This is an op-ed by Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

As Trump empowers Russia and the far right, he is laying the foundation for undermining democracies around the world.

Since the end of the second world war, liberal democracies have stuck together – led by the US. On the opposite side have been authoritarian states, led mainly by the Soviet Union, followed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, by Russia and China.

But all this is rapidly changing. Russia and China have morphed into oligarchies, run by small groups of extraordinarily wealthy people.

The US has been moving from a democracy to an oligarchy as well – and is doing so at lightning speed under Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

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