Unless you have been under a log this week, you have been barraged with countless assessments of the president’s first one hundred days in office. According to his own estimate he has accomplished more in his first one hundred days than any other president in US history. Period. I think he has convinced himself of this, and his supporters are more than happy to be convinced as well, believing whatever he chooses to tell them. They accept the roll-backs of President Obama’s trade deals; environmental regulations; and waterway, public lands, immigrant, and climate protections; and saber rattling with Syria and North Korea as proof that he is doing excellent work.

What I see, on the other hand, is a roll-back of progress, taking the country in a dangerously retrograde direction. The progressive legacy of President Obama is being wiped clean. The people surrounding the president have zero experience with Washington politics. Nepotism reigns, with the Trump family running The White House as much as the president does. The government overall is becoming a kleptocracy, rife with corruption, scandal, and incompetence.

And that is before we consider the crime that took place in getting this president elected. Ties to Russia abound. I have no doubt that the investigations will be able to prove collusion and criminal intent, and I can only hope that corruption will not stand in the way of their being exposed.  As Carl Bernstein said when commenting on the process he and Bob Woodward used when they were investigating Watergate, “Follow the money … and the lies”.

There already have been suspicious firings and experienced civil servants have left their posts without cause. Mr. Trump is following well in the footsteps of his apparent heros and fellow demagogues, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, both of whom are decimating their civil services and journalists. In formerly enlightened America, our president has laid the groundwork for a similar takeover of the pillars of democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our justice system, criticizing our system of government as “archaic and slow-moving”, ridiculing the media, and fostering suspicions of “fake news” for his adoring, hurting, and hopeful followers to devour.

If the emulation continues, are we going to see the president remove other non-cooperating judges, as he removed Preet Bharara in New York, and move from merely vilifying the media to persecuting them? In recent announcements he has declared that he wants the ability to sue news outlets and may be willing to change libel laws in order to do so. He has also suggested that it might be necessary to change the system of checks and balances that, in his view, make the government “slow moving”. Does he even know that this inconvenient feature is at the heart of the American constitution??

Meanwhile, he continues to pepper his followers with protestations that any media coverage that does not express adulation or approbation of him is “fake news”. In response, he is more than willing to supply his own “alternative facts”, a predilection that is deeply disturbing to all who value freedom of speech and freedom from lying leaders.

Mr. Trump called President Erdogan to congratulate him on the success of his final move to become a complete dictator. President Putin continues to poison and dispose of anyone who dares dispute his regime. And now, President Duterte’s assault on his countrymen is being rewarded with a visit to the White House. Is there a double Trump Tower in Manila as there is in Istanbul, or the possibility of new trademarks for Ivanka?

I stand with Indivisible and the many other grassroots organizations that are mobilizing to protest the insidious actions and pronouncements of this president and to do everything in our power to defeat his agenda. This country has come too far to allow an unprincipled, unqualified demagogue to erase fifty years of hard-won progress by appealing to the fear, hate, and insecurities of a minority of citizens. Although we never expected to have to fight these battles again in the twenty-first century, we have fought them before and prevailed and we must and will fight them again now. We have already made our voices heard in the wrestling down of the “so-called” health care bill that would have deprived over twenty million Americans of insurance coverage. Every day there will be a battle and every day we must engage it. America is already great and it is our duty to keep her that way.