“I'm not a dictator ... but I can do anything I want. I'm the President of the United States. I don’t need international law; I am restrained only by my own morality.”
In September 2005, Trump was not the president of the U.S., only a host of his TV Show "The Apprentice." Yet, he would brag to Billy Bush, an American radio and television host, during a taping session for an "Access Hollywood" episode, about his prowess in “anything.” He’d say in a hot mike accident on Oct. 7, 2016, that: “If you are a star, they, women, let you do it. You can do anything.” Thus, we all learned the boundaries of his own morality.
I cannot quote more from the video recording because my own morality wouldn’t allow me. Neither can I direct you to where you can watch it. The only thing I can tell you is that Trump’s words were not only off-color, but they were the work of a depraved mind.
Imagine what such a mind at work as the “star president” of a five-star nation would do? On Aug. 27, 2025, an organization named Elevating Voices of Veterans, a veterans group in America, representing over 1 million veterans, families and supporters, shared a video recording of Trump on Instagram. He said the opposition has been accusing him of being a dictator, but he was not. However, when the nation and the country were in danger, he could do anything he wanted, claiming, “I'm the President of the United States.”
What are those dangers that he wants to keep from harming the U.S.? Only Trump knows the dangers he keeps removing, but all the American public should know that he is doing whatever he likes just because he is the president.
This year, the 2026 midterm elections will decide which party controls Congress and whether Republicans can continue to hold on to every jack and jimmy of influence in the U.S. political toolbox called Congress. If the Republicans lose their control over it, there is only one thing that an all-powerful president of the U.S. can do: Go to the nearest civil courtroom to find out the fines and potential jail time for crimes he committed while in office. I am sure not only the Congress but many of his fellow citizens will sue him criminally and alleged misconduct that caused emotional distress.
The authors of the U.S. Constitution were mostly British gentlemen, and they could not call it “throwing out of office,” but nicely termed it “impeachment.” Three presidents of the U.S. (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump) were formally impeached in the House of Representatives. None of the three presidents was removed from office because they were acquitted by the U.S. Senate.
It seems almost impossible for the Democratic Party to have a two-thirds vote of the Senate (67 out of 100 senators) to convict Trump, even if the simple majority in the House of Representatives brings charges of impeachment against him. The power of impeachment can remove a president from office, and Congress can disqualify him from holding future office. Trump seems scared spitless so much that he began warning Republicans in the House that, if the party fails to win a majority in November’s midterm elections, he will be impeached. He keeps stressing the importance of maintaining control of the chamber, where the Republicans have a razor-thin majority.
Will this loud president control himself from now on so that he will not be impeached? Of course not! Even though he got elected on an “America First” ticket and with a vow to end all the wars, whoever started it, Trump made the “military force” fashionably acceptable as an international tool. In our modern times, no nation would resort to what Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor Stephen Miller says, “raw power, strength and force” in international relations. But Trump, Miller said, has quickly learned that the real world is really governed by these archaic means.
Since the end of World War II, the bosses of our two-polar world have made sure to have rule-based, development-oriented alliances to keep their own side together. The U.S. has even helped some members of the other side to make them behave “normally.” But Trump has destroyed the concept of “normalcy” by putting force at the center stage in international relations. Following Trump’s example, nations may now turn again to their old methods of strangling the less powerful!
But I guess that Trump could not remove such an essential concept from the international arena. Yes, he is a star. He is the all-powerful president of the most powerful nation in the world. He thinks he can do whatever he wants. (He is bound only by his own morality, that is by nothing.)
But still, this is not Billy Bush’s Access Hollywood bus in Hollywood. And, for instance, Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is not Nancy O'Dell, Bush's co-host at the time of that lewd recording, to be seduced by Trump. Hence, there must be some more powerful source to turn the “America First” into the raw law of the jungle of imperialism. If you can abduct the president of Venezuela, they can abduct their favorite president or prime minister. We know many nations would love to have those presidents and prime ministers in their courtrooms. If your military captures other people’s oil tankers, then they may like “to take possession” of your ships.
That is why I think Mr. Trump’s nonexistent morality could not be the only boundary those powers that be, the people who decide what is allowed or acceptable in the international arena, would approve of. It should go beyond that. Trump might have gotten the hint that those who put JD, Little Marco and Pentagon Pete as his wardens in the Cabinet (the neoconservative deep state in the U.S.) want some coercive diplomacy in action, and he thought that his grabbing the oil Maduro has been denying to the U.S. could make the neocons happy; but that was it. Deposing a dictator and opening the oil pipes was good enough. A little dancing on stage for Trump, but not “expanding democracy” nonsense anymore.
My dear professor Sam Huntington killed the basic idea of neocon idealism of promoting democracy almost half a century ago, but Bush and his cabal needed some cover for his glomming onto the Iraqi oil so that he could have his “Coalition of the Willing,” but not anymore. They don't even need the Bush Doctrine; refurbishing the Monroe Doctrine, President James Monroe’s 1823 policy that the U.S. should consider any meddling in the Americas by Europeans a hostile act, as “the Donroe Doctrine” to justify pre-emptive military attacks to bring the fugitive and his wife to the U.S. courtroom seems good enough. Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Trump about the Donroe Doctrine, but he didn't even understand the question. He responded that he has no reason to be called to account for his actions.
So, I believe no Donroe, no doctrine. It is pure imperialism. America is not going to adopt Trumpism, but Trump is going to take the helm. Not the joint statement seven European heads of state issued last week denouncing Trump’s designs on Denmark’s Greenland, but the U.S.’ responsibility as a NATO member should make him sit down with the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, without thinking naughty things about her and destructive ideas about the bloc.
Trump is not as free as he thinks he is.
Lido Anthony "Lee" Iacocca, an executive who developed the Ford Mustang in the 1960s and revived the Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s, said to brag about his master salesmanship that his name is Lee Iacocca, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Apparently, when it comes to Trump, it takes only 67 senators to make his Sharpie-signed name mud.
