Empire of Trump: the President’s plan to make America greater

‘The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation,’ said William McKinley, America’s 25th commander-in-chief, who happens to be one of Donald Trump’s favourite presidents. Trump, who barely dodged a bullet in 2024, shares a number of traits with McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901: Scottish blood, ferocious work ethic, an affinity with the super-rich that somehow appeals to the working classes, a faith in tariffs as a means of safeguarding industry, and a willingness to expand America’s empire to boost future prosperity.

‘I keep speaking to Europeans and British embassy people and telling them he really means this stuff’

‘I’m talking about protecting the freeworld,’ said Trump last week, as he announced his intention to annex Canada and Greenland, to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and to reassert American sovereignty over the Panama Canal. ‘You don’t even need binoculars. You look outside, you have China ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen.’

The same day, the President-elect had dispatched his eldest son to Greenland aboard his Boeing 757, aka Trump Force One, to greet the locals. Don Junior, the princeling, came in peace. ‘We’re going to treat you well,’ he told the Inuits, as 3,000 miles away, in the warmer climes of Mar-a-Lago, his father refused to rule out using military force to acquire their land.

Most of the world reacted to the Trump clan’s imperial ambitions with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. The political and diplomatic classes assume that his expansionist rhetoric is a madman ploy, a bluff to advance the Trump 2.0 tariff agenda and push his more sincere demands that Nato countries spend up to 5 per cent of their budgets on defence. Speak to MAGA insiders, however, and the message is clear: he is deadly serious.