It is surprising and shocking that an American journalist and researcher like Robert D. Kaplan, a democrat, humanist and well-versed in Europe – let us remember his Balkan ghosts– declare himself, I wouldn't say an adept, but certainly sympathetic to some of Donald Trump's approaches. First of all, Kaplan, following the recent publication of his book Waste Land (RBA Editorial, 2025), on the risk of global geopolitics becoming an immense Weimar Republic—and, therefore, a threat of self-destruction for democracy—he dares to disqualify Trump as a politician, treating him as an ignoramus who represents nothing beyond social media propaganda. But when media outlets of various persuasions ask Robert Kaplan whether he sees a tyrant in the US president, the analyst and reporter says that perhaps Trump doesn't respect the judiciary, but then seems to exonerate him: "Trump isn't serious enough to be a fascist. A fascist has devised a plan, and Trump doesn't have one." Kaplan ignores or obviates statements about Trump's fascism expressed by historian Robert Paxton and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.