Trump's fixation on total control terrifies insiders

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

A conservative is worried that President Donald Trump is delusional about the limits to his power — and that this may spark a global catastrophe.

“Donald Trump's latest claim that there are now 'no limits' to his power after launching war with Iran has alarmed political insiders and commentators in Washington, who warn his fixation on 'absolute power' risks catastrophic miscalculations abroad and deepening chaos at home,” reported the International Business Times’ Briane Nebria on Sunday. Trump made these remarks on the HBO program “Axios on HBO” and occurred after he said his ability to declare a war against Iran had proved there were no constraints on how he can use his presidential powers.

After the interview, CNN host Pamela Brown explained to viewers that Trump suggested he was more powerful than Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin, both infamous authoritarians in their own right. Jonah Goldberg, a conservative commentator who co-founded The Dispatch, actually agreed with the mainstream news network.

“There are only two possibilities,” Goldberg explained to Brown. “Either he believes it or he's just saying it. And I'm not sure which one is better.” He added that Trump is either refusing to accept that raw power alone does not confer moral legitimacy or is genuinely incapable of understanding that distinction.

“He only measures things on the metric and the rubric of power,” Goldberg told Brown. Because the president has tremendous global influence, this refusal to distinguish between the two could have dire geopolitical consequences.

“I think [that delusion] is going to create more problems in foreign policy and maybe domestic policy going forward,' Goldberg said to Brown. “If Trump genuinely cannot see, or refuses to acknowledge, the constraints built into the American system, then 'he's going to make the same mistakes again.”

Goldberg, despite being conservative, has long opposed Trump’s presidency. In April he wrote an editorial for the Grand Island Independent in which he pointed out that the president’s double standard in expecting other nations to treat him with respect while he is disrespectful is hurting his foreign policy.

“The essence of this low-road-for-me, high-road-for-thee dynamic rests on the belief that Trumpism is a one-way road,” Goldberg explained on Wednesday. “Insulting Trump, deservedly or not, is forbidden, while Trump's antics should be celebrated when possible, defended when necessary, or ignored when neither of those responses is possible. But he should never, ever face consequences for his own actions.”

He added, “Trump has routinely mocked our allies. For efficiency's sake, let's forgive all of the petty jabs from the first term ostensibly intended to get them to spend more on defense. In Trump's second term, he claimed our NATO allies would never fight on our behalf, even though the only time NATO invoked Article 5 -- an attack on one is an attack on all -- was in the wake of 9/11.”

Goldberg concluded, “Back in January, in Davos, Switzerland, Trump revised this false claim, admitting some did fight in Afghanistan, but that ‘they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.’ This infuriated not just allied leaders, but their voters. Indeed, Trump is even unpopular with the populist right across most of Europe.”

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