Opinion
Donald Trump used to brag about grabbing women by the crotch. Now he’s grabbing the world by its axis.
He still believes he has the right to swoop in with a transgressive attack. He has simply expanded his targets.
“When you’re a star,” he once said, “they let you do it. You can do anything.”
His approach in his second term can best be described as manhandling, abetted by his cabinet of lackeys and congressional Republican bootlickers. Mike Johnson pathetically conjured an “America First Award” for Trump out of thin air. The House speaker called the “beautiful golden statue” of an eagle appropriate to “the new golden era in America”.
Trump thinks more than ever that he can have his way with whatever he wants in whatever way he wants. Whether it’s a country, a skyline, the White House. He accosted the People’s House, bulldozing the East Wing and a Jackie Kennedy garden, before anyone could even look at the plans. He blows up suspected drug boats, snatched Nicolás Maduro out of his bedroom and salivates at the thought of pillaging Greenland and assailing Cuba.
“I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba,” he said. “That’s a big honour. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”
You can do anything.
At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, an amused Trump mused: “I think I may go to Venezuela and run for president against Delcy,” referring to Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president who ascended with Trump’s approval.
On Monday, Trump said that if Iran did not submit to him, “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.” He was steaming that NATO was not bending to his will, and he was vowing that it would rue the day. “This was a test for NATO,” he said during the cabinet meeting, adding: “If you don’t do that, we’re going to remember. Just remember. Remember this in a number of months from now. Remember my statements. They have an expression, a great expression, ‘Never forget.’ We can never forget.”
It’s odd that Trump co-opted the bracing slogan about 9/11 given that on that day he observed that, with the twin towers coming down, one of his buildings, 40 Wall Street, became the tallest in lower Manhattan.
Once, Trump thought war was a waste of time and lives and money; he dreamed of building hotels on the beaches of North Korea and the Gaza Strip. After he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, he gave a speech outlining his military policy. “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” he said. Now he lusts for regime change.
Cadet Bone Spurs has developed a taste for flaunting our unparalleled military, and there’s no one at the Pentagon to curb this new appetite for global violence — certainly not the aggro Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth showed again why he is such an unnerving choice to run our military when he blocked the promotion of two Black officers and two women to be one-star Army generals. As The New York Times scooped, that left a gaggle largely of white men, Hegseth’s favourite breed, on the promotion list.
When Trump was a celebrity developer, people laughed at his megalomania in plastering his name everywhere. He grabbed buildings by the crotch. But now that he is president, it’s not funny. It’s foul.
He forced his name onto the Kennedy Centre. He scratched the “US” out of the US Institute of Peace and made it the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. He is branding his name on a class of battleships. A multistory banner of his glaring face hangs from the Department of Justice. He tried to have Washington Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station renamed after him, and is plotting a Trump-style arch across from the Lincoln Memorial so tall it could interfere with Reagan National Airport flight paths.
Trump’s handpicked arts commission approved the creation of a commemorative 24-carat gold coin with a scowling picture of the president leaning over a desk with his fists clenched. And King Midas is impelling the Treasury Department to mint a one-dollar gold coin with his visage.
Now, in his frenzied quest for ubiquity, he will deface US currency. The Treasury Department announced on Thursday that Trump would become the first sitting president to have his signature on paper money. Thrusting himself onto legal tender is anything but tender — he’s shoving the US treasurer’s signature off the bills. Naturally, Trump put a sycophantic man in that job — ending a 76-year stretch of women holding it.
“The president’s mark on history as the architect of America’s golden age economic revival is undeniable,” said Brandon Beach, the treasurer, in a statement. “Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate but well deserved.” (It’s alarming that the US treasurer does not seem to know that the “operation” in Iran is raising prices and cratering stocks.)
As everyone tries to make sense of this more belligerent Trump, just remember: He’s still “Access Hollywood” Trump. He continues his amoral, pseudo-macho posturing — just with a bigger stage and the biggest weapons.
You can do anything.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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