The Trump Doctine

23 January 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

It is the unstated assumption, and the actual axiom, upon the basis of which U.S. President Donald Trump has formulated all of his foreign policies:

The only way to win in any negotiation with another nation is to have more power to punish that nation than that nation has power to punish yours.

This assumption explains his negotiations with Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Panama, Canada, Denmark, the EU, and all others. It has been less successful in his negotiations with Russia and China than with the others, because both Russia and China — though in somewhat different ways — have roughly the same power to punish America that America has to punish them. By contrast, for examples, Venezuela, Iran, Panama, and Denmark, don’t — they are much weaker.

The biblical book Revelation says, in its line 11:15, that God always wins in the end. It’s also found in Isaiah, 26:10-11. Popes have used the phrase “Divine Mercy” to allege that The Almighty imposes suffering in life, such as when Jesus died on the cross, for the purpose of that person’s achieving an after-life blessed and blissful in heaven. The mercy of the All-Powerful One provides hope even for “sinners” (people who disobey Him). In this way, whatever The Almighty wants, happens and is for the good; and, so, letting power reign, not resisting it, is right, and should be done. For example: slaves should not resist their masters. Thus, power is its own ‘justification’; even a “sinner” might go to heaven. And Paul, in Romans 13:1, said “Everyone must obey the government, because no authority exists wthout God’s permission.” Anyone who resists the government sins by doing so. Trump as the U.S. President has said “I run the country and the world.” According to Paul, in the view of Trump, every foreign Government ought to obey his commands.

Trump learned his religion by attending the church of the Protestant clergyman Norman Vincent Peale, who taught “the power of positive thinking,” which equated success with virtue. In that view, Jesus died for everyone’s sins, and so, the way to model oneself upon The Almighty is to channel more of His power than the other person does — in other words, it is to win. Thus, Tump despises what he callls “losers.”

Thus, too, Trump believes himself to be carrying out the will of God; and, therefore, since Trump believes that he runs not ONLY his country but ALL countries, it is right and good that all weaker countries will obey his commands. Those weaker countries are weaker than America is, on account of the will of The Amighty; and, so, they are inferior in the view of The Almighty; and, so, Trump must treat them that way — NOT as peers but as slaves.

When Trump said to Volodmyr Zelensky on 28 February 2026, right in the middle of this brief clip,

https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/hGjYLyhcIyo

“Trump tells Zelenskyy: ‘You don’t have the cards’”

“You don’t have the cards.”

Trump was very sincere and even impassioned, and his disrespect of Zelensky was real, not feigned, and both men were saying some things that were false, but at least on Trump’s side, the falsehoods were not from Trump’s intent but from his ignorance — he is ignorant of many crucial historical events, and has acquired his ‘news’ mainly from Reublican Party media, and doesn’t read much but gets his views mainly in conversations with his friends. However, he seems to be confident that he channels The Almighty, who defines what is good and what is bad.

In a lengthier version of that clip, Trump told a journalist about Zelensky, “You see the hatred he’s got for Putin. It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.”

Here is another brief clip, which shows Trump himself spewing hate against Somalians, and expressing overtly his anti-Black contempt.

Trump respects people like himself, super-rich and super-powerful; and, in that way, views himself to be the ‘first among equals’. He is very proud that “I run the country and the world.” He wants it to continue for as long as possible. He actually believes that his political opponents are evil. And he actually despises victims and poor people — “losers” — because he thinks that The Almighty made them to be as they are.

In domestic affairs, this view — that power is self-justifying — has deeply politicized the Justice Department and caused hundreds of federal prosecutors to resign in disgust.

On May 12th, I headlined “U.S. President Doubts He Must Adhere to the U.S. Constitution”, and it was about Trump’s answering a reporter’s question of whether he believes that a U.S. President must adhere to the U.S. Constitution. He answered “I don’t know.” Now, the relationship that this answer has to the Trump Doctrine is that if he believes that automatically what he, who ‘runs the country and the world’, rules or orders others to do, is pre-authorized by God, then (of course) he could not honestly answer “Yes” to that reporter’s question. However, as that article pointed out, he has twice taken the Presidential Oath of Office, which says “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Consequently, perhaps also a more general statement of the Trump Doctrine would be: “The U.S.President is God’s agent over the entire planet, and therefore stands above any law but God’s law.”

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.