January 19, 2026
The MAGA voting bloc may have been willfully deceived, but one year into Trump 2.0, it is kind of obvious who is getting the shaft, and how Trump's neocolonialism is actually working.
Some credit Trump's interventionary intentions to the financial needs of his political donors and billionaire pals. But a younger Donald Trump believed the same things the older Trump does today. He discusses America's role around the world with interviewer Rona Barrett on October 6th, 1980, specifically regarding the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, and the Iran-Iraq war . He says if we had gone into Iran with troops we would be "by now, an oil rich nation." Trump said much the same thing last week regarding Venezuelan oil, the result of the CIA/Pentagon coup conducted in Caracas. The cartoonish idea should have been abated by what Trump knew of Vietnam, even though he wisely declined participation. If not that, then thirty more years of intervention in the Middle East, wasting trillions of dollars and millions of lives to create a more dangerous and less US friendly region should have taught Trump something.
Some explain Trump's economic policy as Hamiltonian mercantilism, and his foreign policy as a twist on Teddy Roosevelt, saying " speak loudly and carry a big stick." In either case, Trump sees the ship of state as worthy of commandeering, in the name of populism during election years, and national profiteering afterward.
Some see Trump as heavily influenced by the cartoons of his childhood, as Ron Unz points out in his recent must-read piece. Trump embodies the brilliance of simplicity, catastrophically shaped by unexamined childhood priorities. He presides over a debtor nation, a hollow military, a voracious and powerful intelligence cult, and a growing domestic police state. Yet his intention is to keep the dollar as the world reserve currency, "fix" and "use" the unfixable and largely useless Pentagon, control and direct the intelligence cult, and utilize the police state to maintain "American values."
This might make sense in Trump's mind and morality, but it is incompatible with the Constitution, and American ideals of nonintervention, limited government, rule of law, and free trade. The US Constitution is designed to be incompatible not only with empire, but with excessive pervasive national debt, a massive standing and noticeably putrefying military, a national intelligence network that operates outside of law and public consent, and needless to say, a police state of any kind.
The American Republic was a hard won escape from European serfdom and British colonialism. The evolution of the United States into global empire is the most fundamental problem that faces America. Yet this is a problem Trump celebrates rather than rejects. His enthusiasm for control of everything from electricity prices, state ownership of portions of major industries, personal direction of trade policy and visas, random bombing and regime changes, and forced takeovers of desired foreign real estate all violate the literal US Constitution in terms of permit and process.
Trump, with self-interested cheerleading from his Zionist cohorts, wants a global replay of the expansionist era of the 1840s, without giving up 21st century federal income taxes, massive entitlements, and unsustainable national debt. During the first Trump campaign, it was Andrew Jackson who came to mind, as populist, protectionist, fighter and enemy of the Federal Reserve of his day, the 2nd National Bank of the United States. Since early 2025, we are witnessing instead the nascent imperialism of McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt, presented with Nixonian economic centralism and inflation-fueling self-righteousness.
The teetotaling Trump is far more similar to a different Andrew: Andrew Johnson. A Southern Democrat turned Republican Unionist, Johnson was a man who, while not as awful as historians recall, set the stage for his presidency from the onset. Johnson showed up drunk to his Vice Presidential swearing-in ceremony on March 4, 1865 and gave a speech that was - like many of Trump's pronouncements and social media messages - " hostile, inane, incoherent, repetitive, self-aggrandizing, and sloppy." Donald Trump, like Johnson, became an "outsider" President rather unexpectedly, enraging Washington insiders and beneficiaries.
Contrary to the views of some very wise people, I believe Trump is trying prevent the collapse of dollar imperialism, and the eventual collapse of the dollar at home. He wants to make the dollar great again, but refuses to use the only tools that will work. What are these tools ? Liberty unleashed, immediate shrinking of government spending to a fraction of what it is today, ending the warfare/welfare state, closing down the Federal Reserve and ending America's policies of force and threat. Instead, as he has always done, he seeks more assets to alter "his" debt to asset ratio, more spending to attract more lending, trusting that prime real estate and cheap resources will balance it out in the end.
In his 1980 interview with Barrett, Trump revealed enthusiasm for territory as a means of production and productivity. As President, he is plays this out as the "Donroe" doctrine. Trump's archaic view that controlling territory, owning trade routes and resources can save the American empire is incorrect. That model requires using, controlling and manipulating people, making existing serfdom permanent, and empowering and growing the state - all well-practiced recipes for war, poverty, unhappiness, secessions and revolution.
Oil shaped the planet's wealth, economy and wars over the last century. But the future is less oil and more small scale nuclear and efficient decentralized solar; it is innovational energy efficiency; it is less autarky and more free trade; less isolation and more global connection, less war and more friendship, less jingo and more appreciation for those doing it differently. Countering the worldview of wannabe global rulers, the future is decentralized; it cherishes human liberty and it is increasingly prosperous for everyone. Technology seized and manipulated by states for the sake of the state eventually becomes their undoing, and the past 30 years has truly not been kind to statism, and those associated with it.
Today everyone hates their government, and everyone knows it. Trump, as suggested in the lurid title of this piece, expresses his rapine imperial urges upon his supporters, his allies, and his enemies. Not even what is left of long-suffering MAGA is getting the common courtesy of a reach-around. In the name of improving the state of the US, he revs himself up by spitting on the Constitution. Trump promises his imperial spasms will produce a sweet afterglow. Let's hope that glow isn't nuclear, and that warm feeling isn't just the embers of republicanism.