I’ve seen what freedom looks like — and I can see Trump trying to take it away

A young man chisels away at the Berlin Wall, 1989. Photo by Getty Images

Terrence Petty September 30, 2025

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One October day in 1989, I dropped in at a bar on Leipziger Strasse in Communist East Berlin. I’d crossed from West Berlin into the East for a prearranged meeting with Bärbel Bohley, a leader of the anti-Communist resistance. I had about an hour to kill before the meeting, so I decided to get a coffee.

A little man in his 40s took the stool next to mine. He wore a threadbare suit and scuffed-up brown shoes. He looked pure Stasi. His words confirmed it: “Guten Tag, Herr Petty.” Hoping to shake him, I said I was returning to West Berlin. I paid and headed for the door, the Stasi man right on my heels. Out on Leipziger Strasse, he looked at me and said with a smile:

“I’ll walk with you to Checkpoint Charlie.”

I glanced at the big circular clock on the street corner  — 12:45, 15 minutes before my meeting with Bohley. Time was running out. I was hoping I’d lose him if I headed back toward Checkpoint Charlie. But he stayed with me, step for step. As I began to cross into West Berlin, I glanced back. The Stasi guy waved, turned around and walked away.

This encounter occurred as East Germany’s Communist regime was beginning to crack. Tens of thousands of East German citizens were fleeing to freedom via Hungary, whose reformist leaders had cut through barbed wire along the border with Austria to provide East Germans an escape route. East Germans who remained in their homeland were taking to the streets in ever-growing pro-democracy demonstrations. The pressure was too much for the Communist regime. The Berlin Wall opened on Nov. 9. Giddy East Germans rushed through it, getting their first taste of freedom.

Watching Donald Trump deliver his speech at the United Nations triggered memories of reporting on the end of the Cold War for The Associated Press. It was a time of history-making figures like Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Hungary’s Gyula Horn, Czech Velvet Revolution leader Vaclav Havel, and East German resistance leaders like Bärbel Bohley,  an artist who had helped found New Forum, a grassroots movement that gave East Germans a voice.

It was a time of heroes.

And now, it’s the time of Trump.

Let’s look back at the spirit of democracy that broke through in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, and compare it with how Trump has dragged the world into a period of chaos and dread.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s reformist agenda — especially glasnost, or openness — had a ripple effect across the Soviet bloc. Hungary was among the first to respond. Influenced by Gorbachev’s signals that the Soviet Union would no longer enforce Communist orthodoxy among its satellite states, Hungary’s reformist leaders began dismantling barbed-wire fences along the border with Austria. Austrian and Hungarian officials threw a party, dubbed the Pan-European Picnic, along the frontier on Aug. 19, 1989, during which several hundred East German citizens poured into Austria. Three weeks later, Hungary’s borders were completely opened, cracking open the Iron Curtain and revealing the hollowness of East Germany’s regime.

I was never a big fan of George H.W. Bush as president. But a speech he gave in Mainz, West Germany, in the spring of 1989 has found residence in my head as a geopolitical masterwork. In that speech, Bush lauded Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement for bringing changes to Poland and Hungary for reforms that were beginning there, and said that if Gorbachev was sincere about openness, he should allow East Europeans to have their freedom.

“For 40 years, the seeds of democracy in Eastern Europe lay dormant, buried under the frozen tundra of the Cold War,” Bush said. “But the passion for freedom cannot be denied forever. The world has waited long enough. The time is right. Let Europe be whole and free.”

Over the next two years, cascades of freedom washed across Eastern Europe, drowning Stalinist regimes that had ruled for four decades. But that optimistic mood was shoved aside by new forces, some of which, ironically, were unleashed by Eastern Europeans’ newly won right to self-determination — like the bloody civil war in Bosnia. Nationalist and nativist forces emerged in Poland and in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán has recast democracy as “illiberal,” consolidating power through constitutional manipulation, cronyism and xenophobic rhetoric. And Gorbachev’s dreams of a reformed, open Russia have been demolished by Vladimir Putin, who has rebuilt a centralized autocracy, silenced dissent, and waged war on neighboring democracies, most brutally in Ukraine.

It wasn’t long ago that the United States stood as a powerful symbol against repression, against excesses by police and security forces, against corruption in politics, and for human rights and the rule of law. The U.S. was a beacon of hope to the outside world. But Trump has extinguished it.

In Mainz 36 years ago, George H.W. Bush invoked the “flowering human spirit.”

At the United Nations last week, Trump told assembled dignitaries from around the globe: “your countries are going to hell.”

Since Inauguration Day, Trump seems to have spent most of his waking hours — and quite possibly in his dreams as well — plotting ways to grab yet more power for himself and add to his family’s riches. Some of his abuses of power echo the dictatorial methods of the old Soviet bloc: persecution and prosecution of those who dare to criticize him, assaults on the legal system, on higher education and on free speech, bans on books, rewriting history to mirror Trump’s radical and racist thinking, and using the military to intimidate and threaten those who protest his increasingly authoritarian regime. With Republican majorities in the U.S. Senate and House fearful of crossing Trump, our nation has essentially become a one-party state.

American democracy is teetering. Safety now depends not on law or principle, but on skin color and allegiance to MAGA orthodoxy. And the peril isn’t confined to the United States. Trump’s chaos reverberates globally. Far-right activists in Europe and beyond see him as a kindred spirit. His anti-democratic behavior erodes the moral leverage the U.S. once wielded against authoritarian powers like Russia and China. By cozying up to despots and demeaning longtime allies, Trump has upended the geopolitical balance and global trading system — and dimmed the beacon that once lit the way for those who dared to think differently.

But there are glimmers of hope, personified by a growing nationwide resistance — millions of citizens who organize and march under the banner of grassroots movements like Indivisible, and politicians like Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker, who have broken from Democratic dithering to confront Trump with clarity and courage. Even late-night comedians have joined the fray, battling back against Trump’s attempts to silence dissent and setting examples for the rest of us.

I’ve seen what democracy looks like when it’s reclaimed from the shadows. I’ve listened to dissidents speak truth in whispers, and I’ve seen those whispers swell into movements. Heroes emerge from unexpected corners. It’s exhilarating to see Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and their late-night comrades helping lead the defense of democracy — Bärbel Bohleys of our time, armed not with banners, but with satire, solidarity  — and a valiant refusal to stay silent.