Trump’s de facto Ideology

By Robert A. Vella

Ever since Donald Trump entered the arena of politics and campaigned for the presidency in 2015, observers from across the spectrum have struggled to identify his political ideology.  Although he ran as an anti-establishment populist from the Right, his public statements and declared positions were wildly inconsistent and opportunistic.  Trump contradicted himself so frequently that he either was trying to exploit the short attention span of the general public, or that he was intellectually incapable of being consistent.  In hindsight, both explanations are probably true.  Trump never has been a man of integrity, but that didn’t matter to his supporters.

Now, after nearly 20 months of controversy, ineptitude, scandal, and abuses of power in the White House, it is quite apparent that Trump has no self-conceived political ideology.  He is a President onto himself, obsessed with his own immediate self-interest and compulsively bent on using any and all means to advance it.  People who value ethics and principle see President Trump for what he is – amoral, megalomaniacal, and extremely dangerous;  and, in that assessment his de facto ideology is revealed.

In his new documentary which puts the surprising 2016 presidential election results within a broader socioeconomic and sociopolitical context, filmmaker Michael Moore astutely conveys Trump’s de facto ideology and associates it with business executives who are accustomed to heading hierarchical organizations.

From:  Michael Moore: I’ll move to Canada if ‘Fahrenheit 11/9’ gets me in trouble

“(Trump) absolutely hates democracy, and he believes in the autocrat, in the authoritarian.”

From:  Michael Moore says he believes Trump could be America’s last president because ‘he has no respect for the rule of law’

“They rule by fiat. They decide. They make the calls and they don’t like anybody else having a say.”

See also:

Michael Moore’s terrifying “Fahrenheit 11/9″: Trump is the symptom, not the disease

In new film, Michael Moore compares Trump to Hitler. And he’s not so crazy about Obama, either.

‘Mueller Investigation Is Going to Rock Washington,’ Omarosa Says at ‘Fahrenheit 11/9’ Premiere

Indeed, one only needs to look at Trump’s relationships with foreign leaders, the character of his closest associates, whom he praises and whom he reviles, to see this de facto ideology at work.  Trump is all but in bed with the Russia’s oligarch strongman Vladimir Putin, has a warm place in his heart for North Korea’s brutal left-wing dictator Kim Jong-un, and has been cozying up this week to Poland’s right-wing authoritarian “president” Andrzej Duda.  And, so many of his inner circle of associates are now convicted felons or under criminal investigation – such as his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort – that it gives the impression that Trump’s mentality is akin to that of a mob boss.  Conversely, he has routinely chastised Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, and virtually all other notable leaders, activists, and organizations typified by the western democracies which have been America’s traditional allies since at least the end of World War II.

The consequence of Trump’s de facto ideology is that he will align himself with fellow authoritarians even at the expense of America and its citizens.  If you support democracy and the rule of law, and especially if you are liberal or progressive, President Trump perceives you as his personal enemy.