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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nIt had been handed over by the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, the trade association for Antwerp\u2019s diamond industry, to the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White. A few weeks later, the White House exempted European diamonds from tariffs. Asked whether the gift had been a bribe for Trump, the response was that the ring had been intended for the American people, not the president, and had nothing to do with the tariffs. In August, the organization explicitly denied any connection between the tariff exemption and the ring. In July, the White House said Trump had never been given the ring at all. Under federal law, a gift to the government is registered and passed along, while a gift made personally to the president may be kept by him. Somewhere between those two statements, the ring disappeared, and with it the answer to the question of whether a tariff break was traded for diamonds. Trump is familiar with gifts like these, most recently the luxury jet from Qatar. Maybe the ring is sitting in some corner of the White House, maybe at one of his properties. Nobody who would know is saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n John Murdock was a leading conservative lawyer at the U.S. Department of the Interior, 18 years on the job, and by his own account a conservative Christian. Now he is gone, and his resignation letter reads like an indictment. \u201cWe are headed in the wrong direction,\u201d he wrote. Moving fast and breaking things was no solution. \u201cFlooding the zone with shit is a strategy for producing a shitty country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What troubles him goes far beyond his own department. He listed the things that left his jaw hanging open: \u201cMasked federal agents, abandoning Afghan allies, pardons and payments for rioters and their supporters, the rapid dismantling of USAID, our military probably committing war crimes, and a president who demeans the dead and sees himself as Jesus.\u201d Inside his own department, he watched Matt Giacona, acting head of the agency overseeing ocean energy, talk about \u201cthe highest environmental standards\u201d shortly after a major oil and gas deal in the Gulf of Mexico had been pushed through while bypassing endangered species protections. Giacona had lied without consequence. \u201cI have watched my superiors behave in ways I never expected,\u201d Murdock wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The department rejected that, saying a former employee\u2019s personal dissatisfaction did not turn lawful policy into an assault on the rule of law, and that his harsh words did not make his opinion correct. It said it stood firmly behind its work to carry out Trump\u2019s agenda in accordance with federal law. Murdock is not the first to leave in protest. This department alone lost thousands of employees after Elon Musk\u2019s DOGE campaign last year. He was giving up a secure salary and retirement benefits on top of it, he wrote, and considered that the cheaper price. \u201cI will preserve my integrity. Fortunately, the calculation is easy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the opening hours of Trump\u2019s campaign against Iran, an Iranian strike hit a makeshift tactical operations center in Kuwait. Six American soldiers were killed, and more than 30 were wounded. First they lacked the means to defend themselves, then their own country left them alone a second time. Nine of the wounded say the military medical system simply failed after the March 1 attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lieutenant Colonel Arturo Linc\u00f3n, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, suffered severe shrapnel wounds, including one to his left vertebral artery, putting him at risk of a stroke. For the military hospital at Landstuhl in Germany, that was not considered serious enough. He was discharged to the barracks and told to make outpatient appointments. \u201cI was basically on my own,\u201d he said. He was treated for weeks afterward at Walter Reed, and months later he is still fighting for the benefits tied to his injury. Major Stephen Ramsbottom waited more than four months for the results of an MRI after shrapnel had been removed from his head. \u201cI had to build my own case for everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most severely wounded were flown out within 2 days, while others waited. One group did not leave Kuwait until 10 days after the attack, strapped to the floor of a cargo plane. Among them was Rodney Bearman, with shrapnel in his face and legs, who learned in Germany that he and the others had not been listed as wounded in combat, a coding error that denied them treatment. \u201cA sacred trust that I thought could never be broken was broken,\u201d he said. Some did not learn until they were back home that they had suffered brain injuries. Disappointing, but not surprising, said James Kelly, the lead medical scientist at a foundation dealing with the military\u2019s invisible wounds. In war, he said, this happens often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The system is not failing by accident. It was built this way. The Defense Department has closed its major military hospitals in the Middle East and sends soldiers back into deployment after a mild brain injury. It played down the severity of the strike, with U.S. Central Command initially saying that only 5 soldiers had been seriously wounded. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described the deadly attack the next day as \u201cjust a little thing\u201d and later complained that reports about the dead were meant to make the president look bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same hand hangs over all three: Donald Trump. At the top, a diamond ring disappears, and nobody wants to know where it went. In the middle, a lawyer walks away because he will no longer go along with the lie. At the bottom, wounded soldiers are strapped to the floor of a cargo plane, and someone even forgets to record that they were wounded at all. This is what a country looks like when its government takes what shines at the top and leaves behind what bleeds at the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a>