September 24, 2025

In Hammerstein and Sondheim’s “The Sound of Music,” Captain Von Trapp bristles when the young telegraph delivery boy, Rolf, greets him with a Nazi salute. The moment is chilling: it is only months before the Anschluss, and Nazi sympathizers in Austria are beginning to creep out of the shadows.

The captain’s complacent friend, Max, shrugs off the danger. “Things will happen,” he says lightly. “Make sure they don’t happen to you.”

When the captain sternly warns him never to say such things again, Max doubles down. “I have no political convictions. Can I help it if other people do?”

Von Trapp’s response is pointed, urgent, and timeless: “You can help it. You must help it.”

Seven years after Captain Von Trapp and his family fled Austria and settled in Vermont, the United Nations was created. Its mission was clear: prevent the horrors of World War II from ever repeating, maintain global order, foster international collaboration and promote world peace.

Eighty years later, we live in very different times. The United States finds itself in a very different position on the world stage — a fact made unmistakably clear during this year’s UN General Assembly in New York City.

Donald Trump’s rambling, hour-long speech before the assembly left world leaders wavering between boredom, disbelief and secondhand embarrassment. It should leave Americans not just embarrassed, but terrified.

Allotted 15 minutes of speaking time, Trump spoke for nearly an hour. He quickly abandoned diplomacy in favor of grievance and improvisation. He began with a tirade about the UN headquarters’ escalator and his teleprompter, both of which, he complained, had failed him. To Trump, even mechanical malfunctions are the result of high treason.

From there, his remarks spiraled. He said America’s European allies were “going to hell.” He dismissed climate change as a “con job.” He even revived a decades-old grievance against UN leadership for rejecting his offer to redevelop their Manhattan headquarters.

It was, in short, a classic Trump speech: a mix of lies, threats, and meandering stories that led nowhere.

We have come to expect that at his rallies — where MAGA supporters cheer every lie and insult — Trump will be a clown and a fool. On the world stage, however, he is not just an embarrassment; he looks weak. America did not look strong or resolute, but pitiful, disorganized, and even ridiculous.

When Trump bragged that in less than two years he had “accomplished almost more than any other administration in the history of our country,” the audience responded with laughter. A senior diplomat texted reporter Ishaan Tharoor in real time: “This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?”

Yes, we see it.

And yet, despite the absurdity of Trump’s performance, much of the American press once again softened the edges. The Washington Post published a headline framing his outburst as “Key highlights from Trump’s fiery U.N. speech.” ABC News focused on his gripe with the escalator: “Trump White House wants investigation into stopped escalator at UN.” CNN called the remarks “extraordinary,” while Fox News spun it as Trump delivering “tough talk” to the international body.

It was indeed tough — but not in the way Fox meant.

I’ve written many times about the capitulation of legacy media in covering Trump. Each time, I hope for sharper clarity, for courage in calling his words what they are. Yet time after time, the coverage grows sadder, more diluted, more willing to normalize the abnormal.

Consider the double standard. If President Biden had spoken 45 minutes beyond his allotted time, the media would have labeled him a “rambling old man” unfit for office. When Biden once briefly confused Mexico with Egypt, it dominated headlines for days. But when Trump recently confused Albania with Armenia — a genuine, consequential blunder — it barely registered in the news cycle.

Biden’s every gaffe was picked apart with a fine-toothed comb, while Trump’s incoherent stream of falsehoods and contradictions is often brushed aside in a single sentence.

This is dangerous. We must sound the bells. We must raise the alarms. We have a responsibility to defend our democracy. As Von Trapp said, you can help it — you must.

The world sees what is happening in America. Our allies laugh at our expense. They adjust their strategies, not around a steady partner, but around a president they see as erratic, unstable, and perhaps unhinged. I suspect there are indeed “group chats” among global leaders that exclude Trump entirely.

Even worse, our enemies laugh at our weakness — plotting how they can take advantage of the doddering old fool in the White House.

It is long past time for our own leaders to respond with equal seriousness and urgency. The world is watching.

In “The Sound of Music,” when the flag of Nazi Germany was hung outside Captain Von Trapp’s home, he ripped it down and tore it in two. “There is no Austria,” he said solemnly, lamenting his country’s surrender to fascism.

I wonder if our allies feel the same way now about the United States. Do they look at us — the nation that once helped create the United Nations, the nation that once led the free world — and conclude that America as they knew it is gone?