Michael Brenner scrutinizes the effects of Trump’s behavior on foreign policy over the past 100-plus days, saying his ability to cast himself a winner owes more to the perversity of contemporary American society than to any genius on his part.
President Donald Trump during his commencement address an the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on May 1. (White House / Daniel Torok)
So, President Donald Trump’s heralded intervention to bring resolution to the Ukraine conflict has fallen flat. Rejected by Russia, by the EU states, by Kiev. An unprecedented trifecta of failed foreign policy.
His contrived scheme designed to skirt the core issues and interests at stake was a non-starter from Day One. That should have been obvious. There was no serious thinking in the White House that might produce a coherent diplomatic strategy.
There manifestly was no understanding of Moscow’s position rooted in post-Cold War history and events since the U.S.-sponsored Maidan coup in 2014 — nor of the intransigence among the ultra-nationalists who pull Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s strings.
Instead, what we got was vintage Trump. An impulsive reaching for a quick triumph to punctuate his brilliance as a statesman. The fixing of an objective without a thought-out plan how to achieve it.
A reliance on bullying, intimidation and underhanded dealing — the hallmark of his entire career; its apparent successes rooted in corruption, cronyism, and criminality — facilitated by the deference of other parties who lacked his ruthless cold-bloodedness. In his record of failures, as testified by six bankruptcies, he contrived to stiff his partners and creditors in each instance.
Against this background, his ability to cast himself as a winner owes more to the perversity of contemporary American society that invites chicanery than to any genius on his part.
On Ukraine/Russia Trump was grandstanding. There is an element of self-promotion in everything that he does publicly. The idea of being celebrated as a great peacemaker captured his imagination — not because he had any concern about the destruction and human cost or Europe’s long-term stability.
Admittedly, he also seemed to have been sold on the fashionable notion that the U.S. should mute its confrontation with Russia so as to be in a position to concentrate all our resources for the titanic struggle with China. The role of warrior-in-chief potentially could be just as appealing as that of peacemaker.
“His ability to cast himself as a winner owes more to the chicanery of contemporary American society than to any genius on his part.”
In fact, he had it both ways for a while: a Nobel Prize candidate for mediating in Ukraine; laurels from Israel’s American legions for reinforcing Washington’s complicity in the Palestinian genocide. What counts for Trump is the limelight and the exaltation.
So, he fixates on the one step that could stop the Ukraine fighting quickly — a ceasefire. None of the necessary and suitable preconditions exist; it amounts to calling a timeout of indeterminate length in a war that the other side is winning.
Yet, for three months that is the centerpiece around which everything pivots — futile proposals hatched by Trump’s virally anti-Russian advisers that only a fantasist images could lead to a settlement of the conflict.
The package presented to the Kremlin on a take-it-or-leave-it basis included such zany ideas as the U.S. taking over the critical Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station now under Russian control. This from a government that relentlessly for the past decade has pulled out all stops in its campaign to isolate and undermine the Russian state.
Tariffs & the Magical Circle
Trump being interviewed by Terry Moran from ABC News in the Oval Office on April 29. (White House / Joyce N. Boghosian)
So, the great tariff offensive is mired in its contradictions. Donald Trump’s hare-brained scheme to make the American economy great again is to force everybody else to pay extravagantly for the privilege of sending trillions in goods to the United States in return for nothing more than electronic banknotes printed by the Federal Reserve in the form of debt securities — securities they found it expedient to place in American financial institutions.
A magical circle has allowed Washington to run huge budget deficits and balance-of-trade deficits for decades without fear of a monetary comeuppance. It was the dollar’s supremacy in the global economy, American control of multilateral institutions like the IMF, and its leveraging of security protections that made this convenient arrangement possible.
However, that world no longer exists — a cardinal fact of contemporary international life beyond the comprehension of the hucksters who convinced Trump that this snake oil was the elixir that could cure the national economy of all that ails it — arresting the fading of American economic dominance and, indeed, ensuring its providential hegemony forever and anon.
An essential truth that we have been willfully overlooking is that Trump is an ignoramus — literally. His pool of knowledge about issues, places or persons is so shallow that you couldn’t drown a gnat in it. He doesn’t read. He thinks in slogans, as well as speaks in slogans.
The wide gaps between his declarations and the truth are at once the result of mental laxness and a characteristic of a clinical narcissist whose exalted sense of self can only survive by erasing the line between actuality and what he finds is comfortable and self-serving. Thus, for Trump the truth has no claim.
“His pool of knowledge about issues, places or persons is so shallow that you couldn’t drown a gnat in it.”
We have had nine years of the Trump phenomenon to observe how that approach to the world expresses itself. If further evidence were needed, scrutinize his behavior of the past 100+ days.
His understanding of the Russian leadership’s state of mind (and that of an overwhelming majority of citizens) is close to zero — despite repeated, candid statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, explaining with exceptional clarity what their views are.
The only notions Trump held were simplistic and mistaken: Putin is a strong leader and a hard-nosed wheeler-dealer of the type I’ve known all my life, someone with whom I can strike a deal; Russia is struggling to keep up the war effort; a few territorial concessions are all that is needed to resolve the dispute.
Similarly, his understanding of how the global economy works is equally impoverished. Macro-economics is not his thing; after all, he imagines that he became a (nominal) billionaire by being a master of micro finance. Does he even comprehend that supply chains are the connective issue of today’s international economy?
Safeguarding His Own Impulses
Trump with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Cabinet meeting on April 30. (White House / Molly Riley)
There is another feature of the malignant narcissist that is noteworthy: a powerful drive toward controlling what filters into his mind/feelings. Empathetic understanding of other parties, or detailed knowledge of complicated matters, is perceived as a potential threat to the uninhibited assertion of will. For it is constraining to recognize boundaries, the likely responses of interlocutors, second-order effects, or intricate intersections.
The imperative is to safeguard the privilege of saying or doing whatever that avaricious, demanding psyche may impulsively want to do at any given moment. Sudden reversals are the inevitable outcome.
One day we are told that the U.S. will abandon Ukraine to its fate unless it obeys Washington; next come an announcement with great fanfare of an historic joint-resource venture that will entail a massive American presence and stake in Ukraine’s future — such as it might be, an incidental oversight by Trumpian strategists.
“The imperative is to safeguard the privilege of saying or doing whatever that avaricious, demanding psyche may impulsively want to do at any given moment.”
For the same reason, the formal obligation to observe institutional rules (e.g. NATO, IMF), treaty stipulations, or alliance commitments is anathema.
Is this an overstatement of Trump’s ignorance? Let us recall that this is the president who advised Americans that they may protect themselves against the Covid-19 virus by injecting themselves with bleach. He’s also a president who appoints as secretary of health and human services a whacko who seems skeptical of the germ-theory of medicine.
So, Donald Trump is repositioning his foreign-policy people. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is exiled to the United Nations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio becomes interim national security adviser – warming the seat until Steven Witkoff has completed his failed special-envoy missions in Moscow and the Middle East and available to take over.
In a normal government, led by a normal person, such a move so early in an administration would be seen as having considerable practical significance. It might reflect the outcome of a dispute fueled by serious policy differences. It might impend important changes in the structure and process of decision-making. Neither is likely in this instance.
There is no organized process for setting foreign-policy objectives, for choosing among strategies, for formulating the appropriate diplomacy. Structured, orderly deliberation is absent and alien. Decisions are made by Trump on an ad hoc basis. He listens at random to advice from the principal officeholders, from his White House entourage, from golf pals, from FOX TV personalities. From whomever.
The appointment of the hapless numbskull Pete Hegseth to head the Pentagon happened because Trump relished the crude inanities that he uttered at FOX. (During Trump’s first term, he habitually chatted late in the night with Sean Hannity about what the latter had broadcast in that evening’s segment).
Whatever impresses him he adopts — even if the ideas are contradictory or ephemeral. Hence, the changeability of what he tweets or says from day-to-day — re. Zelensky, Putin, Ukraine in or out of NATO, grabbing Greenland/Panama/Canada, trade negotiations with China versus new sanctions, negotiations with Iran vs Trump fatwa forbidding anyone in the world from buying its oil. All of this is transparent and repetitious. Yet, elided by the media and most commentators.
Frankly, there is a case to be made that the psychology of Trump’s unhinged behavior is less of an analytical challenge than is the behavior of all those analysts who insist on normalizing it by ascribing to Trump’s words and actions design and coherent strategy that simply do not exist.
Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, [email protected]
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
An insight filled article, accurate and assertively stated, yet Professor Emeritus of International relations, Michael Brenner, with all his highly credentialled, broad and hard-won wisdom, appears still not to get the picture of reality as it is in actuality today!
They, Trump and his hand-picked, for his own ends cabal, know precisely what is expected of them; what they are fervently in the process of carrying through, and intending to bring about.
Were both Mussolini and Hitler simply intellectual dolts when they were delegated the power of their states? If so, what does it say of those ‘leaders’ who handed them the Crown of Power?
What does it say of the seventy-seven million Americans who voted to give Trump a second-shot at implementing his narcissist fantasy of replicating and supplanting the two erstwhile, extreme, zealous nationalist idols?
The years 1918-1939 were pre-war years, as have been the supposed Cold War years of 1945-1989. The era we – those of us alive today, are now experiencing, have again been precursor-war years.
In conclusion, states, Brenner:
“Frankly, there is a case to be made that the psychology of Trump’s unhinged behavior is less of an analytical challenge than is the behavior of all those analysts who insist on normalizing it by ascribing to Trump’s words and actions design and coherent strategy that simply do not exist.”
When has going to war ever been a sane strategy? Whoever said insanity had to be acted out coherently?
Both the Italian fascist strategy, and the Nazi strategies were seen, by those ruthlessly acting them out, as coherent, until the global populace began to recognize, way too late, that they weren’t actually beneficial for the vast majority.
And so, inhumane history marches on, constantly repeating itself, while we, the gullible people expect different – more progressively inclusive, uplifting results, for us all; from the black gloved hand of covert power.
(So, the great tariff offensive is mired in its contradictions. Donald Trump’s hare-brained scheme to make the American economy great again is to force everybody else to pay extravagantly for the privilege of sending trillions in goods to the United States … )
You do realize that the exporting countries do not pay the tarriffs … or don’t you? If you want people to believe you are so much smarter than those you criticize, you might learn a few things yourself.
“The stars might lie but the numbers never do,” November 7, 2024, “Trump is the first candidate in 40 years to sweep key 2024 swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, BOTH Chambers of Congress; &, w/76.9 million votes, winning the “popular” vote & the electoral college votes, Trump: 312, Harris: 226.
No doubt, “Core Trump” is a “Gemini.” Hence, DJTrump is all over the place, i.e., “One day we are told that the U.S. will abandon Ukraine to its fate unless it obeys Washington, etc.,” The next minute, the focus is on “One, Big, Beautiful Bill!” Trump-Vance, Inc., are impatient, “Drill, Baby, Drill!” Trump-Vance, Inc., can’t stand the whining, the complaining, the criticism. Hence, Trump manages his contempt, trolling the Democrats, the MSM, the Press Pool; &, “Shakes ‘Em Off,” in a heartbeat.
CLEARLY, DJ Trump is NOT a “Community Organizer.” Not a lawyer. NOT Jo$eph R. Biden! “Orange you glad?”
……NO doubt, IMO, “a vintage Trump” POTUS, saying Biden’s name, ad nauseam, is 100% better than the political corpse, Jo$eph R. Biden, posing as POTUS masquerading as human. *“After the 2014 coup, in Ukraine, 1) the U.S.-installed government in Kiev outlawed political parties, including the Communist Party, and stripped Russian as an official language. 2) VP Jo$eph “The Big Guy” Biden became BHObama’s virtual viceroy in Ukraine.”
It’s official! Trump-Vance, Inc., made English, the official language! Where’s the outrage?!? No doubt, everyone’s ‘Hurd’, Joe$eph “The Big Guy” Biden “is a sympathetic, elderly man w/a poor memory.” Basically, 4 years ago, JRBiden was & still is “unable to make decisions because of a mental issue, whether it be psychological, physical, or through a disease like dementia.” A best practice, “Scrutinize” Biden’s-Harris’ “behavior of the past” 55 years & “100+ days” into Trump’s-Vance’s, Inc., WH & it’s f/obvious why the Democrats’ duo, Biden-Harris, is the Duopoly’s EPIC failure!!!
Regardless of a US President’s grasp of ergonomics, macroeconomics, Bidenomics, the ties that bind, Trump, NOTHING!
The sum’s, the same, US POTUS’ 42-47 + M.I.C. + US Treasury + US Congress = MADness, “Mutually Agreed Deception, Destruction, Death,” NESS! It’s Endless! “Not, Good! Buhlieve, Me. Not, Good!!!
NEEDED: *“A Plan To Save The Planet!” “Now that we have technology to help us think; we need a government that’s designed to act of, by & for the people.” However, the reality is, the Butcher, the Bankers, the “Haymakers,” the other DUO, Bernie/AOC, keep rock’n the Duopoly’s Democracy packed w/Hypocrisy; &, the crowd R O A R S!!! Concluding, “a chameleon may change its colors but never its behavior.” Ciao.
* hxxps://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/biden-staffers-admit-what-we-all-knew-white-house-lied-about-ceasefire-efforts/
* hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/25/vips-memo-the-french-road-to-nuclear-war/
* hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2022/12/29/evidence-of-us-backed-coup-in-kiev/
* hxxps://thetricontinental.org/text-a-plan-to-save-the-planet/
Sad to see the same 90% cheerleading as in NYT comments. One can disdain Trump the man, as I do, and still judge actions by their results. I am waiting on both Ukraine and tariffs. Both have ten times the chance of accomplishing their goals than anything his detractors propose, or, actually fail even to propose.
Brennan offers the same vitriol that seems to be the only nostrum the Left provides these days. He might as well just cheer a Bernie/AOC rally, hate and anger all the way. Seems to make you all happy.
Undeniably the German DNA: know-it-all, big mouth, show off.
This is as bad as atrributing similar behavior to blacks, Asians, etc..
“Ukraine conflict’ [aka the USG/NATO ground WAR, in Ukraine] “has fallen flat. Rejected by Russia, by the EU states, by Kiev. An unprecedented trifecta of failed foreign policy.” Michael Bremmer.
….. Au contraire, Michael Bremmer. Many people disagree. “Ask your readers, “Do you want war w/Russia?!? Because that’s what will happen if Ukraine, which has made a pledge to take back Crimea by force, joins NATO. You will fight a war against Russia. Russia is one of the world’s leading atomic powers. There would be [NO] victors; Macron does not desire such an outcome.” Vladimir Putin, 2.7.22, “AGAIN, Russia has said, from 2008, incorporation of NATO into that alliance is a red line. How many times do we need to repeat ourselves?” Vladimir Putin, 2.7.22.
….. “Russia did not go into Ukraine to play the USG’s/NATO’s war games. Russia went into Ukraine to change it. Outta the gate; to date, Russia rocks the Queen. Ukraine is the Pawn. Et tu, USG/NATO? A Gemini’s $cheme, a “PIECE” Plan? OR, a Gemini’s dream, PEACE Plan?
What you say, above and below, is true…would seem to demand truly competent, deeply informed, self-less and committed leadership to address the multiple, interlocking concerns. Pointing out that one set of actors failed of these qualities in no way automatically raises up the present actors to have them. All told, the present administration clearly seems to be operating from even more limited knowledge, competency, selflessness and commitment than the previous.
Awh, James Keye, unpack’n the Proverb, “the key that opens is also the key that locks,” i.e., “What’s NEEDED,” ‘would seem to demand truly competent, deeply informed, self-less and committed leadership to address the multiple, interlocking concerns;” IMO, “GOT” Ralph Nader written all over it!
IMO, Ralph Nader, is fully qualified to answer the calling! Currently, we’re @ “our” hearts hurt, when we look @ what Trump-Vance, Inc., have done to Ralph Nader’s “Song.” After years & years & years, of Democrats & Republicans, piss’n on, dismissing, diminishing Ralph Nader’s genius & his following, “The Beast,” on the hill, prevails. They must feel that they’ve silenced Ralph Nader forever, i.e., That “that ship, “of, by & for the people” has sailed” or sunk? AND, the U.S. Congress, “Where is their voice?!?”
Ralph Nader runs intellectual rings around all of ‘em. Ralph’s still “GOT” ALL his faculties. His motor skills. His brain power. Nader’s “wheels are still turning,” always in “our” in favor.” The reality is it’s never gonna happen, an “of, by & for the people” POTUS. That pipe dream is GONE! The Ayatollahs, on the SCOTUS, robbed us. And, Congress $crewed us. The only other person qualified, imo, is Clare Daley fm Dublin, Ireland.
Further to your “Pointing out that one set of actors failed of these qualities in no way automatically raises up the present actors to have them.” Basically, James, the present actors like the past actors are, “Corporate Canines. One is the fox. The other is the wolf. No matter what, they’ll both eat you.” Malcolm X
Concluding, John W. Whitehead, a constitutional attorney, author, founder & president of The Rutherford Institute “got” this, “It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.” @ hxxps://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/rule-by-fiat-when-the-government-does-whatever-it-wants/
And, All Presidents’ ‘Power Tools,” i.e., the power to kill, the power to wage war, to spy, to detain, the power to command the largest military and intelligence capabilities in the world and, in turn, “wag the dog.” > “National Crises, Fake Emergencies and Other Dangerous Presidential Powers @ hxxps://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/rule_by_fiat_national_crises_fake_emergencies_and_other_dangerous_presidential_powers
“Protest & Survive!” TY, James Keye. “Keep It Lit!!!” Ciao
Obviously, Michael Bremmer isn’t feeling the “joy,” exhilaration or relief, that Comma La “working ‘tirelessly’ to secure a ceasefire in Gaza & bring the hostages home” Harris, the DNC, basically, that the Democrats are Out of Power!!! “Done & Dusted!” IMO, for @ least 12 years; AND, yesterday, 5.2.25, the Democrats “got” BUSTED!
……Biden’s-Harris’ Staffers admit, “The White House lied about ceasefire efforts;” AND, Sandy “AOC” Cortez’ is a, progressive, liar! HER live action role playing. HER fantasy, that “Fo’ (4) Mo’ Years” of Comma La “Working ‘Tirelessly’ to $ecure a Ceasefire in Gaza” Harris’ was trumped by the WH’s & Israel’s truth, “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year, and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.” Michael Herzog fka Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.
The author loses a tremendous amount of credibility by claiming that Trump suggested people could protect themselves from COVID by injecting bleach.
It went thusly: After some talk about how certain chemicals or ultra-violet light could kill SARS-COV-2 outside the body,Trump asked a doctor if either had been tried inside the body. The pundits began by mocking him and saying his question would have people drinking bleach. That eventually got modified to the falsehood that Trump told people to drink bleach. And that was the Democratic standard until Biden made an injection motion into his arm during a debate implying Trump had said people should inject bleach. So the author stumped to the level of Joe Biden.
What Trump said:
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”
hxxps://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/07/13/fact-check-did-trump-tell-people-to-drink-bleach-to-kill-coronavirus/113754708/
You make clear your dislike for Trump, and you select facts that may not recognize what is involved in a negotiation.
Somethings in it may be outlandish, or however you may interpret them.
But wait until we see the final outcome before jumping out on a judgment limb.
One thing I can say despite having some very strong disagreements with Trump is that he is an immense breath of fresh air after Biden and Harris.
In relation to Ukraine, we are much less tiptoeing on a tight rope over nuclear war now than then. And border policy plus the effort to impose absurd sexism policy is gaining fragrance.
Astonished – always – when what can be witnessed with the eye and ear (mass slaughter = genocide/ arresting judges, kidnapping and shipping people to a dark El Salvador prison without due process=unlawful, dissolving the Dept of Ed=self damaging to country on many levels, etc) — is viewed as but a bit of fresh air! The old adage that says – you know a man by the company he keeps – (witness the degree of reality possessed by his cabinet = Hegseth’s obliviousness to security measures, Rubio’s warped understanding of the historical context of the Ukraine debacle), Bondi’s sycophancy in outright lies about Covid deaths, …- inferior, immature, bullish, shallow, ignorant of history/context, even stupid- this is they. And if they are this, and he chose them, what does that tell you about him?
You do not know Harris. She did not have an opportunity to govern such as did Biden and Trump.
Good God. Trump is a “breath of fresh air” from the previous administration? That’s just another version of “look over there!” that Dem Party toadies use to avoid any reckoning of their own leaders’ stupidity and criminality. Trump IS an idiot, and supremely ignorant, and this is very obvious in his dealings with the Russians over Ukraine. Biden, too, was an idiot, and ignorant. Same for Harris. And, all of them support the Genocide in Gaza. It’s a bit late in the day to be drawing “fresh air” from Trump, no?
I agree Trump was the right choice in 2024 because Biden – Harris were leading us into WWIII. Dictatorship is better than annihilation, and Trump was at least talking about stopping the Ukrainian proxy war…of course he lied, as we can see now. I blame the feckless Democrats for Trump’s 2nd Presidency, not his precocity in anything..
Trump is a man w/o principle, so he floats like a cork on the sea hither and thither, where he himself doesn’t know what he will do (outside of ego, anger and retribution).
“….. Trump …. immense breath of fresh air after Biden and Harris.”
Whoa there buddy.
Biden and little-miss-round-heels were scum and they supported the Israeli genocide and massive crimes-against-humanity. Trump is cut from the same cloth …. even more so. Trump tried his level best to start wars in his first admin — covert/overt operations against Venezuela, launching massive waves of cruise missiles (59) against Syria, constant threats against North Korea and Iran. Now he’s back and it appears he’s going after war with Iran at minimum. Iran has *never* acted against the US.
On the domestic scene, Trump rails against the deep state. But after uncovering all the waste, fraud and abuse — where are the prosecutions? Vaporware. Where are the Epstein files? Trump was accused of co-raping a woman with Epstein but the story vanished. Was Trump raping kids on Epstein Island too? Trump is just another faction of deep state rot — he’s a daddy’s boy that inherited a fortune and — born on third base, he thought he hit a home run. His major accomplishment is 5 bankruptcy’s.
Breath of fresh air or is he really the reek of the sewer?
Roy Cohn taught him almost everything he knows about being a “major league a-hole.” you know, the guy who helped electrocute both of the Rosenbergs
Am watching the genocide continue and am not impressed. Evil is evil.
George Washington claimed that he could not tell a lie. IIRC, that was the first famous lie from the history of American Presidential Campaigns. No President since has dared to claim that they could never tell a lie.
So, its not like this is anything particularly different. Maybe exaggerated a bit, a bit more common with President #47 than with President #46, although he was certainly not famous for admitting that he and Hunter had chopped down the Cherry Tree. #46 had his whoppers too, like there being no Genocide in Gaza nor right-wing nationalists in Kiev who love their tattoos based on SS insignia.
We’ve had a string of Presidents that clearly do not have the training and background to understand what is going on. In such a situation they are of course lying. They don’t know or understand the truth despite the best efforts of loyal advisors to try to explain it to them before they go out to give the sales pitch. Therefore, they have no choice but to be lying.
Jimmy Carter was the last President who might have some internal regrets about telling lies, but I’d never say that he always told the truth. Before that we had Gerald Ford who made his political career on the Warren Commission and the President who was known as Tricky Dick to the nation. Presidents who lie is not exactly news. The Great Chief in Washington Always Speaks with Crooked Tongue.
They call this “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy”. How do you tell the President is lying? When their lips are moving.
Truly, a masterful portrait of Trump.
However, we must also consider that he was elected fairly in two elections, when the media intensely covered his idiocies, when he was subjected to outrageous accusations of being a Russian agent, and equally outrageous lawfare. Simply put, for all his shortcomings Trump is simply proof positive that the US is no longer a serious country. From the White House, to the Congress, to the Judiciary, we (the people) have demonstrated over and over again that we simply have no strong principles, no enlightened ideology, no clue as to how to staff and run a government. Hence, endless wars, support for torture, support for genocide, a barbaric healthcare system, an extractivist higher educational system, and an economy run on skyrocketing debt, or as Michael has so well stated is one designed: “…to force everybody else to pay extravagantly for the privilege of sending trillions in goods to the United States in return for nothing more than electronic banknotes printed by the Federal Reserve in the form of debt securities — securities they found it expedient to place in American financial institutions.”
Before we can ever get past this ‘Trumpian Era,’ the country must cast off its illusions of “greatness” and “exceptionalism” and begin to once again take government seriously, instead of treating it as an entertaining reality show. Unfortunately, it will likely take a serious crash of the domestic economy, where even the top 10% suffer greatly and are not bailed out, before that happens. Trump may turn out to be the catalyst we all need to wake from our slumber.
“Hence, endless wars, support for torture, support for genocide, a barbaric healthcare system, an extractivist higher educational system, and an economy run on skyrocketing debt, ”
America has principles. You just gave a short list of some of them. America, the nation of used car salesmen, is of course lying about having any greater or higher principles. America’s Principles were always best represented by Al Capone. Probably has been for a long time, since I stole that line about used car salesmen from the deceased Hunter S. Thompson.
America just does not like to admit the principles by which it lives … support for war, support for torture, support for massive funding for both, an obscenely evil health care system designed to profit from people’s misery, an economy that runs for the benefit of con artists and speculators, etc, etc, etc …. yep, you just started a nice list of the actual “principles” that America does hold.
America does have principles. Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas captured one of them, with Douglass shouting “Greed is Good!” And all the horrors that the follow from such a philosophy.
It’s all the corruption that resulted from World War two—our being the most powerful country on the planet and being very successful at creating many billionaires. Money and power corrupts. Trump is at least changing some aspects of the corruption.
Say what? He’s changing “some aspects” of the corruption? What corruption, and how so?
“ Trump is at least changing some aspects of the corruption.”
Yes, by normalizing corruption well beyond the slippery back room machinations that at least had some restraints and openly attacking laws, enforcement efforts and public engagement that could limit his own and the corruption of others.
Ladies & Gentlemen,
“We” are still a long, long way from home, i.e., “The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander in Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress), appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress’ blessing), and veto legislation.
“In recent years,” [imo, 1993-2025], “however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government.
The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.” *John W. Whitehead, Constitutional Attorney, 2.18.19.
The owl asks, *“WHO pays the price for the dissolution of the constitutional covenant that holds the government and its agents accountable to the will of the people?” The bird tweets, “We all do.”
I can heartily agree with most of the observations regarding Trump. I am a long-time expat (since 1984) but carefully follow American politics – world politics, actually, I live in Europe and in order to be able to read/watch RT I have to use a VPN, due to the censorship regime here – and had a glimmer of hope that maybe Trump might do something positive compared to the decrepit and corrupt predecessor, but alas. More of the same. Worse? I don’t know how to define that. Certainly no better, especially as regards genocidal Israel. However, I do take issue with the remark about the “whacko who seems skeptical of the germ-theory of medicine”. I think the choice of RFK was one of the few sane appointments Trump made. I have read his thoroughly documented, meticulously argued book on Fauci and thank goodness someone dares to take on Big Pharma at last. I have never seen any skepticism of RFK jr about germs, or anything “whacko” about his discourse. The author of this article does not distinguish between viruses and bacteria (or protozoa ….all “germs” I guess), and his flippant remark really took away from the rest of the article in my eyes.
Too bad that RFK also supports the Zionists.
Thank you for your comments. It saved me from posting something very similar. The sad thing is that Kamala would probably (IMHO) have been much worse. In a different way, of course. We keep our popcorn nearby and hope (even pray) for the best.
Thanks Michelle for proving there is a very intelligent observer of this news.
Thanks for the excellent comment; you saved me the effort.
Yeah, too bad about approving of the extermination of the Palestinians. A small detail.
I was cheering on most of this article but had to stop hard at the libel against RFK Jr. There’s some well-deserved criticism that can be meted out against him, such as his incredibly hypocritical attack on free speech and scientific freedom via new NIH rule saying that scientists can have all their government funding revoked if they participate in a boycott of Israel, all in service of his Zionist donors. It’s completely repugnant that he allowed his Achilles’s Heel of Zionism to infect an office that shouldn’t have a single thing to do with geopolitics. But any nonsense about him not understanding modern medicine is just a sad smear courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry he threatens.
Everything in this article is excellent and insightful – except for his gratuitous slander of RFK which is every bit a clueless as Trump’s mercurial and narcissistic rants. Kennedy knows what he is talking about when it comes to medicine, vaccines, and public health. The problem with him is his support of the genocide in Gaza.
Kudos to Michael Brenner for writing the best takedown of Donald Trump that I have ever read. Trump sees himself as a great man, but in truth, he is an empty-headed fool with a narcissistic personality disorder. What a dangerous mental combination that is in the man who is President of the United States.
I wish Kamala on all your houses, the writer’s and the sycophantic readers/commentators.
Are you suggesting that the American political system doesn’t advance into positions of leadership the most moral, thoughtful and talented individuals? Or are you only offering the comparison of two people who sought high office, both unsuited to the needs of this nation and this time? It is likely that Harris would have continued a, more or less, business as usual approach which would support a certain stability and maintain the existing horrors, while Trump has disturbed both that which wasn’t working as well as that which was working and exacerbated the horrors.
He could put his money where his pen is by moving to California and working for the U-Cal system. Kamala has been announced as the heir-apparent for the post of Governor, and in the Democrats she’ll sail to that nomination, probably without much challenge, and the Republicans can’t win CA since back when they went all racist on the Hispanics and dropped to about 40% support.
So, the writer could choose to go work for Governor Word Salad, if he wanted to.
Of course, I am also fond of telling climate-change denying rightwingers to put their money where their mouth is by purchasing seafront property on the 1 meter contour line.
When and how did Republicans go “all racist on the Hispanics” ?
What do you think this? That somebody who despises Trump must therefore like Harris? Extraordinary shallow and childish. I make little to no distinction between the dingbat Harris and the dingbats Trump and Biden. I’ll say the same thing to you that I was saying to the Biden/Harris partisans who, when their Master was being called out, screeched “Yeah, but Trump!”: Trump is President, not Biden. That’s your man at the Biden desk now, so deal with the criticisms and the awful truth about him.
Who are those men behind the curtain? An important, if not indispensable analysis —
hxxps://monthlyreview.org/2025/05/01/the-maga-ideology-and-the-trump-regime/
I can give a short list from public news reports. Elon Musk. the Adelson heir, probably the surviving Koch, definitely Vance’s Patron Peter Theil. We also know from the Dem side about the mega-donors who substituted themselves for primaries in the last election and first made sure Genocide Joe had no challenge despite 40% approval, and then picked Killer Kam as the eventual nominee. And I’d rather guess, there is some cross-over between that more murky list of mega-donors and the oligarchs like Bezos who gave Trump a million $ to his coronation fund so they could be in the picture with him on the podium.
These days, the curtain is rather transparent, and we have blowhard rich nerds who like to brag about their power.
Thank you! John Bellamy Foster’s MR article is indeed indispensable. (The link should start “https…”)
born to rule with a golden spoon in his mouth, never mind brain power..what else do you expect from a TV reality show star talking headless? reminds me of Nero emperor of empire fiddling insanely while the empire is collapsing all around him…just another day in the open air mental asylum for the criminally insane the US and its worldwide especially EU vassal states have turned into..
Before anything else, it is necessary to understand that Trump is solipsistic…not a philosophical solipsist. There are broadly two forms of solipsism: philosophical solipsism where the deeply considered issues of perception, mental action and proof of existence are contemplated and the other, a grandiose narcissism grown malignant into the belief that you are really all that exists, everything is yours to be used as your wish; it is a fundamental loss of sanity.
We can parse Trump’s actions forever and not find the thread that would be found in the evaluated actions of a sane person, no matter how complicated. This makes understanding and predicting his behavior extremely difficult; even self interest isn’t a guide since it is never possible to guess what is happening within his process to drive his interests in the moment.
His sycophants have adapted to this by simply saying that whatever his most recent utterance is is the most wonderful; it doesn’t matter to him if it immediately contradicts another utterance and it is of no interest to him that the sycophants change positions, only that they reflect his image of the moment, thereby verifying his core reality that he is all that there is. This is very bad for the rest of us that are part of an independent existence in reality.
Indeed.
This piece is so well-expressed that reading it could fairly be called ‘delicious.’ I chuckled and nodded my head, and sometimes laughed out loud, through the whole thing. Many of us who read CN probably know these things already, but to read such a well-articulated statement of them is still something to be savored.
The prose of the original article and your comment are so far above my skill level that I can only bow before superior world-class wordsmiths.
Thank you.
Which makes it even scarier.
I completely agree.
In every photo i see of trump recently, he looks more and more detatched from reality. He has this far away look in his eyes. It reminds me of people i have known suffering from dementia.
Apart from that, the man is an imbicile.
And to prove my point:
Xxxx://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/03/trump-truth-social-media-posts
Appreciate your extended article, but you blew your credibility by dissing Kennedy at HHS, as the nation has been crippled and poisoned by toxic crap in vaccines for decades. Obviously you have no kids but pharma stock? Toxic crap is in everything. We need a devoted, uncompromised leader to expose the peddlers of crap, in spite of their buying off most Representatives.
Thanks for the much needed takedown. Dangerous and lethal clown that he is, even a dangerous and lethal clown can make one good appointment.
Trump is clinically insane…
His plans are psychotic, his demeanor is that of child, and he is a degenerate narcissist with what is called a “god complex” (see hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_complex).
Woodrow Wilson also had a “god complex” but he did have a level of intelligence that is completely absent with Trump.
Protesting this clown and the circus around him will not do much good since his primary reactions will be to attempt to have protesters locked up.
At this point it is not Civil War that the US will most likely fall into but instead, a full blown revolution…
Woodrow Wilson was said to be unstable or mentally ill but little is said about his intellect. He was completely corrupt as he surrendered the Republic to the consortium of private central banks with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
I wonder what they paid him to install this massive commercial skimming operation on the country?
Thanks for bringing it up Valerie. I think that should be a very important point for the media: The emperor has no marbles. The media mostly covered for Genocide Joe when he had meltdowns and dementia moments. The DT, while always displaying behavior of sadism, malignant narcissism, and a general bloviating windbag asshole, now shows signs of serious cognitive decline. He can’t even remember his own BS. Again, the media and his faithful followers pretend everything is fine. (just like the Ds did before with JB).
It is almost unbelievable that the US has reached this level of kakistocracy. It is like a cartoon-characterization of a declining empire and the mentally unhinged freaks in the DT2 regime could not be more perfect. It has become so normal to have the bottom-of-the-barrel quality politicians in the US, many people are used to it and accept it. Even now, we see folks making excuses for the irrational and contradictory behavior.
On top of that, we have lots of claims that the DT is a “coke fiend” and/or “speed freak” (snorting Adderal?) His non-stop foaming at the mouth would support that: he never shuts up, ever, and some say he sleeps very little. He sure seems like he’s jacked up on some powerful stuff.
The MuskRat is a self-admitted ketamine freak. Who knows?
He’s too fat to be on speed. But how long will we have to suffer him Jonny. That’s the question.