Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
“I’ve had a lot of wars of my own, I’m really good at war. I love war….”
– Donald Trump, Campaigning in Iowa, 2016.
“Yeah. There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need international law.”
– Trump responding to a question from a New York Times reporter regarding any limits to his global powers, January 8, 2026.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
– Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller responding to a question from CNN’s Jake Tapper, January 5, 2026.
Donald Trump’s first term (2017-2021) was a disaster, culminating in an attempted self-coup, an attack at the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the electoral votes of the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s bombast had no limits, and Insurrection Day demonstrated the horror of his actions. This led to clemency in his second term for nearly all of the Americans who stormed the Capitol, including such key organizers as Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Torrio. Clemency was offered last year on Trump’s first day in office, and full pardons were issued a week later just after Vice President J.D. Vance stated “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
In the first term Trump faced an unusual level of criticism from high-level officials, including chief of staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and even director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Since Kelly and McMaster were general officers and therefore not permitted to criticize a sitting president, so their criticism was particularly striking.
There are no in-house critics in Trump’s second term (2025-2029), which may be more apocalyptic, leading to the derogation of America’s democracy and greater use of force at home and abroad. The mainstream media is crediting Trump with seeking peaceful agreements to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, while the picture on the ground points to him throwing President Volodymyr Zelensky and several million Palestinians to Russian and Israeli wolves.
Trump’s obvious paranoia, narcissism, and lack of impulse control have already led to destructive acts, including the use of military power in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Western Africa, and now South America. Trump and Miller are also threatening the use of military force in Cuba, Mexico, and even Greenland, which would destroy the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and give a huge geopolitical victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s language is becoming increasingly bellicose. Iran has been threatened with additional use of force, and Trump the word merchant has warned the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, to “watch his ass.” He told the acting leader of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, that if she didn’t do”what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” He has become increasingly blunt about taking over Greenland, stating that “I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”
The most frightening aspect of Trump’s maneuverings is the emergence of a gradual slide toward autocracy, which has been observed previously in various nations over the past decade or so. A partial list would include Hungary (beginning in 2011), Turkey (2013), India (2014), Poland (2015), and Brazil (2019). Two Harvard professors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, touched on this phenomenon in their book “How Democracies Die.” They warned in Trump’s first term about democratic backsliding and how elected leaders can gradually subvert the democratic process and increase their power.
In Trump’s second term, we witnessed the leaders of elite institutions in the fields of higher education, law, communications and the media, and corporations bend the knee in pandering to the bullying from the White House. This was reminiscent of Germany in 1934 in the response to another bully.
In less than a year, Trump has managed to get a series of free rides from the most reactionary Supreme Court in U.S. history, which gave him almost complete immunity from future prosecution; to neutralize the Congress; to ignore the Constitution and the War Powers Act; to politicize the Pentagon and the intelligence community; and to boast that “I’m the speaker (of the House) and the president.” Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has voted against the president on occasion, conceded that she curbs some of her actions and statements because she fears “violence from his supporters.”
Meanwhile, the political and legal systems have failed to punish him for his first and second term transgressions. As a result, the era of militarism and mendacity continues along with the enormous domestic price that we must pay due to excessive defense and intelligence spending, President Eisenhower was spot-on in describing the social costs of defense spending and in warning that “humanity was hanging from a cross of
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