Maureen Dowd
Behold Donald of
Deliria!
Jan. 17, 2026, 7:00 a.m. ET
Credit...Evelyn
Hockstein/Reuters
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion
Columnist, reporting from Washington
There’s a great scene in
“Lawrence of Arabia” when Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence comes back from battle and
meets with Gen. Edmund Allenby, his British superior in Cairo.
The bookish Lawrence
tells Allenby he executed an Arab ally with his pistol and, “There was
something about it I didn’t like.”
Allenby reassures him
that his distaste is to be expected.
“No, something else,”
Lawrence explains. “I enjoyed it.”
Donald Trump was always an impresario
of chaos. He told me that when violence broke out at his
rallies, it added sizzle to the proceedings. He seemed proud of the anarchy and
bloodshed in his name on Jan. 6.
Yet he wasn’t that keen
on military adventurism, even though he liked military parades. He came to see
W.’s imperialism in Iraq as “a big, fat mistake.” He thought our occupations of
Muslim countries were a waste of time and money. He was more into deals than
invasions, dreaming of beachfront hotels rising in North Korea and Gaza.
But now, in his second
term, he’s morphed into Donald of Deliria. He’s mad to make the military do his
bidding.
At a White House
ceremony on Thursday honoring the Florida Panthers, the Stanley Cup champions,
Trump mused about the players flanking him: “Young, beautiful people. I hate
them. You hate standing here with all this power behind you. But I got power,
too. It’s called the United States military. I don’t care.”
Trump Redux is
infatuated with drone strikes and airstrikes, tumescent with the power of the
world’s greatest military, hungry to devour the hemisphere in one imperialistic
gulp. He plucked the dictator of Venezuela out of his compound to plunder that
country’s oil. He’s threatening Iran with military action. He demands that
protesters in Iran not be killed, while stoking tension against protesters in
Minnesota.
He has infuriated Denmark, formerly
one of the most pro-American countries in Europe, by warning he will strike a
deal to get Greenland “the easy way” or will get it “the hard way.” He
threatened on Friday to slap tariffs on nations that resist his effort to grab
Greenland. His belittling boasts about swallowing Canada helped drive our
nicest neighbor into the arms of China.
Donald of Deliria is
wallowing in brute force.
He told Reuters
that “we shouldn’t even have an election” because his administration had
accomplished so much. But in a new CNN poll, most
respondents called Trump’s second term a “failure” so far. Imperialism is ever
so much easier than affordability.
He has already ratcheted up a horrifying military-style
occupation of Minneapolis. Pouring gasoline on a raging fire, as always, he
mulls over invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to send troops there.
As the daughter of a
cop, I am sympathetic to the split-second life-and-death decisions the police
have to make. But Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who shot and shot and shot
Renee Good as she was trying to drive away, tragically overreacted — then called
her a “fucking bitch.” He could have stepped aside and caught up with her
later, since he had her license plate.
As a Times story pointed out, Ross, formerly a National Guard member
deployed to Iraq, embodies the post-9/11 militarization of border enforcement,
a “high-risk approach that favors counterinsurgency-style aggression over
careful policing.”
Rahm Emanuel said on CNN that scenes
of masked ICE agents with no body cams roughing up people have become such a
disturbing part of the American landscape that the agency as we know it will
have to end.
“ICE has become a
lawless mob rather than law enforcement under President Trump,” he said.
When Times
reporters asked the president in an interview whether there
were any limits on his power, he replied, “My own morality, my own mind.” God
help us all.
It’s chilling when you
combine Trump’s stupefying greed with all the power in the world.
It’s almost quaint to
look at the misrule of W. and Cheney. At least they made up some highfalutin’
cover story about bringing democracy to the Middle East, when the real story
was closer to daddy issues for W. and a Halliburton windfall for Cheney.
Trump’s entire doctrine
is naked rapacity, from Venezuela to hijacking the Kennedy Center to hideously
remaking the White House in his own gaudy image.
A fake peace prize from
FIFA wasn’t enough for him. The greedy little piggy was licking his lips as
María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader, curried favor by handing
over her Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday. Pathetically, Trump accepted it, giving
Machado a swag bag in return that included a
medal with his picture on it.
The Panthers presented Trump with two
championship rings, a jersey that said “Trump 47” and a gold hockey stick.
“That stick looks beautiful,” said the
gilt aficionado, fearing the jersey would be his only swag. “Maybe I get both.
Who the hell knows? I’m president. I’ll just take them.”
