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Tag: Donald Trump

  • Kushner’s “Future of Gaza”: A Humanitarian Obscenity, Not a Peace Plan

    Kushner’s “Future of Gaza”: A Humanitarian Obscenity, Not a Peace Plan

    By Amal Zadok

    Kushner’s “Future of Gaza” is not a peace plan; it is a speculative real‑estate prospectus laid over a mass grave, an investor deck pitched on top of fresh rubble and uncounted bodies.  This brutality dressed in the language of “opportunity” and “master plans” is not statesmanship but moral bankruptcy of the highest order, especially in a territory where tens of thousands have been killed and more than 80% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed by war.

    Skyscrapers on top of corpses

    Jared Kushner arrives in Davos with glossy slides of 180 towers along Gaza’s shattered coastline, talking of ports, airports, logistics corridors and “catastrophic success,” as if he were zoning vacant desert land instead of a territory systematically pulverised for years.  He boasts of timelines of “two or three years” to rebuild Rafah, as though bulldozers and cranes were the missing ingredient rather than the deliberate destruction of an entire society and its basic infrastructure.

    The same presentation that sells Gaza as a “regional hub” requiring tens of billions in capital does not pause to name a single family still digging loved ones from under concrete, a single amputated child, a single mass grave.  When the slides show towers and yacht marinas but never cemeteries and bombed schools, this is not reconstruction; it is a visual coup against reality, a marketing campaign against memory.

    Genocide repackaged as redevelopment

    While Kushner and his patrons speak of “demilitarization” and “free market principles,” Gaza’s human losses remain almost unmentionable, reduced to an awkward footnote to the grand business vision.  Independent tallies already report tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, with epidemiologists warning that war injuries, disease and hunger could easily push the total toward or beyond 100,000 deaths in the medium term; that scale of killing matches the language of genocide and ethnic cleansing far more than it does the vocabulary of “development.”

    This is not a “market opportunity”; it is a demographic wound carved into a trapped population of barely 2.2 million.  The language of the plan is not the language of mourning, justice or accountability; it is the jargon of venture capital—“special economic zones,” “investment funds,” “GDP targets,” “microgrants”—sprayed like perfume over the stench of war crimes.  A territory in which perhaps one in fifty residents has already been killed is being treated as a distressed asset to be flipped, not a society entitled to self‑determination, reparations, and the prosecution of those who orchestrated its devastation before a competent international court.

    The Board of Peace: genocide for a fee

    The so‑called “Board of Peace” is the most obscene twist of all: a one‑billion‑dollar buy‑in for a permanent seat at the table where Gaza’s future will be decided.  This is not peace building; it is a pay‑to‑play cartel that monetises both suffering and sovereignty, turning an occupied, bombed people into the underlying asset of a global prestige club.

    Chaired by Donald Trump and populated by hand‑picked elites, the board offers plutocrats and compliant politicians a new status symbol: “I helped reshape Gaza”—for a price.  The promise that all funds will go to reconstruction does not cleanse the structure of its immorality; buying your way into steering the fate of a stateless population turns human rights into a luxury commodity.  When peace has an entry fee of one billion dollars, justice has already been priced out of the room, and genocide has acquired its own VIP lounge.

    Tony Blair, from Iraq’s lies to Gaza’s loot

    And then there is Tony Blair, whose name and institute have circulated around “day‑after” schemes and advisory circuits linked to Trump’s Gaza ambitions, even if reports now suggest he has been dropped from the final shortlist for the board.  A politician who helped sell the Iraq war on the basis of “weapons of mass destruction” that did not exist, and whose legacy is inseparable from hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, has no moral authority to co‑design—formally or informally—the future of another Arab population bombed and displaced under the banner of “security.”

    Blair’s presence in this orbit is not an anomaly; it is the system revealing itself.  The same political class that lied a country into war two decades ago now returns, scrubbed and suited, to sanitise an experiment in colonial redevelopment: dispossess, bombard, blockade, then invite the architects and apologists of previous disasters to broker the “rebuild” in partnership with investors.  In this cycle, Western leaders are never exiled by their failures; they are recycled into advisory boards and consulting roles, endlessly monetising the ruins they helped create.

    Erasing Palestinians to sell the land

    Kushner’s masterplan speaks fluently about towers, income levels, industrial zones and data centres, but stutters into silence when it comes to who owns the land, who governs the territory and who grants permission.  There is vague talk of technocrats and executive committees, of partner states and vetted locals, but no meaningful space for Palestinians to define their own future outside the conditions imposed by their jailers and their jailers’ patrons.

    This is how erasure works in the twenty‑first century.  You do not have to deny that Palestinians exist; you simply frame them as a logistics problem inside a larger story about corridors, ports and foreign capital.  You point at destroyed refugee camps and call them “phases” of a master plan.  You turn survivors into statistics and then into target demographics for tourism, cheap labour in someone else’s Riviera built on the ruins of their homes.

    Free markets over mass graves

    At the heart of the plan lies the dogma that “free market economy principles” will heal what bombs have broken.  Its authors talk as if unemployment, poverty and blockade were glitches in a spreadsheet rather than the deliberate tools of a regime of control, apartheid and dispossession.  By pretending that skyscrapers and special economic zones can substitute for justice, they ensure that the structural violence underpinning Gaza’s suffering remains untouched, unexamined and unpunished.

    “Catastrophic success,” Kushner calls it: a phrase so revealing it hardly needs commentary.  Catastrophe is the ongoing reality of Gazans; “success” is reserved for those who can turn that catastrophe into contracts, portfolios and keynote speeches in the Alps.  The dead, the displaced and the starved are not invited to Davos; they are the unacknowledged collateral in someone else’s growth projections and the invisible cost of a new speculative frontier.

    An unforgivable obscenity

    To unveil a glittering business blueprint for “New Gaza” while bodies are still decomposing under collapsed homes is not just premature; it is an unforgivable obscenity.  It tells the world that Palestinian life is so cheap that even their mourning period can be shortened to fit an investment cycle.  It signals to every future aggressor that you can flatten a territory and, if you have powerful friends, return as the visionary who will monetise the ruins.

    This is the line that must be drawn. A just future for Gaza begins with ceasefire, full humanitarian access, and international prosecutions for war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide—not with glossy renders, not with billion‑dollar seats on a “Board of Peace,” not with the rehabilitation of men whose careers are built on lies that killed entire nations.  Until the architects and accomplices of this horror stand in the dock instead of on Davos stages, every tower they imagine for Gaza will be nothing more than another form of occupation, another monument to a world that chose profit over people—and another reminder that no skyscraper, no board, and no master plan will ever be tall enough to cast a shadow long enough to hide the blood on their hands.

    References

    BBC News. (2026, January 21). Jared Kushner lays out Trump‑backed “master plan” for post‑war Gaza. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jared-kushner-lays-trump-backed-master-plan-post/story?id=129461124

    CNN. (2026, January 22). 180 skyscrapers for Gaza: Trump’s son‑in‑law Kushner unveils “masterplan” for enclave’s reconstruction. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/22/middleeast/kushner-trump-postwar-plan-gaza-board-peace-davos-intl-latam

    Breitbart / UPI. (2026, January 22). Kushner unveils $25B Gaza masterplan including skyscrapers, housing. https://www.breitbart.com/news/kushner-unveils-25b-gaza-masterplan-including-skyscrapers-housing

    BBC News. (2026, January 22). US unveils plans for “New Gaza” with skyscrapers. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7mmpljze7o

    Reuters. (2026, January 22). US pitches “New Gaza” development plan; Israeli fire kills five Palestinians. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-pitches-new-gaza-development-plan-israeli-fire-kills-five-palestinians-2026-01-22

    CNN. (2026, January 18). Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza to require $1 billion payment for permanent membership. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/18/politics/board-of-peace-gaza-trump-payment-membership

    CNN. (2026, January 20). Trump says Board of Peace established to oversee reconstruction of Gaza “might” replace the United Nations. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/20/politics/trump-gaza-board-of-peace-united-nations

    ABC News (Australia). (2025, November 18). As Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza gets UN approval, critics warn it turns ruins into real estate. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-19/rebuilding-gaza-donald-trump-plan-investment-potential/106006900

    The New York Times. (2024, February 21). War and illness could kill 85,000 Gazans in 6 months, new analysis finds. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/health/israel-gaza-war-deaths.html

    Wikipedia. (updated 2026). Casualties of the Gaza war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war

    Al Jazeera. (2025, January 15). The human toll of Israel’s war on Gaza – by the numbers. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/15/the-human-toll-of-israels-war-on-gaza-by-the-numbers

    The Washington Post. (2026, January 22). Trump’s “master plan” for Gaza contrasts with reality on the ground. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/01/22/trump-kushner-gaza-plan

    The Independent. (2026, January 22). Is Trump building peace – or a property deal on the graves of Gazans? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/trump-gaza-kushner-peace-board-property-b2869059.html

    The Guardian. (2025, December 8). Tony Blair reportedly dropped from Trump’s Gaza “board of peace” shortlist. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/dec/08/tony-blair-reportedly-dropped-from-donald-trump-gaza-board-of-peace-shortlist

    Al Jazeera. (2025, December 9). Tony Blair ruled out of Trump’s proposed Gaza “peace board”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/9/tony-blair-ruled-out-of-trumps-proposed-gaza-peace-board-report

    France 24. (2025, December 9). Tarnished legacy: What role for Tony Blair in Trump peace plan for Gaza? https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20251209-tarnished-legacy-what-role-for-tony-blair-in-trump-peace-plan-for-gaza

    ©️2026 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • Wrong and dangerous strategy: appeasing a bully 

    Wrong and dangerous strategy: appeasing a bully 

    Trump has turned Gaza into the set of The Apprentice: governments pay to sit in his boardroom over the ruins, and their only real job is to obey or get fired. Appeasing that is not strategy; it is complicity.

    By Amal Zadok

    Appeasing Donald Trump is not a strategy; it is complicity. Every time governments, institutions and political elites bite their tongues in the name of “stability,” they are not moderating him; they are underwriting his attempt to replace law with money, fear and his own ego as the organising principle of world politics. A man who combines the power of the U.S. presidency with the traits of a malignant narcissist, an obsession with personal “glory,” and open enablement of mass atrocities is not a “difficult partner”; he is a direct threat to any order that claims to be based on human dignity and the rule of law.

    Malignant narcissism is not mere vanity with extra hairspray. It is a configuration of grandiosity, lack of empathy, paranoia about enemies and a willingness to use cruelty to protect a fragile ego. In Trump’s case, this has meant delight in domination, compulsive lying, routine public humiliation of opponents and a chilling indifference to mass suffering, most starkly visible in his embrace of Israeli policies in Gaza and his political cover for a war that has devastated an already trapped population. For such a personality, other people’s lives and entire territories are props in his heroic narrative: if flattening a people or turning them into bargaining chips makes him look “strong” and pleases his base, then it is not a moral dilemma, it is an opportunity.

    The same pathology is visible in his maniacal fixation on the Nobel Peace Prize, and the humiliating spectacle of allies staging fake “peace” honours to soothe him. When a foreign leader like Marina Machado feels compelled to hand him a framed imitation of an accolade he never earned, it is not diplomacy; it is ritualised ego‑massage that tells every despot watching that even democratic politicians will debase themselves rather than confront his fantasies.

    This pathology is written all over his latest creation: the so‑called Board of Peace for Gaza. On paper, it is billed as a mechanism to oversee reconstruction and governance; in reality, it is The Apprentice metastasised to a global scale, with Gaza as the burned‑out set and whole governments auditioning for his favour. A $1 billion payment secures a permanent seat on this Trump‑chaired “board,” while poorer states are relegated to rotating spots, turning the future of a shattered territory into a billion‑dollar membership club. This is not multilateralism; it is monetised feudalism. It is “The Apprentice: Gaza Edition” – pay to get into the boardroom, sit around his table, follow his orders, and hope you are not the next one he effectively tells: “You’re fired.”

    The Board of Peace is also a direct attack on the UN‑centred system that, however imperfectly, recognised Palestinian rights and tried to put reconstruction under universal, not personal, authority. By dangling access to Gaza’s future as a perk for those willing to buy in, Trump is building a private mini‑UN in his own image: hierarchical, cash‑gated, unaccountable and centred on his personality. States that treat this scheme as just another diplomatic forum, rather than a frontal assault on multilateralism, are not hedging; they are helping him prove that you can sideline global institutions if you are ruthless and rich enough.

    None of this is accidental. Trump has begun saying the quiet part aloud. In a recent interview he declared that “my own morality, my own mind” is “the only thing that can stop me,” brushing aside international law and institutional checks as unnecessary constraints on his quest for “global supremacy.” For a man who has shown that his “morality” stretches to cheering bombardments, openly musing about annexations and threatening the use of force abroad, that line is not colourful rhetoric; it is a confession of megalomania. It tells allies and institutions exactly how he sees them: not as co‑equal guardians of a rules‑based order, but as furniture in a set he believes he owns.

    The Davos episode over Greenland and Canada completes the picture. Trump has openly pushed to “acquire” Greenland, tying tariffs and other economic weapons to the goal of securing “complete and total” U.S. control, before offering the thinnest possible reassurance that he will not, for the moment, use military force. He used a global stage to humiliate Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, sneering that “Canada lives because of the United States” and instructing Ottawa to “remember that” before daring to criticise his Greenland ambitions. This is not alliance management; it is hostage‑taking conducted in the language of reality television and mob protection rackets.

    His behaviour toward Canada and Denmark illustrates the pattern that runs from NATO capitals to Gaza’s ruins. Security guarantees, trade access and even basic recognition are treated as favours that can be withdrawn if insufficient loyalty is displayed. Tariffs are brandished like a baseball bat; territorial integrity is discussed as if it were a line item in a real‑estate portfolio; prime ministers are reduced to contestants he can dress down in front of the cameras. When allies respond with nervous laughter, cautious communiqués and private grumbling instead of coordinated pushback, they teach him exactly the wrong lesson: that they will swallow humiliation and coercion rather than risk open confrontation.

    Layer this onto Gaza and the result is grotesque. Trump is offering political and diplomatic cover to a campaign that has destroyed much of the strip’s infrastructure and displaced the overwhelming majority of its population, then presenting himself as the indispensable architect of what comes next. Under his plan, those who pay the price of his Board of Peace get influence; those who cannot pay get whatever trickles down. The people of Gaza themselves are spectators in a show supposedly scripted for their benefit. Their homes and bodies are reduced to scenery for a global audition in which states compete to impress the man who helped enable their destruction in the first place.

    Supporters will insist this is “hard‑nosed deal‑making” and a necessary way to get things done in a brutal world. That is precisely the illusion appeasement feeds. When governments attend his board, they legitimise the idea that the future of a devastated people belongs in a private club chaired by the man who cheered on their devastation. When media treat his “Board of Peace” branding and his “only my morality can stop me” line as colourful copy, they normalise the premise that checks and balances are optional extras in a nuclear‑armed superpower. When Canada, Denmark and other allies respond to tariff blackmail and annexation fantasies with little more than pained diplomacy, they validate his worldview that laws and treaties are decorations, not boundaries.

    The stakes extend beyond Trump himself. Autocrats and would‑be strongmen everywhere are watching. They see a U.S. president who tries to build a pay‑to‑play mini‑UN over Gaza, who declares that only his own morality restrains him, who bullies allies over territory and trade, and who still finds a line of states willing to buy seats at his table. If that behaviour is indulged, why shouldn’t they copy it? If the “leader of the free world” can treat international law as a suggestion and treat entire nations like contestants on a show, the message is clear: there is no real price for running the world as a personal franchise, so long as you are powerful enough.

    Refusing to appease Trump means more than tut‑tutting and diplomatic eye‑rolling. It means:

    -Boycotting and delegitimising the Board of Peace, insisting that Gaza’s reconstruction and governance be anchored in transparent, UN‑based mechanisms where seats are earned by responsibility, not bought with cash and flattery, and prosecution of those responsible for the genocide and war crimes in Gaza.

    -Responding to tariff blackmail, Greenland fantasies and open insults against allied leaders with coordinated economic, legal and diplomatic measures, rather than fragmented “concerns” that he can ignore one by one.

    -Treating declarations like “only my morality can stop me” as a mandate to reinforce external checks—courts, parliaments, alliances—not as a quirky line to be replayed on talk shows.

    Appeasing Donald Trump—appeasing his bullying, his megalomania, his reality‑show Board of Peace, his threats against allies and his contempt for law—is not prudence. It is surrender. Each time leaders choose silence over truth, access over principle or a paid‑up seat at his fake mini‑UN over a real fight for international law, they edge the world closer to a future in which power answers only to itself. A political system that wants to survive, and a world that wants to remain even minimally just, cannot afford the luxury of appeasing this bully any longer.

    References

    1.New York Times. (2026, January 18). $1 billion in cash buys a permanent seat on Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/world/middleeast/trump-board-of-peace-gaza.html[nytimes

    2.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 19). $1 billion contribution secures permanent seat on Trump’s “Board of Peace.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/1-billion-contribution-secures-permanent-seat-on-trumps-board-of-peace

    3.CNN. (2026, January 18). Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza to require $1 billion payment for permanent membership. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/18/politics/board-of-peace-gaza-trump-payment-membership

    4.The Atlantic. (2026, January 17). Trump’s billion-dollar Board of Peace. https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/01/trump-billion-dollar-board-of-peace/685671/

    5.The Wall Street Journal. (2026, January 19). Trump’s $1 billion-a-seat diplomacy club takes aim at the U.N. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trumps-1-billion-a-seat-diplomacy-club-takes-aim-at-the-u-n-2bccd9f9

    6.Business Times. (2026, January 19). What to know about Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza. https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/global/billion-dollar-membership-fee-what-know-about-trumps-board-peace-gaza

    7.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 21). Trump’s Board of Peace is dividing countries in Europe and the Middle East. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/divisions-emerge-among-western-european-nations-over-trumps-board-of-peace-for-gaza

    8.The Hill. (2026, January 21). Trump to Carney: “Canada lives because of the United States.” https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5699148-trump-carney-canada-greenland/

    9.Global News. (2026, January 20). Trump says Canada “lives” because of U.S. https://globalnews.ca/news/11622445/donald-trump-mark-carney-davos-speech/

    10.Axios. (2026, January 21). Trump responds to Carney in Davos: “Canada lives because of the United States.” https://www.axios.com/2026/01/21/trump-davos-speech-carney-canada

    11.People Magazine. (2026, January 8). Trump says “my own morality” is “the only thing” stopping his global supremacy. https://people.com/donald-trump-says-morality-only-thing-stopping-global-supremacy-11881997

    12.Esquire. (2026, January 8). Trump says his “morality” is the only thing stopping him. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a69960918/trump-morality-in-check/

    13.New York Times. (2026, January 8). Trump addresses Venezuela, Greenland and presidential power in new interview. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-interview-power-morality.html

    14.CNN. (2026, January 20). Trump says Board of Peace meant to oversee Gaza reconstruction and security. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/20/politics/trump-gaza-board-of-peace-united-nations

    15.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 19). News Wrap: World leaders weigh whether to join Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/january-19-2026-pbs-news-hour-full-episode

    ©️2026 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • The fearless man without conscience: Trump’s malignant narcissism and the threat to democracy 

    The fearless man without conscience: Trump’s malignant narcissism and the threat to democracy 

    By Amal Zadok and Rev. Antonio Rossemberg, MD, psychiatrist.


    Donald Trump is not scared. Fear is not an emotion that resonates with him the way it does with most people. He embodies what psychologists describe as a malignant narcissist—a personality type that blends narcissism with antisocial traits, a lack of empathy, and a hunger for domination. People like him are largely incapable of feeling fear, remorse, or genuine empathy. That emotional vacuum makes them profoundly dangerous, especially when they ascend to positions of enormous political or social power. 

    A malignant narcissist does not experience fear as a natural warning signal or a moment of introspection. Instead, fear in others becomes a source of satisfaction—a sign that they are in control. His reactions, from defiant outbursts to self-aggrandizing rhetoric, often reveal a man who feels invincible rather than vulnerable. Setbacks, investigations, or criticism are not perceived as moral reckonings but as insults to be crushed or games to be won. This mindset explains why accountability rarely touches him in any meaningful way: he refuses to acknowledge fault because, to him, weakness is worse than wrongdoing. 

    When such a person occupies the presidency of the United States—the most powerful office on Earth—the consequences extend far beyond one individual’s pathology. A malignant narcissist in power sees the nation not as a collective trust but as an extension of the self. The institutions of democracy become tools to serve personal validation, and the truth itself becomes malleable. Loyalty is demanded, not earned. Those who flatter are embraced; those who dissent are derided or destroyed. 

    Trump’s appeal lies in his uncanny ability to mirror the resentments and frustrations of others while remaining utterly self-absorbed. His political genius, if it can be called that, is his instinct for manipulation—his capacity to turn fear outward rather than inward. He convinces followers that their enemies are his enemies, that their grievances justify his own impunity. In doing so, he transforms personal pathology into a political movement. 

    He is not scared because fear requires humility, and humility is foreign to his nature. What drives him is not courage, but the relentless need to dominate. That is why his power—unrestrained, unreflective, and unrepentant—is so deeply perilous. Now, in his second term, the malignant traits that once defined Trump’s personality have hardened into policy and institutional transformation. 

    His declaration—“No one can stop me; only my own morality can”—is not simply arrogance; it is a chilling admission of delusion. It reveals a man who sees himself as the arbiter of what is right and wrong, detached from external moral frameworks, institutions, or law. For Trump, morality is not universal; it is situational—a reflection of what benefits him in the moment. He invokes morality as a mask, framing his impulses as destiny. This is the purest expression of the narcissistic illusion: the belief that the self is infallible and that restraint is weakness. 

    In a functioning democracy, such pathology should meet a firm institutional response. Congress holds not only the power but the obligation to act as a check on executive overreach, using hearings, investigations, and impeachment when a president’s conduct threatens the constitutional order. Yet too many politicians retreat into rehearsed talking points, tribal loyalty, and short-term electoral calculus, choosing self-preservation over their oath to the Constitution. Their failure to confront this malignant narcissism does not make them neutral observers; it makes them enablers. 

    ©️2026 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • When the Republic Wears a Mask: ICE, Trump, and the Constitution in the Crosshairs of Encroaching Power

    When the Republic Wears a Mask: ICE, Trump, and the Constitution in the Crosshairs of Encroaching Power

    James Madison warned that “power is of an encroaching nature, and…ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.”  In Donald Trump’s hands, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become the very embodiment of that encroaching power: an armed, masked, and increasingly unaccountable apparatus that kills a U.S. citizen in Minnesota, terrorizes communities, and dares the constitutional order to stop it.  An agency that claims the mantle of law has slid into something closer to a standing force of intimidation, operating in a gray zone between policing and political control that James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin would have recognized as the threshold of tyranny.

    Madison, encroaching power, and the ICE state

    Madison’s core insight in Federalist No. 48 was brutally simple: “power is of an encroaching nature” and “mere parchment barriers” are not enough to stop a determined branch from slipping its leash.  He feared precisely what is visible today in immigration enforcement: a single executive apparatus accumulating practical control over lawmaking (through broad discretion), execution (through raids and detention), and adjudication (through executive‑run immigration courts).  This “tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands,” Madison wrote, is the very definition of tyranny, whether wielded by a monarch or an elected president.

    Under Trump, ICE has become such a concentration point. Its Enforcement and Removal Operations wing conducts raids, arrests, detention, and deportation. Policy memos from the White House and DHS effectively rewrite who is targeted and how aggressively, far beyond what most Americans imagined when Congress wrote the underlying statutes.  Madison would not be fooled by the bureaucratic language. He would see an executive machine steadily expanding its reach, using the gaps between law on paper and practice on the ground to enlarge its power.

    The Minnesota killing: when “enforcement” becomes lethal impunity

    The killing of 37‑year‑old Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis is not an aberration; it is a revelation.  Good, a U.S. citizen, mother of three and celebrated poet, was in her car when ICE agents confronted her on a residential street. Video shows an officer at her door while another steps in front of the vehicle and fires multiple rounds into the windshield at close range.  Federal officials rushed to frame her as a threat who tried to run over agents, yet witnesses’ footage shows an officer shooting almost immediately as the car inches forward. The city’s mayor called it “reckless use of force” and told ICE to “get out of our city.”

    Local leaders have emphasized that Good appears to have had no serious criminal record and was reportedly present as a legal observer monitoring ICE activity, while the Trump administration branded her a “domestic terrorist.”  This is the logic of encroaching power: those who watch the state become enemies of the state. A federal officer can shoot a citizen in the face on a city street, then retreat behind a wall of official narratives and procedural reviews.  Madison warned that when one branch operates with “overruling influence” and escapes effective checks, “dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community” follow.  Good’s death is one of those oppressions, and the “minor party” is anyone the executive chooses to target.

    The “law and order” defense — and why it fails

    Defenders of ICE under Trump insist that such force and sweeping tactics are the price of “law and order.” They argue that agents face real dangers, that criminals will exploit any restraint, and that masks, unmarked cars, and aggressive raids are necessary to protect officers and communities alike.  Madison and the founding generation would have recognized the danger in this argument: it turns necessity into a blank check.

    Madison’s warning that power is “of an encroaching nature” was directed precisely at governments that invoke safety to justify permanent expansion of force.  Hamilton cautioned that when the federal government “overpasses the just bounds of its authority and makes a tyrannical use of its powers,” the people must “appeal to the standard they have formed”—the Constitution—and seek redress.  Franklin, for his part, wrote that the “means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home,” a line that lays bare what happens when law‑and‑order rhetoric licenses masked agents to kill a citizen like Good and terrorize entire neighborhoods.  The question is not whether enforcement is needed, but whether it remains constrained by law, transparency, and accountability; when it does not, it ceases to be “order” in any constitutional sense.

    Masks, unmarked cars, and the aesthetics of fear

    The methods ICE now routinely employs reveal how far the culture of the agency has drifted from ordinary law enforcement toward something darker.  Across the country, residents watch masked agents in plain clothes jump from unmarked vehicles, armed with rifles, surrounding people on sidewalks and in driveways. Even mayors describe these scenes as resembling “violent abduction,” not policing.  The Department of Homeland Security insists that masks are needed to protect agents from doxxing and threats, pointing to cases where officers’ families were harassed after photos circulated online.

    But civil‑rights advocates and local officials note that masked, anonymous armed men seizing people off the street “compound fear and chaos” and “evade accountability for agents’ actions.”  When the state sends masked figures in unmarked vehicles to carry out its will, it deliberately blurs the line between law and terror, between a warrant and a snatch‑and‑grab.  Madison’s insistence that power must be visibly separated, checked, and identifiable is not satisfied by a small “ICE” patch on a vest. A power that hides its face from the public it serves is already behaving as if it is above that public.

    “Law enforcement” without law

    Formally, ICE is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security, charged with enforcing immigration and customs laws and “preserving national security and public safety.”  In practice, the Trump‑era posture has treated “law enforcement” as a talisman that justifies almost any method, while the rule of law—the predictable, proportionate, rights‑respecting application of statutes—often appears as an afterthought.  Raids at homes, hospitals, and schools, family separation as leverage, and lethal force against a nonviolent U.S. citizen all point to an institution where the executive’s will is the primary law.

    The Founders knew that “law enforcement” can become a mask for oppression. Hamilton warned that when the federal government “overpasses the just bounds of its authority and makes a tyrannical use of its powers,” the people must “appeal to the standard they have formed”—the Constitution—and seek redress.  Franklin cautioned that “the means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home,” a sentence that reads today like a prophecy of post‑9/11 security agencies turned inward on vulnerable communities.  The question is not whether ICE fits the bureaucratic definition of “law enforcement,” but whether its conduct still reflects the deeper law of a constitutional republic.

    The Founders’ moral horizon: liberty, asylum, humanity

    For the founding generation, liberty was universal and inseparable from the dignity of the person. Franklin wrote that “equal liberty” is “the birthright of all men,” language that sits uneasily beside images of children taken from parents and locked in detention centers because those parents lacked the right papers.  Jefferson spoke of the United States as an “asylum” for the oppressed and warned that if the federal government claimed ungranted powers over aliens and others, Americans would end up “living under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority.”

    The killing of Renee Good and the masked‑raid culture around ICE mark a moral break with that vision.  A government that can shoot a citizen observer in the head, on disputed facts, and then march agents back into the streets wearing masks to “ensure their safety” while whole neighborhoods live in terror has ceased to see liberty as a birthright; it sees public fear as a tool.  Madison’s warning that “when the people fear the government, there is tyranny” is no longer a distant abstraction. It is a description of what residents of immigrant communities, and now even citizen observers like Good, experience when they see a DHS badge.

    The Madisonian response: draw the line

    Madison understood that “mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits” is never enough; it is the vigilance of citizens, legislators, and courts that prevents encroaching power from hardening into permanent despotism.  The ICE that kills a Minnesota mother, moves in masked formations through American cities, and claims the absolute mantle of “law enforcement” while operating in legal and moral gray zones is exactly the kind of institution that must be confronted in Madisonian terms.

    To “appeal to the standard” of the Constitution, as Hamilton urged, means demanding transparent investigations and prosecutions where warranted in the Good case, legislative restraints on raids and use of force, and judicial scrutiny of policies that turn communities into occupied zones.  It also means a civic refusal to accept masked, nameless agents as a normal feature of democratic life: insisting on clear identification, recorded operations, and public accountability whenever armed federal staff operate in local neighborhoods.  If Madison is right—and the history of republics suggests he is—then the line must be drawn now, before the encroaching power that killed Renee Nicole Good becomes a permanent, accepted feature of American government.

    Americans now face a test that previous generations knew only in theory: whether loyalty belongs to a leader and his armed agents, or to the Constitution and the republic it binds into being.  The blood spilled at Lexington and Concord, on the fields of Antietam and Normandy, in Selma and at Kent State, was not offered to sanctify a regime of masked men in unmarked vehicles, but to preserve a nation of laws where power answers to the people.  When ICE can kill a citizen like Renee Good on a quiet Midwestern street, when families live in terror of raids more reminiscent of juntas than of justice, the United States drifts toward a resemblance it has long condemned in others: the look and feel of the very dictatorships it claims to oppose.  The choice now is stark and inescapable: either citizens, churches, cities, states, and courts rise in open, principled defense of the constitutional order—demanding that this government once again fear its people, not the other way around—or the encroaching power Madison warned against will finish its work, and the republic so many men and women died to preserve will quietly become something else.

    References

    1.Ammo.com. (2024, April 19). Founding Fathers’ quotes on government, democracy, and power in the people. https://ammo.com/articles/founding-fathers-quotes-democracy-government-power-in-people

    2.Avalon Project. (1788). Federalist No. 48. Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed48.asp

    3.Bill Muehlenberg. (2021, November 29). The Founding Fathers on freedom. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/11/29/the-founding-fathers-on-freedom

    4.Bill of Rights Institute. (2024). Founders’ quotes. https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/founders-quotes

    5.CBC News. (2026, January 9). The White House is defending fatal ICE shooting of Minneapolis woman. But what are the rules of engagement? https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ice-minneapolis-shooting-use-of-force-9.7038275

    6.Civil and Human Rights Coalition. (2025, February 17). The human costs of Trump’s immigration crackdown. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. https://civilrights.org/blog/the-human-costs-of-trumps-immigration-crackdown

    7.Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute. (2016). Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/immigration_and_customs_enforcement_(ice)

    8.FEE. (2025, November 19). 17 Benjamin Franklin quotes on tyranny, liberty, and rights. Foundation for Economic Education. https://fee.org/articles/17-benjamin-franklin-quotes-on-tyranny-liberty-and-rights

    9.Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. (n.d.). Founding Fathers’ selected quotations key. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/Key%20to%20Founding%20Fathers%20Selected%20Quotations.pdf

    10.Hamilton, A. (2017). Alexander Hamilton quotes about tyranny. AZQuotes. https://www.azquotes.com/author/6160-Alexander_Hamilton/tag/tyranny

    11.Monticello. (n.d.). The question of immigration. Thomas Jefferson Foundation. https://www.monticello.org/the-art-of-citizenship/the-question-of-immigration

    12.National Constitution Center. (2016, March 15). James Madison: Birthday quotes from the most quotable Founding Father. https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/james-madison-birthday-quotes-from-the-most-quotable-founding-father

    13.NPR. (2025, July 9). Masked immigration agents are spurring fear and confusion. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5440311/ice-raids-masked-agents

    14.Press-Pubs, University of Chicago. (n.d.). Jefferson, T. Resolutions relative to the Alien and Sedition Acts. https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch8s41.html

    15.Teaching American History. (2024, July 24). Federalist 47, Federalist 48, and Federalist 51. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/federalist-47-federalist-48-and-federalist-51

    16.The Conversation. (2018). How the media dealt a major blow to Donald Trump’s family separations policy. https://theconversation.com/how-the-media-dealt-a-major-blow-to-donald-trumps-family-separations-policy-98669

    17.The New York Times. (2025, July 20). LA Mayor: Masked ICE agents created “reign of terror”. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/us/politics/ice-agents-masks.html

    18.The New York Times. (2025, August 5). Inside Trump’s new tactic to separate immigrant families. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/us/politics/trump-administration-family-separation.html

    19.United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (2003– ). United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement

    20.Federal Law Enforcement Training & Research Center. (2014, November 25). What is ICE? https://www.federallawenforcement.org/ice/what-is-ice

    21.ABC News. (2026, January 7). Woman killed by ICE agent in Minneapolis was a mother of 3, poet… https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/woman-killed-ice-agent-minneapolis-mother-3-poet-129008055

    22.BBC News. (2026, January 7). US immigration agent fatally shoots woman in Minneapolis. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jvnl4j1n4o

    23.BBC News. (2026, January 8). Renee Nicole Good: Who was the woman killed by ICE in Minneapolis? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1jepdjy256o

    24.Al Jazeera. (2026, January 8). Who was Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed in ICE Minneapolis shooting? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/8/who-is-renee-nicole-good-the-woman-killed-in-the-ice-minneapolis-shooting

    25.SupplySideLiberal. (2022). The Federalist Papers #48: Legislatures, too, can become tyrannical (James Madison). https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2022/2/6/the-federalist-papers-48-legislatures-too-can-become-tyrannicaljames-madison

    26.Critical Skills Blog. (2024, July 21). The Founding Fathers’ fears of tyranny: Insights from Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington. https://criticalskillsblog.com/2024/07/22/the-founding-fathers-fears-of-tyranny-insights-from-jefferson-madison-hamilton-and-washington

    ©️2026 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • Oil for Armageddon: How Washington Is Seizing Venezuela to Fight Its Future War with Iran

    Oil for Armageddon: How Washington Is Seizing Venezuela to Fight Its Future War with Iran

    The pattern of U.S. moves on Venezuelan oil, combined with the strategic vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, makes it plausible that Washington is positioning itself for a future confrontation with Iran in which Gulf oil flows could be disrupted, while Venezuelan crude serves as a non‑Hormuz fallback for the U.S. and Israel. The recent U.S. attack on Venezuela, the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and their transfer to New York on narcotics and related charges do not undermine this thesis; they expose how “drug enforcement” has become the legal façade for a resource‑seizure operation aimed at securing oil for a long war scenario.

    The scale of Venezuela’s oil treasure

    Any geopolitical argument about Venezuelan oil must start with sheer scale. Venezuela today holds the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, with estimates around 300–303 billion barrels, or roughly 17–18 percent of all known reserves, surpassing even Saudi Arabia. In other words, this one Latin American country, within flight distance of Florida, controls more oil underground than the entire United States, which has around 55 billion barrels of proven reserves.

    Those reserves are not just large but strategically tempting. Much of Venezuelan crude is heavy, but U.S. Gulf Coast refineries are precisely configured to process heavy and extra‑heavy oil, historically imported from Venezuela and Mexico. In a world where Middle East supplies become uncertain, a political arrangement that gives Washington decisive leverage over the biggest single reserve base in the world is an energy security dream.

    From sanctions to open seizure: Maduro in New York

    For years, Washington relied on sanctions, asset freezes, and indictments to squeeze Caracas while stopping short of open war. The narco‑terrorism case filed in New York against Maduro and other Venezuelan officials framed the country’s leadership as a criminal cartel, preparing public opinion for more extreme measures. That legal architecture has now been matched by force: U.S. strikes on Venezuela, the capture of Maduro and his wife, and their transfer to New York on drug and criminal charges mark a historic escalation from economic warfare to direct regime decapitation.

    Crucially, this escalation has been accompanied by unprecedented candor from Donald Trump about what comes next. He has publicly stated that the United States will “run” Venezuela “for now,” asserted that the U.S. “built” Venezuela’s oil industry in the past, and pledged that American companies will return to “rebuild” and tap its oil reserves—framing this as an open‑ended, effectively indefinite arrangement. In other words, the kidnapping of a sitting president on drug charges is not the consummation of a moral crusade against narcotics; it is the opening move in a new phase where Washington claims the right to administer, and profit from, the world’s largest oil reserves.

    Why the Strait of Hormuz terrifies planners

    The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow maritime corridor between Iran and Oman, the only sea exit for the oil‑rich Persian Gulf. In a typical recent year, roughly 20–21 million barrels of oil per day have transited this passage, about 20–21 percent of total global petroleum liquids consumption and over one‑quarter of all seaborne oil trade.

    For decades, U.S. planners have quietly admitted what they seldom say openly: Hormuz is the soft underbelly of the global oil system. Around 80 percent of the crude that moves through it goes to Asian markets like China, India, Japan, and South Korea, but any serious disruption sends benchmark prices soaring and hits Western economies as well. Iran has repeatedly threatened to close or disrupt Hormuz if attacked and has demonstrated its capacity to harass or seize tankers, mine shipping lanes, and launch missiles at regional infrastructure.

    In a full‑scale U.S.–Iran or Israel–Iran war, Hormuz does not need to be “completely shut” to cause chaos. Sporadic attacks, insurance spikes, and partial interruptions could remove several million barrels a day from the market for months, triggering price shocks, recession risks, and political backlash in oil‑importing democracies. This is the nightmare scenario for Washington: a conflict it believes is necessary for regional dominance colliding with its own population’s intolerance for sky‑high oil prices and economic free‑fall.

    Linking the dots: Venezuelan oil as war insurance

    Once the strategic importance of Hormuz is understood, U.S. behavior toward Venezuela stops looking random. Over the last decade, Washington has oscillated between punishing Caracas with sanctions and selectively easing restrictions to allow specific companies to re‑enter the Venezuelan oil sector under tight U.S. licensing. That pattern looked less like moral outrage and more like controlled positioning: weaken the Maduro government politically, while keeping the door open for U.S. and allied corporate access to the oil fields and infrastructure.

    The post‑capture phase clarifies that logic. With Maduro removed and Trump openly declaring that the United States is taking indefinite control of Venezuela, Washington has maximal leverage to shape any “transitional” administration, dictate terms to state oil company PDVSA, and secure contracts for U.S. and European majors under the umbrella of American military and legal control. The same legal system that now holds Maduro and his wife on drug charges in New York will be used to claim the moral high ground, while U.S. energy companies are presented as the responsible adults arriving to restore order and “get the oil flowing again.”

    To see why this matters for a future Iran war, imagine a scenario in which Iranian mines and missiles reduce tanker traffic through Hormuz by a third for several months. The resulting loss of millions of barrels per day would send global prices spiralling and force consuming states to scramble for alternative supplies. In that context, U.S.‑linked production in Venezuela—now explicitly under a U.S. “run” arrangement with indefinite control—could be ramped up and redirected to cushion the blow for North America and its closest allies. Washington would not be able to replace every lost Gulf barrel, but it would possess a strategic tap that others, especially rival powers, do not control.

    Beyond democracy talk: energy security and Israel

    Officially, U.S. leaders justify both the earlier sanctions and the latest military operation as a defense of democracy, human rights, and the integrity of the international drug control regime. Yet Washington maintains close partnerships with Gulf monarchies whose political systems are far more autocratic than Caracas at its worst, and Trump himself has pardoned or commuted sentences for U.S.‑linked traffickers and allies, undermining the supposed moral consistency of the “war on drugs.” 

    Set alongside the explicit promise that the U.S. will now “run” Venezuela indefinitely and unleash its oil potential, the common denominator is not liberal values but strategic oil supply and alignment with U.S. and Israeli military objectives in the Middle East.

    Israel’s position is central here. Any large regional war involving Iran will almost certainly involve Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear, missile, or command sites, prompting Iranian retaliation via proxies and potentially via direct attacks on Gulf infrastructure and shipping. Israeli and U.S. analysts openly discuss the risk of Hezbollah rockets, Iraqi militias, and Yemeni missiles converging on U.S. bases, desalination plants, and oil installations in a multi‑front escalation. For Washington, guaranteeing Israel’s ability to wage such a campaign without collapsing Western economies requires pre‑securing alternative oil streams that bypass the vulnerable chokepoints Iran can threaten. Venezuelan crude, moved across the Caribbean and Atlantic to U.S. and European refineries, would be largely immune to Hormuz and Red Sea disruptions.

    Seen from this angle, the armed seizure of Venezuela’s head of state on narco‑charges, and Trump’s boast that the U.S. is taking indefinite control of the country, is not just a shocking violation of sovereignty; it is a step in a broader war‑planning architecture. Control over the world’s largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere acts as a form of insurance policy: if Iran makes good on its threats, the U.S. can lean on Venezuelan barrels to stabilize its own market and cushion the shock for its allies.

    The logic of pre‑emptive control

    Energy planners think in decades, not news cycles. The fact that most Hormuz flows currently go to Asia does not reduce the strategic risk for the United States; it amplifies it, because China and India could leverage their access—or their sudden loss of access—to reshape global power balances during a crisis. If the U.S. is preparing for a world where confrontation with Iran, and by extension with Iran’s partners, becomes more likely, then securing a hemispheric oil fortress in Venezuela becomes rational from a cold strategic standpoint.

    By tightening sanctions, escalating to military strikes, physically removing the elected president under a cloud of drug charges, and now declaring indefinite U.S. control of the country, Washington builds a future in which any government in Caracas—friend, foe, or “transitional”—must negotiate oil policy under the shadow of American legal, military, and financial power. The goal is not merely to deny revenue to a hostile regime but to ensure that, when the next major war in the Middle East breaks out, those 300‑plus billion barrels sit within a system of contracts, infrastructure, and shipping lanes Washington can rapidly mobilize. In that scenario, Venezuela ceases to be a sovereign energy actor and becomes, in effect, a strategic fuel depot for a distant conflict in the Persian Gulf.

    References

    1.Al Jazeera. (2025, September 4). Venezuela has the world’s most oil: Why doesn’t it earn more from exports?

    2.BBC News. (2026, January 3). What we know about Maduro’s capture and US plan to “run” Venezuela.

    3.CBS News. (2026, January 3). U.S. strikes Venezuela and captures Maduro; Trump says U.S. will run the country.

    4.CNN. (2025, June 23). What is the Strait of Hormuz and why is it so significant?

    5.CNN. (2026, January 4). Maduro in U.S. custody after surprise Venezuela operation.

    6.Fox Business. (2026, January 2). Trump pledges U.S. return to Venezuela oil industry after Maduro capture.

    7.Fox News. (2026, January 3). Nicolás Maduro arrives in New York after capture; faces U.S. drug charges.

    8.NPR. (2026, January 3). What are the charges against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro?

    9.NPR. (2026, January 3). Maduro faces drug charges in U.S. even as Trump freed other traffickers.

    10.U.S. Department of Justice. (2025, February 4). Nicolás Maduro Moros and 14 current and former Venezuelan officials charged with narco‑terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other criminal charges.

    11.ABC News (Australia). (2026, January 3). Donald Trump says US will run Venezuela for now after capture of Nicolás Maduro.

    12.Los Angeles Times. (2026, January 3). Trump says U.S. will “run” Venezuela after capturing Maduro in audacious attack.

    13.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 3). A timeline of U.S. military escalation against Venezuela leading to Maduro’s capture.

    14.The New Yorker. (2026, January 3). The brazen illegality of Trump’s Venezuela operation.

    15.U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2023, November 20). The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint.

    16.U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2025, June 15). Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint.

    17.Worldometers. (2024, October 31). Venezuela oil reserves, production and consumption.

    18.World Population Review. (2025, December 17). Oil reserves by country 2025.

    19.Newsweek. (2026, January 3). Map shows how Venezuela’s oil reserves compare to the rest of the world.

    20.Institute for Energy Research / IEA. (2024). Strait of Hormuz factsheet.

    ©️2026 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • Trump’s Narco Hypocrisy: Pardoning the Kingpins, Bombing the Nobodies

    Trump’s Narco Hypocrisy: Pardoning the Kingpins, Bombing the Nobodies

    by Amal Zadok

    Trump’s second term has become a moral crime scene: a president who claims to fight terror and drugs is literally embracing a former jihadist whose past helped kill Americans, pardoning a narco‑president whose cocaine helped destroy American lives, arming Netanyahu as Gaza is reduced to rubble, and ordering missiles on nameless men in boats while powerful killers walk free. This is not “America First”; it is a grotesque alliance of blood‑stained elites, wrapped in a flag and sold as patriotism.

    The Syrian visitor is President Ahmed al‑Sharaa, once a rising figure in jihadist‑linked networks that drew a multimillion‑dollar U.S. bounty and were treated as a direct threat to American lives. A man whose circles were on U.S. terrorism lists is now ushered through White House security as an honoured guest, his history airbrushed away in the glow of photo‑ops. Trump does not just “talk” to him in some neutral venue; he grants him the prestige, the symbolism, the legitimacy of the Oval Office, and in doing so spits on the memory of Americans killed by the very networks this man once served.

    MAGA voters were told Trump would be the hammer of justice against jihadists, that he would avenge the dead and protect the living, that he would end “stupid wars” while keeping America safe. Millions of decent people believed those promises in good faith because they wanted fewer body bags, less chaos, and real protection for their families. They were not wrong to want those things; they were wrong about the man they trusted to deliver them.

    Then there is the ex‑president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández. This man did not just “look the other way.” He helped turn his country into a narco highway, enabling cartels to move hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States – a river of powder that translates directly into overdoses, gang violence, shattered families and dead Americans.

    This is not some technical, victimless crime; it is mass poisoning delivered by the ton. A U.S. jury listened to evidence and concluded, beyond reasonable doubt, that this head of state was a key player in a vast cocaine conspiracy, and a federal judge handed down a 45‑year sentence because anything less would mock the victims. And Trump blew it away: in December 2025 he signed a sweeping pardon that opened the prison gates for Hernández and declared his record wiped clean. This is policy, not accident.

    With one pen stroke, he tells every grieving American parent whose child died on cocaine or crack: your pain is negotiable, your justice is reversible, and if a man wears a presidential sash, his crimes are redeemable. He tells every cop who risked their life on the street, every agent who built the case, every witness who testified against a narco‑president: all of that can be wiped away if it is politically convenient.

    At the same time, Trump continues to pour political cover and weapons into Netanyahu’s hands as Gaza is pulverised and large parts of the West Bank are terrorised. This is a government openly carrying out collective punishment, bombing densely populated civilian areas, annihilating entire families, and leaving Gaza’s hospitals, neighbourhoods and basic infrastructure in ruins. Trump stands not as a restraining voice, but as an amplifier: praising Netanyahu, indulging his maximalist rhetoric, blocking accountability, and helping ensure that the bombs keep falling.

    Christians are not spared. Ancient churches have been damaged or desecrated, Christian communities harassed and attacked, Christian clergy assaulted or intimidated as the war spills across the Holy Land. The land where Jesus walked is now a place where Christian sanctuaries are treated as expendable collateral, and Trump’s response is not outrage, not sanctions, not a hard line on war crimes, but more indulgence, more permission, more weapons – all wrapped in a cynical fusion of Christian language and political calculation that turns faith into a shield for atrocity.

    This is the man who promised “no more endless wars” and “America First.” What did his supporters get instead? A president who invites a former jihadist to the White House one day before one of the most sacred days for the U.S. military, turning solemn remembrance into a backdrop for a grotesque photo‑op. That is not restraint; that is desecration dressed up as diplomacy.

    They got a president who blesses, arms and shields a foreign leader whose campaign in Gaza and the West Bank is seen by much of the world as a live‑streamed atrocity. They got a president who outsources “war” to drones and missiles at sea, blowing up boats on suspicion, rather than formally declaring conflicts or respecting Congress. U.S. forces under Trump have repeatedly struck alleged drug boats near Venezuela and across the Caribbean, killing men whose names, faces and actual roles are still hidden from the American public. This is policy, not accident.

    This is not the end of war; it is the laundering of war. It is the transformation of war into a series of “operations,” “strikes,” and “counter‑narco missions” that avoid public debate while still killing real human beings. No body bags shown on television, just shredded bodies in the Caribbean and the eastern Mediterranean, far away from American cameras.

    “Drain the swamp” was supposed to mean confronting entrenched power: lobbyists, foreign money, corrupt politicians, the revolving door with arms manufacturers and foreign regimes. Instead, Trump has fused his White House to some of the dirtiest currents in global politics. He entertains a former jihadist leader, frees a convicted narco‑president whose crimes helped drown U.S. communities in cocaine, and embraces and arms a government accused of genocide, war crimes, and systematic persecution – including persecution of Christians.

    He then stands back as missiles slam into small boats on the high seas, killing the poor and powerless whose only crime is being on the wrong vessel with the wrong accusation attached. The message to the world is simple: presidents and generals get invitations and pardons, while fishermen, migrants and low‑level smugglers get obliterated without trial.

    How is this “draining the swamp”? The swamp has never been happier. Arms dealers profit from the weapons sent to an unrestrained Israeli war machine, and defence contractors quietly celebrate the steady flow of contracts. Foreign politicians with blood‑soaked records find forgiveness and legitimacy in Washington. Lobbyists and ideologues pushing unconditional support for the Israeli government see their agenda elevated above the lives of Palestinians, above international law, above even the safety of Christian communities in the Holy Land.

    Ask plainly: is this what MAGA expected? A president who kills nameless men in boats without trial while freeing narco capos in suits? Who dignifies a former jihadist leader while preaching toughness on terror? Who backs a foreign government as it flattens Gaza, terrorises the West Bank, and allows Christian churches and communities to be attacked? Who uses patriotic slogans and Christian language as a mask for raw realpolitik and transactional alliances with killers?

    All of it adds up to a single, obscene picture. This is not the hero of some populist epic. This is a villain who learned how to speak the language of the angry and betrayed, only to turn around and protect the powerful while crushing the weak. Every missile launched at a boat full of suspects, every tank round that lands on a crowded Gaza street, every quiet, smiling photo with a man who once ran with terrorists or cartels – all of it is a signature on a contract that says: power will be protected, and the rest of you are expendable.

    It is like declaring total war on the Medellín Cartel while still inviting Pablo Escobar to the White House, shaking his hand, and pardoning him for every crime he committed against the American people – then turning around and hunting down desperate teenagers in speedboats to prove how “tough” you are. In this upside‑down morality, power launders guilt, the presidency launders narco‑politics, and the only people who truly face the full violence of the U.S. state are the ones too poor, too foreign and too disposable ever to see the inside of the Oval Office.

    ©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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