God's Chosen President: What Drives Donald Trump's Radical Political Course?

First published in German in the column 'Understanding America' in the daily newspaper "Koelner Stadtanzeiger" on March 27, 2025

Only a short while ago the reliable and pleasantly solid, if somewhat boring Joe Biden was still President of the USA. And yet it feels as if the Biden era has been over for many years. Never before in the history of the USA have so many radical domestic and foreign policy decisions been taken right at the start of a presidency as under Donald Trump. Trump is radically reshaping the structure of the American government and social system in a right-wing-nationalist direction. At the same time, he is attempting to completely reorganize US foreign and security policy and break out of the liberal-democratic framework that has been in place for 80 years.

But what is actually motivating Trump to carry out such an unprecedented radical policy? At least five important convictions and driving forces can be identified.

Transformative Presidency

1. Above all, Trump wants to go down in history as a transformative president. Although Trump is not particularly religious, he is deeply convinced that he is God's chosen one to save America from decadent ruin and bankruptcy. This conviction has become even stronger since the two assassination attempts on him during the election campaign last year. In particular, he was deeply moved by the first assassination attempt on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet narrowly missed his head and injured his right ear. He only survived, he says again and again in a tone of conviction, because God had chosen him to save America and the world. With such rhetoric, he is also able to speak to the many fundamentalist Christians in the USA, as these believers are among his most enthusiastic supporters. Trump is deeply convinced of his uniqueness and his political genius. Even when he promises the USA a new “Golden Age” in an economic sense, he believes it himself.

Countering Feminist-Socialist Ideas

2. Trump is also firmly convinced that the USA has been infiltrated by unhealthy feminist-socialist ideas for years. This, he believes, has led to a completely exaggerated policy of “diversity, justice and inclusion”, not least concerning issues of race and sexual policies, regarding for instance gay and transsexual people. This, he claims, has led to a massive over-bureaucratization of the state and the weakening and weaponization of the US justice system by the Democratic party and other left-wing forces in US society, as he sees it. The simultaneous uncontrolled influx of enormous numbers of illegal and criminal immigrants, he maintains, has caused great additional damage to the country. In a conspiratorial tone Trump repeatedly talks about the internal threat to America posed by the radical left-wing “deep state” and the millions of illegal immigrants.

He also has no love for America’s development aid policy and the many environmental and health policy regulations and the state agencies which try to enforce them. For him, these are all left-wing feminist-socialist projects. This explains the enormous far-reaching powers that Trump has given Elon Musk and his zealous DOGE activists. They are tasked with slashing and cracking down on the entire sprawling state system.

Avenging Past Wrongs

3. Trump sees himself not only as the great liberator who wants to free the country from the leftist straitjacket, but also as an avenger to right past wrongs. Trump is not letting up in his efforts to legally prosecute all those who have supposedly harmed him. This includes the many lawyers and Democratic politicians who wanted to hold him accountable for the storming of Congress by many of his supporters on January 6, 2021. However, former employees who have fallen out with him are also being persecuted, as are journalists, professors and students who criticize him and his far-right policies.

Even though Trump himself naturally belongs to the American elite and his government is dominated by ultra-rich men, Trump sees himself as a modern Robin Hood who wants to enable the supposedly oppressed and disadvantaged white lower classes to participate in the American Dream again. They make up the core of his supporters and 92% of them remain convinced that Trump is a wonderful president.

Ending the Exploitation of the US

4. Trump is also deeply convinced that the US has been exploited by its friends and allies for decades. Foreign countries would enjoy tremendous trade privileges that, conversely, they are not granting to US exports, which has caused Washington's huge trade deficit. This conviction explains Trump's wildly fluctuating tariff policy, which not only affects countries that are hostile to the USA, such as China, but also hits badly Washington’s once closest allies, including the EU and Canada.

At the same time, Trump is also using the enormous economic and military power of the USA to gain geopolitical and geoeconomic advantages. His intention to annex Greenland makes perfect sense for strategic and economic reasons, but is completely illegal under international law. The valuable raw materials and rare earths in Greenland are highly important in the struggle between the superpowers in the Arctic.

Shaping the World of the Future - a New ‘Big Three”

5. Trump also has a completely different idea of how the world of tomorrow should be organized. Trump thinks in authoritarian and monetary terms, just like the all-powerful CEO of a large family business. Decisions have to be made and implemented quickly and purposefully and without much debate. Trump does not have much tolerance for the complicated politics of cooperation and coalition-building that are common and necessary in democratic countries. And this is also how he sees the international scene of the future. A world of the strong “Big Three” - USA, Russia, China - is entirely acceptable to him, especially if the USA is still the leading power. For less powerful countries and international organizations such as the EU, Canada and Ukraine as well as the United Nations, he only has a weary smile. They are of only marginal interest to him.

Europe in particular is viewed with great contempt in the White House. The fact that European defense spending has been far too low for many years has contributed to this, as has the EU's appreciation of climate policies, social justice and human rights. There is currently not much left of the common transatlantic value system. Still, even the disastrous Trump-Vance era will come to an end one day.