The founding fathers baked reason, truth and free speech into the US. That’s all gone now | Will Hutton

Donald Trump's presidency is widely deplored for everything from his unilateral imposition of swingeing tariffs to his public humiliation of Ukraine ’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy , and siding with Russia over the war.

But this misses the larger point: he draws on a constituency that shares his views but also on a well-developed body of thought that wants a decisive rupture with those Enlightenment values.

The US still accounts for the same 25% of world GDP now as it did in 1980 .

Adam Smith , the great Enlightenment economist, inspired the founding fathers as much as Montesquieu , Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine .

But none of that is for the Trumpites , who come from the mobster, cowboy, might-is-right, make-a-deal-on-my-terms strain of US culture and society.