With chaos raging in Minneapolis, my mind wandered to the motivations and history of the man ultimately responsible for the chaos — President Trump.
What makes the man tick? Can we boil it down to one main thing?
If I was forced to pick from his many foibles, I would pick addiction to power.
Power has long been Trump’s drug of choice. His many decades of flashing his name on fancy skyscrapers and casinos, his domination of tabloids, and his years as a reality television star, were all ways for him to satisfy his power cravings. The more visible he was, the more power he radiated.
By the time he became the most powerful man on earth, he was like Tony Montana at the end of Scarface — too much cocaine to gorge on.
But here’s where the drama shifts: After reaching the very top in 2016, he fell to the very bottom in 2020 when he lost his power perch to Joe Biden. Nothing terrifies Trump more than being seen as a loser, weak and powerless.
During his time in the loser’s wilderness, Trump was an addict in withdrawal, facing the humiliation of indictments, court appearances and mug shots, all symbols of powerlessness.
Oh, he never stopped trying to frame everything to regain some advantage. They stole the election from me, they’re trying to take me down so I can’t win again, and so on. It helped him that legal authorities really did overreach and often came after him unfairly, and that his successor in the White House was withering in cognitive decline and plummeting in popularity.
The combination of blundering political rivals and a MAGA base still entranced by him, not to mention avoiding an assassin’s bullet by a few millimeters, propelled Trump to the biggest comeback in U.S. political history.
Now put yourself in the addict’s shoes.
After tasting the cold concrete of losership four years earlier, Trump was now miraculously back in that great palace of winners, that palace where supply of the power drug is unlimited.
What did we think this chronic power addict would do?
Indeed, everything about Trump’s first year back on top can be seen through that power lens. His days are likely consumed with one overriding question: How can I throw my weight around today?
This may sound primal and reductive for a man with so much responsibility on his shoulders. But Trump is no ordinary man. He’s a narcissist with a deep hole inside of him that can only be filled with spectacular demonstrations of his power.
Pretty much any action he has taken or executive order he has signed can fit that lens.
Whether it’s changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico or the Kennedy Center, going after Panama, Canada and Greenland, bullying countries with tariffs, summoning heads of state on a whim, sending federal guards and ICE troops to cities, capturing the president of Venezuela, enabling deals to boost his family’s wealth, taking revenge on rivals, pardoning second-time convicts, throwing hissy fits for not winning the Nobel Prize, tearing down the East Wing of the White House for a grand ballroom, turning the Oval Office into a tribute to gold plating or threatening anyone he dislikes through his random 3 a.m. postings, Trump is effectively telling the world: I have so much power I can get away with anything.
He keeps reaching new lows, in other words, to feel new highs.
Needless to say, there are many fallouts from such a power junkie’s odyssey. Among other things, what will Trump do about the violence and chaos that surrounds ICE? Will he double down on his power trip or try to calm things down?
Around the world, among the worst fallouts is that America is no longer seen by even longtime allies as “the good guy.” We’re now seen as the Great Intimidator. That’s a lousy birthday present on our 250th anniversary year.
Are there any silver linings in all of this?
Of course there are. Power works both ways. Even the left-leaning Washington Post published a piece recently by Marc A. Thiessen on “The 20 best things Donald Trump did in 2025.” It’s worth a read.
But I’m most interested in another silver lining, one that can only come from an unpredictable bully who has a way of scaring the bad guys.
Just as power can destroy, power can move mountains.
Last June, our power-tripper-in-chief moved mountains in Iran with bunker buster bombs that severely degraded its nuclear facilities.
If Trump follows through on his promises to support the millions of Iranians who have been risking their lives to protest a ruthless regime and the planet’s #1 sponsor of terror, it’s hard to overstate how this could transform the region and even the world.
Since the Ayatollahs took over in 1979 and suffocated a great nation, they have spread their reign of terror throughout its region and the world, while millions of freedom-lovers everywhere have yearned for the day when the people of Iran would be liberated.
If that happens under Trump, it won’t make up for the chaos he has unleashed that has damaged the already fraying fabric of our country.
But it’s a sign of the crazy times we’re in that a narcissistic bully can end up doing something that can change the world for the better: Make Iran Great Again.
Even if he’d be doing it just to get another high.
