Donald Trump: An anti-establishment rebel or gangster in a suit?

By Richard Sudan

US President Donald Trump is not a statesman. He’s a gangster in a suit. His unilateral and illegal aggression against Venezuela earlier this week only serves to confirm this.

He built his election campaign on the promise of being an anti-war candidate – a claim so blatantly false that it now risks dividing the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

For a brief moment, some entertained the idea that Trump’s brand of conservatism might be anti-war, while the neo-liberals were pushing for more war.

No more. The fallacy has been well and truly exposed.  Trump has revealed himself to be no different from those before him.  He’s as much of a war hawk as those he decried in his campaign speeches. While the presidency may change, American foreign policy remains constant. It is centered on more wars driven by resource acquisitions and profit.

And let's be clear. What the United States did to Venezuela wasn’t a matter of legitimate foreign policy, counter-narcotics, or “law enforcement” by any reasonable standard.

It was a straight-up violation of international law.  Bombing a sovereign nation, killing civilians while kidnapping its democratically-elected president, and hauling him to New York like a war trophy.

No UN mandate. No approval from Congress. No extradition process. No legal justification that survives five minutes of basic scrutiny. Just brute force and a smirk.

This was always who Trump was. So let’s call this latest act of military aggression what it truly is: kidnapping for oil. Modern colonialism.

Trump didn’t even bother hiding the motive. He openly declared that the US would “run” Venezuela, a country sitting on the world’s largest proven oil reserves. It is criminal extortion.

The US had made the ugly lurch, from openly talking up the idea of colonizing Gaza and turning it into a playground for the rich, to setting its sights on Venezuela. The world must reject this and condemn the US in the same manner as any other nation would.

For all the bluster about foreign criminals in the US and the need to fortify its borders, it’s the US that has acted as the violent foreigner, attacking yet another country.

But the signs of who Trump really is are not new.  We saw them clearly during his first term as US president.

This is the same man who, in his first term, violated Iranian sovereignty, carried out assassinations, and oversaw the killing of Iranian scientists, all while posturing as a peacemaker.

This second term hasn’t changed him. It has unleashed him. From Iran to Somalia and Gaza. From Nigeria to Yemen. From Syria to Venezuela.

The through line is simple: Trump uses violence as policy and treats the law as an inconvenience. He cares not for the US Constitution, and he certainly doesn’t care for international law. He doesn’t restrain American power; he weaponises it for his own ends.

Trump’s ‘America First’ vision is not to look after the working people in the US who voted for him, but to pursue his own brand of American expansionism.

What’s perhaps most grotesque about the attack on Venezuela is the cheerleading. The same voices who laughed when Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was hunted down and murdered are now celebrating Maduro’s kidnapping like it’s the end credits of a Hollywood flick

They talk about “justice” while endorsing an act that, if carried out by Russia or China, would be labelled terrorism by lunchtime.

Imagine the reaction if a US president were seized abroad and paraded before a foreign court. We wouldn’t be talking about legality.  We would be talking about war.

That’s the hypocrisy at the heart of this moment.

The US no longer even pretends to respect the rules-based international order it lectures the rest of the world about. It breaks sovereignty when convenient. It ignores international law when profitable. And then it demands obedience while offering none in return.

That is the very definition of a rogue state.

The distracters will critique the Maduro government and resort to whataboutism.  But it’s irrelevant. This is about recognizing what happens when the “most powerful country” decides that force replaces law, and that kidnapping replaces diplomacy.

If halting the narcotics trade and removing a corrupt leader were ever justifiable by force, the US would be at the top of the list.

History tells us where this road leads. Libya was “liberated” into chaos. Iraq was “freed” into ruin. Venezuela is now being carved up under the same imperial script and Western media wants you to applaud.

Trump didn’t drain the swamp. He turned it into open water for pirates.

This is gangsterism with a flag draped over it. And the world is being warned, in real time, what comes next if no one draws a line.

Richard Sudan is a London-based journalist and writer.