Back in the late 1990s, I had the honor of being — during summer academic breaks from teaching at the AF Academy — assigned to the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House. Some of my work we can talk about, some we can’t, but it was a thrill every day to take the subway into Washington, D.C. and to then walk to the White House grounds, present my pass, and pass through the fence and walk up West Executive Drive, the small road between the actual White House and the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB), now known as the Eisenhower Building.

There wasn’t a single day when I was working there my heart didn’t beat a little faster when I looked around and found myself at the heart of a remarkable political institution. Just up the front stairs and off to the left of the OEOB front door was Conference Room 180. It was a nice conference room, but it didn’t appear to be particularly special. But I always made a point of showing it to people when I gave evening tours to visiting military friends, cadet, and family. I did so because that very room, now a simple meeting place, was once the private office of then-President Richard Nixon.

Nixon hated the Oval Office, and preferred to work in the OEOB and he had Room 180 converted to his “study.” As I explained the significance of the room to those I was showing around, I noted Nixon had, according to the tape recordings he secretly made, said some of the worst comments during the Watergate scandal in the very place where we were then standing. History is real, and made up of real humans doing human things, and sometimes that includes acting irresponsibly and illegally.

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I’d teach my cadet students at the AFA Watergate was likely the worst presidential scandal in our nation’s history, in that previous scandals (Teapot Dome, various misdeeds under President Ulysses S. Grant) were regarding money and getting rich. Watergate, I said, was worse, because it was about consolidating and keeping power. The latter is a much worse sin against democracy.

I may have been wrong. Not about the power part, but about what history will eventually call our worst scandal.

Today we see a president and a deputy president acting in ways even Nixon would never have considered, all in an attempt to gather and keep near-absolute power. And unlike in the time of Nixon, the American media and the American people seem all too often to be merely shrugging their shoulders at terrible behaviors.

You may recall during his first term, President Donald Trump stated more than 30,000 documented lies, from the minor to the major. The mass media occasionally noted the lies, but didn’t really do much about them. And he has started off his second term (of the three he honestly thinks he is entitled to) the same way.

Here’s a minor example. Early on in his term (in other words, a couple weeks ago) President Trump stated on Air Force One he wouldn’t have time to play golf in this term. Heck, his first term saw 289 known rounds of golf played at a taxpayer cost of $150 million. And shortly after he pledged to not play golf this time around, guess where he was? Yup, back on the course, hitting a golf ball while his deputy president hit hard at the federal work force. It’s a blatant lie that cost the taxpayers money. And the media yawned.

At least Nixon was smart. And he understood our national structure. When the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against him over his tape recordings, Nixon turned the tapes over to the special prosecutor. President Trump is threatening to simply ignore any court rulings against him because he sees himself, as was astonishingly tweeted out by the actual White House press office, as a king, beyond any oversight. The tweet showed Trump literally wearing a crown, with the caption “LONG LIVE THE KING!”

As a fellow with an above-average interest in the American founding (see HamiltonLives.com), I am outraged and horrified. We literally fought a revolutionary war against that idea. Trump is truly parroting the most un-American thing possible, and no one in his party objects. Today’s GOP is so intent on keeping power they won’t even attack their party’s leader for such secular heresy. There is a vast gulf between today’s Republicans and honor.

And that gulf is most certainly not the “Gulf of America.” Trump and his deputy president seem to think they can distract the attention of most Americans to shiny things like trying to rename a body of water, to trying to take back the Panama Canal (Not the “American Canal”?), to seize Greenland, and to have Canada become the 51st state. He distracts with those bizarre antics while issuing executive orders that will have a profound and negative impact on most Americans.

And let’s not forget Trump and his minions are capable of remarkably mean and petty actions. His press team has purged the White House press room, a vital part of our free and fair governance, of news organizations they feel have been unfair to Trump (in that they accurately reported on his actions). Can you imagine the blowback had then-Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden kicked out Fox News?

Even more egregiously, Trump kicked the Associated Press reporter out of the White House because that organization refuses to call that body of water the Gulf of America. Those vacant seats were quickly filled by Trump’s press team with far-right “journalists” from highly questionable organizations that will fawn over Trump and Elon.

The shenanigans and outrages committed in Room 180 once seemed likely to never be topped in their egregiousness and their sliminess. Yet today, we see daily assaults on the honor and dignity of governance, and direct attacks on those Americans who have chosen to spend their lives in government service.

At some point, even the GOPers in the House and Senate will wake up, at least a little, when they realize President Trump’s (and Elon Musk’s) threats to primary them, should they prove even a tiny bit disloyal, are largely empty threats. We are already seeing a cratering of the popularity of Trump’s actions, and that is likely to continue. Heck today as I type these words, our United Nations delegation chose to vote with Russia on a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Remember when the world saw the United States as the good guys? Remember when we had Europe’s back, and they ours? Those days, dear reader, are behind us, at least for a little while.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.