Conservatives are lying to themselves. Trump doesn't care about our beliefs. |
Ever since Donald Trump’s surprise 2016 presidential victory, people have tried to put labels on his ideology or recreate it in an academic setting. Even I, myself, have fallen victim to this impulse in the past.
Trump himself gives plenty of opportunities for people to do so through his latching onto certain ideologies. His embrace of the Monroe Doctrine, the "unitary executive theory" or any other ideology fits squarely within conservative outlooks, and yet conservatives shouldn’t get too excited.
Trump uses academic terms and doctrines not because he believes in them on merit, but because they serve his personal aims. We've seen this several times.
Ideologizing Trump is a mistake; his attachment to ideologies and doctrines only goes as far as they serve him. Those who want to succeed him may find trouble later by attaching their ideologies to him now.
In foreign policy, the Monroe Doctrine provides Trump with a rationale to act as a strongman in South America and seize oil reserves. His interest was always in the oil; any other motivations were merely convenient, secondary or in the interest of accomplishing that.
However, Trump has latched on to this Monroe Doctrine idea as a pretext for him to pursue his true foreign policy aims, which is that the U.S. involvement in the........