This Is Trump’s ‘Burn the Ships’ Moment

There’s no turning back from the course he’s setting for the United States

Trump to House Republicans: “They have horrible policy. They do stick together. They’re violent. They’re vicious. You know, they’re vicious people and they stick together like glue.”

It’s not even a full year into Donald Trump’s second term, but this week has been a stark reminder that the administration is setting the United States on a course that will forever change the nature of our society. Whoever follows Trump, Republican or Democrat, will be governing under the conditions set by Trump.

This is Trump’s Hernán Cortés moment — “burn the ships.” There’s no turning back. We are mired in a new world, whether we like it or not.

Perhaps that seems melodramatic. But Trump has three more years to work his will. A Democratic Congress elected this November might impose some constraints, such as launching investigations and exposing malfeasance. He would be forced to bargain on some bills, but he’d just as likely ignore Congress and issue executive orders. Trump raised the prospect of impeachment if Democrats win the House, but that will be of little consequence. He will not be convicted.

After all, this week was also the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection — a reminder that he has escaped accountability for outrageous acts before.

Here’s a quick summary of why this week is a hinge-in-history moment.

The United States divorced itself from the world. Trump authorized the seizure of the leader of another country and transported him to the United States to stand trial. Yes, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was a brutal dictator who had refused to accept that he lost a fair election. But Trump did not even offer the pretense of trying to work through the international system, as George W. Bush did before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Moreover, Trump took this action not in the name of restoring democracy — rejecting an election result obviously is not a deal-breaker for Trump — but for the declared purpose of grabbing Venezuela’s oil. Never mind that the oil industry there is in disrepair and Venezuelan crude is notoriously dirty — or that the United States today produces more oil domestically than any other country. Trump decided he wanted the oil — and that’s that.

In an interview with The New York Times, Trump declared he was not constrained by international law — “I don’t need international law” — which he suggested was open to interpretation. He said he was bound by “one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Trump’s track record on morality is spotty, to say the least.

Perhaps the clearest expression of what this means came from influential Trump aide Stephen Miller. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

As a further sign of his scorn for the international system, Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order suspending U.S. support for 66 international organizations, agencies, and commissions, many associated with the United Nations. That was just a capstone on a year of withdrawing from international agencies such as the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, and UNESCO.

The transatlantic partnership ended. Trump’s seizure of Maduro was followed by bellicose rhetoric by Trump and his aides that they would soon claim Greenland, perhaps with military force. Miller’s quote about “iron laws” came as he asserted the United States had the right to control Greenland.

Greenland, of course, is the territory of Denmark, a NATO member. The U.S. military already is permitted to do whatever it wants on Greenland, and Denmark has been among the U.S.’s closest allies. Demanding Greenland — even buying it — would destroy NATO and provoke a devastating break in relations with European allies.

Even if Trump does not follow through with his threat, this was the week when many European leaders realized that trying to placate Trump or humor him will not work — and that the United States was in effect becoming a rogue state.

Trump, bound only by his morality, wants Greenland as a scalp — to be able to say he greatly expanded the territory of the United States. (Greenland looks especially big on the misleading Mercator projection of most flat maps.)

Greenland also is in the Western Hemisphere. This week, the State Department posted a chilling message to the rest of the world: “This is OUR Hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened.”

Even a tragic death won’t deter Trump. In ordinary times, the shooting death of an unarmed mother by a federal immigration agent through her car window would have been investigated with diligence and respect. In tense situations, accidents can happen. Instead, Trump and Homeland Security officials immediately settled on a cover story — that 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was a terrorist bent on killing the agent who killed her.

That claim was quickly disproven by careful video analysis by The Washington Post and The New York Times, which showed the agent shot Good when he was not in harm’s way. But by quickly getting a false version of the story out — and earning support from GOP colleagues in Congress — Trump ensured that the circumstances of the shooting would be muddled and unclear. Yet Good was a U.S. citizen and ICE agents had no authority to stop her from leaving the scene, let alone use deadly force.

Such a tragedy should be a cause for reflection, perhaps even a change in policy. But official violence like this — and the outrage it inspires — is embraced by Trump because he views everyone who opposes him as deranged and even violent.

On Tuesday, in a rambling, falsehood-filled speech to House Republicans, Trump gave the clearest distillation of what he thought about Democrats.

“I wish you could explain to me what the hell is going on with the mind of the public because we have the right policy; they don’t,” he said. “They have horrible policy. They do stick together. They’re violent. They’re vicious. You know, they’re vicious people and they stick together like glue.”

He regretted that “we have to even run against these people.” Then, in a joking aside, he added: “Now, I won’t say ‘cancel the election, they should cancel the election,’ because the fake news will say ‘he wants the elections canceled — he’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.”

Or was he joking? Trump’s jokes often turn out to be serious. The answer, alas, will depend on Trump’s moral compass.