As Trump rants and threatens, our allies fear the worst
Donald Trump told the New York Times last week that he is only limited by his morality and his mind. The problem is: He has no morality, and he’s lost his mind.
America’s allies understand this better than we do here in the United States. They are not limited to mostly viewing, reading or listening to news generated by American corporate media, which is itself a behemoth of disinformation propped up by Trump and enjoyed as entertainment by the legions of lunatics currently incapable of critical thinking.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in addressing his European compatriots last week, was blunt about Trump in the wake of his recent military action in Venezuela that saw President Nicolás Maduro and his wife captured and unceremoniously dumped in a Brooklyn jail to stand trial on drug charges. As recently as Saturday, Trump declared that he is now in control of Venezuela, and that the country is rich and safe.
“In my opinion,” Steinmeier said, “we have now moved beyond the stage where we can lament the lack of respect for international law or the erosion of the international order. We are far beyond that, I believe…both disrespect and erosion are well advanced.”
The German president was blunt about where he thinks Trump is leading the world: “It is about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers. Where even medium-sized states, such as ours, are being pushed to the margins of history, and where smaller and weaker states are left completely unprotected.”
Trump, acting as a modern-day J.R. Ewing, declared the U.S. is now in the oil business as he took over Venezuela. But the oil companies, especially ExxonMobil, are not so sure. They’ve been sold that bill of goods too many times before.
Nonetheless Trump’s mafia approach to American imperialism has understandably caused concern among our allies — especially those in the countries we built from the ashes of World War II. To them, having the U.S. potentially turn against you has the same emotional appeal as finding out your parents are members of “Murder Inc.” The natural reaction is to keep the parents out of reach, emotionally and physically. As this happens, the potential for the destabilization of Europe only increases.
While Steinmeier holds mostly a ceremonial post, his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron — who wields a bit more power — recently said nearly the same thing. “The U.S. is an established power, but one that is gradually turning away from some of its allies and breaking free from the international rules that it was until recently promoting,” Macron told France’s diplomatic corps at the Élysée Palace last week. “Multilateral institutions are functioning less and less effectively. We are living in a world of great powers, with a real temptation to divide up the world.”
Actually, we live in an increasingly egalitarian, sterile culture dominated worldwide by school yard bullies so cliched you recognize them as characters in American sitcoms, superhero movies and a variety of comics, graphic novels and video games. This is not only today’s fiction, but unfortunately it is our reality. The lines are blurred. Both sides of the political spectrum complain there’s no critical thinking, and both sides are sometimes guilty of failing that class themselves.
But nothing is so blatantly salacious and ridiculous as a Donald Trump lie, and millions of Americans never tire of hearing him spew them.
But nothing is so blatantly salacious and ridiculous as a Donald Trump lie, and millions of Americans never tire of hearing him spew them. Others believe that it is okay to see masked men in tactical gear indiscriminately stopping, detaining and shooting American citizens. These people are not as ubiquitous as your average Trumper, but they do exist. By being numb to, ignorant of or totally complacent about reality, these eager NPCs (non-player characters) make a habit out of running into walls in their lives without ever comprehending why. Some do understand what is going on and argue that masked men in tactical gear should not be active in American cities on a daily basis. Call me crazy, but that’s where I fall.
We are a nation built upon laws, and this should never be allowed on American soil. We accept the established framework of the Constitution and afford every person due process. If that cannot be guaranteed by the administration, then they have increased the likelihood of ratcheting up violence, and if they continue to be successful — which Trump has been — they will then use that violence to bring about even more violence.
Last week in the Brady Briefing Room, Vice President JD Vance vowed to lower the temperature in Minneapolis and elsewhere by sending in more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in response to all of the dissent following the murder of Renee Good. By Wednesday the Trump administration was calling it a “surge.” Instead, it’s open warfare on innocent citizens of an American city. I half expected a Snidely Whiplash twirl of the mustache or a Bertram Oleander sidewise glance and sneer. But Vance wasn’t wearing any eyeliner that day and didn’t engage in such drama. He merely yelled like Donald Trump delivering his 2025 Christmas greeting.
Matters not. They prater on. Former Trump administration official Miles Taylor, the “anonymous” of Trump’s first administration, says the ultimate goal is to suppress votes, ratchet up the violence and call into question the upcoming midterm elections. “He likes to say that he’s making jokes,” Taylor said of the president. “For example; he ‘joked’ that he’d call off the midterms. But these are trial balloons, and if Trump doesn’t get enough pushback, he pushes forward. Trump’s jokes are jokes, until they aren’t.”
Janessa Goldbeck, the CEO of Voice Vets, echoed those thoughts, saying that Trump’s political goals are transparent — especially after escalating violence in Minnesota. “The president’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act is not about restoring calm or keeping people safe. It is part of a pattern of provocation, escalation and threats of force designed to justify using the military against Americans.”
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Continuing many of these arguments along strictly political lines is pointless. In reality, the Minneapolis shooting isn’t about whether the ICE agent was guilty or innocent in the moment. What are the rules of engagement for ICE and the general public? This is a non-political question and should not be viewed otherwise. This is procedural.
I covered a lot of police-involved shootings in 42 years. The first book I wrote was about that subject, sources I obtained and protected by going to jail four times.
Police always have strict policies about engaging in gunplay — especially in public areas with many innocent bystanders. I want to follow the facts. Did the officers follow their procedure before and, more importantly, after the shooting? It certainly didn’t seem like they did – or if they did then their policy is extremely lacking in the common sense of every policing entity I’ve worked with in the 40 years I’ve covered violent crime — five of which were spent at “America’s Most Wanted.” Usually, after an officer-involved shooting, the cop hands over their weapon to their partner, waits for other police to arrive to investigate the shooting and is routinely placed off-duty with pay until the end of the investigation. In this case, the officer left the scene and the vice president told us in advance the conclusion to the investigation that hadn’t started.
Police are trained to de-escalate situations. A former high-ranking local police officer I’ve known since college put it best: “The objective is to not create the circumstances that justify deadly force.”
But what can you reasonably expect to happen when mask-wearing police officers are allowed to act as military units and roam the countryside in tactical gear while treating Americans citizens as potential enemies? We cease being a nation of laws where the police serve us. On Thursday, Presidential Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that ICE agents were “only doing their duty,” were 100% correct and that Democrats wanted to allow dangerous criminals on the streets.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I haven’t heard one person defend violent criminals. “It’s just that the members of ICE shouldn’t be violent toward American civilians,” Goldbeck explained.
The president and vice president have both said the ICE raids will continue, and more people will be involved. That’s a recipe for disaster.
The president and vice president have both said the ICE raids will continue, and more people will be involved. That’s a recipe for disaster. Some say it is an attempt to create martial law in select blue cities across the country to thwart Democratic control of Congress come the fall’s midterm elections. Trump has already said that if Democrats return to power, he fears another impeachment — a statement he has taken to repeating on an almost daily basis.
The violence in Minneapolis and the violence abroad, as well as additional violence threatened by Trump everywhere, is a theme that both Taylor and Goldbeck say have a common root cause: Trump’s desire for imperialism.
On Tuesday, the president appeared in Detroit, ostensibly to talk about the economy and how our nation is “hot, hot, hot,” but also to further demonize Democrats, anyone who speaks against him and, of course, his next nation of conquest: Greenland. He also took the time to flip off an autoworker who said something about pedophiles and Jeffrey Epstein. The following day, Trump’s FBI raided a Washington Post reporter’s home looking for information on a “very bad leaker.” The president threatened Iran with military action, and the White House held continued talks on Greenland with representatives from that country and Denmark. Afterward, Danish officials characterized the meeting as unproductive because of a “fundamental” difference with the United States. Apparently part of where the countries disagree is that Trump doesn’t understand the difference between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Bering Sea.
Just kidding. He just keeps saying he “needs Greenland,” when in fact he can already get everything he needs there. But Trump keeps saying he is “going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not.”
That’s a threat — something Donald Trump knows and understands. But this warning could lead to the dissolution of NATO, an outcome that would apparently be fine with Trump and his hero, Russian President Vladimir Putin. The danger is so real that Sweden, Germany, France, Norway and the United Kingdom are sending military personnel to Greenland at Denmark’s request as part of Operation Arctic Endurance, an effort to increase security in the Arctic amidst tensions from Trump’s interest in acquiring the territory. The president’s response to that on Thursday amounted to him saying he couldn’t care less.
We are working against our own self-interest as a country. The U.S. built post-World War II Europe with the Marshall Plan. Today we’re tearing it down with the Trump plan.
There is a greater risk as well. Recent disreputable media sources have referred to World War III and talked about who would most likely be drafted to fight in that war.
No one gets drafted. It ends up with two people pushing buttons, and ending civilization in a cataclysm that Carl Sagan described as “Nuclear Winter.”
The president is plunging head-first into this increasingly possible scenario. He calls climate change the biggest scam in history, and yet he is addressing national security concerns in Greenland because of sea shipping lanes opening in the Arctic Ocean due to the effects of climate change.
He denies reality and, in the process, he’s bringing us closer to the brink of destruction. They see it in Europe. Here in the United States, we refuse to.
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