they fund a president who does all of these things because the after-tax return is sufficient. Their morality is a function of their marginal rate.

David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, described the market’s reaction to the Iran war, a war that killed six Americans, crashed South Korea’s market by 12% in a single day and disrupted 20% of global oil supply, as “benign.” He said it on the same day his own research team warned oil could hit triple digits. This is what enablement sounds like at the institutional level: the language of normalcy applied to catastrophe. If the market is “benign,” the war must be manageable. If the war is manageable, the president’s judgment must be sound. If the president’s judgment is sound, the donations were justified. The logic is circular, self-sealing and, as of today, costing lives.

What they would have done to Obama

I want to hold this frame for one more moment, because it is the frame that explains everything.

Imagine that President Obama had: Made $4 billion from the presidency through cryptocurrency ventures he previously called “a scam”; Pardoned a convicted money launderer whose platform subsequently enriched his family; Announced Saudi real estate deals the same week he sold advanced weapons to the kingdom; Launched an unauthorized war that killed American soldiers, with a defense secretary who had no military command experience; Told the Times “nobody cared” about his profiteering; Governed almost entirely through executive orders, with virtually no legislation; Imposed tariffs so sweeping that allied stock markets had their worst crashes since 9/11; Fired 250,000 federal employees through an unelected advisor; Used the Alien Enemies Act to justify mass deportations; Pardoned 1,500 people who violently stormed the Capitol; Presided over the worst January for job cuts since the Great Recession; Lost 77,000 manufacturing jobs while promising a manufacturing boom; Allowed electricity bills to rise 6.7% while promising to cut energy costs in half

He would not have survived the first month. And every person named in this essay knows it. This knowledge is what makes them cowards rather than fools.

The agency we still have

I have spent this essay in anger. I want to end it in clarity.

The enablers have failed. The institutions they were supposed to steward — corporate boards, media organizations, financial markets and the US Congress — have been captured, hollowed out or bought. The Senate voted to let a president wage an unauthorized war. The CEOs attend galas. The billionaires write checks. The editorial boards issue measured calls for “dialogue.”

But here is what I know from 30 years of watching power operate: The countermovement never comes from the institutions that capitulated. It comes from below.

The civil rights movement did not wait for corporate America to develop a conscience. It forced conscience upon a nation through boycotts, marches, sit-ins and the willingness of ordinary people to absorb violence in the service of justice. The labor movement did not wait for Wall Street to discover fairness. It organized, it struck, it bled and it built the middle class that Wall Street now profits from. Solidarity did not wait for the Polish establishment. It began in a shipyard.

The 300 million Americans who are not in that room, who are not at the galas, who do not write the checks, who do not sit in the front row, are not powerless. They are, in fact, the last institution standing. When the Senate abdicates, when the courts defer, when the press is purchased, when the corporations kneel, the citizenry is the final check on power. Not as aspiration. As structural reality.

There are members of Congress who voted their conscience, some against their own party, knowing it would cost them. Thomas Massie, who called the strikes “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.” Rand Paul, who said his “oath of office is to the Constitution.” Tim Kaine, who demanded: “If you don’t have the guts to vote yes or no on a war vote, how dare you send our sons and daughters into war where they risk their lives.” Warren Davidson, a former Army Ranger, who said simply: “No. War requires congressional authorization.” Andy Kim, who told the administration that it “owns” the results of this conflict, including every American death. They exist. They spoke. They voted no.

There are Google employees who were fired for refusing to build technology that powers genocide. There are journalists who continue to report under threat. There are small business owners, teachers, nurses, veterans, organizers and citizens who refuse to accept that “nobody cared” is the final word.

The enablers have made their choice. The question now is whether the rest of us will make ours.

Trump said nobody cared. He was describing the people who surround him: the court jesters, the cowards, the converts, the profiteers. He was not describing America. Not the America I have spent my career serving, the America that has always, eventually, painfully, imperfectly, chosen the harder right over the easier wrong.

The enablers bent the knee. The republic does not have to follow them down.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.