Does Donald Trump Really “Run the World”?

Or is he even in charge of the White House?

United States President Donald J. Trump, who somewhat hubristically claims that he “runs both the country and the world”, has created a political machine called MAGA, which stands for Make America Great Again. He has parlayed that instrument into electoral victory by pledging himself to improve the lives of Americans through shaking up the federal bureaucracy while also ridding the country of illegal immigrants and criminals. He has also focused on the enormous waste, in every sense of the word, that has resulted from what he calls by the name of his predecessor “Biden’s Wars,” referring to those conflicts in Asia and Europe as pointless.

The MAGA slogan was an effective marketing tool but the voting public would have been better advised to consider what Trump accomplished during his first term as president. In the area of foreign policy, with particular focus on war-making, he unwisely withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by President Barack Obama which monitored and inspected Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Likewise, in 2019 he canceled participation in the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, which has created something like an nuclear arms race in Europe that has advanced the scientists’ nuclear warning clock to the closest point to midnight that it has ever arrived at, suggesting that a tiny misstep could have devastating consequences up to and including nuclear annihilation. Trump also foolishly assassinated Iran’s General Qassim Soleimani who was on a peace mission in Baghdad Iraq in 2020 and struck Syrian targets with cruise missiles twice based on phony threat information produced by neoconservatives.

More recently Trump has bombed Iran in support of Israel, has assisted in the overthrow of the Syrian government, and has supported avoidable wars in both Ukraine and Gaza/Palestine. So it is pretty clear that Donald Trump is not a man of peace and it is also evident that he has negligible understanding of international politics and diplomacy, which he pretends to support but with little or no follow-through. He is also a man who believes in “When in doubt threaten to bomb them!” He has recently been making and citing plans to start nuclear war with Russia, quite possibly to prevent the release of the Epstein files which might contain devastating negative information on the president.

In a “Truth” social media post that was so serious that it contained authentic presidential grammatical, spelling and syntactical errors, suggesting that the president himself had actually written it, Trump announced that he has positioned two nuclear submarines close to Russia because he was upset that former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had teased him on Twitter. It demonstrated that even a pseudo-warlike former draft dodger who becomes president can get emotional enough to end the world after a mean Twitter comment. And when the radioactive dust settles, Trump will be a shoo-in for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he said last week he had already fully earned four or five times through his astonishing level of peace-mongering.

And of course there is the matter of the relationship of the US with Israel, where both Trump and his predecessor were clearly visible as pawns in their dealings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has now decided that Israel will occupy all of Gaza minus the Gazans, ignoring some proposals put forward by Trump. Trump is truly tied hand and foot with Israel and anyone who denies it is being naïve, or worse. A friend of mine recently drafted a letter that he then sent to the White House complaining about US support of war crimes in Gaza. The White House information office responded with a letter, ostensibly signed by Trump, which included “When I became President, I made it clear: America stands firmly with Israel… To keep our country safe, I imposed visa restrictions on foreign nationals—including international students—with ties to terrorist organizations. I am steadfastly committed to deporting pro-Hamas radicals and to making our college campuses safe and patriotic again. These actions reflect a clear and unwavering commitment to a foreign policy of peace through strength. Under my leadership, the United States is once again standing strong against terrorism and standing firmly with our allies. The State of Israel represents the peak of human perseverance and the pinnacle of human triumph—and I will always support its right to win its war on terror.”

So it is all about Israel without a word about actual US interests. As Israel is the world’s leading source of international terrorism, up to and including genocide planned for 2 million Gazans, Trump’s letter is somewhat disingenuous, particularly as the United States is complicit in the war crimes and has done nothing to stop the fighting either in Gaza or in Ukraine, which he could do by a simple phone call to Volodymyr Zelensky and Netanyahu cutting off all support for either or both endeavors. The US might also concede that the arguments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin concerning Ukraine and NATO as well as the fact that the atrocities attributed to Israel in Gaza are real war crimes amounting to a genocide that is also real. It was amusing to watch the recent inspection of “humanitarian” conditions in Gaza by US Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Chief Negotiator Steve Witkoff as it was a staged event surrounded by Israeli military and featuring several apparent Arabs described as “Gazans” who conveniently described how much they feared their own Hamas rulers and appreciated what the Israelis were doing. Both Huckabee and Witkoff conveniently detected neither starvation nor mass murder of the Arabs by the Israeli hosts.

Meanwhile 20 AIPAC sponsored Republican Congressmen led by no less than House Speaker Mike Johnson were roaming Israel, to include the West Bank which once upon a time was considered to be the future Palestinian state but which is now being taken over by Israeli settlers backed up by soldiers who just love to shoot Pals. The largely Christian Zionist GOP trash deliberately included on their itinerary a Palestinian village that had been purged of Palestinians and illegally occupied by settlers and their progeny. It was the first such visit by a US Government delegation providing the seal of approval from Washington on such misbehavior. A delegation of Democratic Party Congressmen were meanwhile preparing to descend on Israel to show their total loyalty as soon as the Republicans vacate. This happens every congressional recess.

So there has been a lot of fun and excitement over the past week, but for me one story stands out. On Wednesday, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, whom I have dubbed the “dog killer,” announced that there would be some new conditions on the disbursement of the $1.9 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds that have been authorized by Congress in the upcoming “big, beautiful budget.” Bear in mind that the money in the budget comes from taxpayers and is intended to alleviate the suffering of Americans who are enduring natural disasters. The Trump administration has now declared that states and cities will not receive FEMA funding if they choose to boycott or otherwise cease doing business with Israeli companies or individuals. States and cities must from now on certify that they will not engage in a “discriminatory prohibited boycott” which is “refusing to deal, cutting commercial relations, or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorized by, licensed by, or organized under the laws of Israel to do business.”

The condition on FEMA funding takes aim at the international Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for a global boycott to pressure Israel over its occupation of Palestine and its brutal genocide in the Gaza Strip. In response to a voter backlash when the story broke, DHS declared that it would enforce the boycott of the Israel provision even though “There is NO FEMA requirement tied to Israel in any current NOFO. No states have lost funding, and no new conditions have been imposed.” DHS wrote somewhat evasively on X: “FEMA grants remain governed by existing law and policy and not political litmus tests. DHS will enforce all anti-discrimination laws and policies, including as it relates to the BDS movement, which is expressly grounded in antisemitism. Those who engage in racial discrimination should not receive a single dollar of federal funding.”

So you see, the bottom line is that the Trump Administration believes that Jews are always the victims, even when they are killing thousands of one year old babies. All of which means that if you are a company or a political entity you have no right to make a business or investment decision based on morality. Nor do you have any right, if you have any executive authority, to exercise free speech or manage decision-making taking into account the behavior of a foreign country or make decisions based on such perceptions if that country is Israel.

That you are a US tax payer paying taxes to assist fellow Americans in an emergency is irrelevant if Israel is involved. The special case granted to Israel is, by the way, unique. No other country enjoys that same privileged status with the current US government. Beyond that federal ruling, there already exists considerable pressure to target the BDS movement using laws at the state level. This has been due to unrelenting pressure from groups that together make up the Israel/Jewish Lobby to benefit Israel in all ways possible and it has been going on for many years. At least 36 US states have laws on their books that prohibit or deny benefits and jobs to citizens promoting boycotting Israel in some form. In a number of states a resident seeking a job or a form of assistance must specifically sign a form which is a legal document pledging not to call for any boycotts, divestment or sanctions relating to Israel or Israelis.

We Americans have to ask ourselves whether our nation’s favoring one foreign country due to corruption and manipulation is or is it not treason? It should be, and our leaders and shakers who have worked so hard to place Israel over and in charge of the United States just might one day have to pay the price for their labors as the tide is definitely turning. Someone should mention that to Donald Trump and his associates in power.

Posted by Philip Giraldi on Aug 11 2025 . Filed under CNI Authors, Commentary & Analysis, Philip Giraldi . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.