With each passing month of his presidency, Donald Trump is behaving more like America's mastermind than its boss.
How? Let me count the ways. We are a nation at war today, with tens of thousands of troops deployed alongside Iran. Usually, when our nation is at war, the prime minister's top priority is to keep the country united. Because there is nothing more embarrassing for US soldiers fighting abroad than to look back and see our country tearing itself apart at home. And nothing encourages the enemy to hold on to better principles of ending war with America than to see America at war with itself.
And how did Trump rise to that prime-time coalition job? He did not lift a finger to bring the Democrats after the war. Instead, he prioritizes acting as a master of thieves. At the same time Trump is asking our men and women in uniform to make the greatest sacrifices, he has engaged in a brazen attempt to hack the US Treasury to benefit himself, his family and his political supporters, which may include those who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It's a tyranny that even some of his most loyal Republican Party members would accept.
Trump conspired with his Justice Department, led by his former lawyer, to use taxpayers' money to create a $1.776 billion political fund, which is said to compensate those Trump supporters who “suffered weapons and law enforcement” at the hands of his predecessor. In fact, as the paper's editorial board noted, “it will reward loyalists who are willing to break the law and commit violence in the name of the president.”
Fortunately, a federal judge put a temporary hold on the plan, which no one explained better than Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: “So the top law enforcement officer in the country is asking for an empty fund to pay people who abuse the police? In the face of all that opposition, Trump has shown a willingness to back down from his evil plan, but I'll only believe it when I see this incredibly corrupt, self-serving plan dead and buried.”
If Trump had a little integrity, instead of planning to set aside 1.776 billion to pay these fake defenders of the border of freedom – the loyalists who rob the halls of Congress – he would direct Congress to spend that amount to support today's real defenders of the border of freedom: the Ukrainian Army. Both resist Vladimir Putin's attempt to crush Ukraine's democracy and weaken Russia's ability to threaten other free European countries. God bless the Ukrainian fighters.
Alas, however, Trump apparently only wants money from people trying to subvert our Constitution at home, not those who want to emulate our constitutional democracy abroad.
In addition, the Trump-directed Justice Department quietly filed, as an addendum to that bailout agreement, a one-page document signed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, stating that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and FORBIDDEN from prosecuting or pursuing” tax claims pending against Trump, his family members or his businesses. It is not yet clear what will happen to that measure.
President Trump has another moniker that belies his ethical challenges: “big trader,” as the Associated Press recently suggested. Why? Because “recent presidents have never traded stocks in companies that could increase their fortunes or hit the pen, but Donald Trump broke that precedent in the first quarter of this year with more than 3,600 buy and sell orders,” wrote the AP, “many of which involved companies whose profits were directly affected by government decisions.”
That was an average of 50 trades a day in stocks that include US military suppliers affected by the Iran war. “If he had been secretary of defense, he would have committed a crime,” Richard Painter, a senior White House adviser in the George W. Bush administration, told the AP “Technically he could do this, but it's a fundamental breach of trust.”
Not only did Trump stop almost all US financial aid to Ukraine, but he also reduced US troops to NATO countries where Putin, seeing that he was losing the war, threatened them the most.
Just as the American people are beginning to see that Trump is becoming an aggressor in our system – trying to manipulate the justice system to make money available to his pirates on January 6 and to protect himself and his family from continued taxation – our allies conclude that Trump's America is becoming a dangerous aggressor for them.
Indeed, something is happening with the American traditional partners that I never thought I would see in this life or the next. In the post-World War II era, we and our allies together adopted a doctrine of “deterrence” against the Soviet Union, and later Russia, to prevent any attempts by the Kremlin to expand its influence in the free world or to put neighbors under its thumb.
It doesn't matter anymore.
Our partners watched as Trump threatened to make Canada the 51st country and take Greenland from Denmark. They are watching him start a war with Iran without consulting NATO and then they want NATO to help rescue them from this mess. They watched it cut US financial aid to Ukraine, put the Russian aggressor on a par with that country and then impose all the reckless, ill-conceived taxes on all of our allies.
As a result of all that, something unprecedented is happening: “Containing Trump's America is now a strategic priority for our allies as it was for Russia,” Nader Mousavizadeh, CEO of Macro Advisory Partners, a regional consulting firm, and former senior adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, told me.
And how could it not? If you look at how Trump has hit Canada with tariffs, it is difficult not to conclude that the worst situation for the country to be in during the second administration of Trump “is to be a close friend of America and integrate your economy, energy and military systems with that of the United States,” said Mousavizadeh. Everyone can see, he added, that Trump “will arm any country's dependence on America and use it to take out anything that can define American power.”
It is not surprising that after Trump reinforced his rhetoric about taking Greenland, the European NATO members – Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland and the United Kingdom – all announced plans to send small troops to Greenland to reinforce the Danes.
Daniel Fried, the former US ambassador to Poland, noted in his Atlantic Council article that although these NATO supporters are trying to plan their action as necessary to strengthen security in the Arctic, they have also “used the word 'deterrence.' For Europeans to speak this way about the United States, even indirectly, is a low point, but it is necessary. “
Let's not forget that at the beginning of Trump he forced Ukraine to give the United States access to important minerals in order to get US help against the Russian Army that is trying to destroy it. This is the real “Trump Doctrine”: Resist America, and I will charge you; Trust in America, and I will cheat you.
The only reasonable response of our allies is to try to “block and divide,” Mousavizadeh concluded. And if Trump keeps this for his full four years, he added, “no NATO leader will ever again accept with responsibility the level of reliance on US technology, US defense systems or financial systems” that NATO countries take for granted.
I've been in Portugal this week and I'm shocked at the extent to which European business leaders are talking about losing faith in American institutions and America as the guarantor of global legal rules – something they always take for granted. It literally disturbs them, like hikers who have lost their compass.
In short, having a president who behaves like a king of thieves – not a military commander – costs us dearly at home and abroad. This distortion of the American presidency undermines the foundation of the alliance that won two world wars and the Cold War and created one of the longest periods of peace and prosperity in history. Every day we put up with such behavior at the risk of our children's future.
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