President Donald Trump’s belligerent foreign policy can be understood by his “abusive, impulsive narcissist relations with women,” says the associate editor of a prominent Washington DC magazine.
Describing Trump’s statement last week that he plans on “taking Cuba in some form” because he can “do anything I want with it,” the bottom line is that “Trump’s megalomania continues to grow because he is so rarely punished for it,” wrote Washington Monthly associate editor Gillen Tener Martin in a Sunday editorial.
From winning the 2016 presidential election despite the "Access Hollywood” tape leaking (in that tape he bragged about sexually assaulting women) to getting reelected in 2024 even though he was found liable by a civil jury for the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, Trump has learned that he can harm others with impunity — and that translates into his policy choices.
“But, of course, ‘I can do anything’ isn’t just Trump’s modus operandi with women,” Martin wrote. “It’s his mantra—how he moves through life: selfishly, chaotically, with little forethought and no expectation of consequences. And we’ve seen how that translates into policy; from tariffs to vaccines to DOGE, from Minneapolis to Venezuela to Iran.”
Martin added, “Turns out, if you’re an abusive, impulsive narcissist in your relations with women, you tend to be one in other areas of life, too. Who would’ve thought?”
There is good news for anti-Trumpers in that Trump’s attitude of invincibility does not translate into actual invincibility, Martin pointed out. He failed to repeal Obamacare, contain the COVID-19 pandemic, steal the 2020 presidential election or convince America’s former allies to back his reckless military venture in Iran.
“Even a military superpower needs allies in war, and allies are hard to find when war is waged on specious grounds without a diplomatic endgame,” Martin concluded regarding the last point. “Under different circumstances, the president being forced to reckon with the consequences of his actions may have brought solace—even glee—to some. Alas, the repercussions of this mess will come for us all.”
Martin’s concern over a possible US invasion of Cuba is based on Trump’s recent fixation on the Caribbean island country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents are Cuban immigrants and who is a staunch opponent of that nation’s longstanding Communist regime, has long called for the island to be democratized.
"There is a very personal and corrupt agenda that he is carrying out, which seems to be sacrificing the national interests of the U.S. in order to advance this very extremist approach," Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla told the AP in October about Rubio.
In response to additional Trump threats in January, Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel told Reuters that "Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do. Cuba does not attack; it has been attacked by the U.S. for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood."