How can Americans best defend their democracy from their president?

美国人该如何最好地保护自己的民主免受总统的损害？

In my last column, I recounted three lessons from other countries where popular movements have made headway challenging authoritarian rulers. Critics of President Trump have frankly been fairly ineffective — witness his election and the way his approval ratings have risen in some polls lately — but Trump does give us a great deal to work with. He is immensely vulnerable.

在上一篇专栏中，我梳理了其他国家的民众运动在挑战威权统治者时取得进展的三条经验。坦率地说，特朗普总统的批评者们一直在做无用功——看看他的当选以及最近一些民调显示的支持率上升趋势就知道了。但特朗普确实给了我们很多可乘之机。他的弱点极为明显。

Drawing upon these lessons from my last column, here are what I see as the most promising lines of attack for his critics:

基于上一篇专栏中的这些经验，我认为以下是对其批评者而言最有希望的攻击方向：

Trump is deeply corrupt. All presidents are accused of shady practices: Remember that President Barack Obama was said to have diminished the presidency by wearing a tan suit. But Trump is a felon who is using his office to enrich himself as no other president did in history.

特朗普深陷腐败泥潭。所有总统都会被指控有不光彩的行为：还记得吗？有人说奥巴马总统因穿棕褐色西装而有损总统威严。但特朗普是个重罪犯，历史上没有任何一位总统利用职权中饱私囊的程度能与之相提并论。

The Times reported that more than $2 billion has flowed to Trump companies in just a month, and some of his ventures look alarmingly like opportunities for influence peddling. How else do we explain his announcement that the biggest investors in his new cryptocurrency memecoin, $Trump, would get dinner with him? Some guests flew in from overseas for the dinner, held Thursday, and had acknowledged that they hoped to influence Trump and his administration’s policy on financial regulation.

《纽约时报》报道称，仅一个月内就有超过20亿美元流入特朗普旗下的公司，而他的一些商业项目看起来像极了权力寻租的机会。否则，我们该如何解释他宣布其新发布的迷因币$Trump的最大投资者将获得与他共进晚餐的机会？一些宾客从海外飞来参加周四的晚宴，并承认他们希望借此影响特朗普及其政府的金融监管政策。

The Trump family started a cryptocurrency outfit, World Liberty Financial, that received a $2 billion investment from the United Arab Emirates. Don Jr. is also starting a members club in Washington, with a $500,000 charge to join. And Saudi Arabia and Qatar are investing in Trump businesses, putting money in family bank accounts.

特朗普家族创办了一家名为“世界自由金融”的加密货币公司，获得了阿联酋20亿美元的投资。小唐纳德还在华盛顿创办了一个会员制俱乐部，入会费50万美元。此外，沙特阿拉伯和卡塔尔也在投资特朗普的企业，资金直接进入其家族银行账户。

Meanwhile, Trump is using the government to help his pal Elon Musk. (Who even knew that the world’s richest man was needy?) The White House South Lawn was turned into a temporary showroom for Tesla vehicles in March, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged people to “buy Tesla” stock, and American Embassies reportedly have pushed impoverished countries to grant regulatory approvals for Musk’s Starlink system.

与此同时，特朗普正利用政府资源帮助他的好友埃隆·马斯克。（谁能想到世界首富也需要帮扶？）今年3月，白宫南草坪被改造成特斯拉汽车的临时展厅，商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克呼吁人们“购买特斯拉”股票，据报道，美国大使馆还向贫困国家施压，要求它们批准马斯克的星链系统的监管许可。

Trump is hurting you in the pocketbook. One reason Trump won the presidency was voter resentment at inflation and economic weakness under Joe Biden. Now it’s Trump who is badly damaging the economy and hitting voters in the wallet.

特朗普正在损害你的钱包。特朗普赢得总统大选的一个原因是选民对拜登任内的通货膨胀和经济疲软感到不满。而现在，正是特朗普在严重破坏经济，让选民的钱包缩水。

Trump’s tariffs amount to the largest tax increase for Americans since 1993, with one study suggesting that a typical household may pay an extra $1,400 per year. Trump might already have sent the economy spinning into a recession, and plans for huge increases in American debt are pushing interest rates upward — which for many Americans means putting off any hope of buying a home.

特朗普的关税相当于1993年以来美国民众面临的最大规模增税，一项研究显示，普通家庭每年可能需要多支付1400美元。特朗普可能已经让经济陷入衰退，而其大幅增加美国债务的计划正推动利率上升——这对许多美国人来说意味着暂时放弃买房的打算。

In addition, the Republican House approved a plan that would slash Medicaid, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating that more than seven million Americans would become uninsured — this in a country where life expectancy in Mississippi already appears shorter than in Bangladesh.

此外，共和党控制的众议院通过了一项削减医疗补助的计划，国会预算办公室估计，这将导致700多万美国人失去医疗保险，要知道在这个国家，密西西比州的人口预期寿命似乎已经比孟加拉国还短。

The Trump administration is also cutting the number of employees at the Social Security Administration by at least 7,000, even as staffing is already at a 50-year low. The upshot is reports of disruptions and extra-long waits for assistance. As they wait on hold for hours, callers should be encouraged to think about how Trump and Musk have made their lives more difficult.

特朗普政府还裁撤了至少7000名社会保障管理局雇员，而该机构的人力本就已处于50年来的最低水平。由此导致有报道称服务中断，民众等待援助的时间极长。当人们在电话中苦等数小时之际，应该让他们想想特朗普和马斯克是如何让他们的生活变得更加艰难的。

Trump looks down on you and thinks he can manipulate you. Several studies have found that warning teenagers that smoking may kill them is often not effective. What does work is showing them how tobacco companies are trying to deceive and manipulate them. That outrages them — and in the same way, MAGA voters may shrug at Trump’s defiance of the courts but be offended by evidence that he thinks they are dummies.

特朗普看不起你，认为他可以操纵你。多项研究发现，警告青少年吸烟可能致命往往效果不佳。真正有效的方法是向他们展示烟草公司如何试图欺骗和操纵他们——这会激怒他们。同样，MAGA选民可能不在乎特朗普藐视法庭的行为，但如果有证据表明他认为他们是傻瓜，他们会感到被冒犯。

“Look at those losers,” Trump once said of the people spending money at his Trump Plaza casino, according to Maggie Haberman’s biography of Trump, “Confidence Man.” She also quoted Trump telling White House aides that his supporters were “[expletive] crazy.”

“看看这些没用的家伙，”根据玛吉·哈伯曼所著的特朗普传记《自信的男人》，特朗普曾这样评价那些在他的特朗普广场赌场消费的人。她还引用特朗普对白宫助手说的话，称他的支持者是“[脏字]疯子”。

Let’s move beyond particular lines of attack. One lesson from other countries is the importance of finding a compelling individual story to make a point. Democrats too often cite large numbers — the 70 million Americans dependent on Medicaid — rather than leaning on storytelling about individual tragedies.

让我们不要拘泥于那么几个攻击的角度。从其他国家的经验中得到的一个教训是，找到一个引人入胜的个人故事来阐明观点至关重要。民主党人往往过多引用庞大的数据——比如7000万依赖医疗补助的美国人——而不是依靠讲述个人的悲剧故事。

Trump excels at storytelling, and Democrats could learn from his talent. He has a knack for devising withering nicknames for rivals, he can be funny, and he conjures heartbreaking stories (sometimes out of thin air) of brutal crimes committed by immigrants. Democrats need their own anecdotes, and they need to remember that even when the stakes are deadly serious, humor is sometimes the most effective tool.

特朗普擅长讲故事，民主党人可以从他的这种能力中学习。他善于为对手起刻薄的绰号，有时很能逗乐，还能讲述（有时是凭空捏造）令人心碎的故事，讲述移民犯下的残暴罪行。民主党人也需要给出自己的轶事证据，还要记住，尽管在危急关头，幽默有时仍然是最有效的工具。

The best stories probably won’t be about immigrants; Democrats have so little credibility on border issues that priming voters to consider immigration may benefit Trump. But American citizens have been seized off the street and locked up on suspicion that they are undocumented migrants, and hemorrhaging moms like Porsha Ngumezi, 35, appear to have died because of rigid abortion bans. Voters should know their names and see their photos.

最好的故事可能不会是关于移民的；民主党人在边境问题上信誉扫地，促使选民关注移民问题可能反而对特朗普有利。但美国公民被当街抓走并关押，只因被怀疑是非法移民；像35岁的波莎·恩古梅齐这样大出血的母亲，似乎因严苛的堕胎禁令而死。选民应该知道他们的名字，看到他们的照片。

Let’s acknowledge one more point: We critics of Trump have made innumerable mistakes.

我们还需要承认一点：我们这些特朗普的批评者犯了无数错误。

In his first term, Trump pushed us to the left in areas like immigration and law enforcement. Liberals took steps that they thought of as inclusive — such as endlessly embracing pronouns, land acknowledgments and terms like “pregnant people” — that bewildered many other voters or left them feeling excluded.

在特朗普的第一个任期内，他在移民和执法等领域把我们推向了左翼。自由派采取了他们自认为具有包容性的措施——比如没完没了地弘扬代词、“土地确认”和“孕人”之类术语——这让许多其他选民感到困惑或被排斥。

Worse, there is a tendency in liberal circles to denounce anyone sympathetic to Trump as a racist, bigot or fascist. It’s always distasteful when educated elites employ invidious stereotypes to dismiss millions of working-class people — plus it’s difficult to win votes from people you’re castigating.

更糟糕的是，自由派圈子里有一种倾向，即把任何对特朗普有所认同的人都斥为种族主义者、偏执狂或法西斯分子。受过教育的精英们用恶毒的刻板印象来贬低千百万工人阶级，无论如何都是令人生厌的——此外，你很难从被你谴责的人那里赢得选票。

The last task for Democrats is to fix our own blue communities; the blight in West Coast cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., helps Trump hold the Senate by winning votes for Republican candidates in purple states. And how can Democrats ask voters to trust them when the blue state of California accounts for nearly half of the entire nation’s unsheltered homelessness or when one study finds blue Oregon ranking around the bottom of the country in education after adjusting for demographics?

民主党人的最后一项任务是整顿我们自己的“蓝色社区”；洛杉矶、旧金山和俄勒冈州波特兰等西海岸城市的衰败，帮助特朗普通过在紫色州为共和党候选人赢得选票来控制参议院。当加州这个蓝州占了全国无家可归者的近一半，或者一项研究发现，在调整人口结构后，蓝州俄勒冈在教育方面排名接近全国垫底时，民主党人又怎能要求选民信任他们呢？

However appalling Trump’s behavior may be, his critics have to show that they not only can mock him but also can govern. If we are to hold Trump accountable, we must also hold ourselves accountable.

无论特朗普的行为多么令人憎恶，他的批评者必须表明，他们不仅能嘲笑他，还能治理国家。如果我们要让特朗普承担责任，我们也必须对自己问责。