King of the World – Trump and the Art of Exploitation
In 2024, the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration and security bill negotiated by Republican Senator James Langford of Oklahoma. The $118 billion package allocated $60 billion to Ukraine defense, and over $20 billion to DHS for border security enforcement, including detention facilities, personnel, technology, and asylum processing.
Pressured by Donald Trump, the bill was voted down in the Republican controlled House of Representatives. Trump wanted immigration to be a central issue in his upcoming campaign for re-election. It should have been clear to everyone then that Trump sought to exploit the immigration problem, not solve it. His motive? Political gain.
With the deployment of ICE troops in Minnesota the exploitation goes on. Pam Bondi made that clear in her January 24 letter to Governor Tim Walz, in which she demanded access to voter rolls as a condition for removing federal forces. Voter rolls have nothing to do with immigration.
One would think that, after winning a second term, Trump would have nothing more to gain politically. So, why continue the exploitation?
Trump’s narcissism is unbounded. He has political aspirations beyond the US presidency. He first revealed a global ambition in 2019 when he tried to buy Greenland. In this second term, he has kidnapped the president of Venezuela and “runs” that country. Ostensibly his purpose was to stop illicit drug manufacturing and distribution, but it has become clear that his real purpose and interest is Venezuelan oil.
He still craves Greenland and says that the US will take it, “the hard way, if it can’t do it the easy way.” He has also threatened our northern neighbor saying Canada should become the 51ststate. He has threatened to take back Panama and to take over Cuba, Colombia, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Gaza, and Nicaragua. Most ambitious is his present attempt to organize an international Board of Peace, of which he is president. Membership requires a $1 billion initiation fee.
Clearly, Trump’s Board of Peace would compete with the United Nations, which faces financial collapsebecause the US is delinquent in dues payments. To a deal maker like Trump, forcing a competitor out of business is simply good business.
But to realize his global ambition, Trump must first establish absolute control over the United States. He must become an authoritarian ruler. With White Christian Nationalists, like Steven Miller, running his administration, and restructuring our government so that it conforms to the Project 2025 plan, Trump is well on his way.
The authoritarian state envisioned by Trump and the Christian Nationalists is inspired by Putin’s Russia. Trump openly admires Putin, as the Christian Nationalists, like Tucker Carlson, idolize Russian society, even though the Russian people are relatively unhappy compared to Americans.
Russia presents itself as a democratic, law-based country, but its actual political structure reveals a different reality. In practice, Russia operates as a police state that suppresses dissent and prioritizes state interests above individual rights. As a result, the rule of law is frequently undermined, and opposition to the government is prohibited.
Key to Putin’s control over Russia is the FSB (Federal Security Service). Classified as a military service under Russian federal law, it is a paramilitary organization. It is the successor to the Soviet-era KGB and holds vast powers, including domestic intelligence, counterintelligence, anti-terrorism, and border security. It answers directly to President Putin. Its budget is hidden but it is estimated that the FSB employs at least 200,000.
For Trump to exercise control over US, he needs an FSB equivalent, which is what Miller and Noem are creating, using ICE as the underpinning. Recall that the bi-partisan committee that produced the 2024 immigration bill determined that $20 billion would cover the cost for ensuring border security. Yet the partisan “One Big Beautiful Bill” allocated $185 billion to DHS, nearly 10 times more. Was the bipartisan estimate simply wrong or did the writers of the Big Beautiful Bill have something more in mind?
Of the money allocated to ICE, $75 billion is essentially a slush fund. Spending objectives are undefined, which enables vast uncontrolled spending. That sounds nefarious, and it is. Miller and Noem are quietly building a paramilitary organization, which is designed for more than enforcing our immigration laws.
Consider this image of ICE agents. This is a military tactical unit, the look of which terrorizes and intimidates. In place of traditional police uniforms, masked agents wear military style camouflage garb and are armed with automatic weapons.
Paramilitary police typically:
Conceal their identities – ICE agents hide their faces and do not wear name tags.
Conduct arbitrary searches, arrests, interrogations, indefinite detentions and hide suspects – Standard ICE procedures.
Act as law unto themselves – ICE agents freely disregard constitutional guarantees of due process and fourth Amendment search and seizure protections.
Target political opponents – ICE agents are deployed to cities run by Democrats, like Minneapolis, where the majority voted against Trump and protest his policies and administration.
Gather political intelligence – ICE agents are compiling a database that includes personal information on people who exercise their constitutional right to protest. This reflects Trump’s 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum NSPM-7 that suggests anyone objecting to the administration’s policies is a domestic terrorist.
Another disturbing fact is that, to facilitate a massive hiring effort, Miller and Noem have lowered ICE qualification standards. Many recruits lack the required knowledge, skill, maturity or judgment, and may include far right extremists. Look at the Good and Pretti incidents in Minneapolis with. Alex Pretti was unarmed and held down by ICE agents, while shot 10 times, three times in the back. In the case of Renee Good’s homicide, after shooting the 37-year-old mother three times, the agent can be heard saying, “f*cking bitch.” How is it possible that any law enforcement agents employed in the United States can be capable of such callous brutality? Miller and Noem are hiring thugs.
To control the people they rule, all autocratic regimes have a secret police force. Hitler had his Gestapo and SS; Mussolini had OVRA; Putin has FSB and Trump will have direct control over ICE. A Republican controlled congress authored and sanctioned this travesty. We have witnessed the consequences in Minneapolis. There is more to come.
Voting Republicans out of office in the mid-term elections is the only way to stop this madness. Nothing is more important. Otherwise, the great American experiment is certain to end in an autocracy. Only a more powerful and glorious office would induce Trump to leave the presidency – something he really craves, like King of the World.
The damage wreaked on American institutions over the past year by the Trump administration has been devastating. On the world stage Trump has already destabilized NATO, put United Nations at risk, and diminished US standing. Given global power, his narcissism will wreak unthinkable havoc. Patriotic Americans have the power to stop the insanity in the November mid-terms. This may be our last chance.
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