In 2016, Donald Trump told supporters, “The only important thing is the unification of the people — because the other people don’t mean anything.” The message was unmistakable: there are “the people,” and there are “the other people.” Only one group counts.
Trump has never pretended to be a unifier. His political power has always depended on sharpening divides, not healing them. What many once dismissed as impulsiveness or incompetence has, over time, revealed itself as something far more deliberate: a governing strategy built on chaos, conflict, and the constant widening of America’s internal fractures.
Analysts have long noted that Trump’s political instincts are rooted in generating conflict. As WBUR reported, Trump’s ability to “manufacture conflict about culture war issues is in overdrive,” a tactic that keeps him at the center of public attention while destabilizing the institutions meant to check him. This chaos is not merely noise; it’s a tool that exhausts the public, overwhelms the media, and blurs accountability.
A Fulcrum analysis goes further, arguing that Trump’s governance “fractures institutions, fuels anxiety, and tests America’s democratic core” by leveraging polarization as a political resource rather than a problem to solve. In this view, chaos is not a failure of leadership — it is the leadership.
Nowhere is Trump’s chaos‑as‑strategy more visible than in his approach to immigration. From the earliest days of his first term, Trump framed immigrants—particularly Latino and Black migrants—as threats to national security, crime, and cultural identity. This framing wasn’t incidental. It created a permanent state of emergency that justified increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics.
In 2025, as his second administration took shape, he escalated the language further, telling a rally crowd that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase that drew condemnation from historians for its echoes of 20th‑century authoritarian movements.
Under Trump, ICE was encouraged to operate with maximal force. Reports throughout his presidency documented racial profiling, neighborhood sweeps, courthouse arrests, and raids that targeted entire communities rather than specific individuals. Civil rights groups and legal observers repeatedly warned that these tactics were designed not only to detain undocumented people but to instill fear across immigrant neighborhoods, chilling cooperation with police, schools, and hospitals.
The recent killings of Alex Jeffrey Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents echo this history. Within hours, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem labeled Good a “domestic terrorist” — despite incomplete footage and no independent investigation. CNN’s interview with Noem showed her doubling down on claims of “unpublished evidence,” mirroring the administration’s long‑standing habit of defining the narrative before facts are established.
This is the same playbook used throughout Trump’s immigration agenda:
- Escalate enforcement.
- Justify it with fear‑based rhetoric.
- Defend agents reflexively, regardless of evidence.
- Frame targeted communities as threats.
It is chaos deployed with purpose.
Trump’s political identity depends on the existence of enemies — immigrants, the media, Democrats, “RINOs,” protesters, bureaucrats, and sometimes even his own appointees. Unity would collapse the narrative architecture that sustains his movement.
A unifying president seeks to lower the temperature. Trump raises it. A unifying president tries to build coalitions. Trump breaks them. A unifying president sees political opponents. Trump sees existential threats.
Division is not a side effect of his leadership. It is the fuel.
As the country faces rising polarization, institutional distrust, and political violence, Trump’s strategy of governing through chaos is destabilizing and dangerous. Democracies depend on shared facts, functioning institutions, and a basic level of civic trust. Trump’s leadership style corrodes all three.
The question is no longer whether Trump thrives in chaos. The evidence is overwhelming. The real question is whether the country can withstand another era defined by it — and what citizens can do to strengthen the guardrails that democracy relies on.
That work doesn’t begin in Washington. It begins with people choosing to engage rather than withdraw. It means supporting local journalism that verifies facts instead of amplifying outrage. It means participating in civic life — voting, attending public meetings, serving on boards, and holding leaders accountable through lawful, democratic channels. It means refusing to let disinformation go unchallenged in our own circles, and choosing dialogue over dehumanization even when disagreements run deep. It means reinforcing the institutions that make self‑government possible: independent courts, professional civil servants, nonpartisan election workers, and the peaceful transfer of power. And it means voting in the midterm elections.
Midterms are one of the few structural tools Americans have to rebalance power, impose oversight, and correct course when any administration — regardless of party — operates without meaningful checks. They determine who writes the laws, who conducts oversight hearings, who controls budgets, and who can restrain or enable a president’s agenda. In moments of heightened instability, those levers matter even more.
Voting in midterms is not about endorsing one personality over another. It is about deciding what kind of governance the country will tolerate, what level of accountability it expects, and whether the institutions designed to prevent excess will be empowered or weakened. When turnout drops, the loudest and most extreme voices fill the vacuum. When turnout rises, the system reflects a broader public will — and becomes harder for any leader to bend toward chaos.
Citizens cannot control the rhetoric coming from the White House, but they can control whether they participate in the process that shapes the nation’s future.
Chaos thrives when people feel powerless. Democracy survives when people remember they aren’t.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum, the publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.